Kirill Grouchnikov's Blog: Pixel Precision the Almighty

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«The real story about how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader | Main | Working with JAXB 2.0 - JavaOne BoF »

Pixel Precision the Almighty

Posted by kirillcool on June 08, 2005 at 03:45 AM | Comments (2)

While the debates rage on with a lot of unsupported claims on both sides, while various projects aim to fix problems that are apparently known to developers only, while the developers themselves publish elaborate techniques to perfectly imitate behaviour that will be changed by OS vendor in the next version, where is the truth?

Many have praised this new Pixel Precision deity, many have claimed that this deity fails to account for successful UIs such as WinAmp or Media Player. I suspect that there are many followers of this new deity that wish to emulate native look and feel while at the same time thoroughly despising the OS vendor and all its products. All in the name of the end user experience.

Many have claimed that the default Metal LAF is obsolete and its replacement should have nothing to do with water. Many have demanded to incorporate open source LAFs into Mustang, hailing them as saviours long thought to be lost.

But what about that most sacred and decisive argument that serves both sides so well - the end user experience? Where is that mythical user that shatters his new LCD in frustration seeing awkward bluish rectangular buttons and at the same time screams in anguish seeing familiar look and feel in the completely different OS? That mythical user that is cited not once too many by both sides as the ultimate goal, the holy Grail of LAF, so to speak? Is he aware at all that such a problem exists? Has he been approached in a systematic manner? Has he been presented with some new application in assortment of LAFs? Did he have a chance to make his statement?

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Comments

Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first) | Post Comment

Perhaps its because for years developers have been told that in order to make their application successful, they have to make it accessible to users. For the longest time that meant designing GUIs around a set of guidelines that judged what would be best for the end user.

But now it seems to be acceptable, even fashionable, to decide to dump all that in favour of custom widgets for everything. Sure, apps no longer look like they're stuck in 1995, but at the same time having different widgets that look the same but act differently isn't very user friendly, is it?

UIs like Winamp are successful, IMO, because they attempt to replicate something solid that the user can relate to in the real world, in Winamp's case a somewhat generic stereo system. The problem is that for most applications, there are no real world equivilants to compare to.

Posted by: aidan_walsh on June 08, 2005 at 04:47 AM

There are two kinds of deities in fact: Pixel Precision and Pixel Fidelity. Developers worshipping Pixel Fidelity are the ones who want a native look and feel. Those worshipping Pixel Precision take care of the smallest detail when creating a UI. That said you can worship both.

As I said somewhere else, I've never met a user complaining about problems of visual fidelity to a native look and feel. Yet, lack of fidelity in the feel is from from harmless. If you have habits you might be very frustrated because the application does not behave as expected. WinLAF and Quaqua try to address these issues along with visual ones.

I myself don't like when an application tries to look native but doesn't manage to. I prefer to get a different look, it's less awkward. That said, it is a matter of taste. My usability isn't hurt because vertical scrollbar arrows in Java's Windows look and feel are shifted by one pixel to the left (you can see this with the Windows Classic skin on XP :) It might be annoying when you're picky about small details though but you eventually get used to it.

If you haven't read it yet, may I suggest you to read the "Java Look and Feel Debate" (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10633) on OSNews?

Posted by: gfx on June 08, 2005 at 10:58 AM

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