Philip Brittan's Blog

Java vs. .NET, part 1 - Usability

Microsoft has the upper hand on the usability front

This Blog entry is the first in a series in which I plan to analyze the challenges that Microsoft .NET poses for Java and explore ideas for overcoming those challenges.

Many people love to rail against Microsoft products, saying how bad they are. And there is a sense in which this is justified: many Microsoft products are not as robust and scalable as some other products, and perhaps they don’t have all the conveniences for system administrators that other products do (at least they don’t in early versions).

But let’s face the hard facts, folks: Microsoft user applications rule. They are slick, they are sharp, they have tons of great features. Users like them -- overwhelmingly. Here is what one disgruntled CIO had to say about Microsoft product usability vs. that of the Linux community:

McCourtney added: "Microsoft is just more functional and useful. They actually conduct usability studies to see if people can intuitively use their apps. I don't recall any postings on SourceForge in that topic area." And if there are, I'll bet they say something like, "Users are dumb! They don't DESERVE to run Linux!!"

And it’s not just Microsoft applications. It is the Windows operating environment and all the ISVs who natively write to that environment. Microsoft sets the style and the ISVs (to one degree of success or another) follow that style, locking in the Microsoft leadership.

Please pardon me for saying this, but most Java apps look shabby compared with other desktop apps. Java now has a reputation for shabby-looking apps on the client-side. Swing was supposed to address this and has failed. IBM’s SWT comes closer but still hasn’t really challenged native MS technologies on the client. I am encouraged by Alan Williamson’s review of Juliette as a project that takes the UI seriously, but they apparently had to provide their own GUI layer!

There was hope a few years back that the Web would change this equation. The expectation was that all applications would move out of the native environment into the browser, where they would be much more intuitive than that complicated Microsoft stuff, and of course would be powered by server-side Java.

Well, although many apps have moved into the browser, usability issues haunt those Web apps – badly. Many Web app projects have become shelf-ware. The Web architecture has been sold to the CIO (and possibly CFO) as a way to reduce costs and increase flexibility; and the potential for that is real. But there has often been tremendous push-back from users on the sluggishness and low usability of those browser apps. For day-in-day-out usage, users generally prefer the experience of their old client/server or desktop applications. Amy Fowler gives a great example of this for the consumer market. (And by the way, who controls the browser?)

The non-Microsoft camp likes to claim that MSOffice is so popular simply because it is often bundled with new PCs, and there is no doubt that plays a role. But it is also the case that Office and other Microsoft-based apps are very sharp and highly usable for the vast majority of users. We must take product usability very seriously to make inroads against Microsoft domination.

Comments

• It is true..to some extent...
  It is true to some extent that client side Java apps dont outperform their MS counterparts, there are surely some UI needs that need to be put in Swing to make a better UI experience for a Swing app user. There are lots of Swing apps out there which are doing a good job, but just not sticking with the regular 'windows' patterns for UI.....and that is where the users get complaining about Swing. As noted in the article above, there surely is a need for a user experience group within Swing team to get this in place, and get Swing apps where they can out perform (or match) MS based desktop apps.

  Posted by: ravneetg on July 30, 2003 at 03:14 PM

• This is actually Swing vs. MFC
  The Windows applications you are talking about were written in MFC or maybe straight Win32. Definitely not in .NET. And actually the UI of a lot of Microsoft applications do suck. Without layout managers, many apps or dialogs cannot be resized. Some apps have an older look and feel and some have a newer one.

  Having dabbled in .NET, I only know of a few applications actually written using WinForms. They are on the same quality level as the average Swing application. Microsoft left out a lot of Win32 UI stuff from WinForms. If you go to any .NET site you'll see pople trying to implement the VisualStudio menus, etc in .NET. This is essentially the same situation Swing is in.

  Microsoft may have at one time conducted usability tests (definitely not with personalized menus!) but your average WinForms (or Swing) developers has not and will not.

  Neil

  Posted by: mockum on July 30, 2003 at 04:31 PM

• Market and perception...
  These are valid points.

  It's hard to compare an average Swing app to MS Office. The scale isn't the same. On the same note, it's hard to compare the average native project to a Swing project for the same reason.

  Then again, if a user encounters a really good Swing app, are they likely to recognize it as such, or mistake it for a native app?

  
  

  Posted by: d_bleyl on July 31, 2003 at 07:18 AM

• Try a Mac
  My wife and I got a new iMac and a digital camera three weeks ago. The iPhoto user inteface blew me away. Not just "better than a web app" or "looks sharp and is responsive." The thing was telepathic or something.

  Of note: iPhoto doesn't suffer from the feature bloat that many big, standard applications sink in.

  Anyone know what sort of usability work went into that program?

  Posted by: dwalend on July 31, 2003 at 09:23 AM

• Beyond thick client
  I think the answer here lies in thinking beyond the traditional thick client (MFC or Swing) and also thinking beyond the traditional thin client (web browser). IM is leading a quiet revolution, and I believe it is just getting started. I believe it is critical that the Java community rally around a Java IM implementation.

  Posted by: byronsebastian on July 31, 2003 at 09:23 PM

• User Interface Design for Programmers
  User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky is reasonably short and quite good:
  http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000247.html

  Posted by: leknor on July 31, 2003 at 10:07 PM

• Just a matter of being accustomed to commercial MS Office?
  As with many things in life, the impression of "usability" is to a great extent simply a matter of being accustomed.
  As I experienced in my years as a UI designer both in MFC and Java Swing, common users are accustomed to the handling and appearance of native Windows applications by their MS Office installation - everything that doesn't behave or look exactly like that is recognized either as "interesting" (at best), as "strange" or as "shabby" (at worst).

  Another point: I suppose the Windows application s Philip is referring to are mostly commercial ones, which means that the UI designers put a great deal in polishing them up.
  Most of the java applications are not! As a rule, open source programmers do set no great store on the UI but more on the productivity of the tool - you prefer to develop another "cool" feature rather than polishing the UI, don't you? There are exceptions, of course.
  I can assure Philip that I have seen non commercial MFC applications which he himself most certainly would rank among the most "shabby " looking apps of the universe...

  After all, I agree with him that there should be taken some more effort into this more often.

  Regards,
  Matthias Paul Scholz

  Posted by: mpscholz on August 01, 2003 at 12:49 AM

• Beyond thick client, where does IM fit in?
  Byron,
  This seems to be somewhere just beyond the horizon. Maybe a hybrid rich/thin client? An application browser, or something. I was wondering where you saw IM fitting into this.

  Posted by: d_bleyl on August 01, 2003 at 05:45 AM

• Just a matter of being accustomed to commercial MS Office?
  Matthias, I have no doubt about that! I have seen many such shabby MFC apps.

  Thanks.
  - Philip

  Posted by: pbrittan on August 01, 2003 at 06:30 AM

• Beyond thick client
  Byron, you are foreshadowing where I�m going with this. The answer doesn�t simply lie in �C�mon guys, let�s try harder!� (although I totally support that attitude). I don�t think it even lies in trying to fix the problems with Swing (although I think Swing has flaws).

  I think there is something more fundamental here, and getting ourselves to see beyond traditional conceptions of thick clients and Web clients is definitely the first step.

  Thanks.
  - Philip

  Posted by: pbrittan on August 01, 2003 at 06:31 AM

• Try a Mac
  Thank you for pointing that out. Apple is a company that takes usability extremely seriously, and they work hard to instill that commitment to usability and style among their developer community. I applaud them for that.

  Best,
  - Philip

  Posted by: pbrittan on August 01, 2003 at 06:33 AM

• Try a Mac
  Thank you for pointing that out. Apple is a company that takes usability extremely seriously, and they work hard to instill that commitment to usability and style among their developer community. I applaud them for that.

  Best,
  - Philip

  Posted by: pbrittan on August 01, 2003 at 06:35 AM

• Addendum
  Philip,
  while currently working on a Java-Excel bridge I detected two things:
  * that the latter is certainly one of the most widely-used native Windows applications, though by no means can be described as being "sharp", "usable" or "intuitive", can it? It's just people having spent years of getting to learn it and being accustomed to it (the "vi" effect, that is). Guess that's backs my first note a bit.
  * that the API for those native windows applications, how sharp they may look or not, is most definitely HELL (at least for win32 API, MFC and the OLE stuff)...it is to be hoped that .NET will do the same reasonable job here as swing obviously does for years now.

  Regards,
  Matthias Paul

  Posted by: mpscholz on August 01, 2003 at 06:56 AM

• Addendum
  Mattias -

  (1) There is no doubt that long-term exposure to an app makes that app seem more intuitive. Personally, I do find Excel to be 'sharp' in its look and feel, and I find most functions to be intuitive, although there are plenty of advanced functions that are obtuse (like charting).

  This might be of interest to you: there has been some research which compares the usability of Excel to the StarOffice spreadsheet, StarCalc. It is important to note that StarOffice was not originally written as open source, as that report states, and, important for our present discussion, it was not written in Java.

  
  (2) Microsoft claims that .NET will make programing Windows applications very easy.

  
  All the best,

  - Philip

  Posted by: pbrittan on August 06, 2003 at 06:44 AM

• Linux, XWindows, iMacs, Useability and the kitchen sink
  Some good points raised by everybody.

  A little story to outline what I am going to say. I'm a 20 year UNIX user and love the operating system and have always thought M$osft OS's have nothing on that old "heart of gold" that is UNIX. But I have never found a good thing to say about XWindows over the whole of that period. When I finally got around to buying some PCs for the kids at home I tried installing Linux (who cares what distro). I so hated Gnome and all the X derivatives that i gave up in disgust and paid the M$Soft tax just to get a better GUI over the OS.

  This is what Apple got right with OSX: a UNIX "heart of gold" with a great, non-X based UI layer over the top (pity their hardware strategy sucks). Why couldn't the UNIX companies see that X was the problem even back with the OpenWindows, X11R5 debates of 10+ years ago when they had the chance?

  I just get the feel that the Java UI stuff inherits from X and is one of the reasons why it is so poor.

  Anyone agree that what we need is a new set of graphics libs and services over Linux to get the UI services built properly over the old "heart of gold".

  UI design and Human Factors? Why is it that programmers think they are the experts? We were not taught it at Uni as part of our IS degree (though maybe it is today) and it was only working with Experimental Psychologists at Telstra Research Labs in the late 80s that showed me how it should be done.

  My 2c worth.

  regards
  Simon
  GIS - A Great Profession, A Lifelong Passion!

  Posted by: sgreener on August 11, 2003 at 11:09 PM

• Market and perception...
  I don't think most users care how their apps work or what technology they use. I think the only thing they really care about is how easy they are to use.

  I think the ultimate goal for interface development is to make the computer transparent. I think it's about allowing people to use computers to do things without really being aware that they're using a computer.

  Of course, in the future when people using computers have grown up with them, it will be a totally different story. It'll be interesting to seer how that will affect UI development.

  Posted by: helephant on August 18, 2003 at 01:09 AM

• Java vs. .NET
  Excellent thought Philip !
  I profoundly agree with this. I have a feeling that Java community is quite exposed to Microsoft's Smart Client onslaught. As we see the CLRS proliferating desktops we will find IT acceptance to .NET Smart Client class of applications.

  If they do not ....

  I guess there is always the protected marketplace.

  Posted by: sbanerjee on August 20, 2003 at 03:34 PM

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