多么重要的是一致的用户界面？

计算机用户界面很多多年来改变了。 一些比其他改变了更多。 窗口，例如，增长出于是什么最后是引伸？dosshell ？ 入什么我们在窗口景色今天看见。 虽然它相当改变了，它似乎Macintosh UI比那改变了较少窗口？ 笠头？t相信我，头 Nathan ？s Toasty技术图形用户界面画廊 1984年并且检查某些Macintosh系统1.x screenshots支持。 当图表(明显地)时改善了， 基本 布局是相同？ Menubar在上面与像在右边。 1984年，窗口1.0 hadn ？t被介绍和这是，至于大部分，个人计算机用户界面：

C:\> (甚至) A:\>

如此，呀，我们？ve在用户界面设计问候取得进展。 我祝愿事可能是更加一致的。  我们到在十字架平台应用之内时代，并且伙计越来越创造横跨窗口、MacOS和Linux将当地跑的应用(一些均匀BSD和Solaris)，因此牌子有它艰苦一致的用户界面横跨所有应用在您的计算机不管什么操作系统您选择。 至少有些应用 尝试 要适合，其他表面上笠头？t关心。

(正规兵)计算机用户是否关心，如果应用跟随某一类用户界面标准？ Joey是否Bagadounuts关心，如果所有应用在他的个人计算机或Mac看起来？同样？ ？ 我关心(在某种程度上)，当我喜欢一切有一致的品质，但是I ？m离您典型的计算机用户很远的地方。

多年来，我使用了 Trillian 作为我的立即传报应用，当使用窗口机器时。 Trillian在本身之内是一致的，意味它看同样不管任何操作系统它？s跑。   Trillian也有什么通认作为a ？skinnable ？ 接口？ 一旦普遍，并且由节目使用例如 Winamp. 应用例如这些船与缺省皮肤，但允许用户在网上去，并且发现新的皮肤匹配他们喜爱的体育合作，看非常异乎寻常设法看齐一些OS品质或题材的皮肤，甚至皮肤。 I ？从未完成这的结果ve，和，这是什么Trillian总看了似对我。

当我在这个机器再装了景色，我在窗口决定试验Pidgin。 I hadn?t used Pidgin on Windows in some time, but I used it exclusively when I was running Linux as my main OS. Pidgin was designed originally to fit into the GNOME Desktop Environment, and like other applications such as GIMP, uses GTK+ libraries for it?s UI and widgets. Windows does a pretty good job of rendering GTK applications, and as a result, Pidgin looks pretty good on Windows Vista, sporting Aero window borders, and overall, seems to fit in on a Vista desktop better than Trillian did:

 

 Mozilla Firefox is another application I use extensively. I?m not sure I understand Firefox?s UI design 100%. I?ve heard it called a ?pseudo GTK app?, and I?m pretty sure it only uses GTK libraries when running  under Linux, but I?m going to use examples of Firefox 2.x.x and Firefox 3 to illustrate just how hard it is for an immensely popular cross-platform desktop application to have a consistent look and feel across platforms.

I?ll start with Firefox 2 on the MacOS. Macintosh users have always tended to prefer applications with have a native OS X UI over those which didn?t, and as a result Firefox always had trouble with winning Mac users over from Safari ? especially with v. 2.x.x. As you can see, neither the application widgets, nor the widgets on the web-page itself look native to the Mac ? everything simply looks out of place. Mozilla did a much better job with Firefox 3 for Mac however and Firefox 3 on the MacOS now has more of a native look and feel to it. Not only does the application itself fit into the OS better, but the widgets on the web page now have an Aqua appearance, and seem to fit the overall aesthetics of the Mac platform. Many Mac users now agree that Firefox ?feels? more like a native Macintosh OS X application now. It is still not perfect, especially if you compare it to Safari. If you really look closely to the FF3 and the Safari screenshots, you can see that on Safari, for example, the widgets that make up the browser toolbar just look ?cleaner? ? everything seems more anti-aliased, and even the search buttons on the Google homepage look smoother. On the Firefox screenshot, the buttons almost seem too close to the Google search box, and the toolbar buttons seem to have a slight jaggedness around the edges. Firefox 3 has made huge strides in gaining acceptance by die-hard Mac users, and I?m sure will continue in this direction.

Firefox is king browser in the land of Linux distributions however, even though some distributions such as Debian (as you will see in my screenshots) re-brand it as Iceweasel due to Trademark concerns, but it?s still Firefox underneath the different name and different icon. On Linux there are two (maybe three if you count XFCE) major Desktop Environments you can choose from: GNOME and KDE. Each is made up of separate toolkits and environments. GNOME (and XFCE) are based on the GTK+ toolkit while KDE is based on QT.

Even though Firefox is the king of Linux browsers, and is the default browser on many distributions, Firefox 2 had issues rendering some controls within web-pages themselves, take Gmail under FF2 (Iceweasel2) running on Debian Linux.  Pay special attention to the checkbox next to ?Remember me?? and the shape and design of the ?Sign In? button. Now let?s contrast that to Firefox 3 running on Ubuntu 8.04, and as you will see, under FF3, both the checkbox and the Sign In button are now rendered too more closely match the look and feel of the rest of the OS theme. Also, as of FF3 if you change your theme in GNOME or even change your icon theme, Firefox will now change itself to match the rest of what you have applied. Now, since I mentioned it a few paragraphs up, let?s talk about Firefox running on KDE for a minute. Regardless of if you are using Firefox 3 or still on Firefox 2, without custom skinning or a special package to make your GTK applications wear QT ?clothes?, Firefox will look pretty bad on KDE. Gone are the smooth lines you saw when running Firefox under GNOME. Every thing looks ?unthemed? for lack of a better word, and has a hard, unfinished appearance. As a result many KDE users simply do not use Firefox, opting instead to use the official KDE Browser Konqueror. Now, Konqueror is an excellent browser in it?s own right, and since it?s open-source, many of it?s rendering features (KHTML) are used in Apple?s Safari browser. As you can see in the screenshot, it has a much better appearance under KDE than the Firefox screenshot above, and everything now looks smooth, blended, and, well, finished. It looks and feels like it belongs on your desktop, and not like some foreign piece of software that shouldn?t be there at all.

So far, I?ve been talking about the Mac OS X and Linux. What about Windows? Does it have the same problems? Sure! And often Microsoft is the biggest culprit. Have you seen Office 2007 running under Windows XP? It?s not very pretty (to me anyway). I can deal with some UI inconsistencies better than others, but please do not mess with the Title Bar and the default look of the Window Controls. Another Microsoft application that suffers from this identity crisis under Windows XP is Windows Media player 11. It?s almost as if Microsoft wanted WMP 11 to look like a Vista application, however I think the overall effect was lost. To me the application just sticks out like a sore thumb on a Windows XP Desktop. It?s even worse if the use has Windows Classic set as their theme rather than one of the XP Luna themes. Why would Microsoft do this? It seems to me that a Microsoft application should fit in on a Windows desktop better than anything else! There is also one example of what I call a UI disaster that has actually kept me from using an application. I was really looking forward to Google?s Chrome browser.   I guess you could really call me a true Google fan, as I tend to love all things Google, and I really really wanted to like Chrome. To me, it looks hideous. The UI looks nothing like I would expect a Windows application to look. Remember back when Windows XP was first released and everyone called Luna the ?Fisher-Price GUI?? To me, this is the ultimate ?Fisher-Price? GUI. It looks like a toy ? it doesn?t flow with the rest of the OS, and those tabs look like giant warts to me. I just simply can?t use it. C?mon Google ? I know you can do better than that.

The basic question remains though, how much does any of this matter to your average computer user? Do they care what an application looks like? Do they care if it fits into the over look and feel of the rest of the operating system? Is this something only geeks and nerds would care about? Probably. Most users just want to check Facebook, and surf the web. There are new projects and platforms currently emerging such as Adobe AIR which powers the ever popular Twitter client Twhirl. Applications such as these are defiantly on the rise, and new ones are cropping up every day. Given the popularity of Twhirl, perhaps that is the answer to my question. Users simply don?t care. They just want to be able to do what they want to do and couldn?t give a flip what the application doing it looks like. I also want to be clear that I?m not downing applications such as these. I think Adobe AIR is awesome technology, and I think it?s great to have a flexible platform to develop these runtime based applications, as they allow people (like me) who use multiple platforms to have a set of applications that they know they can use regardless of platform, and I think it?s a key indication of where computing in general is heading. As time goes by, it?s going to be less and less important what operating system your computer is running, and what?s going to be more important is how fast, and flexible your connection to the internet is.