Re: GUI work (was: Graphical help browser)

[David Grundberg]

Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso skrev:
> 2008/11/25 David Grundberg <address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden>>:
> > I don't think Qt is a meta-toolkit, i.e. just because it has native
> > components/commands/widgets and you use this to create a GUI, the 
> program
> > will still be a Qt program, and will not look like a native win32 or 
> GTK+
> > program.
>
> I was under the impression that Skype and Google Earth looked native
> in each of their environments. Was I mistaken?
Looking and behaving are two different things.

Make no mistake, they probably worked a lot to make it happen. It's like 
I said, they probably designed the layout specifically for each 
platform. There's no way they just designed it on one platform and pop! 
it looked great and worked exactly right (in regard to user expectations 
such as mnemonics) on the other one too. There are probably a lot of 
layout ifdefs, I'd suspect.

This being said, a lot of cross-platform applications are designed for 
Windos only, and most users on "other" platforms (except mac users) are 
used to Windows shortcuts etc, and they get by. Still, it's technically 
wrong, since a GNOME user who haven't used Windows would be frustrated 
since the shortcuts would be wrong, and the settings dialog wouldn't 
work (as they expected).

Google Earth isn't really a good application to discuss, since part of 
the user experience is exploration, and the gui isn't designed to be 
familiar, it's supposed to be cool and Web 2.0 or whatever. Also, mayor 
part of the user interaction is with a custom component, the 3d view.

Haven't used Skype for a long time, so I can't really relate.