Re: Many GUI Toolkits, no "Best Option" [was wxWindows vs. FLTK]

[Andre Costa <acosta@...>]

Hi Sean,

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 23:55:28 -0500
Sean Middleditch <elanthis@awesomeplay.com> wrote:

> This "native controls" argument is completely stupid.  Even if you
> have"buttons that look alike," that does nothing for feel or tie-in to
> a desktop.  Good Mac apps look nothing like good Windows apps, and the
> same goes for GNOME or KDE apps (why people think Motif is a good GUI
> is beyond me - it's a crap user experience, and if you don't care
> about user experience, what's the point of worrying about what the
> fricking buttons *look* like?).

I believe you got Scuri's arguments wrong. Definitely, Mac apps look
different from Windows apps, and, if we're talking about different apps
then there's hardly basis for comparison.

However, if we're talking about a same app ported to both systems (i.e.
GUI design is essentially the same for both versions), differences are
mainly (if not exclusively) due to widgets' look & feel -- after all,
the developer wouldn't want user experience to differ radically on each
environment.

So, at the end of the day, using native controls increases significantly
the feeling it is a "native app", making the fact that there is an
intermediate layer (like a cross-platform GUI toolkit) completely
transparent to the user. I guess this is why Scuri thought relevant to
consider the characteristic of supporting native widgets. Portability
and complexity of a GUI toolkit definitely vary if it uses native
widgets or not, and so varies the user experience.

Just for the record: I am not saying we should or shouldn't go for
native widgets look & feel when chosing a GUI toolkit for these new Lua
projects; as you properly say below, other (probably more relevant)
issues have to be considered as well. I just wanted to add my $0.02 to
your argument above.

Best,

Andre

-- 
Andre Oliveira da Costa