Common Apathy

Jono Bacon talks about toolkit differences on Linux and how to resolve them.

First of all I was just going to add a comment to his post, but I decided to post here instead. Then my original post was going to be about how this is a nice idea but isn’t really a big deal – look at all the different toolkits and UI components on Windows (especially Microsoft apps!) or Apple happily ignoring their own HIG with their ‘brushed metal’ iApps (these are now in their HIG though) – but then I started thinking about it a bit more…

As a user

The main reasons¹ I prefer GNOME over KDE a) the fact that one is a Desktop Environment (DE) that runs applications and the other is a bunch of applications that make up a DE (I’ll let you figure out which is which…) and b) the GNOME feels more consistant than KDE. Sure, KDE is more consistant as long as you are using the bundled apps, but thanks to the GNOME HIG you can pick up a GNOME app from the ‘net and it will feel like part of the desktop.

Because of this I (sub)conciously² choose GTK+ / GNOME apps over their QT / KDE counterparts when googling for apps and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

For example: Quanta Plus seems like a great web development tool (although it desperately needs a new website, but that’s a post for another day) but it really looks out of place on my desktop, so I’m more likely to look at Bluefish or Screem for my needs.

As a developer

When I’m developing applications, I strive to make them look ‘natural’. This means that they look like part of the desktop they are running on by either following the GNOME HIG or supporting Windows XP themes (ridiculously easy with .NET 1.1) and using the common dialogs.

Far too many ‘developers’ are obsessed with making their application stand out with skins, themes and strange interface designs – at a recent LUG conversation we discussed media players and how Russ & Jen preferred Foobar2000 over the likes of Winamp and iTunes because it just looks like a Microsoft Windows application, not a miniature stereo system or whatever.

Instead, they should be letting their choice of toolkit do the heavy lifting for them and concentrating on functionality and usability.

So, getting back to Jono’s idea, if there was an interface that would allow me to call the common dialogs of whichever DE my application was running in, I would use it. This shouldn’t just be a purely technical solution though – maybe freedesktop.org could produce some sort of meta Human Interface Guidelines to help educate people.

Apathetic

Now, going back to my original idea for this post – how having different toolkits/dialogs wasn’t that big a deal – I realised I was being apathetic. Just because other operating systems have these discrepancies doesn’t mean Linux should emulate them. Kudos to Jono for actually trying to do something about it.

¹ Reason c) is simply that I prefer the GTK+ apps.

² Reason d) is that I really don’t care how good your app is it’s name doesn’t need to start with a K just bescause it’s running on KDE!

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