[openbeos] Re: (G)UI design, round 2 (split from: Patch: Prettifying the default decorator)

  • From: "Waldemar Kornewald" <wkornewald@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 17:23:07 +0100

Hi Thom,

On 2/26/07, Thom Holwerda <slakje@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I don't know how bloody obvious this question is (if at all) but did Be,
Inc. itself not have a HIG like i.e. Apple and GNOME? I know one was never
published (iirc), but I could poke a few ex-Be engineers or Bernd to see if
something along these lines exist.

If not, I think one has to be written. You cannot expect Haiku developers
(let alone 3rd party developers) to intuitively code (G)UIs that are in line
with other applications. You need guidelines for that.


Jon started writing one. Here is a regularly updated build:
http://factory.haiku-os.org/documentation/HIG/

Before R1 gets released we should try to finish, improve, and clean up
the HIG. For example, I find it too wordy and the writing style is
sometimes too "casual".

The KDE usability team has done interesting research which we might
want to take into account:
http://obso1337.org/hci/kde_hig/KDE4_Information_Design_Document.pdf
We should also highly involve our developers into the writing/design
process since they are the target audience of the HIG.

Help is highly appreciated! The HIG is written in Doxygen (all tools
are in the repo), though, so it's not very easy to get started. It can
be found in the repository (haiku/trunk/src/documentation).

We could also come up with a list of other R1 usability tasks
(partition manager, installer, find inconsistencies, etc...) if anyone
doesn't know what to do with his spare time. Patches are the best way
to contribute. ;)

Well, even R2 work (Glass Elevator) is appreciated, but if you do
something please concentrate on real problems and summarize
discussions with a specification (I can help you with getting
started). Too often we get these "hey, wouldn't this be cool...?"
brainstorming mails, but in the end there is no usable result...

Bye,
Waldemar Kornewald

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