Quote:Original post by Lode
Do you have some examples of big things missing in this custom GUI that make this a problem?
Sorry, I know I'm not being very helpful, but I don't have time to download and evaluate it in detail (although I might if it had a native look and feel ;-) ). One thing that is apparent from the screenshot is that it looks nothing like the native interface in any recent Windows release. If anything it kind of reminds me of GUIs circa 1994-96. This is already a big problem IMHO because it means that users will not be immediately familiar with it.
Quote:Original post by Lode
Simply "because it's custom" doesnt really help much. GTK, Qt and Java are also custom in some ways for example. So is the "GUI" of web-based applications such as the Gamedev.net forum... And many movie / mp3 players for PC.
Custom - there is a tremendous difference between "Qt custom" and "Lode custom" in that there are at least many other programs out there that are "Qt custom" :-)
GTK, Qt - I'm not familiar enough with them so can't comment on specifics.
Java - SWT provides native look and feel. Swing has a pluggable L&F so you can set the L&F to native, although IIRC it's only an emulation. Generally I would use SWT for best native look and feel on every platform, but I'd rather not open that can of worms and invite the Swing vs SWT people into this thread :D
Web applications - are not really desktop applications although they are moving that way thanks to JS/AJAX. Also, the web works on a different model (stateless, post/get, state emulation via sessions) so it's much harder to make it adapt a native L&F (but you can provide a "standard" L&F if you use one of the javascript libraries like Dojo, for instance). Even then, there are some web-specific usability guidelines that most good websites follow, such as form labels and fieldsets (and more generally: progressive enhancement).
iTunes/movie players/Blender/Steam - many are good examples of why not to use a custom GUI. iTunes works, barely. Others - not so much. Blender still gives me chills and I've been using it on and off for years now. If there was an equally powerful open-source 3D modeling app, I'd jump at it in half a minute.
Quote:Original post by Lode
What kind of things could users be expecting from a GUI that doesn't behave properly here?
It must look and behave (L&F) like a native app as much as possible. This includes everything from how the menu is laid out to what happens when the user right-clicks somewhere. On Vista/7 it must integrate seamlessly with Aero. For cross-platform all this is of course rather difficult, but that's why we have cross-platform frameworks like SWT. I don't know which problems are specific to your program (my guess: many) but from the above comments it seems that keyboard shortcuts are one of the main problems.
Various companies (Microsoft, Apple) publish design guidelines for their user interface toolkits. If you are not familiar with those yet I suggest you look them up, as they should help you understand and iron out some of the issues (I'm assuming it's a bit late in your project now to go with a non-custom GUI).
[Edited by - lightbringer on March 22, 2010 2:31:18 PM]
