The second is the belief that the user interface is worthy only ofĪfterthought that the real software is the underlying The layout of windows, dialogs, and menus is So while it’s not pretty, it isn’t trying to be. I won’t dispute that BBEdit’s interface is relatively unadorned but It’s certainly nice to have a chair that looks good īut if you’re going to be sitting in it 8 or more hours every day,Įrgonomics are much more important than aesthetics. Compare and contrast to, say, choosing an Interface design, not the whole of it - and for a serious tool, not But aesthetic appeal is but one aspect of user Something aesthetically pleasing is deeply satisfying in a This is not to say that aesthetics are unimportant. Vibrant primary colors, and visual effects such as transparency,ĭrop shadows, bezel edges, and smooth-gliding animated widgets. Visual whiz-bangery: gorgeous iconography, anti-aliased type, Good it looks i.e., that the state of being “Mac-like” implies onlyĪdherence to the gestalt of Apple’s recent-vintage Aqua-flavored The quality of an app’s user interface is simply a measure of how One is the conflation of aesthetics with usability. Genuine understanding of what it is about BBEdit’s “interface” that There are two vectors for such bewilderment, both of which belie a Non-believers who profess outright bewilderment at BBEdit’s decade-long Prefer other editors, there are vocal contingents of BBEdit Those who simply have no need for a serious text editor, or who simply But its appeal is not universal: in addition to Presented via an intuitive, discoverable, usable interface might as wellįor something as inherently nerdy as a text editor, BBEdit is Irrelevant it’s the usability that matters. The raw capabilities of a particular application are, for most users, A user’s relationship with an application is For users, the application is what they can see,Ĭlick, and interact with. That separates programmers from non-programmers.įrom the perspective of users, however, the importance of the user It is the ability to grasp these abstractions When a programmer wants to produce a circle, he writes aįew lines of source code. When an artist wants to produce a circle, heĭraws a circle. Developers’ relationship with the software they produce In a broad sense, the source code for a UI-less background process suchĪs the Apache web server very much resembles the source code for a The application - whereas most non-application software doesn’t evenįrom the perspective of a programmer, all software is just source code. To paraphrase Edward Tufte, the user interface is The key difference is the primacy of the user interface in applicationĭevelopment. All applications are software but not all software is an application.
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