It seems there is an industry-wide GUI crisis. People are pulling their hair out over GUI issues. In particular:
- Lack of a GUI standard and/or standardized cross-language GUI kits
- Much more difficult to create even simple GUI's than with tools from a generation ago
- Confusion over browser integration
If enough disagree that there is a GUI Crisis, then feel free to delete this topic after a few months.
I'd be interested to see what evidence you have for the existence of a GUI crisis. I can't say I've encountered it. Quite the contrary, in fact -- with click-n-drag GUI builders built into VisualStudio and EclipseIde, and event-driven programming and HTML typically being a part of university and technical college computing education, there's considerably less of a "GUI crisis" now than there was a generation, or less, ago.
Those are vendor/language-specific. I agree there are semi-decent vendor and language-specific solutions, but after 25 years of GUI's you'd think we'd move beyond that. We're stuck in 1984.
- Lack of a GUI standard
- Definitely true. This is unquestionable, even.
- I dunno... there seem to be a whole lot'a GUI standards. ^_^
- Lack [good] of cross-language GUI kits
- Definitely not true. WxWidgets, Qt, GTK are all cross-platform.
- It has complicated integration/binding. To qualify, it would have to be reworked as a service.
- Much more difficult to create even simple GUI's than with tools from a generation ago
- Absolutely! It seems that the larger the toolkit, the more capable it is, and yet, the less scalable it is. See ImmediateModeGui.
- Confusion over browser integration
- This requires clarification.
- How or if to integrate with a web browser, create an independent "GUI browser", or compile/integrate into a specific desktop app.
- GUI crisis is an IndustryUsabilityCrisis? from the user perspective.
- Despite the fact that developers & marketers are convinced the interfaces are "intuitive," customers still can't figure out how to accomplish tasks without relying on GoToGuys and Gals.
- In my opinion, that is a different topic. It is a psychology/political/human-nature topic rather than a technical one. (I think its largely caused by bigwigs wanting control rather than let usability experts decide.)
- That's good. Brush off human factors engineering as something non-technical. I'm sure that's just what usability experts want.
- Try disabling/enabling JavaScript in InternetExplorer. Now try telling someone else how to do it and why. Now bang your head a few times. Compare and contrast these experiences in your journal.
FebruaryZeroEight
Industry Gui Crisis