Are skins over-rated !
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Considering the amount of effort that goes into creating Skin systems for popular apps, I wonder if the worth of the whole process is way over-rated ! May be I'm not "IN" but to me all skins do is make an app look trendy and stamp a minor trade mark on the app. The DownSide, 1. Something else to go wrong ! (And with GUI thats easy), 2. Early beginner users find SKins confusing. 3. They can use up a stack of K'S and MHZ resources Enlighten me ! Regardz Colin Davies Strategy: get arts.
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Considering the amount of effort that goes into creating Skin systems for popular apps, I wonder if the worth of the whole process is way over-rated ! May be I'm not "IN" but to me all skins do is make an app look trendy and stamp a minor trade mark on the app. The DownSide, 1. Something else to go wrong ! (And with GUI thats easy), 2. Early beginner users find SKins confusing. 3. They can use up a stack of K'S and MHZ resources Enlighten me ! Regardz Colin Davies Strategy: get arts.
Skins are a menace. There's consistency in the windows GUI for a reason; it makes it easy to start off with a new program and lets you recognise the standard icons, layout of menus, and so on. If you've got a skinned program, you have to learn it from scratch, since you have to find out which of the pink giraffes is the save button, and how many times you need to click the rotating pineapple to open a new window. Or whatever :-P
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Considering the amount of effort that goes into creating Skin systems for popular apps, I wonder if the worth of the whole process is way over-rated ! May be I'm not "IN" but to me all skins do is make an app look trendy and stamp a minor trade mark on the app. The DownSide, 1. Something else to go wrong ! (And with GUI thats easy), 2. Early beginner users find SKins confusing. 3. They can use up a stack of K'S and MHZ resources Enlighten me ! Regardz Colin Davies Strategy: get arts.
Hi Colin! I was infact myself gonna make my app with some kind of skin! BUT, I changed my mind coz: 1- You lose the main target in the development, you won't know what are you programming anymore, the application or the SKIN! :confused: 2- I support your comments and all the others, coz the skinned app is not at all userfriendly (which to me is one main developmet step!) for the end user. 3- It really does take extar MGs un-necessarily! 4- All bads but only one good on the other hand, they are more appealing and pull you to the screen! :) " I love water, but hate to drown! " -- Masoud Samimi Website: www.geocities.com/samimi73
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Considering the amount of effort that goes into creating Skin systems for popular apps, I wonder if the worth of the whole process is way over-rated ! May be I'm not "IN" but to me all skins do is make an app look trendy and stamp a minor trade mark on the app. The DownSide, 1. Something else to go wrong ! (And with GUI thats easy), 2. Early beginner users find SKins confusing. 3. They can use up a stack of K'S and MHZ resources Enlighten me ! Regardz Colin Davies Strategy: get arts.
Hi Colin, Being basically agree with your stand of view, I have recently encountered a situation where skins may be useful. We had to port our product from Windows to Unix. Though the port itself does not require much re-implementation of the program (thanks to MainWin!), the program under Unix still looks as a Windows application, and this frustrates some users (and marketing people as well ;) This is where I hope the skins might help... Best, Yuri
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Considering the amount of effort that goes into creating Skin systems for popular apps, I wonder if the worth of the whole process is way over-rated ! May be I'm not "IN" but to me all skins do is make an app look trendy and stamp a minor trade mark on the app. The DownSide, 1. Something else to go wrong ! (And with GUI thats easy), 2. Early beginner users find SKins confusing. 3. They can use up a stack of K'S and MHZ resources Enlighten me ! Regardz Colin Davies Strategy: get arts.
I think the main issue is what does the app do. If your making some kind of tool its a waste of time and space to worry about a cool interface. Function is more important. I've noticed that a lot of multimedia software uses skins. These were cool at first, but after looking at them for a few minutes the coolness wore off. They ended up being rather complicated and I stopped using them. The one place where I've got to have something beyond the usual Windows-like interface is in a game. I need the game to put me in the right mood or else I just can't get into. If its desinged well it won't be confusing, and as far as resources go I've seen some awsome interfaces on apps under 5MB. They were easy to understand and almost entirely bug free. I'll agree that a skin isn't necessary in most cases and even bad in some, but if its done well for the right kind of app it can add a lot to a program.
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Considering the amount of effort that goes into creating Skin systems for popular apps, I wonder if the worth of the whole process is way over-rated ! May be I'm not "IN" but to me all skins do is make an app look trendy and stamp a minor trade mark on the app. The DownSide, 1. Something else to go wrong ! (And with GUI thats easy), 2. Early beginner users find SKins confusing. 3. They can use up a stack of K'S and MHZ resources Enlighten me ! Regardz Colin Davies Strategy: get arts.
Not only are they over rated, but their implementation is grossly inconsiderate of the user. They soak up system resources like a spung which makes it necessary to have 100,000,000 bytes of ram just to run windows, and not even optimally. They load much slower than would a genuine windows app. I'm certain they add to the cost of applications. And on top of that they are ugly and bloated with 50% of the applications interface doing nothing except wasting space on a monitor which only has 1024 x 768 pixels (if you're lucky). Computers, the internet, are still relatively new, not even 25% of the population even uses them at this point; which is to say that it is WAY TO EARLY in the game to start being pompous with system resources. Out of respect for users, the least a company can do is provide a means to viewing their products in the normal, resource sensitive design with which all computer users are familiar. Like WinFax Pro for example, you can choose the bloated (Big ugly phone) on your desktop, soaking up space, memory and just being a mass of confusion, or you can revert to a normal windows interface for Winfax. But others like RealJukeBox do not even provide this functionality. Though the software is decent it may still have to go, do to the fact that while it is running nothing else can run. I mean even if you have the excessive resources to run 2 or 3 of such bloated apps simultaneously, you certainly will not have the desktop space.
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Considering the amount of effort that goes into creating Skin systems for popular apps, I wonder if the worth of the whole process is way over-rated ! May be I'm not "IN" but to me all skins do is make an app look trendy and stamp a minor trade mark on the app. The DownSide, 1. Something else to go wrong ! (And with GUI thats easy), 2. Early beginner users find SKins confusing. 3. They can use up a stack of K'S and MHZ resources Enlighten me ! Regardz Colin Davies Strategy: get arts.
I just wanted to add that an app can look trendy without being skinned... For example, i'm working on a good looking program (IMHO) that only uses one 20x20 px bitmap for the UI. The rest is painted with good old CDC functions (you can even do real-time antialiasing with SetPixel :cool: ). This can give the app a colorfull and original look while still keeping the traditional menus and toolbars for the sake of ease of use. An additional bonus is the the exe is small, and that it doesn't eat all your ram (like Media Player 7 does) because you don't have to load a ton of huge bitmaps (and convert them from jpeg etc.). In short, this is the art of programming good looking, intuitive apps that don't eat up resources... ;) ---[ d e v i x ]---
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I just wanted to add that an app can look trendy without being skinned... For example, i'm working on a good looking program (IMHO) that only uses one 20x20 px bitmap for the UI. The rest is painted with good old CDC functions (you can even do real-time antialiasing with SetPixel :cool: ). This can give the app a colorfull and original look while still keeping the traditional menus and toolbars for the sake of ease of use. An additional bonus is the the exe is small, and that it doesn't eat all your ram (like Media Player 7 does) because you don't have to load a ton of huge bitmaps (and convert them from jpeg etc.). In short, this is the art of programming good looking, intuitive apps that don't eat up resources... ;) ---[ d e v i x ]---
I dont dispute this. Hey I'd love to see a screen shot of your App. But I think building a cool app is similar to constucting a building, eg you need a balance between Achitect,Engineer, and Prospective User ! Regardz Colin Davies
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I dont dispute this. Hey I'd love to see a screen shot of your App. But I think building a cool app is similar to constucting a building, eg you need a balance between Achitect,Engineer, and Prospective User ! Regardz Colin Davies
Here you go:
~ 11kB Note: I'm not trying to make this a model of good GUI programming... just trying to give an example of what GUI programming could be. As you can see, this is only a part of the app, cuz the rest hasn't even got a UI yet. The bitmaps that are used here are the rounded corners of the two white rectangles (a 20x20 px bitmap for the 4 corners) and the orange arrow (yes, I added this since I posted the prev. comment)... and the system image list which would be part of a standard GUI anyway. The tabs are 100% drawn with CDC functions. If the user gets lost in the UI (which he/she probably won't anyway), he/she can always fall back on the standard menus and toolbars. Anyway, Happy New Year everybody. :cool: Cheers, Marc -
Here you go:
~ 11kB Note: I'm not trying to make this a model of good GUI programming... just trying to give an example of what GUI programming could be. As you can see, this is only a part of the app, cuz the rest hasn't even got a UI yet. The bitmaps that are used here are the rounded corners of the two white rectangles (a 20x20 px bitmap for the 4 corners) and the orange arrow (yes, I added this since I posted the prev. comment)... and the system image list which would be part of a standard GUI anyway. The tabs are 100% drawn with CDC functions. If the user gets lost in the UI (which he/she probably won't anyway), he/she can always fall back on the standard menus and toolbars. Anyway, Happy New Year everybody. :cool: Cheers, MarcMarc I Like your Apps style, It looks Darn Kool To Me Regardz Colin
