[OT] "The Condescending UI" (was: Do we need Win95/98/Me support?)

[Walter Bright]

On 1/23/2012 3:51 AM, foobar wrote:
> A few additional points:
> # Microsoft allegedly does a lot of usability research and they came up with the
> upcoming Metro design which relies on text instead of icons. # Regarding the
> English language - Icons are supposed to be universal so it saves money for
> companies to localize their software. Localized UIs do present a trade off in
> usability: It depends which terminology is more common, the local or the foreign
> (English). E.g. "print" is easy to translate and would be intuitive for non
> techies but "bittorent" probably isn't.

One huge issue with "universal" icons is that each company copyrights theirs. So 
every user interface uses deliberately different icons.