WPFfor d

[Adam Wilson]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2013 02:37:47 -0800, Jacob Carlborg <doob at me.com> wrote:

> On 2013-02-19 10:29, rumbu wrote:
>
>> That's the power of a declarative UI: separate behaviour and design. If
>> you want a larger button, touch sensitive - even thought sensitive :),
>> just change the design to better suit device features, but don't change
>> the behaviour. Just to keep your scroll bar example: in desktop world we
>> can keep the scroll bar visible on the screen. In the touch sensitive
>> world, we can hide most of scrollbar content, keep only some arrows to
>> tell the user there is more data, but leave it to respond to common
>> gestures to scroll up and down. From the programmer perspective, The
>> scrollbar object will have the same methods, same events and the same
>> properties. The end user/designer will call/use these methods/properties
>> performing different actions specific to target device.
>
> That would be good if it could work like that. But that's not what I  
> have usually seen with custom widgets. They just don't work in one way  
> or another.
>

In the old OS widget model where you have to rebuild the widget from the  
ground up if you want to change the look this is absolutely the case, most  
programmers suck at reimplementing this stuff. With WPF this is a complete  
non-issue. Because the look (style) of the widget is completely, 100%, and  
unquestionably separated from the function of the control, I can use a  
known-good implementation of the widget without being locked into each  
OS's look-and-feel, which means that my app has the same look-and-feel  
across many devices. Users LOVE that.

As a UI design I don't give one hoot what the OS thinks my UI should look  
like, that's MY job, I succeed or fail on my own, and TBH, OS UI  
uniformity is no guarantee of success. I've seen just as many good OS UI's  
as bad ones. Because it turns out that the OS UI isn't the determining  
factor in a UI's success, the designer is.

> The problem isn't just designing a widget the looks differently on  
> different devices. Sometimes the application needs to be completely  
> different.
>

RIGHT! Which is why re-styling controls is so critical. I can get uniform  
functionality with infinite stylistic possibilities that allow me to  
choose the best style for each device.

--
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/