Brushed Metal or the use of HI Guidelines 20Oct04

Screenshot, Source: daring fireball

John Gruber about the use of brushed-metal windows and OS X. By the way this articel gives an example on how human interface design guidelines were understood by their users. And how they put the guidelines into action. Sometimes the personal preference of the designer or developer is stronger than apples guideline.

Extract:

I’ve noticed that there are two entirely different arguments in the Aqua-vs.-Brushed-Metal debate.

The more common, superficial argument is about personal preference. Some prefer the way metal windows look, others hate it, and that’s the argument. You say to-MAY-to, I say to-MAH-to.

But the deeper argument against the brushed metal (a.k.a. textured) theme is simply one of consistency. A large part of the Mac’s historical usability advantage is that Mac applications all look and feel the same. Not exactly the same, of course, but certainly within the bounds of a single “theme”. Most consistent would be a single theme; acceptably consistent would be a second theme used only under certain well-defined criteria.

Brushed-metal aficionados often point out that what they like about metal windows isn’t how they look, per se, but rather how they behave, in that you can drag metal windows by clicking in any unused space in the window (as opposed to regular windows, which can only be moved by clicking in the window title bar). But this behavioral difference makes things even less consistent — if it’s a good usability idea, all windows should work like this; otherwise, none should.

Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines ostensibly lay out the rules for when the brushed metal theme is appropriate (...)

related links:
Daring Fireball: "Brushed Metal and the HIG"