PFG = Platform games?
By the way, all the meantioned games are exactly the games that the mainstream considers the best, but I consider them a little bit idea-less, unpretty, boring game-clones. Like 3D shooters, yet another battle or civilization game, and so on.
For that kind of Games Windows is the dominant platform.
Pasty-Faced-Geek? Pig-faced-gorilla? Hey, that could be my second names
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I think BeOS was extremely fine in some aspects, but not great at all in other aspects. Especially when they intentionally made it not runnable on 99.9% of PCs. Everything older than half a year was fully intentional not able to run BeOS. So You had to a buy a computer which costs as much as an old car. That did break NeXT the neck, so it did to BeOS.
> I just want a platform to learn how to write GUI
> code. I tried that under Windows, and the GUI
> toolkits over there are either too expensive,
> or simply horrible.
Yes, nothing to learn fast and then write fast UI code, for Your own application. So when Win programmers are finally used to their IDE or to WinAPI, they have (as a natural process) adapted their way of thinking (as You do on Mac/Unix/Amiga, too). So all Win applications have this sort of complicated look, that is special for Windows apps. Even when it would be possible to make it simpler. Look at a small utiilitiy (for example a mail client or a decompress tool), and You can clearly see a pattern. So the OS has impact on Your style of software designing!
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Thanks for the book tip, investigating it further.
> I'm not a big fan of the Interface Hall of
> Shame, either. They rarely offer any slack for
> artistic impression, and the fact that people
> can learn such quirks very quickly. Functional
> doesn't mean you have to be boring.
He's talking especially the intrusiveness (can't be turned off, interrupts Your menu actions, bubbles over the loudspeaker etc). We don't need _that_ kind of entertainment.
But this principal can be applied more radical IMHO: "Boring" minimalism can be better than too "loud" art, not only for science and business work, but for creative work, too! _You_ want to create art, you don't want the OS to create art!
What I appreciate is a general environment that is aesthetical: good-looking, consistent, easy to comprehend/oversee/handle.
Artitistic impression is another issue [edit: another aspect of GUIs that is beyond the scope of Isys' Hall of Shame], Isys is already doing a good job with his site. Let's leave the artitistic impression issue to the many other GUI sites. Could be an incentive for You, to write Your opinions about this and put them on a website!
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> [...] ok, more bugs on XP but overall better performance [...)
Bah
, Desolator.
That exactly was what I were hinting at when I started the question. Smoothly runnning (besides good loook and easy handling) is important for me, when the system doesn't run smooth, I even can't _start_trying_ to produce some art that takes more than a few minutes. Maybe other people can.
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Mac OS X has a double meaing AFAIK: The obvious Roman number 10, but X, too. (X= X Windowing System)
MS officially says XP stands for Experience, and that it means the improvements made possible through learning a lot from the development work at the previous versions. (This can lead to endless sarcastic comments, including "The sold only beta crap until now". Maybe it'S good if we restrain a little bit about that or we drift in the well known "MS sucks"-cascade.)
Since WinXP was one of the aerliest OSs to take advantage of the AMD XP, it might have relation to that, too.
