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Implement features that are known to be loved in other programs, on your own

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skwire:
Here's a good example (with screenshot): http://www.minimalist.com/software/ExplorerBreadcrumbs/

...and a Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadcrumb_%28navigation%29

app103:
Here's a good example (with screenshot): http://www.minimalist.com/software/ExplorerBreadcrumbs/

...and a Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadcrumb_%28navigation%29
-skwire (August 17, 2011, 03:49 PM)
--- End quote ---

Thanks!

Nope, probably not something I'd stick in one of my apps.

skwire:
Well, they have absolutely have their uses in apps like file managers.  I love the functionality that breadcrumb functionality brings.  However, I know for a fact that it's not as trivial to implement as urlwolf says.  It certainly isn't as easy as putting:


--- ---Breadcrumbs = True

...and you're done.   :P

urlwolf:
I totally understand the complexity of some of these features. Some other, like breadcrumbs, are trivial, though.
-urlwolf (August 17, 2011, 02:42 AM)
--- End quote ---

See?  This is exactly what I'm talking about.  How are you certain this is trivial?  Are you a developer that has written some "breadcrumb code" into your own app?  Most breadcrumb implementations I've seen seem to manipulate a standard ToolbarWindow32 class control.  Manipulating those controls smoothly in real-time can be a right pain in the arse.
-skwire (August 17, 2011, 01:59 PM)
--- End quote ---

I know nothing about win GUI programming. In fact, I do almost no GUI programing at all :) I cannot tell if that's hard or not, other than by stretching intuition. In GTK, thunar does it using buttons, a button per folder in the path. It never turns into a textbox when clicked, though. I think nautilus does something similar.

When you see hardware innovation, you can count that there's a patent preventing others from copying it. Only logitech mice have that free spinning wheel, for example. But in the case of GUIs, it must be just a matter of effort to replicate things. I don't think if you make a component that highlights all search occurrences someone will come after you (I might be wrong; I'm using an EU-centric view where software patents are not so pervasive). Independently of how hard it is, I'm still surprised that softwave dev. is not more 'darwinian'. It takes a long time for innovations to reach all competitors. Opera 5 had tabs, at least 2-3 years before any other browser copied it. Was it that difficult to realize this was a good idea? Or was it so hard that they started copying immediately, but took them that long a time?

worstje:
Opera suffered from bad marketing and a bad approach to selling it. The fact the free version had builtin ads for most of its life meant people simply didn't try it; those were the worst of the worst days when adblockers were in their infancy, regularly windowbombed the crap out of your pc so that it crashed, and so forth. The fact it had builtin advertising simply meant people were like 'no damn way am I adding more ads to my browsing experience!' Add to that that they never had the free advertising of simply being a popular opensource package, and they were always the minor lone wolf fighting Internet Explorer after the demise of Netscape (ok, there was Seamonkey, but that sucked donkey balls). Eventually, Mozilla got its act together and released Firefox. Opera had its chance, but to be fair: there were no successful business models for free browser software. Internet Explorer ruined that market, and there was no Google to play sugar-contract-daddy either.

Software-wise, it is very difficult to add good features, especially given that users tend to request visual things. Windows in particular is a crazy layer of cogwheels that work together to make the interface work. To provide a seamless experience, you need to support Windows Classic (with custom colours!), Windows Themes (visual styles, XP style), and Windows Aero. Doing that consistently on W7 is a huge headache on its own, then add support for older versions like XP. (Or start out for XP, go to W7.. my point remains similar.) Then throw in stuff like DPI, multi monitor support and perhaps even an inhouse style/configuration your application has to conform to, and you've got a huge feature matrix of hell already. Some applications are like 'hey, let's recreate all controls in our own custom theme'... and then you end up with a really crappy experience as a user. This is one of the reasons I dislike WPF - recreates all standard Windows controls, and I plain notice the little differences between the real win32 control and the WPF faked varieties. It makes it easier to make special custom controls, but it just as easily makes it possible to design those things so that the feature matrix tests want to cry. Ask cranioscopical - it took me a fair number of builds/versions just to get DPI handling right in JottiQ. Or JoTo for the partially unsolved issue with his High Contrast themes. JottiQ is one big chain of bugfixes/workarounds/etc for merely visual issues, and that really is a hell most easily avoided by sticking to the standard controls without fancy colours, images and the sort. (And then your application looks boring, making for crap screenshots and no downloads. :D)

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