[Novalug] windows look and feel on GUI's

[Clif Flynt]

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 02:03:53PM -0400, Bonnie Dalzell wrote:
> In my computer experience - such as it it - there are two major
> different GUI looks:
> 
> The windows type in which each open window has its menu controls in a top
> bar and the Amiga/Mac type in which the menus for the active window are
> contained in a control bar across the top of the screen. The Amiga/Mac
> type control bar often contains things besides the controls for the
> current active window.
> ...
> What do you all mean when you say a GUI reminds you of Windows?

  Most often, when I hear folks talk about Windows Look&Feel they
are either contrasting the Mac-ish jellybuttons to the battleship
gray Windows, or a Motif/Gnome/KDE look to the austere W2K look.

  I hear about this mostly in relation to Tk GUI applications, since I
deal with Tcl/Tk a lot.

  Tk was the greatest thing in the world when it was the only way get a
modern motif GUI without compiling C Code, libmotif, and too many X11
calls.

  Tk lost favor as gtk and some other GUI building tools took off with
a more modern (post-motif) L&F.  Tk has been playing catchup ever
since. With a little effort, it can have any look & feel, but most apps
still look like Motif.

  I think the average user is refering to the width of button edges, font,
base application color, style of file-browser, etc when they talk about 
Windows Look & Feel, rather than the location of the menubar.

  Clif

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