Cool to see Sun’s Web App UI Guidelines finally go public. As Chip Alexander says,:
They are a set of building blocks for web applications that have been designed by user interface specialists, thoroughly thought through and usability tested. They can be used for developing full web applications, allowing designers and developers to focus on their application’s particular needs rather than the design of all the controls and elements inside.
The corresponding Woodstock toolkit for which they were written has been available under an open source (CDDL) licence for a while, but of course the guidelines themselves can be applied to any web app. (They do have a bit of a system administration app slant, though, for obvious reasons.)
Are these the same Sun “user interface specialists” who worked on all the Java UI crap they gave us just a couple years ago?
Gee, that sounds so tempting, Sun, but I think the hobos outside my window are presenting a more compelling business case. Maybe next millennium, mmm’kay?
Can’t say I recall any notable changes to the look and feel of Swing in the past couple of years, and specc’ing and usability testing those would be the only thing that Sun’s Java UI folks would have worked on, If you have problems with Swing’s API or performance, or there are bugs in Swing’s implementation, then tragically your complaints are misdirected. I’m sure you’ve filed comprehensive reports about any such problems you may have encountered rather than just lamely bitching about them where nobody’s going to take any notice of them, though, so that’s fine.
Oh, and no, it wasn’t them anyway.
No, I have no problem with Swing’s API or performance. But try opening the Java Web Start Application Manager and then telling me with a straight face that Sun has something to say about usability.
Yes, I used to file detailed bug reports with Sun, but after being ignored for years, I gave up. Empirically, Sun’s own bug-tracking system is also a place for “lamely bitching about [bugs] where nobody’s going to take any notice of them”.
But if it wasn’t those people again, then maybe it’ll be useful. I’m not going to hold my breath, though, based on their recent history. “Three-Level Tabbed Panes”? Just, wow.