XPToolkit XP Widgets
Last Updated: Jan 4, 1999 by Mike
Pinkerton
You've seen the debate, the gnashing of teeth, the snarling on the
newsgroups. Now it's time to see what our UE team has come up with
for XP, GFX-rendered widgets for web content and dialogs.
The following is from German
Bauer, in the Netscape User Experience team:
- Simple is good. Let the widgets be less salient when
the user is focussed on content, frame and hilite and 3D look only
when mouse is over or element has the focus
- Recognizable, yet independent Rather than re-inventing
the wheel we leverage known appearances from the OSes. Yet the
widgets should look different enough so users would not expect
full behavior compliance with OS.
- Web-like, mesh well with content, use colors and hilite
schemes known from links and toolbar buttons today
- Environment neutral, that is colors used in widgets can
be derived off the page's background, hilite and text color
styles
These widgets should:
- look consistant with each other
- not look like platform specific widgets if they do not behave
that way
- not look like any one particular platform, to avoid the
perception of platform imperialism
And now, the widgets:
This is rough, and subject to change, but here's a taste
Bill Lynch's HTML prototype.
German's static version:
maintained by Mike
Pinkerton (pinkerton@netscape.com)