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