Sunday, August 7th, 2005, 3:57 am
Interfaces Commonality
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KDE‘s Konqueror menu bar
Firefox menu bar
Firefox is Mac OSX-themed (Download/install)
t is no secret that various software vendors use similar conventions for menu layouts, icons and so forth. As an instance, have a look at the one-to-one correspondence in the screenshots above (Edit, View, Go, Bookmarks, Tools, Help) where even menu accelerators are identical. It is inevitably so because consistency needs to prevail. Users who moves from one piece of software to another must be able to re-orientate quickly by identifying familiar phrases and labels (terminology) or images.
What impact does that have on innovation and diversity though? The most rational interface will not necessary make it easiest for the user to adapt to. For example, Windows users are accustomed to going to “Start” when they want to End the current session. Is that not preposterous? Yet, if this convetion gets changed, this will probably result in confusion.
Software that is most usable is one which implements control interfaces that most users are familiar with. Familiarity of the novice users is influenced by high-impact software such as Windows or Photoshop. Due to the nature of this trend, imitation becomes easier to claim. In fact, this would be one reason for the scare among anti-software patents activists. The main sufferer would be the user who needs to master different distinct interfaces and ends up in a lock-in situation, whereby migration between software packages become an ardonous experience.
Finally, let us consider a practical example where the damage of patents is apparent. Xerox sued Palm for the use of Graffiti — a one-stroke method for inputting text, which they claimed they had patented. As a result, Graffiti 2 (see criticism) emerged so Palm users had to throw away years of experience, learning a new ‘handwriting’ method, which involved 2 strokes rather than just one.
