Re: idea: special menuitem in MenuBar of each gnome application

[Alan Shutko <ats acm org>]

Lee Mallabone <lee fonicmonkey net> writes:

> One could probably argue that a really well designed user interface
> *shouldn't* be changed by a user... 

One would be wrong.  Needs of all potential users cannot be foreseen by
the developer of the software, and history shows that developers will
be wrong even when they might have foreseen a need.  

Most programs will benefit from customization (even the kind seen ten
years ago on MS Office for the Mac where you can change menu and
toolbar order) but as we've seen, it's sufficiently difficult to allow
such customization that most app developers won't do it unless an
existing framework makes it easy.  

Sure, it's possible that users will customize their apps such that
it's inconsistent with other people or the default.  But we have
customizable window managers, a customizable panel, customizable
menus, customizable shell, customizable keybindings.  If UI
consistency is the point, damn the users, we should get rid of all of
that.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats acm org> - In a variety of flavors!
What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"?