Re: .NET 3.0

Eric,

IIRC it was actually about the need to expose form design and customization (cf John's post).

Well, since /i/ made the original post: i sated that it makes more sense for the WF Workflow Designer to be able for reuse by applications - while very few applications would have a need to expose the WPF Form Designer (aka Cider), since very few applications need to let the user design entire windows/forms/dialogs.

To which John replied that he thinks "just about all" applications need that.

Now, of course, if i state "orange is an ugly color", we can spend all day arguing why blue is rather pretty, in fact. But none of that would address my original comment re: Orange.

As such, what i initially stated remains undisputed: a very small percentage of all applications have the need to host a form designer designer such as the Winforms/WPF/VCL form designer.

The ability to "customize" applications is utterly untouched by this argument.

The difference between a built-in and a companion designer is rather "cosmetic", if I may say.

No, it stresses my core point: it's not something END USERS need. My dad doesn't create Firefox skins. he never will.

Again: Johns claim was "almost all" applications would benefit from exposing a designer such as the WinForms form designer, to the end user. The claim was not about customization in general.

John's claim is very valid.

No, it's not - i provided an extensive list of applications that absolutely do not need nor would benefit from the end-user having a windows designer to rework the application.

That directly disproves that "almost all" applications need this. Some? definitely. Almost all? Nope, sorry.

Well, Outlook is more of an industry standard, so what it does defines the "norm" of what people expect in a mail/newsreader.

Except that Outlook is more then a mail reader.

All of these provide reasonable customizations (some more, some less or next-to none), but NONE of them allow you to redesign the basic layout of forms or dialogs. Can you drag around controls on the "Apply Gaussian Blur Filter" in PhotoShop? I don't think so.

There are user requests to improve customizability of PhotoShop (and other applications), and when reading them, it's clear that users would be happy to get Office-like capability.

I'm sure there are users that *would* like to drag around the controls on every PS dialog to their own liking. That still doesn't mean such a feature would benefit the application - see the discussion in the separate subthread about application design.

--
marc hoffman
Chief Architect
RemObjects Software
http://www.remobjects.com

and the fifty-two daughters of the revolution
turn the gold to chrome
.

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