mwm@raven.relay.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) (10/19/90)
Just so you know, the WB 2.0 can hold its head up QUITE proudly next to the Mac's interface. The clunkiness if 1.3 (which we all love if we're true Amigoids, even if we wince when we see the admittedly elegant Mac...) is gone, replaced by something VERY nice-looking, and VERY powerful. Yup, that 2.0 WB is almost pretty enough to hang on the wall. On the other hand, I never considered works of art to be a good guide to what GUI's should look like. The Mona Lisa would probably give me even worse headaches than the 2.0 WB. The problem is, whichever artists did the 2.0 WB forgot that the primary point of all their pretty artwork was to make it easier for the user to manipulate windows. And the primary point of the windows was to display information for the user. The user concentrates on that information in the window; not on the window borders. That information needs to be displayed in the best possible manner; and the bitmaps in the window borders are of secondary importance. Since I spend a lot of time looking at text, getting readable text is of prime importance. After 10 years of working with color terminals & workstations, I've found that the best color combination to use is very light blue text (actually white with a touch of blue in it) on a dark blue background. Since I also hate inverse video, I like a 4-color workbench so I can have a couple of colors for other things. Normally, one color for "standout mode", and one for the cursor. Both need to be eyecatching. I tend to favor dark red (cursor) and dark green. Guess what the 2.0 workbench looks like with those colors - ugly. On the other hand, it doesn't give me headaches, which is more than I can say for the things provided in the palette menu. Such is the price of honoring hardware manufacturers schemes to get us to buy faster hardware. <mike -- Kiss me with your mouth. Mike Meyer Your love is better than wine. mwm@relay.pa.dec.com But wine is all I have. decwrl!mwm Will your love ever be mine?