mordant wit

Hmmm... I thought for a second, maybe it's the icons. But no, the icons are pretty modern with all the gradients and stuff you would expect of any modern app. Then? Suddenly I realised what it was! The default Windows XP UI!! I was basically exploring the UI of certain apps to figure out why some were uglier than others.

But then I thought, hey I am on windows. If the windows UI was so ugly then why don't I find all the other apps ugly too?That is when I started noticing this. How many programs of everday use *really* use the Windows native UI? Lets take a look.

First lets see the programs running in my system tray -

* Windows Messenger
* Yahoo Messenger
* Google Talk
* Outlook 2k3
* ZoneAlarm
* AVG Anti Virus
* LeechGet
* Copernic Desktop Search

Guess what, NONE of the above programs use the native Windows look and feel!!!

Then I look at my Quick Launch bar which is to the side of the Start Button.Here I just keep (instead of the 'Show Desktop' button)

* Winamp
* Itunes

NO windows native UI in these either!

Now I really start thinking. Here are some of the most commonly used programs which *don't* use native windows look and feel-

* Everything in MS office (word, excel, etc)
* Visual Studio
* Windows Media Player

Actually NONE of MS programs have the native windows look and feel. Talk about following what you preach! Anyway continuing with our list -

* Ad Aware
* Macromedia Dreamweaver
* Adobe Reader
* Opera
* WinDVD
* Quick Time
* Real Player

And of course a lot more.

In fact after noticing this I tried to see what programs that I frequently use on my computer *do* have the native look, and here is what I found -

* Eclipse
* Firefox
* Solitare :)

So the next time you find that a UI is ugly, don't blame the programmers, they were just following the MS guidelines for Windows apps :)