Comments on: Think Different: A Lesson in Porting http://sawdustandglitter.com/2007/10/think-different-a-lesson-in-porting.html Musings on Design, UX and Architecture by a Muse Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:23:24 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Rachel Blackman http://sawdustandglitter.com/2007/10/think-different-a-lesson-in-porting.html/comment-page-1#comment-55 Rachel Blackman Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:29:00 +0000 http://arkidect.net/blog/?p=25#comment-55 I think another important element to keep in mind is not just the visual look-and-feel, but how things behave. And this is I think the biggest pitfall of porting a program among multiple platforms.<br/><br/>For instance, Thunderbird on Mac OS X still doesn't talk to the system address book and system spellchecker (without third-party plugins, anyway), being off in Mozilla-land. This is why even though Thunderbird is a great mail app, you end up with something that feels 'out of place' on OS X, even when they have modified the UI to fit in. <br/><br/>People expect that the address book is just the address book and should be available in mail-related programs, etc. I think another important element to keep in mind is not just the visual look-and-feel, but how things behave. And this is I think the biggest pitfall of porting a program among multiple platforms.

For instance, Thunderbird on Mac OS X still doesn’t talk to the system address book and system spellchecker (without third-party plugins, anyway), being off in Mozilla-land. This is why even though Thunderbird is a great mail app, you end up with something that feels ‘out of place’ on OS X, even when they have modified the UI to fit in.

People expect that the address book is just the address book and should be available in mail-related programs, etc.

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