On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 13:14 -0700, Richard Kelsch wrote:
Function over form, ya know...
Good eye candy, implemented properly should not detract from functionality,
That's sometimes true, and sometimes not true.
I find that eye candy, by it's very nature, can distract from the useability.
and should, in fact, increase functionality as not all eye-candy is for special effects, but can be part of function. For example, the simple bouncing icon of a program loading in Apple's Aqua is, in my opinion, eye candy improving functionality.
I would call that a feature, or functionality; I wouldn't call it eye candy! :-) And BTW, would be a good feature for Gnome.
I think for those (the 1 or 3 of you out there) with a wife or girlfriend
Uh... girl-what???
until programmers finally get together with artists and designers. Both would be surprised what the end result can do.
I think it's possible to have something that looks good without falling under the "eye candy" classification.
Anyway, I don't think eye candy is necessarily bad; I think it's often a (not always) a tradeoff between form and function, and I personally prefer function. No reason not to have eye candy available, especially if I can turn it off when it starts distracting/annoying me.