[wp-design] A Quick Sketch

[Joen Asmussen]

Michael Heilemann wrote:

> Just to add a quick note: Firefox is actually the main offender when it comes to ugly form elements. It's white 'highlight' is too bright and blends in with white backgrounds (one of the most commonly used backgrounds out there)...
>
>I personally think we should restyle input and textarea's to have a dark 1px border. Makes everything look much much tighter. And then just leave buttons and other widgets to the OS.
>
>- Mike
>
I don't like the sound of this, honestly. If input boxes just have a 
black 1px border, it'll "just be a box". In fact, if I had one single 
thing in the whole current WP admin UI that I could change, then it 
would be to unstyle all input boxes.

Give me say on one thing: let's leave input boxes alone.

I know you all hate Jakob Nielsen, but his usability writings are based 
upon measuring thousands of users behaviour in usability labs. "He's 
just the messenger". And he mentions "Non-Standard Use of GUI Widgets" 
as his #3 on his top ten web design mistakes:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990530.html

 From the article:

"*Consistency* is one of the most powerful usability principles: when 
things always behave the same, users don't have to worry about what will 
happen. Instead, they /know/ what will happen based on earlier 
experience. Every time you release an apple over Sir Isaac Newton, it 
will drop on his head. That's /good/.

The more users' expectations prove right, the more they will feel in 
control of the system and the more they will like it. And the more the 
system breaks users' expectations, the more they will feel insecure. 
Oops, maybe if I let go of this apple, it will turn into a tomato and 
jump a mile into the sky."