Windows Live Writer UI Ponderings

June 25, 2007 by 1 Comment

I like Windows Live Writer.  It’s the only offline/desktop blogging client that I use.  In fact, I’m using it right now for this post.  But there’s a few things about the UI that I wonder about…

  • Why does Windows Live Writer use its own font choice for menus, toolbars, and such? Why doesn’t it honor the system font?
  • Why do the Windows Live Writer menus (both the pulldown and context menus) look like they were written in Java, rather than with the standard windows UI?
  • Why does the formatting toolbar have a 2D look-and-feel with a gray background, and the functional toolbar have a 3D look-and-feel with a blue background?

Not major issues, but just things that make me wonder why there are so many different UI standards/directions coming out of Redmond.

[tags]windowslivewriter, wlw, ui, userinterface[/tags]

Filed Under: Blogging, Technology ·
  • http://jcheng.wordpress.com Joe Cheng [MSFT]

    Great questions!

    > Why does Windows Live Writer use its own font choice for menus, toolbars, and such? Why doesn’t it honor the system font?

    The Windows Live team has its own internal design group that publishes rules for us to follow. (I’m sure they have their reasons but I don’t know what they are)

    > Why do the Windows Live Writer menus (both the pulldown and context menus) look like they were written in Java, rather than with the standard windows UI?

    Because the standard Windows menus don’t let us provide colored icons. This is particularly important for the Insert and Table menus. We went back and forth on whether to use system menus or custom-drawn menus and after seeing both, the custom-drawn menus won.

    > Why does the formatting toolbar have a 2D look-and-feel with a gray background, and the functional toolbar have a 3D look-and-feel with a blue background?

    We’re trying to “bind” the formatting toolbar to the editing region below, while keeping the primary toolbar separate. Also, having two 3D-style toolbars (as we did in the previous release) looked “lumpy”:

    http://www.onfolio.com/writer/ss3.jpg

    As for why there are so many different UI standards/directions… good question, I don’t know. I also wonder why there are so many different product/version naming conventions, even from one version of the same product to the next.