Initiatives like these are exactly what we hoped for when we made the Aristo UI open source together with 280North. If you're interested check out the full PSD at the github repo: http://github.com/280north/aristo We're working on some nice refinements/additions too.
I find it interesting that Aristo's examples are almost 100% identical to Apple's controls, albeit with less shininess (a good quality in a generic UI, I prefer cleaner). Care to comment on that? (I haven't read the Aristo psd, but cappuccino looks interesting)
And I personally despise those little rotary controls. You can't control them precisely or read them accurately. They're useful only for extremely coarse controls, which few programs have a use for.
The circular slider is a pretty specific user element. Maybe so specific that it doesn't belong in a general purpose framework, I don't know. But it definitely has its place. It's usually coupled with a text field for precision, but it's generally a good tool for setting an angle in a UI.
While I totally respect 280North for what they've done for the web, and for their insanely talented engineers and designers, I can't help but think homogeny between web applications on a large scale is necessarily a good thing. At what point do you lose a sense of identity for the sake of adhering to a standard set of UI elements or some HIG document? Just my 2c.
Standard Interface is intended to make it easier to rapidly prototype and build web applications based on a good looking default style. The goal is not to create design homogeny.
The goal is to make the leap from unformatted, unstructured raw HTML to something presentable and easy to use automatic. Then you can customize it. It's very similar to the way the iPhone UI works with interface builder.
Ah makes sense. Would you consider this to be akin to Blueprint, et al. in any way? Providing a default set of, essentially, CSS rules and building from there?
I don't think the goal is to prescribe exactly the same look and feel for all apps. A useful analogy here is to look at what has happened in the Mac world (I won't use the iPhone as an example as the App Store reviewers impose HIG compliance everywhere).
Nearly all Mac applications have the same feel to them - even third party apps. This is what makes the Mac experience so nice, apps all work the way you expect them too. But, the final interface can often look highly unique. Think of applications such as Delicious Library.
Interface guidelines are for those parts of your app that aren't the core. They are for providing a layout that is reasonable and familiar to users when your application doesn't need to do better.
For example, think of Delicious Library. Obviously, the browser screen of DL has nothing at all in common with what the HIG suggests. This is because it is the core experience of the app, and Wil Shipley felt that it was important enough to bring his own feel to the app. But open up a preference panel, and it looks exactly like a preference panel on any other Mac app. There was no need for Wil to spend energy trying to figure out how to layout his preference panel, he just followed the HIG. And now users of the application get that comforting, familiar feeling when they open the preference panel.
There is going to be design "homogeny" no matter what, it will be whatever the standard style of your browser is or renderer is. Right now, that standard is pretty ugly, and its pretty hard to go from that to something that looks decent. There's no reason someone writing a scientific application, or someone who can't afford a good designer, or doesn't understand the importance of design, should have no other option than something that looks pretty poor. The goal of a good standard is to allow applications to look really good out of the gate, which doesn't prevent you from then customizing it.
Look at Mac OS X for desktop and iPhone. These are the OSes with the most focus on a interface guidelines, but the also have the most unique looking apps as well.
