Mike,

>>>Imagine the overhead involved in implementing what amounts to a insignificant UI-Eye Candy.
>
>>How can you judge ?
>
>Whohh! I think anyone here has the right to judge anything that invloves changing ones vehicle of a living, I stongly agree with John's statment.

How can john, judge that one ore two extra events would have any performance impact for whatsoever. We can't judge, because we don't know the implementation details.

>Goofy paper clips, "My Favorites" and other pretty things just don't belong in Business Computing.

Hmmm. So the coolbuttons in IE and all office applications are no part in business computing. Interesting observation... The same mistake IBM made about ten years ago, saying that business software didn't need a graphical shell (windows) arround it, Dos would do. We now all now what a terrible mistake they made. If they'd realized the importance of UI, we probably would be using OS/5 or something instead of Windows.

There is much to learn about UI. This is a very advanced topic, and is very important in software development. Bad UI's drive people nuts, but good UI's are very, very hard to write.

>I don't need pretty Icons on my buttons, because I don't even use icons, I use words like "add" and "edit" on toolbars. I don't feel the need to make buttons that don't look like buttons or put icons on a menu. What value could possibly come of this, except for more time and money developing something as useful as a spleen and more resources consumed? I honestly would like to hear your point of veiw on these questions.

Mike, With all do respect, You've got a lot to learn about user interfaces. Just read any UI learning book. My favourite is About Face, Alan Cooper. He clearly explains why to use icons.

Icons are ment for the experienced users, as the beginner probably would use the menu to find functions. Next to the menubar there can be an icon displayed (like in the office applications). This gives the beginning user an clue how to perform the same actions with toolbar.

Toolbarbuttons, often refered as buttcons are very pixel conversative. They don't use a lot of space, are even more clear than words to the user once he knows what the buttcon does.

Walter,