True that. Of the three programs I can see on my desktop right now (Chrome, WebStorm and Outlook,) none of them are even remotely trying to look consistent with the rest of the operating system. On the other hand, Office 2000 looks right at home on Windows 2000. Even though some controls were technically non-native, they still fit in because the 3D bevel was universal.

I secretly enjoy the ridicule I get from other web developers for refusing to use Chrome (except for late stage cross browser testing) because it does not even try to fit in.

> People cared about consistent look and feel back then, everyone was hating on java because it got it wrong

That does not jive with my memories - and I remember WinAmp, MusicMatch Jukebox and Nero Burning ROM vividly.

I remember that too, I never said people were consistent. Get the order of menus wrong and you were the devil incarnate, write your own gui toolkit and everyone fondly remember you twenty years on (in the case of winamp, music match and nero were reviled).

> in the case of winamp, music match and nero were reviled

Heresy! WinAmp was much-loved. This is the first time I'm hearing anything but love for WinAmp - it was the best music player/organizer at the time, and they added Milkdrop as bonus

I think he's actually saying that it got winamp loved, but music match and nero reviled.

You should probably mention that the vendors at least make an attempt at a 'standard' for their platforms. Whether or not developers follow it, is up for debate.

https://developer.apple.com/design/ https://material.google.com/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/design

There was a period where there was major demand for form widgets in the browser to have a "native look and feel" to decrease the learning curb for people coming from native apps (while meaningful at the time, is less of an issue when most things are web-deployed), and then like the next month there were demands for CSS styling of form widgets and browsers were being shat on because they only supported it in a limited fashion, only color changes, and not actual shape and text styling.

Now you can make text on a button bold italic, but who knows what that means when you see it in relation to a button that isn't bold italic or is just bold or just italic (other than that the designer has bad taste). I once worked with a designer who wanted control over the focus-caret styling (the dotted line in Firefox/highlighting in Chrome that indicates where keyboard input is destined, which changing has potentially huge impacts for accessibility). Having a UI/UX that grossly visually distinct negatively impacts usability, discoverability, and accessibility, IMO, for very little gain in branding (unless your branding is purposely meant to be "confusingly different from everyone else").