I think you have to credit users with a little more intelligence than that. The context of a UI control is way more important than how it looks. I really don’t believe a user is going to break down in a state of confusion because they were sure that button had rounded corners last time they looked.
Credit users with intelligence? Now that’s a novel concept. ;)
While I agree that most users will have no problem coping with the difference – it still leaves a bad taste.
Users have little problems with unstyled buttons looking different across different Operating Systems because they
already know this phenomena from 100 other websites – and because such buttons at least blend in with the rest of the UI.
The story is different when you confront the user with a carefully styled button that looks “good” in one browser but “broken” (degraded) in another, where neither version resembles a standard style that the user knows.
The mental framework of our common, non-technical user has no concept for this scenario – his brain will raise an unconscious “something is wrong here”-flag when he encounters it.
Moe
Credit users with intelligence? Now that’s a novel concept. ;)
While I agree that most users will have no problem coping with the difference – it still leaves a bad taste.
Users have little problems with unstyled buttons looking different across different Operating Systems because they
already know this phenomena from 100 other websites – and because such buttons at least blend in with the rest of the UI.
The story is different when you confront the user with a carefully styled button that looks “good” in one browser but “broken” (degraded) in another, where neither version resembles a standard style that the user knows.
The mental framework of our common, non-technical user has no concept for this scenario – his brain will raise an unconscious “something is wrong here”-flag when he encounters it.