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Originally Posted by tombeck
you wrote: "but on Mac OS X where nearly all apps inherit the same, correct UI behaviors"
This one is new to me.
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It's called object oriented programming. The "inheritance" concept has been used and perfected for decades. If you use an existing class for a feature, you'll inherit all of its existing behaviors and features that every other application inherits. You'll also automatically gain new features as they are introduced to the standard class definitions. When you start "reinventing the wheel" by rewriting your own custom version of every single user interface element, though, you're going to wind up with a growing list of inconsistencies as I mentioned above.
The latter is precisely what Firefox does. It redefines its own versions of
everything (and not just in the UI). Why do toolbars and context menus and buttons and text fields and such all "feel" more natural and consistent in other apps like, say, OmniWeb? It's because the developers of OmniWeb used the standard NSToolbar and NSMenu and NSButton and NSTextField classes just like every other application developer should. It saves a lot of coding on the developer's side as well as guaranteeing compatibility and consistency with the OS and other applications.