The Year of the HIG

Apparently, when Gruber speaks, people listen. "The HIG Is Dead", his presentation at C4, has sparked an incredible amount of discussion and activity recently. Amidst all the individual stories of developers sprucing up their UIs, Brandon Walkin has organized the Indie HIG. I highly recommend everyone take a look, and get involved if you like the idea. Also, I have an account there, and that makes it even cooler.

It can't be expected to actually replace Apple's HIG, and Brandon says as much on the front page. It's largely a design principle popularity contest, with a bunch of dev types discussing do's and don'ts and occasionally agreeing with each other. And it will never have the authoritative feel of Apple's official docs. Having said all that, it's the best idea I've heard recently, and there's no way around those issues. Unless we can hypnotize Steve Jobs...

Which brings me to another point- Apple's HIG 2.0. I predict this will be the year we see it. Not until WWDC, maybe, but I think Apple is paying attention. I believe the volume of public complaints from developers about the difficulty of maintaining a consistent look and feel has already surpassed Apple's threshold of tuning-out. There have been rumors of more standard controls in Leopard, and standard toolbar icons, etc. and the HIG 2.0 will be a perfect companion.

In the meantime, join us over at the Indie HIG, and throw in your 2 cents. Imagine the stories you can tell your grandchildren when your ideas get rolled into the HIG 2.0...

UPDATE
My first-ever prediction may be comin' up Milhouse. Daniel Jalkut gives me hope. And no, I did not attend the tech talk when it rolled through my town, which was before I posted my prediction.