[jancsika]

> IMO just copy AE’s UX affordances first if your goal is to make something you want other people to use.

@clementpiki I second this advice and strongly suggest to document it as a guideline for your project as soon as possible. Surf on the shoulders of AE's UI giants!

Otherwise a small but vocal number of devs users who implicitly love FOSS software will end up rationalizing all the little UI quirks as features. Worse, their lack of expertise in UI design will be proportional to their level of energy and post length on all your communication channels. It's the epitome of bike-shedding. But if you just standardize on "whatever AE does" nobody will spend a moment advocating for putting quirks into the UI. (Plus they'll be very forgiving about quirks since it's obvious that getting the UI to work exactly like a proprietary piece of software is a very difficult problem.)

[KennyBlanken]

The greatest failing GIMP had (and still does) is that has almost nothing in common with Photoshop UI-wise - or numerous other photo editing tools. I've used them all my life and every time I open GIMP, I can't seem to do anything.

It's like walking into a car dealership and they tell you their car is free, and you ask where the seats are, and they say "why, on the ceiling, of course. We didn't want to copy all those other car companies."

You pop open the hood and there's no engine. "Where is the engine?" "On the roof!"

"Where is the gas tank?" "It's that plastic bag you keep on your lap."