Both GNOME and Apple had written HIG (human interface guidelines) and I thought GNOME 2's UI was especially well thought out for applications. (I'd perhaps move your date range forward a bit though.)
And it's not just devices, but the web, too! Every web application must, practically by necessity, reinvent some or most of the basic UI controls.¹ Most professional websites do, and each is different. In many ways, the web makes me think that many of the concepts discussed by HIGs (simple, non-graphical stuff like, "put the 'accept action' button in the same place) have been lost.
Even Chrome disobeys my system preference for UI, and rolls it's own. Then the websites it displays roll their own.
Some of the comments below you remark that many applications disobeyed (or ignored) good UI principals, but nothing's changed with the web; there's still plenty of bad examples². If anything, its worse, as there is no system HIG to fall back on as "correct": it's not what a bunch of people decided was a good idea, it's not what I want, it's just whatever the designer liked.
HTML is still playing catch up in UI: we just got flexbox for layouts (which you need, imho), but some things are still just plain hard. (Pinning a header row and header column on a table, for example.)
This doesn't even begin to scrape the "flat UI" fad, which I think is bad because you can no longer discern actionable areas like buttons. With desktops, I could choose my UI theme. With the web, I'm again stuck with whatever some designer liked, instead of what I want.
¹HTML provides the simple stuff like checkboxes and buttons, but a tree-list-view? Good luck!
²We will have reached UI nirvana when I never see another checkbox used as a radio button.
And it's not just devices, but the web, too! Every web application must, practically by necessity, reinvent some or most of the basic UI controls.¹ Most professional websites do, and each is different. In many ways, the web makes me think that many of the concepts discussed by HIGs (simple, non-graphical stuff like, "put the 'accept action' button in the same place) have been lost.
Even Chrome disobeys my system preference for UI, and rolls it's own. Then the websites it displays roll their own.
Some of the comments below you remark that many applications disobeyed (or ignored) good UI principals, but nothing's changed with the web; there's still plenty of bad examples². If anything, its worse, as there is no system HIG to fall back on as "correct": it's not what a bunch of people decided was a good idea, it's not what I want, it's just whatever the designer liked.
HTML is still playing catch up in UI: we just got flexbox for layouts (which you need, imho), but some things are still just plain hard. (Pinning a header row and header column on a table, for example.)
This doesn't even begin to scrape the "flat UI" fad, which I think is bad because you can no longer discern actionable areas like buttons. With desktops, I could choose my UI theme. With the web, I'm again stuck with whatever some designer liked, instead of what I want.
¹HTML provides the simple stuff like checkboxes and buttons, but a tree-list-view? Good luck!
²We will have reached UI nirvana when I never see another checkbox used as a radio button.