Mac OS X Desktop and GUI Design 348
Khelder sent us a nifty little bit about the MacOS X Desktop. It talks quite a bit about
UI Design (mirror) from a Mac-Centric but also a general perspective. It's quite interesting stuff for anyone into MacOS-X, but also it has lots of practical stuff for anyone who's ever tried to create a usable theme for one of today's modern window managers.
Re:current HCI work has limited scope (Score:1)
The open source development model of KDE/Gnome allows for some *real* innovation to take place on the UI front, yet it is being neglected. Look at most WMs, and count how many of them use taskbars, or start menu-ish controls. I don't think we can count on MS or Apple to break out of the mind set that "this is what a GUI looks like". Of course to attract users UIs have to be intuitive and natural to use for people experienced with win/mac UIs, but that can not be used as an excuse to halt UI development at the stage it is now.
I really have faith in projects such as KDE to break out of non-sensical conventions, as is the trend with OSS, and I hope that as well as doing a great programming job, the developers put some research into UI design as well. Remember that computers are slaves to us, not vice-versa.
Translucent/transparent dialogs and menus in X? (Score:2)
My question is this: can this be done in X? Would enlightenment be able to do this through a theme? I would think, to get menu and specific programs to display transparently, you would need to use something like a GTK theme, yes? So maybe the Gnome themes this could be done?
I don't know very much about X and Gnome, but I would be interested if this can be done in X. If anyone has and ideas, please let me know.
Re:window switching? (Score:1)
Re:www.linuxppc.org (Score:1)
Jezzball
ls:
Re:Aqua Memory Requirements (Score:1)
On the other hand though, when running actual productive apps (i know this doesn't apply to most of you
Actually, with respect to GNOME/KDE (Score:2)
For instance, you could put any gnome-panel on any of the sides of the screen and have any buttons or taskbars or menus or documents or anything on them you darn well please. You could make them any size, and have them autohide at any speed.
With both QT and GTK, I know that you can "rip" toolbars out of their default position and move them into a vertical position on the right or left, just as the author suggested. As far as the round menus go, I just don't know what he was talking about. But, with differnt themes of the respective toolkit, one cold put thick borders on buttons.
In short, I agree with you as far as UI designers knowing UI and learning about it. That's obvious, it could always help. But I feel that the inherent flexibility that GNOME and KDE provide go a long way to making the UI usable, no matter what you preferences or prejudices or habits or preconcievied notions of what a UI should be.
While GNOME and KDE can be improved (what can't be improved?), they also deserve a high-five for their work so far.
Re:Aqua Memory Requirements (Score:1)
I read recently on AppleInsider (www.appleinsider.com) that Apple has increased the stated memory requirements from 32 MB to 64MB of physical RAM. Here is a quote from the article AppleInsider (http://www.appleinsider.com/macosx.shtml):
------quote------
Mac OS X Hardware Requirements
The iMac will be the ideal machine to run Mac OS X. Apple is telling customers with questions on Mac OS X hardware requirements to look at the iMac.
* 233 MHz Apple Power Macintosh G3 System or Greater
* 64MB of Pyysical RAM (up from 32 MB)
* 1-2 GByte Hard Disk (though anything over a GByte should do)
* CD-ROM Drive
* 15" Monitor (this does not apply to Apple PowerBooks)
Please Note: These requirements were taken directly from Apple in early '99. Whether they have decided to change them since then is unknown.
------/quote-------
I searched around Apple's pages on Mac OS X (http://www.apple.com/macosx) and couldn't find any specific information on memory requirements. This isn't really surprising, as the OS is still in early development and the requirements could change drastically. There is this little blurb on the new Virtual Memory manager, though.
-----quote----
We Didn't Forget Virtual Memory
Along with the protected memory mechanism, Darwin provides a super-efficient virtual memory manager to handle that protected memory space. So you no longer have to worry about how much memory an application like Photoshop needs to open large files. When an applications needs memory, the virtual memory manager automatically allocates precisely the amount of memory needed by the application--no more, and no less. The result? Out-of-memory messages are out of here.
------/quote-------
Hope this helps.
-chris
.
(OT) LISP (Score:1)
Re:O/T: Two Button Mouse? (Score:1)
Re:O/T: Two Button Mouse? (Score:2)
___________________
Re:Out of touch? (Score:1)
In Aqua, for instance the open/save dialog, all the drawing routines and graphic resources have changed so that it takes advantage of the new graphics layer. Kaleidoscope for OSX probably wouldn't want to take on allowing users to customize that, it will just allow changing the graphic resources (but maybe in a vector based format rather than a pixel based format). If people really want to change the graphic routines, they can write directly to the Appearance Manager, but I'm guessing they have to write an entirely new appearance.
But I probably won't use anything like that, I think the Aqua interface looks splendid as is.
cheers,
-o
Re:O/T: Two Button Mouse? (Score:2)
___________________
Re:Out of touch? (Score:1)
Apple handles changes well (Score:1)
UI-wise, Apple has never pulled the rug under users and developers. The only reason that Apple survived through the bad times in 1996-97 is that there were fanatical users who knew the UI by heart. Changing the UI experience too much will alienate the old-timers and Apple knows that it can't survive on trying to ensnare first-time computer buyers.
--Bud, a non-active Apple fan
Wrong - Tog did not design the Mac UI (Score:1)
Jobs was a lot closer to the Mac UI design than Tog ever was.
Re:Accomodative interfaces vs Inuitive interfaces (Score:1)
I just want the window to go away when I'm done using it. I don't care how it does that, as long as it doesn't go away when I don't want it to. In a PL I don't really care what the syntax looks like as long as I can write my program correctly. Thus I want things like type checking (and in SML, all the wonderful other things that it checks, like making sure my if statements make sense) and don't really care about how much it looks like English.
In both, I want to get my task done quickly above all else, but in a PL the intuitiveness of the interface is not so much a concern due to the higher level of knowledge required to use it anyway. However, for those of us who are programmers, we understand programming and syntax, etc., and thus we want our interfaces to act like programming languages. For us, it's honestly easier that way. Now, when I'm using, say, WebTV, I don't want to bother with total control, I'd just rather surf. I'm not sure what this has to do with Aqua, but I do think it speaks to the disagreement between the text and GUI folks.
Walt
Re:Aqua Skin (Score:1)
This is intented to be used with the rather nice shareware WindowBlinds offered by Stardock at http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/dow
For several X-Windowmanagers there are Aqua-like themes available at themes.org. For example Aquatic for WindowMaker...
Johann
hmm... (Score:1)
http://forum.appleinsider.com/ ubb/Forum2/HTML/001104.html [appleinsider.com]
Tog's the man (Score:4)
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WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
Tog @ Sun (Score:2)
You may not like them, but NeWS was James Gosling's creation and was arguably ahead of its time - Java bears more than a passing resemblance to NeWS in a number of respects. (Remember that NeWS was more than a windowing system - it provided network extensibility and transparency to applications as well, and was arguably the first serious attempt at writing a viable OO network-aware GUI.)
Personally, I think both OpenLook and NeWS were great to work with: I still haven't found scrollbars anywhere else that work that well, and the pushpin/tearoff menu metaphor that's so common now is from OL/NeWS. NeWS in particular had some very cool capabilities: several years ago it did a lot of what we're just now getting around to reinventing in KDE and GNOME. Unfortunately for NeWS in particular, it overestimated the cycles available under Moore's law, and so it was based on Display PostScript (quite cool, really) at a time when it would be several years befoer the horsepower was present to run DPS quickly. As a result (much like GNOME today?), it got a reputation for being dog-slow, and there was little interest in writing apps for it as a result.
Remember that Xerox was the other half of the OpenLook team. OL/NeWS looks a bit dated by today's standards, but it was arguably the most advanced GUI in the insustry when it was released, and broke new ground in important ways, some of which were even picked up by the Mac! It was a quantum leap improvement in Unix GUIs and was light years ahead of SunWin and the original SGI and IBM GUIs, which in their early days were hardly worthy of the name. (something as simple as TWM is a HUGE improvement on SGI's orginal windowing system...)
FYI, Tog's major project at Sun was to play movie producer and make a video short titled "Starfire", which demonstrated a vision of future UI technology in a badly acted setting of corporate politics and intrigue surrounding the near cancellation of a low-pollution car.
(For the car guys in the
Re:Out of touch? (Score:2)
the clipboard was originally intended to create a short-term copy of selected data. since that's what it does with the text of selected filenames, i'm afraid calling it 'totally inconsistent' is putting things a bit strongly. cut-and-paste for filenames is totally consistent with cutting and pasting text in any other context. the fact that you're pleased to define the metaphor a different way doesn't mean that the existing product has none.
on top of that, your own metaphor isn't as consistent as you might think. what would happen, for instance, if you cut one file, then cut another before pasting the first one into a new folder? under the standard clipboard metaphor, that would be a silent and irrevocable deletion of the file, which violates the principle of clarity.. a biggie in the mac os. for that matter, what should happen if you cut one file, select another, and paste? by default, the thing selected is replaced by the thing in the clipboard, so does that mean we should delete the selected file and replace it with the one just cut?
assuming we did manage to work around the difficulties, there's still another problem to consider: overloading the interface. if cut-and-paste does one thing when you've selected the text of a filename, and something else when you've selected the icon, the interface contains a modality that's likely to breed mistakes. the two types of selection are visually similar, and i don't think anyone believes that the average user would always get the distinction right on the fly. interface designers don't have as much license to blame their problems on stupid users who couldn't find a clue with both hands and a flashlight as other programmers, because the whole point of the game is to find something that makes sense to those very users.
BTW - your assertion that cut-and-paste normally copies everything, not some specific object property, is incorrect. the clipboard can actually carry several parallel versions of the copied information, and is designed to paste the version most compatible with the context of the target environment. if you cut a piece of text that's in 12-point Times New Roman, right justified, etc, all that style information is a property of what was copied. you can still paste that selection into a window that doesn't support all your style properties, though. the clipboard just strips off any information that isn't appropriate to the new context.
by that light, the fact that only the filename appears in the new context when you cut-and-paste from the Finder is *entirely* consistent with the overall metaphor.
Re:3rd Generation GUI (Score:2)
I prefer vector-based interfaces in general, but don't believe the hype when they claim it's great new next-generation stuff. It's really just what the motorcycle crowd call the BNG models (where the only real change is Bold New Graphics). It still works the same, just prettier.
Re:Actually, with respect to GNOME/KDE (Score:2)
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Re:Tog makes a lot of good points (Score:2)
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A good starting for UI design. (Score:2)
About Face and
The Inmates are Running the Asylum
Both of these texts are written by a man named Alan Cooper, and go into details of how a good UI should work and why. This background is needed not only to truly understand the issues of UI design but also allows a good standpoint for defending and argueing the views of the author. Overall his article is very well written, and holds a much more open view than your typical Mac OS design piece. (Which usually sum up that: All GUIs are poor imitations of Mac) While I do not completely agree with the author there is little need to critcize it. I think some extra view points would be more benefical so here are some other view points.
One consideration I see overlooked time and time again in all GUI designs is object placement. The human eye normally moves from the upper left hand corner to the lower left hand corner. diagnally. This leaves the lower left and upper right hand corner mostly ignored. This makes them ideal for placement of say menu's because you tend to need to use a menu less frequently than applications and is defensable as why they were chosen in many enviroments as menu locations.
There are reasons to advocate the design of most interfaces but what would be more beneficial to all of us is a well researched and well implented UI. Much of this research has been done, and is discussed in Cooper's books. And envirments such as X give us the freedom to evaluate new ideas and concepts.
This is why enviroments like Entlightenment and Sawmill are so powerful. They provide the ablity to take a good easily and continously improve on the windowing provided by a GUI. And with KDE and Gnome moving along nicely the entire feel should soon allow for this concept to be putforth across entire enviroments.
So again if you are truly interested in all the aspects of UI design please read Cooper's books, they are some of the best references on the topic.
Oh, and don't let the fact that he works for M$ sway you, I'm fairly convinced no one listens to him there.
GUIs sould be boring (Score:2)
It should be boring.
I do not want to be entertained by my UI, i want toget work done in a quite neutral environment.
Richard Feynman said rightly:
For a sucessful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Re:Round Menus (Score:2)
Pie menus may be useful for some operations, but aren't universally useful. And when you start having to mix navigation metaphors, that inconsistency is worse than having no pie menus at all.
Accomodative interfaces vs Inuitive interfaces (Score:2)
You say programming languages are also a form of HCI. I agree with this, and I also agree that Tog isn't properly treating the subject by saying that, in effect, "BASIC rules all".
Perhaps there's a cognitive dissonance going on here. A programming language is an HCI that imposes a "schema" on the user, meaning that a user has to accomodate this new interface into his mental processes. The focus is on taking a mental model and sticking with it, in order to concentrate on the application of that language. Examples of this trend are evident in Functional vs. Object oriented vs. Imperative vs. Declarative vs. Logic programming.
Contrast this to a non-instructional HCI like a GUI, which most HCI literature aims at making "intuitive", or in other words, an interface that is easy to "assimilate" into one's mental processes. The focus here is for the user interface designer to do the "accomodating", not the user him or herself.
From this latter perspective, I think it's quite easy to see why Tog can claim that "BASIC rules all". It is the most English-like language available, and hence the most intuitive.
However, programming language theory has advanced to a point that we know that what is intuitive isn't always the best language: there are trade-offs with performance, expressibility and power when designing languages. So, in effect, Tog is wrong from the PL point of view.
Thoughts?
current HCI work has limited scope (Score:2)
I think imitating Windows/MacOS and applying current HCI principles in systems like KDE and Gnome will be nice in that it makes Linux accessible and comparable to those other desktop platforms.
But I hope that in the medium term, Linux will serve as a platform for more interesting and more important UI breakthroughs, including UIs geared towards expert users. Linux is probably in the best position for that because it seems a lot more flexible and extensible than those other systems. And, more importantly, Linux has expert users that can often themselves modify and improve the UI and share those modifications.
Re:OT Re:Tog's questionable judgment (Score:2)
That's all well and good, but could you explain what specifically you thought was so completely wrong?
What was wrong with the topic/problem? A lot of people have had criticisms of the Aqua GUI - even (perhaps especially) veteran Mac users.
What was wrong with the conclusion? It didn't sound to me like he laid a death sentence on Apple, he simply said it could become their 'New Coke'. Seems possible to me, whether or not it is likely.
So, what's the problem?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Mystery Meat Navigation (Score:2)
Gotta admit though, it's absolutely the most flexible GUI around, even if it is dog slow. THAT is an interface that's way behind the Moore curve. But boy is is something. Lets you drag, resize, and rotate every window and every widget in them.
Re:A good starting for UI design. (Score:2)
Curious. Has any research been done to see if this is also true of people who read right-to-left languages like Hebrew and Arabic?
Re:Is he nuts? (Score:2)
That's pretty amusing, considering the unix world can have the colons but not the slashes. You have to have something as your path separator if you want a unified path and filename (it doesn't have to be like that, but then you make shells damn near impossible).
Round Menus (Score:2)
I'm not sure, but what I think he's talking about here is an application of Fitt's Law that he mentioned in his "A test to give you fitts" article.
Rather than have your menu arranged vertically (or horizontally) as is the case with 99% of menus today, you have the items arranged in a circle, around the cursor.
This works best with popup menus, where you click the button, and come up with something like the following (where the asterisk is the cursor point):
|
Menu|Menu
-_Item1|Item2_-
--___|___--
Menu--_/\_--Menu
Item_|*|_Item
6_--\____/--_3
_--| --_
-Menu|Menu -
Item5|Item4
|
The idea here is that (1)the distance the mouse has to move to the menu item is drastically reduced, and (2) each option is associated with both a distance and a direction, amking them easier to remember, even if the user isn't looking at the screen.
It's a neat idea, and one that I don't think either GNOME or KDE are capable of, without a lot of kludging.
The only desktop environment I know of that does this is UDE [ude.org] but that suffers from other problems, notably that it's nowhere near being complete, not to mention the fact that development on it seems to be all but nonexistent these days.
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
--
- Sean
Re:Agreed. (Score:2)
I won't defend Gasse's incessant whining about it, but Apple wanted Be to pay up to develop for their hardware, if such specs could even be bought for any price. Intel paid Be millions to develop for their hardware. Which would you choose?
Re:Actually, with respect to GNOME/KDE (Score:3)
How do I put the menu for the current application at the top of the screen? How do I add some global options to the menus? Also known as 'Pie menus' think of a circle appearing at where the mouse was clicked, subdivided like a pie chart, such that you, say, go left for formatting details, right for copy. Thats eye-candy, nothing more. You can't change the feel or logical arrangement of a GNOME or KDE application with the theme alone. Pardon?? (All I've ended up using is Sawmill, wterm and Xemacs.) There is NO global scriptability for GNOME applications, and similarly for KDE in 1.x. KDE 2.x may be different, I hope so.
There is little flexibility at the application level (like you get with various Windows applications -- GNOME and KDE applications aren't mature/bloated enough for that, and wouldn't get sufficient development anyhow) If your preferences or prejudices relate to simplicity of design, overall thought of design, plans for future, etc. then I'm afraid that that just isn't the case. what needs to be stressed, and isn't is Flexibility, Reuseability, possiblities for Customisation/Integration at the component level -- currently KDE 1.x and GNOME 1.x have no real concept of a component level. True, but it is all too often that the people in charge see the cosmetic factors in their competition, and go all out to emulate those and only those without the thought that has gone in to the rest of the design of what they aspire to copy. The moral of this story is: Think, Think and Think again before you code something that you want to put out (TAI -- Linus didn't think about global users when starting Linux, and didn't distribute it until it was going somewhere, and he's stuck to his aims ever since.)
John
Re:Good article, a few problems (Score:2)
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Out of touch? (Score:2)
That difference is in holding the mouse is probably the biggest problem people have with it. We've all become used to resting the heel of our hand and the back end of the mouse.
As for the Keyboard - It's shit. It doesn't have all the keys on it and should never ship on high end models.
I agree with that. I think they screwed up there.
Alternative viewpoint: Apple has done quite a bit to support the mouse/trackball/keyboard aftermarket here. Hundreds of thousands of people replacing input devices means millions of dollars to companies like Kensington and MacAlly. R&D money for new and better products flows from there.
I have a Kensington Orbit trackball (2 buttons.) I love it.
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Re:Agreed. (Score:3)
Be has its own reasons for switching to Intel, and shifted the blame elsewhere for their own convenience. If they were expecting free R&D from Apple they should have expected otherwise. Not to mention their investment by Intel - Be's recent (ie. within this month) announcements seem to indicate that they are at the mercy of their shareholders.
Seriously though, why would Apple care? BeOS running on Apple hardware doesn't lose them any money. You're assuming a murder when there wasn't even a motive.
Re: #2, current share prices, increasing marketshare, and sales numbers indicate otherwise.
Re: #3, it's subjective. Nobody in the public has even used it, anyhow.
Re: #4, hard to say. Refer to #3.
...if you want to point out mistakes, try not carefully introducing cloning in '88 or '89 (you can blame Jean-Louis Gasee of Be for that one). How about Copland? How about over-pricing?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:can we use aqua with linux? (Score:2)
It is? The "core OS" (Darwin) may be open source (or will be open source if they release a Darwin that's the same as the core of MacOS X), but, as far as I know, none of the GUI stuff is going to be open source, either in whole or in part.
Re:Out of touch? (Score:4)
I'm cautiously optimistic, but there are a number of people who have had major issues with what Apple has shown so far. Tog, who worked at Apple for 14 years, is one of them. I personally think Apple threw the screenshots out for public consumption as a sort of trial balloon - they've done this before. Given that there are 5-6 months until release, they've got time to make the kind of minor changes people are advocating.
Anyhow, please don't stereotype Mac users. We don't all agree with everything Apple does, and aren't nearly as blind/conformist as you think we are (witness the deafening roar of bitching Mac users erupted in when QuickTime 4 was released).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Out of touch? (Score:3)
There's an article [arstechnica.com] on ars technica [arstechnica.com] that another poster provided a link to, which goes into all of the swank new technology behind the eye candy. It says that PDF is a superset of PostScript, which isn't exactly true. PDF is a subset of PostScript with some new onscreen features added like forms and hyperlinks. Eventually PostScript and PDF are going to be pretty close to merged - Adobe's PostScript Extreme engine is a PDF RIP (PDF to print, with no PostScript in between) and a PostScript to PDF converter.
There are a couple things about Display PDF that aren't mentioned in the article that are extremely cool. GDI and QuickDraw are the current systems for onscreen display on Windows and the Mac OS, respectively. On Windows or the Mac, if you copy anything other than text from one app to another, you are copying not the original file, but GDI or QuickDraw commands. And most non-desktop publishing apps use GDI or QuickDraw to print, which causes a couple of problems. GDI and QuickDraw are both RGB, which throws color off completely if you copy a CMYK TIFF from Photoshop into Quark or copy an EPS with spot colors from FreeHand into PageMaker. And GDI (and to a lesser extent, QuickDraw) is not at all friendly to PostScript printers.
PDF (as of version 1.2) understands CMYK and it understands spot color channels. PDF is friendly to non-PostScript and PostScript printers alike. Which means that non-desktop publishing apps will suddenly print much nicer to PostScript printers, and it means that copying and pasting from one desktop publishing app to another just may stop being the Extremely Bad Thing that it is now.
Oh, and because Mac OS X is based on NeXTStep is based on BSD, for the first time I'll be able to do my desktop publishing on a real OS. No more stopping to allocate more RAM to FreeHand or less to Quark; no more crash and reboot.
In the same way that I tolerate the bright gaudy blue of the G3 on my desk at work, I'll probably learn to tolerate the jelly bean buttons and the jewel-bright scrollbars of Mac OS X.
Good article, a few problems (Score:3)
In addition, in the MacOS the command he didn't know is just that, the command key. Hold it and you can move or windowshade(minimize) background windows without switching to them.
Apple tells users shortcuts very clearly in it's help system, just go in there and search, you'd be surprised how many things you can do just by holding a button.
But anyway, he definitely raises some valid criticisms of OS X, and I definitely don't want to have a "Finder/Browser" type file navigation system. I also think Apple will be total idiots if they don't include a way to use something that is almost exactly like the current platinum look, or at least have a theme system that would let a third party do that. There are some bitter arguments going on in the MacOS community right now(www.maccentral.com/forum/) about the OS X interface, and no matter what Apple does it is going to piss off a whole ton of people.
Oh, BTW:
system folder: 5,138 files
total on main HD partition: 29,957 files
Wow.
Re:O/T: Two Button Mouse? (Score:2)
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Re:3rd Generation GUI (Score:2)
Programming languages are not interface (Score:2)
No, that's not true except in a trivial sense. A programming language is not an interface, it it rather a framework and a set of tools for structuring the problem and the solution. That's a very big difference and probably the one that confused Tog.
Programming languages are not (and should not be) designed to provide a better interface to the machine. They are designed to make problem solving easy, or at least easier. Good languages, essentially, provide a useful framework for thinking about the problem domain and supply you with proper tools to express the solution you have found. None of this has anything to do with human-computer interface.
Kaa
no, you are (Score:2)
I don't think you're thinking of the MacOS.
___________________
Re:This statement is just wrong (Score:2)
I don't necessarily think that the Mac version is really 'ponderously-heavy 3d chrome', though. There is a lot less gray, fewer bevels, etc. You have to admit that they both moved in that same general direction.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
MacOS X Talk (Score:2)
http://www.omnigroup.c om/community/mailinglists/macosx-talk/ [omnigroup.com]
...it has a pretty distinct OpenStep/NeXTStep focus, but there are some classic MacOS users there as well. Overall there are a lot of good ideas being floated around there, as well as a few bad ones, but the people are generally intelligent enough to avoid 'MacOS X rulez/sucks' messages.
Much better than Apple Insider [axismutatis.net], which appears to be more or less frequented by bored 14 year olds (the site itself is pretty decent though).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Attention GNOME/KDE developers! (Score:4)
GUI design has been well researched by Apple and others, and the developers of the new desktops should actually read this stuff. It seems that most of the features included in both desktop environments seem to be added because they are "cool" or they are what a particular developer thinks is best. If everyone makes sure that they are playing by these rules, we can ensure that both environments are superior in speed and ease-of-use to both windows and mac.
Re:MacOS X Talk (Score:2)
Try this instead.
http://www.omnigroup.c om/community/mailinglists/macosx-talk/ [omnigroup.com]
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:A good starting for UI design. (Score:2)
Besides, that should perhaps be "worked for"; he works for Cooper Interaction Design [cooper.com] (although, as the name of the company suggests, "works for" probably understates the case :-)). The book says that he was the designer of the visual programming interface for Visual Basic - but don't let that sway you, either; in About Face, he's perfectly willing to thump Microsoft for things he considers bogus (such as excessively-deep cascading menu on, for example, the Start bar; of course, excessively-deep cascading menus are hardly unique to Windows).
Tog makes a lot of good points (Score:2)
5. Should not hold the trash can. (The trash can should be on the desktop, where it belongs.)
and
It has a far higher access time than the foolish location Windows uses...
and you have to wonder why, because he doesn't tell you what's going on. I always appreciate Tog's work but he shouldn't assume we know why he thinks things, especially in a field as relatively obscure as GUI design. (Most of the geeks I know, including myself, tend to adapt no matter how irritating the system, and while we do bitch about it, we also have little trouble adapting. Also, some of Tog's comments indicate that he is thinking more in terms of professional use, not everyday use by the masses. Still, he's definitely better at this than I am.)
Aqua Memory Requirements (Score:2)
Does anyone know how much memory the GUI eats?
To the looks of it... perhaps running Quake 3 as your Finder may take less memory.
Any answers?
-Saxton
_________
Re:Agreed. (Score:2)
I could see why Apple may have wanted some cash to help Be out. Engineer time isn't free, after all, and there's no telling how much Be needed/wanted.
In the end though, I think it came down to marketshare. I can't blame Be for that, although it may not have been the smartest move (Macs are very common in Be's target market - err, old target market). In the end, they were seduced by the large raw marketshare of the Intel market.
I think it may have hurt them though - their move to IA's may have been due to the inability to keep up with driver development on the PC platform.
What I *am* pissed about is Be's wishy-washy attitude about it. When they first added X86 support, they were saying that they were dual platform, that it was one of their core stengths, etc. Since then they have kept the PPC version very stagnant, and haven't evangelized it at all. I just wish they'd get around to officially dropping support and the charade that goes along with it.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Enlightenment: The *Modern* WM! (Score:2)
Note the 's' at the end of 'modern window managers'. I think he knows that there are more than one.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Is he nuts? (Score:3)
The Mac OS has always been limited to 31 character filenames. This is, I believe, derived from a limitation in HFS, the Mac OS file system. HFS+, which debuted with Mac OS 8.1 offers support for 255 character file names. However, the OS has not been updated to support 255 characters, due to legacy OS and application issues.
The collapsible directories *have* been there -- I suspect he's talking more about this method being the default, rather than the freeform/gridded icon layout that is currently the default with the Mac OS.
Where Tog I believe missed the mark (or perhaps he did mention this, I don't recall) and the Salon article [salon.com] certainly did, is that the old-style Finder is still present in Mac OS. The NeXT-style browser is simply the default, and offers a new option. From what I can tell, the NeXT-style is oriented at newer users.
Re:Offbase (Score:2)
FWIW, Apple licensed usage of what they saw at PARC for 100,000 shares of Apple stock. Not quite the 10,000,000 that Mr. Jobs just got optioned, but still, an apparently fair amount of money.
A new invention... (Score:4)
Questions please?
Q: How does it work?
A: It is sent signals from the programmer that set the method used to determine the result, and to get a new throw.
Q: What do I have to do to use it in program X?
A: Sending it a zero over the serial port will get a new random throw. Sending it any other number from 1 to 11 will set the method it uses.
Q: What methods does it use?
A: The number sets it, and it increases in randomness with the number; i.e. 1 just does a fairly simple random generator, while 10 takes a minute to mathematically simulate the dice on an atomic scale as it flies through the air!
Q: Why does it need Ethernet then?
A: That's for when you send it the signal 11, the most random mode. It posts a comment to Slashdot, enters a wait state for two hours, then comes back, takes the moderation score and adds 1.
Re:Is he nuts? (Score:2)
http-//www.dartmouth.edu
which is dumb.
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Re:no, you are (Score:2)
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Re:no, you are (Score:3)
However, the functionality is not apparent in the current MacOS. I guess Apple figured poorly coded apps might break, and there isn't really a good way to display filenames in the Finder with that long of names (it looks a bit unwieldly).
My understanding is that long filenames work just fine in OSX.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Good article, a few problems (Score:3)
Themes (as they stand on our desktops today) are nothing more than eye-candy. Eye candy is nice (that's why people obsess over wallpaper), but it's hardly the end-all of UI. It's the actual *interface* that is the bell-ringer for a UI. It doesn't really matter what it looks like (provided it isn't visually distracting), so much as how it works.
Take your average E-theme for example. Most of them just change a few pixmaps here and there. Nothing fundamentally different about your Desktop, changes when you alter a theme. Maybe you click somewhere else to close a window. BFD. Themes don't change how the layout of my application looks. Themes don't control what my filemanager looks like. Themes don't tuck me in a night...
Okay, forget that last one (I've heard that some of the new Sawmmill themes do just that). What's my point? I'd rather Apple/Englightenment/KDE spent their energy in developing a more usable *interface* than a prettier one. And, actually, I think Apple has done (and will continue doing) just that.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:Offbase (Score:3)
Here's an account [jefraskin.com] by Jef Raskin, one of the original Mac developers (much of the Mac's concepts came from his research from much earlier).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Offbase (Score:2)
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
ehh? (Score:2)
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Re:Good article, a few problems (Score:2)
Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines [apple.com], but they could do so by at least offering various Apple-made or -approved themes, if not user-created themes. But apparently they're going to stick everyone with Aqua, which some people will like and others won't. Personally, I like Aqua, but I like being able to change my themes.
Fine - a better link. (Score:2)
(although it seems to be down at the moment...?)
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Re:ehh? (Score:2)
As for the cycles, we'll see. Supposedly Quartz is very very fast, but we'll have to wait and see.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Tog's questionable judgment (Score:5)
I used to respect Tognazzini a great deal. However, close reading of his writing, over an extended period of time, has led me to believe that he has questionable judgment about many issues. Just examine his article, How Programmers Stole the Web [quailwood.com], where he claims that:
These are only a sample of the glaring Deep Wrongness in the article I link to above.
In addition, Tog is a relentless Apple partisan, despite his objections to the new Aqua interface. This clouds his perception of all Apple-related issues. For example, among other things, he says in the Aqua/OS X interface article that "Apple could argue, and few would deny it, that Apple was first and Microsoft is the one who made things difficult by failing to accurately copy the Mac interface." Ignoring, of course, the fact that Microsoft would have been perfectly happy to copy the Apple interface exactly, except that Apple is one of the most litigious companies in the IT industry (have you seen Microsoft threaten to sue KDE over their Windows98 theme?).
IMHO, Tognazzini has suffered from a lesser form of the same brain rot that has affected Jon Katz since becoming published on the web: free to spout off without an editor, never forced to confront dissenting opinions before publication, he has become something of an autodidact. This may seem a bit harsh, but I urge the programmers in the audience to read the "How Programmers Stole the Web" article. It reveals a great deal about the didacticism of Tognazzini's thought habits, and will probably cast a very different light on his supposedly authoritative interface design ideas.
I once respected Tog. Occasionally, he comes up with some good insights. However, don't let his impressive resume blind you to his often misled assertions.
~k.leeO/T: Two Button Mouse? (Score:2)
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Re:ehh? (Score:2)
I read this article a while ago, so I don't remember if this was addressed, but Apple better make sure all these bells and whistles are optional.
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Radio interview with Tog (Score:3)
Re:Is he nuts? (Score:2)
Putting a URL in the title is sort of akin to putting txt or doc in the title (oh, the 8.3), but you're not to blame for that..
cheers,
-o
Re:ehh? (Score:2)
I'm on a G3/Lombard myself, which isn't the fastest thing around, but not the slowest either. Hopefully it'll be okay.
I can't imagine Apple putting those things in there without them being disableable. If they don't, someone will - it didn't take long for someone to hack out the zoom rects in the current MacOS.
It's supposed to be released late this month. I'm not too confident about that, but we'll see. From there, I think we'll have a better idea. It ran very very fast at the keynote, but Jobs was probably using a top of the line G4...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Out of touch? (Score:2)
Usability is the big concern, I think. The look of the classic Mac UI isn't what set it apart from the crowd, it's the usability factors.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Mystery Meat Navigation (Score:2)
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/badnavigation.htm
Aqua (sort of) Tested (Score:4)
My first impression upon activating the theme was the expected "that looks cool," and I also noticed that it was a bit brighter looking than the current "platinum" look of OS 9. Not that it was a bad thing, it wasn't blindingly bright, just a little unfamiliar at first. That soon changed however, as I began to actually use it. The theme isn't the most accurate representation of Aqua, for example it doesn't have the slowly throbbing default buttons, but it did have the same "traffic light" buttons on the windows. Some have expressed concern that the buttons are too close together and that someone could miss and accidently close a window, but that did not happen to me once. I got used to the new setup very quickly (to contrast, I never seem to get used to it when I have to use Windows). In fact, I took a liking to the buttons and that pinstripe background. They aren't noticable while doing work, but when you want them you know exactly where to look.
The other main thing that the theme altered was the icons. Even without Quartz and 128x128 (scalable) icons, the new icons look great! That's not one of the things anyone has really been arguing over though...
Unfortunately, the theme cannot simulate translucency, shadows or the "sheet" dialogs - although from the pictures the sheets look really good. The tranclucency might need some playing with, but again I could not try it in person. So on to the browser...
I found the browser useful for quickly navigating a heirarchy of folders - just move the arrow keys towards where you want to go. On the other hand, it wasn't so great for copying/moving files to other places - in most cases a new browser window must be opened. Of course the limitations of this browser might not be the same as Apple's, and the browser view is just an addition to the traditional icon, list, and button views. I'll probably end up using a combination them all, much like I do now.
Keeping all this in mind, it's imporant to remember that Aqua is still in development. Mac OS X is scheduled to be released this summer (not next year as Tog said, that's when it will be preinstalled on all shipping Macs), so there's still time to make any criticisms you might have heard - that is probably one of the reasons for showing Aqua so far in advance.
Re:Is he nuts? (Score:2)
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Re:Out of touch? (Score:4)
I agree 100% with the round mouse thing. I think Apple was aiming toward little kids (which seem to be able to use it, due to its size), but they should never have shipped it with their higher end systems. Same with the keyboard.
For the record, I prefer 2 button mice, which work just fine on the Mac (you can simulate a second button on later revs of the OS by holding down control and clicking on the a file - contextual menus). On the other hand, I have been forced to support Windows users confused by the second button, so they may have a point.
In the end, it doesn't cost much to buy a better mouse. Apple should make it a build to order option, and support both equally.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:O/T: Two Button Mouse? (Score:2)
Re:Out of touch? (Score:2)
I think about it this way--I want PMT, SMP, Protected Memory, and all the other buzzwords. I'd pay $99-$149 just to get it with the existing GUI (which I really like, BTW).
But Apple needs to generate some serious volume from the iMac consumer base to make enough money, so they iMacified it.
I'm not a big fan of Aqua the way it looks now, but if it enables Apple to ship my buzzword-enabled OS, then so be it!
So she puts on five pounds of makeup so that my brother will agree to take her out on the double date, and I get to go out with the cool sexy one who understands PMT, SMP, PM, S&M, etc.
You're a better programmer, so what? (Score:2)
What have YOU done that qualifies you to make disparaging remarks about the man who helped define the Graphical User Interface as we know it?
Use of text instead of graphical icons (Score:3)
It appears that is what TOG is discussing here as well. He seems to be pointing out that Aqua places too much emphasis on the usefulness of graphical representations (which look gorgeous but do not relay much information).
That is why I have always found primitive interfaces such as TWM so useful - more often than not, informative text takes the palce of a pretty (but useless) graphic.
By the way, anyone who has the chance to see Edward Tufte speak should do so. For $500 you get all his books and a great lecture that was really worth $500, as hard as that might be to swallow. I can actually say that I learned a great deal about interface design.
Ya know, I like it (Score:3)
I came to Linux from MacOS X and I suspect a lot of other people will too.
Be patient little penguins. MacOS X is no threat to Linux.
_Deirdre
Re:Offbase (Score:2)
('Course Microsoft never paid anybody.)
Re:Attention GNOME/KDE developers! (Score:5)
Realistically, those involved in designing user interfaces for Open Source projects should take it upon themselves to invest in some good UI books. Ben Shneiderman's Designing the User Interface, 3rd Ed. is a good starting point. Harold Thimbleby's User Interface Design, out of print, is a good book for the quantitative side of HCI, e.g. Fitt's Law and other known metrics relating to user interfaces, if you can find it. Wander through the HCI stacks of your local university library, raid graduate level HCI professors' web sites for other suggested papers and books to read. Shell out for a membership to the ACM SIGCHI -- surf through the CHI conference proceedings for good UI nuggets and broad-based UI design principles.
I also find it amusing how these great Linux user environment projects got started off -- with noone seemingly having any understanding of UI design at the helm. What sort of user experience are we really building for Linux? The problem is that no one really knows. This business of "built by hackers, for hackers" doesn't wash, as few hackers I've known have any clue whatsoever about user interface design issues. This is a substantial field, with many solved problems, yet instead of Using The Source (i.e. doing the readily available background reading) many Open Source projects continue to reinvent the UI wheel -- badly.
That said, there have been some successes, but mostly in individual isolated projects. Nothing on the scale of providing a comprehensive, flexible, yet unified user experience..
Re:Aqua Memory Requirements (Score:2)
I've heard reports from a semi-trusted source that Aqua has run comfortably on a NeXT box with 32 MB of RAM. Of course, this is due to the vastly improved VM scheme which Apple is implementing in Mac OS X.
I long for real modern memory management in Mac OS, and it looks like my wish has been granted:).
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I still think it looks like SGI IndigoMagic (Score:2)
If you have ever used a SGI Indy running Irix paired with that amazingly *ahem* interesting 4DWM desktop windowing environment [sgi.com] the dynamic resizing of icons should be familiar to you.
I used to have access to one back in the mid 90's... whoa... that sounds cool.
I know when I took people by the lab to see it they would immediately go "COOL!!!" when they saw the scrolly thingie make the folder icons look bigger then smaller then bigger then... you get the i dea.
It's no wonder SGI's never caught on... it must have been the amazing easy to install no issues approach [sgi.com] to software they have always used. I know I am not alone [jwz.org] in feeling this way.
http://www.mp3.com/fudge/ [mp3.com]
Re:Is he nuts? (Score:2)
On the plus side, this allows you to use just about any other character. Backslashes, forward slashes, dashes, asterisks, spaces, percent signs, etc.
Before URLs became commonplace, colons weren't terribly common when you think about it.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Tog's questionable judgment (Score:2)
Without directly addressing Microsoft's motivation for VBScript, I would just like to vote for an "ActiveScript"-like interface in Mozilla that would allow developers to add additional scripting languages via plug-ins.
I've yet to see a real argument that JavaScript is the One True Language for web scripting, it would seem that Microsoft's approach of supporting an extendable script architecture is probably the right idea. After all, you can now write IE-specific script in PERLScript, not that you would, and it would be nice to see other alternatives like AppleScript or PascalScript (for the Borland folk) supported in a cross-platform manner. (At least when you can afford to stop supporting Netscape 4.x.)
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Re:Out of touch? (Score:2)
The problem is the advantages of the old UI aren't single momentous features. (Unfortunatly, the disadvantages are.) Most people can't explain them ("Hey that menu went away when I wasn't expecting it to."); It is just an uneasy feeling that things aren't right. But some thought went into those special cases, and its those pieces that I'm not usre that Apple put into OS X.
Its easy to make something pretty. Its easy to make something that is logical to explain. Its hard to make something that feels natural.
Better reviews available (Score:2)
Daniel.
3rd Generation GUI (Score:4)
I must say, i learned a lot from the report the Arsificial Intelligentia over at arstechnica.com [arstechnica.com] put up.
Check it here [arstechnica.com].
Its got a great deal of info on how MacOS X and Quartz are a 3rd generation GUI, relying on vectors, and a great deal of pdf technology to speed things up. This decreases the amount of power needed to run a transformation like the genie effect by great amounts.
Good stuff.
Re:no, you are (Score:2)
Re:Out of touch? (Score:2)
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Agreed. (Score:2)
1. dumping BeOS
2. Bringing back Steve Jobs as Lord and Savior (erm, CEO
3. Putting that butt-ugly interface on top of OpenStep
4. Apparently not going to beta-testing, or even testing at all, on anyone other than developers that stood around slack-jawed saying, "coooool."
Sorry, but that's how I feel about the subject. My extreme hope is that GNUstep doesn't go to themeing toolkits just because OpenStep is themed now...it might be nice, but, c'mon, the NeXT toolkit is nice, usable, and fairly intuitive. The only improvement I could see is making menus either Mac-style or Windows-style, with the additional option of "traditional" NeXT-style menus.
Re:O/T: Two Button Mouse? (Score:2)
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Re:Boy was I wrong. (Score:4)
1. Pay Xerox in the form of Apple stock.
2. Take a few notes on what Xerox has done. No code.
3. Mix in a large number of ideas by Jef Raskin and others.
4. Develop the Lisa/Mac.
5. Bill Gates takes a look, and...
6. The rest is history.
Hope that clears things up a little more.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:window switching? (Score:2)
Windows also allows the option of an SDI interface, a Single Document Interface. This seems to have become the de facto standard, but imho, it's far more complicated and becomes nastily disorganized very quickly. There is no homougeny between programs, etc. It becomes a smorgasbord (sp).
So, imho, I'd like to stick with the command-tab that's in MacOS. It works. What you're asking for isn't a feature, it's a fundamental OS change. If Aqua is based on X, it'll probably happen. I hope not. I like the feel of MacOS, and yes, I started using computers back in DOS 2.1, so I've been around both worlds plenty of times. I'm a Windows programmer at work, but when I come home my G4 feels a lot cleaner and sharper than anything I've encountered under Wintel.
And that's not a flame, that's my opinion.
Jezzball
ls: