Apple Explains Interface Differences 763
WCityMike writes "This switch document for developers details the interface differences between Microsoft Windows and the Aqua interface used in Mac OS X. Written on a layman's level, it actually makes for pretty interesting reading!"
That's simple. (Score:3, Funny)
Also... (Score:5, Informative)
agree.html (Score:4, Interesting)
However, OS X manages extensions with so much more inteligence than Windows (or any *nix windowing system I've used), that I've complety changed my tune now. I now like the way OS X uses file extensions, and don't want to go back.
MacOS X File Extensions (Score:3)
Re:MacOS X File Extensions (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, to be precise, (and we slashdotters like precise, no?) all previous versions of the Mac OS have recognized both a Creator code and a Filetype code for every single data file. Thus, a file can identify itself as a jpeg, and additionally identifies which application was used to create the file.
This allows for a fascinating and brilliant user interface device, which is so intuitive that most people will never even realize it exists. When you drag a data file icon to an application icon, the application icon only highlights if that particular application believes it can open that particular file type. (If you're lucky enough to be sitting in front of a Mac right now, give it a try by dragging a data file icon to the wrong application.)
Re:Also... (Score:3, Insightful)
In 10.2 command-oprion-H is "hide all other apps"; don't want to see other apps? Use it.
Prior to 10.2 the "hide all other apps" didn't have a consistant short cut, but it was always in the same place in the application menu (second manu on the bar, between the apple and the file menus).
Personally I like having, oh, say, my IRC client up, and pushing the minimised iTunes controls between the IRC connect/notify windoes and the users window. Or maybe closing the users window and having a DVD play there. Or sticking the compile window from Project Builder below the chat area, or Backup's progress bar close to the...
No, never. That's not to say from time to time I don't click the wrong thing and get the app I don't expect, but I have found it trivally easy to "get back". Command-H always hids the current app in OS X, so if you didn't want the app up at all (say the pesky finder that unhides if you miss a window and click the desktop) Command-H hides it and switches you back to the last app. If you wanted that app un-hidden, you can return to the last app by doing Command-Tab in 10.2, or prior to 10.2 the shareware HotApp program let you use Opt-tab for that.
Sure, if you spend zero time learning how to use them they are bad at stuff. Much like spending no time learning how to drive a car makes them bad transportation devices, and great devices for crushing expensave stuff, or spending zero time learning to interact with people in a bar makes it hard to get a date, but easy to wear a drink. Most stuff does require a little effor to learn! Sometimes the very tiny effort of finding someone who likes the thing and saying "er, why do you like it?", or "how do I do this?". Sometimes - the horror - the supreime effort of reading a book!
I'm not a big windows fan, but I do admit their GUI lets you madly rush about and has defaults that don't suck too hard. Linux seems about like all the other (non-Mac) Unixes and has random GUIs on top of it that conflict a bit, have defaults that suck hard, and after tons of effort in getting them tuned to how you like to operate, tend to work better then the out of the box configurations of Windows or MacOS. Or corse I expect if you spent the same effort to customise the other two you would get the same effect.
Well, they sure aren't cheap (except maybe the iBook, and maybe the DVD-writer iMac up agianst name brand PCs....definitly not as cheap as white box PCs though!).
On the other hand they sure don't seem slow. I was happally writing CD-Rs for backups watchign an IRC channel and DVD, running iTunes and nothing seemed the least bit slow. Ripping CDs seems way way faster (and simpler) then Intel-ish PCs with 2x to 4x the clock speed! Compiles seem to go by just as fast as any other IDE system (laptop, so no SCSI option). Maybe for most tasks the slowest thing is not the CPU, but the memory wall, or the disk wall, or just plain the person sitting there doing work.
Of corse I don't think I would go out and buy rack after rack of Xserve boxes for a render farm, then again, it would be one of the platforms I would evaluate. I kind of susspect the Intel-ish systems would win out there though.
Re:Windows File Extensions Usages are Awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
For another example... say Grandma has created her first web page, and because I was the one talking her through it, she did it in Notepad. Now, she can't see the file extension, but Notepad, being its usual *cough* helpful self, saved it as index.txt or something like that. So she goes and changes the filename (all of which she sees is 'index') to 'index.html'. Mac OS X does the Right Thing here: changes 'index.txt' to 'index.html'. Windows does the simpler, but Wrong thing: changes the filename to 'index.html.txt'. Double-clicking on it will still bring it up in Notepad.
There's one simple, slightly contrived, example. I'm sure others could be provided. Pray cease to comment on my intelligence, unless you actually know what I'm talking about.
It is quite interesting, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, a developer may appreciate a large stock of standard controls, but sometimes the best controls are non-generic. I light my gas oven by turning the dial and pushing it in. This is not how I operate my toaster (single dial and slider to depress bread) or microwave (timer dial with separate on/off/pause button) or my fridge (single slider for thermostat, built in switch for the light.)
Do you know something? Despite their proximity in the kitchen, I don't find this plethora of different user interfaces confusing. I didn't even have to read the manuals, even though my new toaster is quite different from the old one. Contrary to what interface designers tell us, we can cope perfectly well with this sort of complexity.
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Consistency is the most important part of a UI - a user will get used to the behaviour of certain controls/widgets, if your app comes along and uses it's own that behave differently, you just broke consistency and the user will have to waste time deducing the behaviour rules of your control.
Windows has become a hive of confusing and inconsistent interfaces, not only because people like Adobe write their own tab controls, but people like Creative and whoever wrote BlackIce discard the standard interface entirely and use their own hideous bitmap based monstrosities.
Not to mention the fact that using standard controls saves a hell of a lot of time developing custom ones. Obviously some controls simply won't exist and you'll have to make them yourself, but with a reasonable set of standard ones and a good canvas control you have most things covered.
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
However, with each version of Office to date (I think...?), Microsoft has never used Windows's native control set. A perfect example of this is Office XP. Office XP, although XP branded, supports none of XP's skinning abilities. Office XP definately sports that flat look, rather than the fluffy, colorful look that Windows has. Although Microsoft has always made sure that the Office controls are an accessible super set of whatever Windows can do, this strategy is a waste of time and money.
How can anyone take Microsoft seriously if they aren't even following their own advice? It's as if they want Office to be its own operating system...
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:2)
It's like when someone uses CSS and puts '!important' in every element - some developers just can't accept that the UI should not be 100% under their control (ie/ some users need to be able to override).
Standard widgets are pretty good (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree. I generally find that custom widgets charm developers, and annoy users.
Lets take a look at existing custom widgets. The big annoying ones are bitmap ones (on Windows, often using the standard button as an underly widget). These look different, add nothing to the application, amake the program bigger (esp. to download), slower, look less professional, and seem to frequently be written by interns or something, judging by the quality of them.
There are custom tab widgets. They usually aren't any better than normal tab widgets, especially the annoying reshuffling multi-row tab widgets.
There are animated widgets. Animated widgets are just plain annoying to a lot of people.
There are dials. Every custom widget library seems like it has to come with a dial widget. Dial widgets are about the most difficult interface to work with on a computer, given your input devices (keyboard, mouse).
A lot of examples of what custom widgets do and how bad they are can be found at the excellent Interface Hall of Shame [iarchitect.com].
There are a *very* few custom widgets that I've seen over the past few years that I think are honestly good and deserve being adopted. I haven't seen a single Windows widget that I like, and in all my years of poking around at human-computer-interaction, I've seen exactly three widgets on the Mac that were a good idea (all of which were pretty much uniformly adopted by the Mac developer community).
A) The slider. The MacOS never had a slider control. When MS copied the Mac's interface elements, this is one of the things they did right -- added a slider. Traditionally, MacOS developers have used scroll bars to fill in the gap, but a fair number of people have introduced a Windows-style slider.
B) The Mercutio MDEF -- this is a menu widget that supports more complex keybindings. The original Mac menu widget only supported Command-A, not Command-A separate from Command-Shift-A. This has been a fairly useful invention (and the UI was done right -- there was a shift symbol added, not just a capital "A" shown in the menu).
C) Windoids. These are the little palettes that vanish when you switch to other apps. They don't look like standard windows, they disappear on their own, but they're so useful that everyone uses them now.
There are also a few, high-level and very custom widgets that don't really appear to the user as widgets, and make reasonable sense. A calendar widget, or something along the lines of GnomeCanvas.
Re:Give programmers less control. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, HTML is pretty much an inefficient, hard to parse Postscript variant.
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a question of being "unfriendly at first glance"--most new interfaces are (that's what makes them "new"). It's a question of being unfriendly throughout the lifetime of your interactions with it, due to bad design decisions made at a deep level. Your statement gives developers permission to punish end-users for needing to use the app. This is good news if you're a monopoly, but bad news if you have competitors.
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:4, Informative)
I agree with you, however... I suspect the reason Apple makes this suggestion is that most developers over estimate their expertise in designing user interfaces. They think, "it makes sense to me" and they write a control that makes no sense at all. Their intimate familiarity with the product and it's intended use makes it difficult for them to imagine the thought process of a new user.
Designing user interfaces is pretty complicated, and requires a lot of thought. Even with this time investment, you still need to do user testing etc on your new control to see if it gets used the way you had hoped. This is true of any new interface, but especially true if that interface is full of non-standard controls. Most software products don't have the resources to devote to this aspect of development.
So yes, an intelligent design with non-standard control *can* work. But you won't go far wrong with the ones that have been carefully thought out and provided for you. As soon as the article say something like "most developers will do better with the standard controls", every developers suddenly feels like he is part of the group that doesn't fall into that category. (Everyone overestimates their own ability.) [cia.gov]
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Please remember this:
People are stupid.
Programmers are people.
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:2)
More accurately, it says not to use non-standard controls unless the application really needs them--in particular, don't create a non-standard version of a control that is already available in a standard form.
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:2)
Isn't it nice how you can get into almost anyone else's car and you pretty much know how to drive it? How the accellerator is always on the left, the gearshift is somewhere in the middle?
That's called standardization, and it's good.
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:2)
D'oh! Maybe I should wake up before I post
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:2)
Actually, it's on the right in the US too (I'm just dumb.)
Never having driven a left-hand car, or on the left side of the road, I can't speak from personal experience here. But the few British people I've known here in the States have ranted for a quite a while about having to switch back and forth and it taking getting used to.
And in an emergency, it had *better* be second nature!
Re:It is quite interesting, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually as a Windows user who loathes the Mac look and feel it was one of the few pieces of advice I agreed with as a general matter.
When Mosaic first came out the most noticable thing about it was that it was the first browser for X-Windows that did not have an amateur DIY look and feel, it was plain Motif with the standard SGI fonts.
I don't much like using Adobe products because they insist on inventing their own UI techniques rather than providing the user with something consistent. At one point I used photoshop on a daily basis, then I stopped using it for a couple of months and found that I had forgotten how to use most of the commands. These days I just can't be bothered with it.
My pet peeve is MP3 players. For some reason these programs seem to be insist on morphing into the most unusable shape possible. Skins are cute as an option but just why does nobody - including Microsoft make an MP3 player with standard Windows look and feel?
The other point that is quite noticable in the document is that the Apple designers appear to be making most of their comparisons to the Windows 95 look and feel rather than XP.
It is also quite noticable that the example they give of an application with 'only one' menubar on Aqua actually has at least four visible command bars. The IE window has its own menu and shows a page with yet another menu.
Some good points (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Some good points (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to be trolling. But Apple made few mistakes.
Like first. From users point of view, they are addressing that grey is out and they posted completely white screenshot. That could be painfull for eyes. I know I was having troubles with MOX on my Powerbook. Everything is too white and bright.
Second point. They are addresing that you need to use big photorealistic icons. Not true. Photorealistic icons are not simple and preety. I agree, first look is gorgeous, but from users point of view, carton like friendly icons are much closer to non-pro user. Second the sizes needed to look cool for photorealistic icons are automaticaly bigger that sizes needed for handdrawn ones. It's the question of on-screen space and memory needed for program. Programs with larger images are automaticaly slower.
Thrird point. Constant use of controls. I agree but, why the hell QT and iTunes looks completely different than other ones.
Fourth point. Drop down dialogs out of captions are not as good as they seem to be. Apple suggests that ok, cancel, etc should be put on bottom of dialog. So you get two ok and two cancel buttons. Without some visible border between.
Fifth point. They forgot to take in consideration points of no happenings. While Aqua constantly freezes while you're waiting on something, there is no visible progress (at least as I checked out in 20%). This point is very good described in Gnome human interface design.
Sixth point. Suggested spaces between controls are too big. this forces them to use pager controls. Bad design Steve. On my powerbook, well simple dialog and screen was full.
Seventh point. Gray is not out. Aqua is not in. As much as I dislike Windows, there at least is option to choose non gray colors. On MOX, well no, it's WHITE. Skin interface rules.
Eight point. MDI is usable. It's just a point of usage (sometimes yes, sometimes not). Having hundred windows belonging to same application on screen all thrown up there on desktop is not really friendly. This point is nicely addressed in Gnome human interface design.
Well I could go on and on. But it should be enough.
Re:Some good points (Score:3, Insightful)
As for control size, the guy that you responded to has a good point. Control sizes have increased because of Fitts' law, that directly relates control size and distance to the control from your current point to the amount of time it takes the average user to actually hit the control. Windows menus are actually terrible because they're so small, the Apple menubar at the top is brilliant because its effective size, being up against the side of your monitor, is much larger. If you have larger controls (which is a good idea) you probably also want a bit more space between them. Crowding controls together effectively REDUCES their size, because it's too easy to accidentally slop into another one, I problem that I have all the time with Window control buttons.
A bit hypocritical... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not even going to get into some of the innacuracies used to make the Mac UI look better or the complete lack of professional advice being utilized. Much of these arguments are based on the premise that "Mac users like it this way" and assuming that the typical Mac user is a UI expert.
Re:A bit hypocritical... (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember that this is written for Mac Developers, who do stuff for macs, which the mac user uses.
Re:A bit hypocritical... (Score:5, Informative)
Not on my system it isn't. I'm viewing it in Mozilla, and the text is inside the boxes.
Also the text is forced to a smaller size than is comfortable to read on screen and by using this size text the bold headline sbecome blurry and even more difficult to read.
Assuming you are using Windows, I find text is far more legible on Macs.
To be fair, I'm guessing they designed their site to be viewed on Apple systems and there is a difference in screen metrics because Macs are basedon a 72dpi resolution while PCS use 96dpi (though they can be changed to anything from 72dpi-144dpi).
That's not the problem. Mac monitors are no longer 72 dpi if you run them at high resolutions. I'm using a 19" Sylvania monitor set at 1280 X 1024. Mozilla's display resolution is 96 dpi, same as on PCs. IE also defaults to 96 dpi.
The real issue is not screen resolution, but the size of fonts on Windows.
A 10 pt font is expected to be 10 points. There are 72 points to an inch (or 2.54 cm). Windows fonts are too large, with 10 points closer to 12 points. I know this because I work in pre-press. This is why the text on websites made on PCs often looks too small on Macs, and vice versa.
Nothing new (Score:2, Flamebait)
Of course, if you go to MacKiDo's main page, you'll also notice an introduction note; in summary, it says that OS X was a mistake, as Apple's primary focus is no longer on the UI. And you know what? I couldn't agree more. Say all you want about OS X bringing Unix to the masses, but the fact is, the masses would have been better off without Unix. OS 9, despite having less eye candy than OS X, was architecturally better for the home user in just about every way than OS X - the only significant development X had was Cocoa, and that could easily have been ported into an OS 9 upgrade instead.
By switching to OS X, Apple threw out 15 years of hard work, just to release an OS with an inferior UI on an inferior kernel. And their interface in many ways no longer follows the principles that Apple themselves set out so brilliantly back in 1984, and others tried to emulate with varying degrees of success (don't even get me started on the Dock).
I still love the PPC platform; it's no Alpha, but it is the most popular RISC platform for the desktop. IBM, at one time, had the CHRP platform; it was the PPC answer to x86's open hardware, and it would have allowed a PC user to upgrade to PPC by simply throwing a new motherboard and processor into their existing case using their existing components and peripherals. If IBM releases their new Power4 processor for CHRP, I'll be the first to buy it, and install PPC Linux. And if the planets are all in alignment, and Apple decides to design OS XX based on a completely new design, scrapping all development environments but Cocoa and going back to the old OS9-style user interface, then I'll buy a Mac.
But there's absolutely no point in buying a closed platform when the software, specially designed for that platform, sucks. At least with PCs, I can run BeOS on a laptop; with Macs, such is no longer an option.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, a kernel that rarely crashes is indeed inferior. Likewise, a kernel that allows developers to build applications based on standards is a poor choice.
Re:Nothing new (Score:2)
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple's Developer site has more info [apple.com]. In fact, they say that xnu is not strictly a microkernel.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
No, actually he does not say that. What I read there is that he doesn't necessarily agree with Apple's "new direction", and has decided that the difference between PC and Mac interfaces is now negligible. Obviously, a lot of people disagree.
Cocoa could not, no-way-no-how, have been ported to OS 9. While I miss my old spacial Finder too, I realize that it does not scale at all for the large numbers of files UNIX - and indeed, things like digital photography/music collections - requires.
By switching to OS X, Apple threw out 15 years of hard work, just to release an OS with an inferior UI on an inferior kernel. And their interface in many ways no longer follows the principles that Apple themselves set out so brilliantly back in 1984, and others tried to emulate with varying degrees of success (don't even get me started on the Dock).
Inferior kernal? Smoke another one, buddy.
I've heard these arguments over and over about the Dock. No one has a problem with the dock unless they are already thoroughly entrenched in some other mechanism. I'm convinced that it is the pain of un-learning something else that makes people hate the Dock. Try this - put some newbies in front of Mac OS 9 and tell them to launch the browser. They won't be able to do it. Where is the browser? 4 levels down, inside the Apps folder, with no visible way to get there. OS X solves this. The dock may have some significant limitations, but it's hardly the disaster some make it out to be.
As for throwing out 15 years of work, if you'll check the aforementioned Aqua UI guidelines, you'll see that it's not true. They have built upon that foundation. It's practically identical. I still have the original 10-book set of UI guidelines, and it really hasn't budged. If anything they've added to it - such as the new mode for dialogs (status, reason, action). Things like 'verb' button-labels remain.
But there's absolutely no point in buying a closed platform when the software, specially designed for that platform, sucks. At least with PCs, I can run BeOS on a laptop; with Macs, such is no longer an option.
You know, that is an opinion.
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Funny)
Ah yes! Damn thee the to hell, Xnu[0]! I can no longer press the mouse button to pause the operating system...
[0]- Xnu is the name of the new kernel.
Best suggestion (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Best suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
Tabbed browsing in Mozilla? Quicken's tabbed windows? That's MDI, too. And lots of people like it. It's MDI done right.
The problem with old-style MDI apps (e.g., icons in a big empty window) that it was a one-size-fits-none policy that all apps could use. The in-app window management was usually horrible: icons that could be overlapped.
The only different is that apps are using MDI nowadays and are customizing the in-app window management to the application. Most people love it; other control freaks don't (e.g., if you have a custom 9000-line
Re:MDI (Score:2)
Use verb buttons instead of 'yes/no' (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Use verb buttons instead of 'yes/no' (Score:2, Informative)
GUI Bloopers
The Design of Everyday Things
Also, the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines (downloadable here: http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/mac/HIGuideli
I'd recommend focusing on the principles of good design that can be used on Swing, Windows, Mac or KDE and Gnome. Good UI principles will still be valid 10 years from now, when neither XP or Aqua will be around anyway.
Re:Use verb buttons instead of 'yes/no' (Score:3, Informative)
Try the Interface hall of fame and hall of shame at Isys Information Architects [iarchitect.com]
Usability... (Score:2)
At least with a menu-per-window you know that that's the menu for that app; there's no confusion. The paradigm breaks with OS-X anyway, since they allow toolbars in the windows, which makes matters worse - is an option available here, or up at the top of the screen?
Giving the OPTION of having the menus for each app in its window would go a long way toward helping people migrate from Windows, in my view.
This is just my opinion though, I use OS-X,XP and KDE pretty regularly but if I had to order them by ease of use, I'd have to say XP,KDE then OS-X...
Re:Usability... (Score:3, Insightful)
The cheesy reason: It saves screen space, on a 3 or 4 inch low res monitor screen space is very valuable.
The good reason: 'targetability' With the menu always at the top of the screen it has an effectivly infinite height making it easier for the user to get to the menu (ie a quick flick upwards of the wrist always gets the mouse over the menu).
Clearly the first reason is no longer valid on todays systems, but the second still has some merit. But on the other hand if I wish to 'target' a menu item in a different document window things get much more cumbersome... I guess they just optimized for the common case at the expense of the uncommon one
Re:Usability... (Score:2)
Either way, to get back to the application you want, whether the menu is at the top of the window or at the top of the screen, you have to either click on the window in question, or select the program from the dock.
I also believe that allowing users to choose between two such radically different interfaces will only lead to confusion. Yes, it might be strange at first for people switching from Windows, but Apple cannot simply design their interface based on making it easy for Windows switchers. To do so would simply mean mimicing XP's interface.
XP is easier for you just because you are used to it. The OS X environment is easier for me because that is what I am used to.
Re:Usability... (Score:3, Interesting)
Precisely. I'm not saying that everyone's the same, but since it's in Apples interest to attract Windows users, it makes sense to make the transition as painless as possible.
Is adding a menubar to a window really that radical a change? It's just an object - I'm betting the alteration to attach it to a movable window rather than fixed to the desktop is not a huge undertaking, and the apps wouldn't behave any differently aside from a thin strip across the top of the windows.
Again, this could easily be a choice; a simple checkbox ("Dock menu to window"), and not the default, but maybe mentioned in a getting started guide for Windows migrants. People can then choose whatever works best for them. Be interesting to see the percentages in any case...
Improves creen real-estate (Score:2)
The only thing I don't like about having the menu at the top of the screen is that I wish a menu bar would appear in each display an app is located in... or perhaps a "menu follows mouse into display" feature that would migrate the menu bar when the cursor changed screens. As it stands other monitors besides the primary are mostly good for storing palettes from active apps or apps that are pretty much self-contained on screen and need little menu interaction (like iTunes).
Good keyborad acess helps a lot though. There are a number of apps I use where I almost never use the menu bar, so it's OK to be out of the way.
Re:Usability... (Score:2)
And with menu-per-window you know that that's the menu for that window, not for the app as you say. Your app may have more than one window. And it wastes space. Especially when you also have toolbars.
Doesn't acknowlege Windows' keyboard superiority (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't used a Mac in five years, but I have used Linux and keyboard support sucks. Sure, if you never run X at all you can do anything from the keyboard, but type "startx" and you're screwed.
In Windows you can do everything except specific drawing tasks without having a mouse. (Using Autocad I can actually do some drawing tasks without a mouse using keyboard coordinate entry.) And dialog boxes, I never reach for the mouse to answer a Windows dialog box.
The very first version of Windows I used was 3.0 and it got this right. I've never seen a non-Windows GUI OS that matched the keyboard support of any Windows OS.
Why can't Gnome and KDE developers adopt the simple standard of requiring a "hot-letter" for every menu item and every dialog box item including buttons and selection widgets.
Re:Doesn't acknowlege Windows' keyboard superiorit (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard, typically, because the second you change the wording of a menu or dialog dox, all the keyboard navigation letters have to change.
The single best way to fix this stupid problem is for keyboard shortcuts to be automated but overrideable in GUI toolkits. When I write a menu item, it should scan the entire list of menu items, and generate keyboard mnemonics for everything. It's not a terribly complicated algorithm, but it is tedious to do by hand. Sometimes, it will come up with lousy results, and some menmonics can't be deduced from the text, but it would solve the problem of developers completely forgetting about them.
We've put a ton of work on making nedit [nedit.org] keyboard accessible. Almost everything you can do with the mouse, you can do with the keyboard. It's a huge amount of work, but we wouldn't have it any other way. Alomst every GUI item can be hit with the keyboard, and vice-versa.
Want to know why I won't use Mozilla on Windows? When a yes/no dialog pops up, I can't type 'Y' or 'N' to dismiss it. Stupid things like this, problems that were solved 15 years ago, still plague us.
Re:Doesn't acknowlege Windows' keyboard superiorit (Score:3, Informative)
How old is your Linux box? I've been able to just hit the key I want for whatever menu shortcut I want for several years now, out of the box.
Humor me, try this:
See? You can assign and remove any meny accellerator you wish, in any application (that supports it of course, like stock gtk+ applications, XUL code (i.e. Mozilla, Galeon), and so on.
Your FUD doesn't help the cause.
Re:Doesn't acknowlege Windows' keyboard superiorit (Score:3, Interesting)
> kicker. The K menu has, at least in 2.2.x, no
> keyboard accelerators at all. Bring it up with
> alt-F1 and scroll around with the arrow keys,
> fine. But why can't I hit "g" and jump to
> games, like Windows has allowed me to do in
> the start menu since 1995?
I just checked, and at least KDE 3.1 CVS lets you press a key to jump to the first kicker item beginning with that letter. The letters get underlined when you press a key. The developers are listening.
- Brent
Re:Doesn't acknowlege Windows' keyboard superiorit (Score:3, Informative)
With those options turned on you can do everything you want without needing a mouse.
Mac OS vs XP vs KDE 3 (Score:2)
Which one is the best? I wouldn't know I use all 3 and I really like all of them, well I like Mac OSX and KDE3 a little better because they're a tad more customizeable, but with a little tweak XP and other tools it's all a matter of time before you feel at home with your box.
The one thing that they are all missing is one very simple thing. Not everyone runs at 1200x1600 resolution. None of these new GUI's look good in 800x600. When the menu bar takes up 10% - 20% of your window then you really have problems. Win98 and MacOS 9 took low resolution into account and put less crap on the screen. I definantelly think that enlightenment and blackbox have the right idea about how to appeal to the entire market.
But how does Linux and MacOSX make it possible for me to have my enlightenment or blackbox directly on top of the core OS? Simple they use standard tools and binary compatability, Linux and BSD. Windows however just plain sucks at anything less that 1024x768, but also windows XP's minimum requirements are a Geforce2 and like 512 megs of ram too, so windows assumes you also went out and barfed out another $300 for a monitor.
I prefer Linux, but I don't mind Mac OSX and I get by using windows XP. All-in-all they are all starting to share a common theme. "Be appealing to the eye and place the common tasks within easy reach, with as little fluff as possible."
More good reading... (Score:2)
For those of you that missed the link at the beginning of the article, take a look at Apple's full Aqua HI Guidelines [apple.com] (or in PDF [apple.com] format). It has *tons* of specific examples and screenshots useful for some of the theory and design behind the current GUI.
I have to agree with the earlier post that OS X is somewhat of a step backward in usability overall. Although I do appreciate some of the innovations (sheets,...) I still find the standard OS 8/9 "platinum" interface [apple.com] to be easier to understand. (It's an interesting comparasion.)
I don't know -- once Apple gets its butt in gear and gives me a SPACIAL FINDER [arstechnica.com] and uses METADATA PROPERLY [arstechnica.com] I might feel different.
Photoshop doesn't conform. (Score:2, Interesting)
Great to see Apple promoting usability issues, something a certain competitor in the OS industry would do well to follow.
Windows GUI... (Score:2, Informative)
I wish Apple would follow their own guidelines (Score:5, Informative)
Well, apart from this document being for developers, and not for the 'layman', I have a couple of issues with it, and they're mainly due to Apple's "Don't do as I do, do as I say" attitude.
For example: #4 Avoid Custom Controls, and #7 Aqua Is In, Grey Is Out.
Go try out iTunes, QuickTime, etc to see how much Apple thinks "Grey is out" (the window background is non-standard, and grey). iTunes and Quicktime also have custom title bars, and custom resizing gadgets. All of these things are already implemented perfectly well by the standard GUI, so why doesn't Apple use them? It's like when Bill Gates exhorted developers to use the common dialogs to keep the user experience consistent, while MS Office didn't use them.
And #5 - Use A Single Menubar is particularly ironic - I doubt very much that anyone porting a Windows app to MacOS would add a menu to their main window (mainly because it's probably quite hard), while Apple should really read and inwardly digest the main points of this article - i.e. when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Anyone remember QuickTime 4? It had a single menu bar on MacOS - and on Windows too! Of course, Windows doesn't have a 'menu bar', so in one of the most impressive displays of pigheadedness and 'not getting it', Apple decided that QuickTime for Windows should create a floating window whose sole purpose was the have a menu on it. Genius - they managed to get all the disadvantages of both systems, and none of the advantages (the menu wasn't attached to the player window).
And #10 - Reconsider Toolbars still has me puzzled. I never have worked out why Mac users are so insistent that palettes are superior to Toolbars. I always find floating palettes to be a pain in the neck to maintain (as a user) and they're always getting in the way of what I'm trying to do. However, I appreciate that both forms of UI are useful, and wouldn't really be able to honestly state that one is better than the other. Besides, run MS Word, drag a toolbar into the middle of the screen, resize it - looks kinda like a floating palette doesn't it? That said, I can understand why they say not to use toolbars - they're not really a part of the MacOS feel, so they tend to stick out. On the other hand, it is interesting the way half the windows in OSX/Finder use toolbars all over the place. I guess if you make the toolbar icons R-E-A-L-L-Y B-I-G then it's ok for some reason.
Don't get me wrong - this is a useful document, if a little preachy and arrogant ("well, clearly, our UI is better than the crap you poor Windows developers have had to put up with, you sad losers..."), but I just wish Apple would follow their own edicts a bit more closely.
However, the best thing to come out of this slashdot article is that I found out that Mr MacKido (the master of reasoned and unbiased argument) doesn't like MacOS X. The thought of him gnashing his teeth about OSX had me chuckling away for ages :)
Tim
PS. For the record, and to pre-empt some formulaic replies to this posting, I mostly use Windows, but also use a Mac [guyswithtowels.com], and I don't always have good things to say about Windows [guyswithtowels.com].
Re:I wish Apple would follow their own guidelines (Score:3, Informative)
The article actually left out the guidelines on the aluminium look. This is actually a look that can be impressed on any Application in 10.2. They're not custom controls, it's just a "skin" for them.
Apple's guideline to developers is that the aluminum look should be used for applications that attempt to simulate a hardware or "real life" device. iTunes=stereo, QT=TV, etc.
However, they break even that guideline w/ the new address book app. Go figure.
Re:I wish Apple would follow their own guidelines (Score:3, Funny)
iCal: nothing
Actually, I have repented. Both these apps do have a respective digital lifestyle device: the PDA.
Wait...
Yeah....
Re:I wish Apple would follow their own guidelines (Score:3, Insightful)
Because since 1989 when the Mac II was released, we've been able to easily plug a second video card and a cheap (or not so cheap, depending on your budget) second monitor into our Macs and use it exclusively to hold the palettes. Windows multiple-monitor capabilities didn't achieve parity with that of the Mac until Win98, IIRC.
Personally, I've used dual monitors on every desktop Mac I've owned since 1994, and have no intention of giving them up. Once you get used to that extra screen real estate, working on a single monitor feels very confining.
~Philly
Girl power! (Score:4, Funny)
In Microsoft Windows
In Mac OS X
MS is just a bunch of chauvinist pigs. Buy Apple, support Women's Lib!
Uniform user interfaces (Score:2)
The emergence of the Web proved them both wrong. Each website (atleast initially) had its own color schema and navigation mechanism. Users never complained. I rather like the fact that each application has its own look-and-feel identity rather than a communist approach to how an app should look.
Even on the desktop, the popularity of skins is proof of that (to some extent).
The bottom line is that the application should be intuitively easy to use - having a uniform look and feel does not necessarily guarantee that.
Re:Uniform user interfaces (Score:3, Interesting)
No, they don't complain. They just don't use websites that are too different and/or confusing.
Tim
Darwin or Lamarck might help. (Score:2)
The basic GUI is fixed and any innovations originates from the respective companies or developers based on their understanding / thinking about users behavior and preferences.
Why not try and turn this on its head and use a Darwinian development model. Start with a very simple IU and Meta Configuration files that has to ability to be combined with other Meta Configuration files and thereby create a "derived" or "evolved" IF. Then use the net to exchange the Interface DNA if you like. The "Survival of the fittest" will be measured in "usage time" for the specific phenotype of that GUI.
There should be a lifespan of any Interface after which time it will die and the user needs to procure a new. The new could be a derivative from the original.
This might or might not work but I think its worthwhile to try and see if it has merits. We would probably see clusters evolving based on typical usage. The clusters would not be normal tops down thinking like Office / Game station / Development but rather reflect the real world mixed usage.
Radical new ideas could be introduced as "mutations" and their survivability could be ascertained effectively. Second the radical new ideas need not be perfect initially and they could evolve via usage tweaking. (Kind of a LaMarckian approach in a predominantly Darwinian world).
I am a bit further along on this and if anyone has an interest drop me a line. (lamarck@s-tadil.com remove -)
Single Philosophy leads to clean Design (Score:4, Insightful)
it's not all roses (Score:4, Informative)
Here are just three observations that come to mind:
There are other problems with the Aqua UI. But the most basic one is perhaps that it is just another toolkit-based GUI--a system in which people produce the same kind of inflexible applications that people produce in the other major toolkits on the other major platforms. The fact that Aqua looks a little prettier and crashes a little less does not get around this basic fact.
Overall, I think what makes Aqua most useful is a desire to keep applications simple. Unlike Windows, Gnome, or KDE, it comes with useful applications are not overburdened with zillions of options; developers of those desktops should take notice.
Re:it's not all roses (Score:3, Insightful)
"Use a single menubar" - look at the example (Score:3, Interesting)
The example also shows Itunes on the desktop. Although it's not on top, it's not visually obvious that it's currently in background. Itunes clearly follows the convention that "Entertainment Apps Don't Use the Standard GUI but instead Look Like Consumer Electronics Products."
reminder (Score:3, Informative)
9. Design Clear Dialogs (Score:3, Insightful)
The Windows dialog box in #9 looks perfectly normal to me. It asks a question and lets you enter a response. But in the back of my mind, something always bugged me about it, and not just because it gives you three ways to answer a Yes/No question. Now that I see the comparison with the Mac version, I realize what's wrong with it. The Mac version makes more sense and is guininely easier to use. It's not a coincidence that these are also two phrases that describe a Mac (compared to a PC).
One of the things the Mac dialog box does that the Windows box doesn't is converge everything about the action into the dialog box itself. In other words, it gives you enough information so that you can focus on the immediate issue (saving the file) without having to think how you got there.
As the text says, dialog boxes interrupt the user. When the user is interrupted, his train of thought is interrupted, and that usually forces him to think unnecessarily harder about what he's doing.
The difference (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Some things are misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, why didn't the size of the dialog shrink if those features weren't there? That's Apple's point.
Re:Some things are misleading (Score:2)
Fair enough -- except that it turns out to not be true. One frequent action that users take is to move a modal dialog out of the way in order to look at their document, and then navigate the dialog based on what's on the screen. Having dialogs of constant size facilitates that user operation; altering dialog height to fit the dialog's contents its workability inhibits it.
Re:Some things are misleading (Score:2)
This is why they caption calls it a "Windows-like dialog box," and not "a dialog box from Windows." It's just an example of things they are saying you should avoid.
Re:They Forgot.... (Score:2, Funny)
Martin Tilsted
Re:#5 Menu Bar is enough reason to not change (Score:4, Informative)
Re:#5 Menu Bar is enough reason to not change (Score:5, Informative)
The point is that the research and user testing this design decision was based on is from a different age and time. To believe that it is still a good decision, one would have to show that today's users with today's technology have an advantage. This must be done empirically, because without such testing, we are all just speculating.
Re:#5 Menu Bar is enough reason to not change (Score:2)
To believe that it is still a good decision, one would have to show that today's users with today's technology have an advantage.
Now that you mention it, I do notice that when I go up to the menu, my mouse is more often at the very top of the screen than elsewhere in the menu. I also recall that the Dock used to have a 1 pixel "edge" in an early incarnation of OS X, but they pushed it all the way to the edge because of the number of user complaints. It seems clear to me that the Apple advantage is still there.
Re:#5 Menu Bar is enough reason to not change (Score:2)
And if I'm not wrong. Most of my Mac users have two monitors. I have four on Xinerama on my Linux workstation, so personaly I can't imagine my self travelling all the way to menu bar. It would be the same as buying airline ticket to select a menu or a lot of 'throwing' in the next room.
Re:#5 Menu Bar is enough reason to not change (Score:2)
Re:#5 Menu Bar is enough reason to not change (Score:2)
Re:#5 Menu Bar is enough reason to not change (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, if you just let yourself get used to the idea that everything you need to do is on the top of your screen (and always in the same order: Apple, Application, Edit, View, App-specific stuff, Window, Help) you might find that Mac users worship the top menu concept for a reason. It makes your life easier, in the long run.
Re:#5 Menu Bar is enough reason to not change (Score:2)
Re:It's crap... (Score:3, Informative)
Because Apple's HCI guides work very well, no matter which OS you apply them to. Yes, some things will be specific to the Mac. On the other hand, I still stick by many of the principles outlined in the "Apple Human Interface Guidelines" book published circa System 6.
Oh, and that's for Java, C/C++ apps and even web pages to a small extent. Haven't had a Mac since the original LC.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Jesus christ. (Score:5, Interesting)
"We" don't. (If be "we" you mean "clueful programmers".) This article wasn't written for "any Mac developer worth his salt." It was written for very smart developers of other platforms that want to be aware of what the need to know to succeed on the Mac platform.
The article is interesting reading to see what Apple is currently telling coders who are new to doing a Mac port. Many companies have ported apps to the Macintosh without paying attention to Apple's UI guidelines, and were stunned to discover that the entire Mac community thought their app, which was a modest success in the Windows market, was universally dismissed as utter crap by Mac users. This info can help companies avoid repeating that mistake. It's not about conforming to what Apple wants it to look like nearly as much as what Apple users have come to expect from their apps.
One of my favorite differences is that I almost never see a dialog box with a button that only says "Yes" or "No" on it when I'm using the Mac. (Mozilla is one of the exeptions. The Mac 1.0 version is still lacking a lot of Mac-ness, but it pulls up /. pages a lot faster than IE, and doesn't break on as many sites or nag me for money the way OmniWeb does, so I'm not going to bitch too much about a "capitol-F" Free software product.) There are far too many Windows apps that pop up dialog boxes saying stuff like "You are launching proceedure $FOO without condition $BAR being properly set. Do you no longer wish to avoid autocorrecting the object status and reimplementing the enterprise settings? [Yes] [No] [Cancel]"
Re:Millions of colors? (Score:2)
Re:Apple clutters the interface (Score:2)
Without MDI, you can arrange the windows in any possible manner. With MDI, some applications are guaranteed to take up a rectangular are of screen. If the MDI application has more than one window, it's almost guaranteed that some screen real estate will be hogged by a empty, useless bit of root window.
MDI assumes you want to work with only one application at a time. That's an assumption taht may or may not be true. On the mac, if you get confused, you can "hide" the extra apps, or minimize the windows into the dock...
Re:the part about the dialog box is wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:the part about the dialog box is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about the scroll wheel, whether M$ did that first or not, but I have not come aross a single button on M$ keyboards that is so useful it boosts my prouctivity.
You're right, they do play out differently. And in 99% of the cases, the mac OS is easier, more intuitive and faster.
Re:You guys really eat Apples PR up. Mindless shee (Score:2)
This was not a Win vs. Mac OS comparison. It was an article for the specific purpose of telling developers what common Windows application misfeatures one should avoid when writing a Mac port. The fact that Win95 (which is where I assume where they pasted those images from) showcases some of these misfeatures was just convenient for them.
I don't know how many Mac users I hear saying that the Mac "Launch bar" (name?) sucks.
If you are talking about the Launcher, that was a shareware App that Apple liked and offered as an optional tool in System 7, as a way to let your young kid run apps on your Mac without being able to delete your system files. Since many schools who used Macs used the Launcher to lock down their desktops and prevent studens from hacking their boxen, a lot of teens in the 90's assumed that the Launcher is what MacOS was, and wrote long screeds on message boards about how "restrictive" the OS is.
On the other hand, maybe you are talking about the Dock. The Dock is an application bar, which behaves a lot more like the one from NeXT than the menu bars from Windows and Gnome, which a lot of old-skool Mac users don't care for. I've grown to really love it, except I wish there was either an option for locking up the Dock's screen real-estate, or else a better implimentation of the window maximization feature, so windows would not sometimes extend under the Dock when I maximize them.
Re:You guys really eat Apples PR up. Mindless shee (Score:2)
The restrictive interface was "At Ease." (I remember using the built in file deletion features of Microsoft Word to delete the "At Ease" preference file , thus exorcising the broken interface from the computer. Ah memories...) Launcher was an attempt to bring the "single click to launch" feature of "At Ease" to users of the Finder. It was kind of clumsy compared to third party application launchers.
(Why an application launcher? The standard mac technique of storing apps within folders made some sense organizationally, but searching through folders to launch a program is a bit of pain. So after "System 7" most mac users had an aliases folder containing references to frequently used applications. The various application launcher organized such "aliases folders".)
By the way, Apple doesn't produce shareware. Some Apple things are "free as in beer", though. I think "At Ease" was actually sold as a commercial product.
Re:You guys really eat Apples PR up. Mindless shee (Score:2)
As for choosing Windows - well, it's the one I would choose if I were Apple - a document telling Gnome developers how to port their apps to MacOS would have a much smaller target audience.
However, the fact that the document can't just give you the facts, and has to exude the usual insufferable smugness and arrogance that you usually get from Apple PR doesn't really help, I agree. Most developers know when you're trying to bloke smoke up their proverbials.
Tim
Re:You guys really eat Apples PR up. Mindless shee (Score:2, Interesting)
No, you are not the only one who sees that. You would also not be the only one to see the Virgin Mary in that oak tree that was in the news this week. In other words, I think you are seeing what you want to see.
This article was written for the benifit of developers who are porting Mac apps. It happens to also be of interest to geeks like the crowd here on /. who like reading about GUI design. If their intention was to "bash Windows" to sell people on switching to OS X, there are far more damning things they could have brought up.
If anything, the article might scare some developers away from doing Mac ports, because they are basically saying "jump through these hoops or Mac users will ignore your app and all the effort you spend on proting will be wasted."
Re:forgive me.. (Score:2)
But is it realy fair to compare
standerd save dialog with that of Notepad?
Certainly... shouldn't Notepad be using the standard save dialog? (That's one of the other things mentioned. Why create your own dialog when the system-standard ones already exist?)
Even SimpleText (the old Mac equivelent to Notepad) has this right.
Re:File-name extensions (Score:2)
Re:Right Click (right click works) (Score:2, Informative)
Guess what? It all works, the buttons, the wheelmouse, etc.. The right mouse button works just like a PC user would expect.. context menus.
People should look into an issue before just spewing crack out of their mouths.
Nick Powers
Re:Right Click (right click works) (Score:3)
The included mouse is perfectly un-encumbered. Unlike on Windows, on the Mac the contextual menu is not required for ANYTHING. By design, there's *nothing* you can do with a contextual menu that you can't do in some other fashion. It's there for those that would like an additional means of accessing functionality.
Furthermore, the "official means" of accessing contextual menus is "modifier-click", specifically Control-click, not "click in some other way." Most people who decide to purchase multi-button mice map their second buttons to a Control-click, but it's not required.
Once you get used to it, Keyboard+Mouse control is actually a little faster than Multibutton-Mouse control.
Re:Right Click (Score:3, Informative)
You control-click (e.g. on a file in the finder) to get them - or if you have an MS mouse, the driver converts* a right-click to a control-click, so it works pretty much like Windows/X.
Tim
* Although MacOS may actually just support the right-click natively now - I don't know.
Re:Right Click (Score:3, Informative)
Any two button USB mouse is automatically supported by MacOS X, and right clicks work like control-clicks (that is, they invoke contextual menus).
Re:Hire Professional Help (Score:4, Interesting)
The days of the skilled programmer (but unskilled UI designer) putting together the icons and user interface are over. Well designed applications are the key to making an application useful. I think SoundJam and iTunes are a great example.
Cassidy and Green built the original SoundJam MP3 application, and while it was full-featured, it was a bit of a pain to use, particularly the custom playlist feature. In fact, I never really used the feature since it was such a pain to create the playlist with customized criteria and keep it in synch with the songs I had in my collection.
When Apple bought SoundJam from Cassidy and Green, they renamed it as iTunes, and stripped the functionality down. The most important thing they added was the live searching feature, and the ability to support integrated playlists. Suddenly, the overwhelming SoundJam application became the much more friendly iTunes, accessible to any user. iTunes 1.0 had fewer features than SoundJam, but since its user interface was better, the application was better.
Icons are the same way. When you look at just the icons of 10 years ago, you can see how far we've come. Look at the winners of Icon Factory's Pixelpalooza [iconfactory.com] competition, you can see how even the winners' icons from just five years ago, you can see although they were cute and clever for 1997, they look unprofessional compared to the look of the icons delivered with Mac OS X 10.2.
Re:A 20 year old irony (Score:3, Informative)