[thelist] Re: UI Standards

[Graham Bird]

Hi Jeff,

Just wanted to add a few comments - not especially on-topic, but as you
point out, the design of the operating systems we use directly affects how
we interact with web interfaces.

> i'd challenge anybody to come up with a word or icon that could be used
>to fully and accurately represent all the
> functionality available from the start or apple menu.

How about "Actions"?

> or more importantly, a matter of customization if you just can't
>acclimatize yourself to its location on screen.
> prefer it at the top?  drag it up there and dock it to the top?  prefer
>it on one side of the screen or the other?
> move it there.  this is certainly one aspect where windows has apple beat.

You can move the Dock in Mac OS X. Admittedly the menu bar is not movable,
but then neither are the menu bars in Windows.

> i find it much more difficult to get an accurate sense of what
>applications/windows are open when using a mac
> because they're hidden in a dropdown menu top right.  this leaves the
>bulk of the bar across the top open, which
> apple inconveniently uses for the menu options for the active
>application.  i much prefer having buttons that
> represent the open applications/windows.

The Dock in Mac OS X constantly shows what apps are open.

> i constantly have the contents of the desktop visible to one degree or
>another distracting me from what i'm trying
> to do in the active application/window.  there isn't any way to
>completely maximize the window so all i see is its
> contents.  there's a button with a very non-descript symbol in it that
>performs not two, but three resize actions
> when i click it in succession.  i've never really grasped what it's
>trying to do and i've used macs off and on for
> over a half dozen years.

The maximise button only resizes to the biggest you have sized the window.
If you make the window full screen, it will then remember that.

> scrolling is annoying since the button to scroll up is below the
>scrollbar, but above the scroll down button.

This is customisable, under Control Panels, Appearance

> when i need to scroll to a particular point in a document/window
>(especially ones with lots of content), there's no context
> menu available when right-clicking the scrollbar to scroll to the clicked
>region.

Nice Windows touch, which I never knew until now and I've been a heavy
Windows user since 3.1. What does that say about Windows? The Mac scrollbar
will scroll to the clicked region if you click in the scrollbar.

> if i want to close the window with the mouse i have to either use the
>menu options that are way up top or i have to move the mouse (which spends
>the majority of the time in the right-hand half of the screen) to the top
>left of the active window and click a tiny hit zone.

How is this different to a PC (apart from the left/right thing)? You could
always type Apple-W.

> keyboard use seems to be next to impossible, from my experience.  i hate
>how the cmd and option keys are the exact opposite
> functionality from what i'd expect them to be based on their placement
>and my experience with windows.  i constantly am
> pressing the outside most key and expecting to be able to copy, paste,
>refresh, etc.  when it doesn't happen i realize that i need
> to be pressing the key right next to the space bar.  ugh, annoying.

That's simply down to your experience with Windows, as you say. It is a
different operating system after all. And correct me if I'm wrong, but
didn't Apple come up with keyboard shortcuts first...?

> despite all the things i dislike about the mac interface, there is
>something i like about it alot -- the ability to roll the window > up so
>it's just the titlebar.

This is one of my favourite features too, but annoyingly it's no longer
possible in Mac OS X!

Regards,

Graham Bird