[thelist] Re: UI Standards

Chris W. Parker cparker at swatgear.com
Thu Aug 1 18:58:01 CDT 2002


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Graham Bird [mailto:gbird at cambridge.org]
> Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2002 1:31 AM
>
> > 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.

mac obviously realized the downside to their previous interface and
changed it to mimic windows.

by menu bar do you mean "File Edit View ..." ? if that is the case then
i think what .jeff is saying is that in windows the menu bars are
attached to the window and can be moved around wherever you please.
however on the mac, the menu bar is always at the top regardless of
where the window is for any particular program. so essentially you /can/
move the menu bars in windows.

correct me if i'm wrong.

> > 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.

again, apple has realized the error in their ways (hehe) and changed
their interface to better accomodate their users.

> > 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.

i find this annoying as well. and when you accidently click the desktop
all the windows go away (or at least "fold up") and you are at the
desktop. in windows it just makes the desktop the active "window"
leaving everything else where it is. this makes more sense (to me.)

and how about the idea that you have "throw away" a cd to eject it? have
they changed this in os x?

> > 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.

actually i think this is a waste. when i first discovered this i
thought, "what the heck? when would i ever use that?" i'm still not
sure.

> > 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.

i think the point is the left right thing.

> > 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...?

agreed. that's just a matter of being used to something as opposed to
better or worse interface.

> > 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!

i find this annoying. if i want to "get rid" of a window and go to the
desktop or another program i will do the old alt-tab switcheroo, or
click the desktop button on the quicklaunch toolbar. i think the
quicklaunch toolbar is a great feature. i've got 22 icons there. thanks
microsoft!


i also think that YES/NO/CANCEL makes more sense when used consistently.
in fact, just makes more sense.



chris.



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