Re: Tracking files the right way -- NeXT apps are lessintuitive with worse HI?
Re: Tracking files the right way -- NeXT apps are lessintuitive with worse HI?
- Subject: Re: Tracking files the right way -- NeXT apps are lessintuitive with worse HI?
- From: "David W. Halliday" <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 12:06:24 -0500
- Organization: TNRCC
James DiPalma wrote:
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I agree with Ondra and have similar experience. Everyone I knew
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including many Apple fans preferred using NeXT based applications over
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anything else. There is no substitute for clean, consistent, and clear
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user experience.
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Why is this relevant to cocoa-dev? If we as a community constantly gripe
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about how NeXT's influence on Mac OS X is dismissing years of better UI,
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we won't see innovations like: an applications menu, a find pasteboard,
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file bundles, user directories, and many more. I don't think these
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innovations are without influence from Apple tradition and many talented
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Apple employees, but they are breaks from a MacOS tradition that is
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strong enough to prevent innovations from happening.
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I had hopes that Mac OS X would go further, but we'll probably never see
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innovations that break from industry conventions (we are teaching our
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children to use computers how we like to use computers and not how user
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interface studies show a computer should be used); scrollbars will never
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be on a view's left.
I still hold out hope that this will not always be the case. However, the
traditions of Mac OS /do/ wield a strong inertial influence (especially since Apple,
rightfully, recognizes the nature of their Mac OS steeped user base: It will take
time to convince such a user base that non-traditional solutions really can be
superior [Apple was not alone in the Not Invented Here syndrome: The Mac OS steeped
user base appears to have at least as strong a mind set]).
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...
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Functional
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Scrollbars on data's left
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As simple as this is, so few understand. English and other Romantic
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languages have influenced how we display information; information is
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concentrated on a view's left. At least textual data will very often be
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heavily left shifted because structural elements of text are left
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justified. If a view is partially obstructed on Mac OS, a user must
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choose between obstructing data or its scrollbar. Interestingly, this
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one innovation affects usage patterns like window placement and dock
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placement; without it, I find myself unnecessarily moving windows back
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and forth, placing my dock on screen left where it can do no harm, and
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daily feeling like Mac OS is stuck getting in my way.
Of course the left vs. right convention for scroll bars should be reversed for
right to left languages. (For precisely the same reason right to left languages
should have the scroll bar on the left.
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...
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I argue that NeXT OSes ease of use is founded on clear, consistent, well
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implemented user experience and that Mac OS ease of use is founded on
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tradition.
Of course this was not always the case. The earliest days of Mac OS involved a
great deal of user testing and a strong attempt at consistency (of course there were
undoubtedly compromises due to limitations of the hardware and the programming
systems used [Steve Jobs has commented about how he missed the OOP angle when
visiting Xerox, but he attempted to remedy that oversight with NeXT]).
Unfortunately, with time, tradition becomes a strong form of inertia.
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-jim
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> On Friday, August 30, 2002, at 10:15 AM, Ondra Cada wrote:
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>> On Friday, August 30, 2002, at 03:22 , Mike Shields wrote:
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>> I really feel that MacOS apps have in general been more intuitive and
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>> had better HI that apps coming over from NeXT.... This is something
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>> that people seem to ignore...
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>
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> Mainly since the exact opposite is true.
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