Re: Tracking files the right way -- NeXT apps are less intuitive with worse HI?
Re: Tracking files the right way -- NeXT apps are less intuitive with worse HI?
- Subject: Re: Tracking files the right way -- NeXT apps are less intuitive with worse HI?
- From: Andreas Monitzer <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 19:10:40 +0200
On Saturday, August 31, 2002, at 01:34 , James DiPalma wrote:
Here are some examples of why I think NeXT OSes had a better UI than
any Mac OS including OS X:
ok, I'll bite:
One window style
NeXT OSes had one look for all windows, including menus, which where in
a window. A window's contents communicated meaning by adhering to
conventions (e.g. menus look like menus and alert panels have an app's
icon on their left side). Mac OS 9 has many window styles; modal
alerts, system alerts, windows, utility windows, and a few others
including calculator's rounded windows; all have different window
borders. OS X has 3: window, utility window (which looks similar, but
shrunken), and brushed steel that kinda means a one window app.
I liked that behavior in Mac OS 9. You could tell how a window reacts by
looking at its frame. Of course, NeXT OSes (and Mac OS X) don't have
most of those things like a system-modal window. The calculator's window
is a leftover from the times when Mac OS didn't support multitasking.
File bundles
NeXT OSes used app bundles and file bundles to simplify a user's
interaction with their files.
MacOS had resource forks for this information. Same idea, different
solution, different pros and cons on both sides.
Home directories and path conventions
NeXT OSes used home directories and paths like ~/Library/Preferences to
separate user's data from application and system files. These
conventions cleaned up interacting with applications
Since Mac OS is single-user, there's no reason to do that.
Sliders and scrollbars
Sliders and scrollbars look similar and have some reflection of real
word widgets. On NeXT OSes user interaction with these controls is
consistent. In Mac OS, sliders click to focus and scrollbars page jump
(having never used a computer, would you guess that scrollbars would
page jump?).
Sliders look totally different compared to scrollers for a reason.
Consistent shortcuts
NeXT OSes and Mac OS both have some consistency with shortcuts, but
NeXT applications always showed more consistency. My opinion here is
based on memories of developing IB's menu palette; we looked at too
many Mac OS applications that had no consistency in menu organization,
nor in shortcut conventions.
Those were mostly legacy problems.
Applications menu
NeXT OS applications all have application menus (as do OS X apps) that
define a location convention for menus like: Help, Preferences, and
Info (About in OS X). About menu items under a system menu are
consistent, but not clear: "About MyApp" is no more a system menu than
"Services" is an application menu.
Agreed
Scrollbars
NeXT OSes used dynamic scrolling with proportional sized thumbs in
their scrollbars and used click-to-focus behavior. These simple
innovation allowed users to see how big a document was and more easily
interact with any application that showed data. NeXT OS had these
innovations before its first public release in 1989, how many years
before Mac OS added dynamic scrolling and proportional sized thumbs?
Well, they implemented it in version 8.0, which is pretty outdated now
(my oldest Mac here came bundled with 8.1).
Edited windows
NeXT OSes altered a window's close button to show a broken "X" when a
window was edited. Without this simple innovation, I felt a small level
of uncertainty every time I edited any document in Mac OS; pressing
Cmd-S to save and not seeing any visual change in a document's window
made me even more nervous.
agreed; Mac OS implemented proxy icons for this info, but only a few
apps supported it (BBEdit for example).
Ellipses
NeXT OSes used a simple convention for "..." in menu items: if a window
was brought front. This convention hints to users what was about to
happen, Apple uses "..." to hint to a user what type of action a menu
will perform (an action that requires user interaction; or an action
that can be cancelled; or an action that shows an application settings
window, but not a document settings window, nor any action that opens a
window that is typically open during an application's use). Is that
clear?
Mac OS <X uses the ellipses when a modal panel is opened when selecting
that item. Mac OS X uses it when there is more information required to
execute the task. Is that clear now?
"Special"
Without looking, what is in a "Special" menu? You would not know
without being a traditional Mac OS user. No one can argue that grouping
functionality under a "Special" menu is providing a more intuitive and
better human interface, but it has been part of Mac OS for decades.
Agreed. I feel special too, but I didn't have my own menu item there ;-)
Scrollbars on data's left
As simple as this is, so few understand. English and other Romantic
languages have influenced how we display information; information is
concentrated on a view's left. At least textual data will very often be
heavily left shifted because structural elements of text are left
justified. If a view is partially obstructed on Mac OS, a user must
choose between obstructing data or its scrollbar. Interestingly, this
one innovation affects usage patterns like window placement and dock
placement; without it, I find myself unnecessarily moving windows back
and forth, placing my dock on screen left where it can do no harm, and
daily feeling like Mac OS is stuck getting in my way.
My dock is placed on the right edge of my secondary monitor, and I tend
to size windows so that they fit into the screen. I'm rather concerned
about mouse distances, but I've never used a UI that used left-aligned
scrollers, so I can't judge.
Find pasteboard
For a developer, a must. A simple intuitive innovation that is cleanly
incorporated into every application.
Each app had to solve it on its own in Mac OS.
I argue that NeXT OSes ease of use is founded on clear, consistent,
well implemented user experience and that Mac OS ease of use is founded
on tradition.
Mac OS is way older than NeXT OSes (5 years), and went from a b&w
non-nested-folder hierarchy single-task OS to something only experts can
distinguish from a modern OS. Sometimes breaking with tradition is worse
than doing it right (inventing Carbon is avoiding to break with
tradition for me for example, but there would be no Photoshop nor Office
without it).
andy
--
DigiTunnel 1.0 released, offering full PPTP-support for Mac OS X!
http://www.gracion.com/vpn/
_______________________________________________
cocoa-dev mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/cocoa-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.