Re: Call for user feedback
Re: Call for user feedback
- Subject: Re: Call for user feedback
- From: Henrik Holmegaard <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 09:26:46 +0100
John Zimmerer wrote:
Please give me more detail on what you feel are ambiguities. I invite others
to chime in.
There were some threads with John Gnaegy a while back about Mac OS 9
which I'll recap here. The monitor is the minimum imaging hardware, a
printer is always optional. But the UI for the monitor is a
tremendous hurdle because it's conceptually inconsistent.
So let's forget all we know and sit down for the very first time with
a Mac and a deadline to meet. This method is micro-sociological, you
focus on what visual clues the user is given and what expectations
guide her in interpreting them.
Just the same as when saving out an EPS from Photoshop 5.0, 5.0.2,
5.5 and 6.0 (whose UI I will return to shortly -:)).
a. The Monitors control panel uses a scrollbox with all of seven type
<mnrt> (monitor) profiles. ColorSync 3 now shows a highlight for the
selected profile. ColorSync 2.5 didn't so I asked Steve Swen for an
umambiguous flagging mechanism. The following updates had a highlight
which is better than no highlight, of course -:). But why not make it
still simpler and more consistent?
b. The ColorSync control panel has a 'Display' popup that by
definition only shows one profile whereas the Monitors / Color /
ColorSync Profile scrollbox shows all of seven profiles. I'd like the
same selection mechanism in the ColorSync control panel and in the
Monitors control panel, meaning I'd like a popup. (And if there are
several monitors attached to the Mac and showing up in the ColorSync
- 'Display' popup as listed items, then automatically a popup in
Monitors / Color for each monitor, too, but that's arguable.)
c. If I am a novice user, what exactly is a 'ColorSync Profile'? That
is any profile whatsoever because as a novice user I equate
'ColorSync profile' with 'ICC profile'. And in the System folder I
can see a ColorSync Profiles folder which contains every class of
profile under the sun. So it looks to me like the 'ColorSync Profile'
mechanism doesn't subset the relevant monitor profiles from all
possible profiles including printer profiles, and yet it does
something, I can see that, too. So as a novice user I'm confused, and
rightly so -:). The scrollbox was likely named 'ColorSync Profile'
back when AppleVision monitors became ColorSync monitors which then
became StudioDisplay monitors ...
d. In Mac OS 9 the Monitors selection mechanism is where I choose the
profile shown in the Display popup in the ColorSync control panel.
But if instead I were to select the monitor profile in the Monitor
Profile popup in the Monitors control panel, then I should also see
my Monitor Profile selection in the Monitor popup in the ColorSync
control panel. Therefore, out with Display and in with Monitor in the
ColorSync control panel 'Profiles for Standard Devices' tab. Then
what's inside the two control panels is named consistently.
(End part 1 of Mac OS 9 / ColorSync 3 UI make-over)
--
Henrik Holmegaard
TechWrite, Denmark