[slimmy]

I really miss the lack of a menubar at the top of the screen. I really miss the menu being a sort or tearoff set of buttons that could be placed anywhere. I'd like to GET RID of the menubar along the top of the screen and have same somewhere else.

Is this impossible?

roberto

[Saetre]

Screenshot?

I personally like where it is in OSX a lot better than the way windows and linux do it.

[moki]

Here's a screenshot from my NeXT cube that I happened to have laying around:



The "menu bar" is in the upper-left corner of the screen, and can be dragged anywhere on the screen. Sub-menus can also be torn off and placed anywhere on the screen you like.

[Saetre]

Thanks Moki. That looks a little cumbersome in the position it is in now. From your description it sounds it can be positioned like the normal mac-like menubar. That's cool. I like having options. On the whole, how does the usability of the NeXT interface compare to OSX? Does it feel more polished? I've always been meaning to try it, but haven't yet had the chance.

[macmike42]

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (I only have experience with GNUstep, never used NeXT), but I'm pretty sure that NeXT menus always remain vertical. The advantage is that you can tear off menus and any menu can be positioned anywhere on the screen. The usability of it is, of course, in the eye (and priorities) of the beholder. I personally like an application's menus at the top of the screen better, but the GNUstep aproach is noticably better on a Linux desktop, where apps using any other toolkit use the menubar-at-top of-each-applicable-window approach.

[moki]

Originally posted by Saetre:
Thanks Moki. That looks a little cumbersome in the position it is in now. From your description it sounds it can be positioned like the normal mac-like menubar. That's cool. I like having options. On the whole, how does the usability of the NeXT interface compare to OSX? Does it feel more polished? I've always been meaning to try it, but haven't yet had the chance.

No, the "menu bar" on NeXTSTEP is always vertical, as it is shown there. There are some nice things about the interface, but it never felt as cohesive as the Mac OS X (or 9 for that matter) interface does, IMHO.

Being able to position the menus anywhere, and tearing them off, is nice if you have screen real-estate, but because they can get moved anywhere, you don't have the muscle-memory that takes you to the right spot for the main "menu bar" as you do under OS X.

[dru]

Originally posted by Saetre:
Thanks Moki. That looks a little cumbersome in the position it is in now. From your description it sounds it can be positioned like the normal mac-like menubar. That's cool. I like having options.

It's there by default but the vertical menu can be dragged around, it can't be made horizontal. Any of the sub-menus can be "torn off". Additionally I recally you can set a mouse button (or is it a mouse button + key combo) to temporarily jump the set of menus to the pointer.

As a side-note, let's not forget the NeXT UI was designed for 17" hi-res "Megapixel" screens of 1120x832 (92 dpi) back in '89.

[Emotionally Fragile Luke]

No way in hell could you move the menubar from the top in OSX.

[Sarc]

You could tear off menus (well sort of) in Mac OS X Server 1.2 ...

[argod]

I miss the minimization on the bottom of
screen. Of course the left scroll bar, the Shelf
on the Workspace, Digital Librarian, Digital Webster. Preference.app that doubled as a Clock.
I miss getting paid to program on it as well.

[Mike S.]

Things I miss from NeXTSTEP:

1) The Shelf

2) The NeXT minimize scheme, Early Jaguar minimize in place looked like a return but I doubt it had the same functionality.

The NeXT menus could be completely hidden from the screen unless called upon using the 3rd mouse button if the user so wanted. Having it appear at the pointer location was not always good, however, since the menu could appear partialy off screen and require scrolling.

I like the Mac Menubar better.

[solitere]

Originally posted by slimmy:
I really miss the lack of a menubar at the top of the screen. I really miss the menu being a sort or tearoff set of buttons that could be placed anywhere. I'd like to GET RID of the menubar along the top of the screen and have same somewhere else.

Is this impossible?

roberto

a bit offtopic but I miss the look of NEXT Colorstation of todays computers.

[Sven G]

Interesting...

IMHO, the OS X Menu Bar could become more flexible also by letting it behave similarly to the Dock: that is, "dockable" on any side of the screen (except the bottom, maybe). Of course, there could also be the option for NeXTSTEP-like menus and, at the same time, for powerful contextual menus - à la AfterStep, for example:



... or Window Maker (here, some vertical menus):



As for vertical menus, it would probably be better with a vertical "menu pane" (see the Menu Bar made vertical, also through drag and drop) as default (à la Windows Longhorn, or even the XP Taskbar, if it's not an heresy to say this here!), with additional "tear-off" capabilities...

[Graymalkin]

Hey cool a NeXTStep thread finally! It's cool when you've been thinking of something then see someone else has been thinking about it too.

My thoughts about how cool NS's interface could be arose whilst hacking on my Powerbook the other day. OSX takes up a metric buttload of screen real estate and requires me to move all over the screen using a trackpad.

Fitt's law says that it easier for us to hit a large close object than a distant small object with the mouse. Hence the menubar is the absolute top of your workspace, it has an effective size of infinity making it easy to hit with the mouse. That is well and good but it is also taking up quite a bit of space on the desktop and requires me to go from the area I'm working to the top of the screen and then BACK to the area I'm working or the new dialog that pops up. The menubar itself obeys Fitt's law but the rest of the dialogs and windows that you need to work with don't do as good of a job with it.

That's what got me thinking about hacking GWorkspace (a clone of Workspace) from the GNUStep project to replace Finder. There's nothing particular about Cocoa apps that requires Finder to work. They just need something to respond to the requests that Finder does. GWorkspace could have the old NeXT style menu palettes that just display the menus currently sent to the menu bar. I was thinking GWorkspace could be a drop-in replacement for Finder as long as it approximated enough of its features.

From what I know of GWorkspace making it talk to Quartz rather than X wouldn't be terribly difficult because the display system is layered so it can be stuck on top of any low level drawing environment.

So how hard WOULD it be to do something like that? Finder is great for the MacOS experience but there's plenty of times when it just gets on my nerves, especially on my Powerbook when a mouse is not handy.

[stew]

If it was after me, Apple should have ditched the Classic MacOS menu bar and add a second mouse button that'd pop up a next-like menu right under the mouse pointer. If anyone remembers, kind of the way "MagicMenu" on the AmigaOS worked.

[Sven G]

The New Finder™ should simply take the best of the best from all existing file/web managers/browsers, and deliver it with the typical Apple ease of use: GWorkspace and the AmigaOS could, of course, give some hints, among others.

BTW, the new



looks quite interesting, also with its contextual menus:



... Of course, from the aesthetical point of view it's not at the levels of Aqua - but it seems to have some potentially powerful features coming...

[mrtew]

Originally posted by stew:
If it was after me, Apple should have ditched the Classic MacOS menu bar and add a second mouse button that'd pop up a next-like menu right under the mouse pointer. If anyone remembers, kind of the way "MagicMenu" on the AmigaOS worked.

Cool, but then everyone would say the Apple was trying to 'Force' them to buy a new mouse!

[Coxy]

Originally posted by stew:
If it was after me, Apple should have ditched the Classic MacOS menu bar and add a second mouse button that'd pop up a next-like menu right under the mouse pointer. If anyone remembers, kind of the way "MagicMenu" on the AmigaOS worked.

Thank god it's not "after you." Apple has alienated enough people with Mac OS X, thankyouverymuch.

[Millennium]

It is well-known that when multiple mouse buttons are required to access basic functionality, usability is shot completely to hell.

You can't have it both ways: complain about Apple ditching 20 years of UI research all you want, but then don't complain when they proceed to not ditch one of the most basic and well-known concepts they found.

[stew]

You might want to read some of Jef Raskin's recent publications (you know, that guy that actually invented most of the original Macintosh) where he says himself that using only one mouse button was a mistake.

That whole "two mouse buttons are too complicated" is just plain BS. If you can't even deal with two mouse buttons, why have 104 keys with strange alt, ctrl and clover keys?

Do you realize that the OS X finder at least at one point requires you to use ctrl-click/rmb? I haven't found any other place than the context menu where you would find the "Show package contents" command.

[jasong]

Slightly off topic, but does anyone know of a program that will show the menu bar (file, edit, etc.) in a context menu. I use two monitors, and to have to keep going back to the "main" monitor to use the menu is very annoying.

-- Jason

[Mike S.]

Originally posted by Graymalkin:
That's what got me thinking about hacking GWorkspace (a clone of Workspace) from the GNUStep project to replace Finder. There's nothing particular about Cocoa apps that requires Finder to work. They just need something to respond to the requests that Finder does. GWorkspace could have the old NeXT style menu palettes that just display the menus currently sent to the menu bar. I was thinking GWorkspace could be a drop-in replacement for Finder as long as it approximated enough of its features.

Wow, if that's possible I'd definately be interested in it!

What about the Dock though? Isn't it needed by X for minimizing? I doubt it would be so easy to get X apps minimizing into NeXT style tiles...

I don't imagine task switching would be too hard a task though.

[Graymalkin]

Dock.app is entirely separate from Finder.app, if you had a drop in replacement for Finder the Dock would still work properly. I think I like Dock a bit more than Wharf from NeXT but that is just me. I've become interested in WorkSpaceX recently though so Dock is definitely not the end all be all of dockiness.

[juanvaldes]

Originally posted by jasong:
Slightly off topic, but does anyone know of a program that will show the menu bar (file, edit, etc.) in a context menu. I use two monitors, and to have to keep going back to the "main" monitor to use the menu is very annoying.

-- Jason

good point. I just got a dual monitor setup and I love it but your right that it can get annoying going back and forth. I would hope apple will let us put a menu bar on EACH window, I think this would be even more likely to happen then what you describe.

[Graymalkin]

I REALLY don't want to see application windows with menubars attached to them. Context menus or mobile menu palettes I would appriciate but in no way do I want to see Mac apps looking like Windows and X apps.

[suhail]

off topic:
Am I the only one who can't stand the minimize button on OSX. I tried to like it, I gave it many chances, but it keeps on disapointing me.
I just can't seem to use it and I think it sucks!

[clarkgoble]

Things I miss from NeXT

Am I the only one who thought that index program with the complex works of Shakespeare was cool? I've seriously thought about writing an OSX version to teach myself Cocoa and Obj-C.

I also kind of dug how the original NeXTs shipped with Mathematica standard. But I know that isn't likely to happen.

Other than that thought...

Mouse Buttons (Revisited Again)

The problem isn't having a useful context menu but having a useful context menu that you must use only with a right click. Ideally there should be nothing in a context menu that isn't available elsewhere. The problem is less the utility of context menus (which I think very useful). The problem is a standard user interface which offers a degree of consistency. If commands "mysteriously" pop up in context menus you never know when to expect them. Ideally you should have a nice assortment of verbs that get "greyed out" when not applicable. That gives you, in the menus, a general sense of how a program functions. It also makes sense from a programming point of view since commands get directed through a hierarchy of visual elements.

All the PC programs I've used that had unweldly context menus typically had huge interface problems. Unfortunately with OSX I've noticed many of these trends coming to the Mac, even as they've slowly been fixed in the Windows side. (I'm also a firm believer that context menus should be relatively short, but there are some programs with more than a dozen items rather than using submenus)

I don't mind modifier keys on the mouse. You are right that they act in effect as multiple mouse buttons but without the efficiency. The reality is though that they should ideally act as modifiers to the main function of the mouse. If you have a multi-button mouse, as most do, you can then add option-click and command-click to the third and fourth mouse buttons. Originally those would do things like constrain mouse effects or so forth. So they acted like a modifier key, much like the shift key or control key do to alpha-numeric keys.

However, having said all that, I'll once again say that not all programs do this well. They add functions willy nilly to buttons and keys without thinking through any consistency to the interface. The very notion of modifier as something which slightly modifies a regular action is lost.

The biggest problem on the Mac is that it still doesn't offer good keyboard functionality. If you are typing, for instance, and need a function or a slight change of mode, then having to reach for the mouse is stupid. With OSX we still don't have the keyboard power we deserve. And don't bring up those silly functions for handicapped people. That is not the same as thinking through the interface for using the keyboard. Oddly this was something Windows initially did quite well but get worse and worse at with each edition. (Undoubtedly due to Microsoft's strategy of "ease of use" as "hand holding or wizards" rather than making it simple to do things)

By and large though with OSX 10.2 I think Apple has a very, very nice interface. There are problems - the Finder still has interface problems and the "reduce window" doesn't work well at all. However compared to WinXP, Win95, NeXTStep, KDE, or Gnome I think it is by far the best. Let's hope the next major edition increases interface productivity (mainly in the Finder and with bad interface objects like the drawer)

[pmcd]

I miss AcChen and Gourmet the most. I also miss the security of knowing Services are available.

philip