[lpkmckenna]

I've been a Mac user since Jan 00 and I've grown quite comfortable in the reality distortion field. I recently replaced my iMac DV with a PB G4 and have used it extensively at work for all kinds of things. Many coworkers ask about my Mac and I usually find myself explaining the interface differences between Macs and PCs, and how the Mac world seems to have it all figured out (column view, Expose, iPhoto, and the Office formatting palette being the most common subjects).

But I never mention the things about the Mac that I wish would change, and I generally feel a little guilty about recommending a Mac to friends and coworkers because of these personal dislikes. I have several issues with the Mac interface that I wish Apple and other developers would improve on...

Metal vs Aqua

I want Apple to completely replace the pin-striped Aqua theme with the brushed Metal theme. I think all the Metal apps simply look more professional, and are significantly easier on the eyes. I find that switching to an Aqua app after looking at a Metal app to be a blinding experience. I also feel that Aqua apps are simply too colorful: Metal apps have nice glassy or gray buttons, while Aqua apps usually have gaudy, overly-detailed buttons. (Occasionally, some developers create Metal apps with gaudy, Aqua-like buttons. Those apps are the worst of both worlds. For example, look at the right side of the toolbar in the new Automator for OS X 10.4 - how horrid!)

I think that the current visual interface is simply too inconsistent, without any real reason. Add the fact that GarageBand has its own appearance, and the Pro Mac apps (Final Cut, Motion) have yet another, and my favorite app (Logic) has yet another seems to indicate that no one at Apple seems interested in a fully consistent and attractive interface. To both newcomers and many veterans, the Mac looks like visual chaos. A full Metal interface would be the best.

Source Lists and Palettes vs Drawers

I hate Drawers. I find virtually every instance of them to be a poor implementation of an otherwise good concept. As examples, Mail would look so much better if the mailbox drawer was replaced with a source pane of mailboxes, and the formatting drawer used in Nisus Writer Express would look much better as a floating palette (similar to Mellel's or Word's formatting palettes).

Drawers have been replaced by Apple in several places recently, with significant improvements in usability resulting: the Help Viewer drawer was replaced with the Library menu item, and iCal now allows the Show Info to be a palette instead of a drawer. Expect the drawers in Preview and Mail to be replaced with source panes in Tiger.

Mostly, I find drawers to be an eye sore - a simple rectangular window is preferable to the odd shape that a window with a drawer makes.

Window Widget Weirdness

Ever click on a green Zoom button, knowing full well that you have no idea what will happen? The Zoom button has been my personal nemesis since the beginning of Mac OS X.

Sometimes, it's a maximize button (mostly for Cocoa apps, like iPhoto, iCal, Script Editor, and Help Viewer). Sometimes, it's an optimize button (the Finder and Preview). And sometimes, it does something completely different again (iTunes, Address Book, the MS Office apps).

I find that only the maximize zoom is predicable, but even then Carbon and Cocoa apps maximize differently; Cocoa apps hug the edges of the screen but Carbon apps tend to leave a small sliver of space all the way around the window.

Optimize zoom was a great feature for the Finder and Picture Viewer prior to OS X, but both the Finder and Preview now can't figure out what the proper window size is supposed to be, and they leave scroll bars or empty space when they shouldn't. Optimize zoom usually works for Safari, but it took me a year to figure out what TextEdit was doing when I zoomed. (In case you didn't know, the size of the window is related to the settings in the Page Setup. Seriously.) Optimize zoom has now become an unreliable feature for the Mac because of poor programming.

Ever use the Zoom button in Office? I don't know what Microsoft was thinking - I can't even decribe what what the window is supposed to be doing.

To make things simple, the green Zoom widget should only maximize; consistent and predictable. If the developer wants the zoom button to do anything else, it should have a different color (blue? purple?) and be full explained in the documentation why it does what it does.

Finally, the red Close button should only close windows, and never Quit the program. I hate the fact that Panther changed the Close button function for System Preferences and the Calculator from the right way to the wrong way. If I want a program to Quit, I'll tell it to.

Trash Talk

Ever wonder why iPhoto and iMovie have their own trash? More importantly, have you ever thought that perhaps the iPhoto way makes the most sense - with the trash in the source pane? That's where Apple should move the Trash to - out of the Dock and in to the Finder source pane.

Palette Pandemonium

Ever try Mellel? Its most outstanding feature is its formatting palette. In addition to being able to come apart, it's so smart that it knows to collapse the lower panels if opening the upper panels causes some of the palette to shoot off the screen. You should try the demo program out just to see this amazing little feat. But I would never buy Mellel - I simply require too many of the features in Word.

But the Word formatting palette is so stupid next to Mellel's. It will happily grow downwards until it sticks below the screen, requiring me to close some other panel to fix the situation. Worse, it grows horizontally too, and will typically overlap the document I'm trying to write! Annoying!

The Font Panel of TextEdit is even worse. To see all of the formatting options available, it needs to be ridiculously wide. Compare for yourself the logic and simplicity of the Color Panel versus the inflexibility and akwardness of the Font Panel. Add to that, the TextEdit toolbar is completely useless. Apple is so close to having the most amazing "free" text editor, but the impressive typography and formatting chops of TextEdit are trapped under the most obtuse GUI ever seen in a Mac program. Shame, Apple!

Floating Toolbars

My two favorite interface conventions are floating palettes and window toolbars. Everything a program needs can be found in these two features. But the floating toolbar (as found in Office, Photoshop, AppleWorks, and Palm Desktop) is the biggest, most annoying visual abomination in the Mac environment. The basic reasons: lack of consistency and visual clutter.

Some floating toolbars stretch from screen edge to screen edge (Adobe) while some are of odd lengths and shapes (Office). Some are colorful, some monochrome. Most are loaded with indecipherable glyphs without any clue as to their meanings (AppleWorks, and even worse, BIAS Peak).

I find it amazing that Adobe thinks Photoshop needs a floating toolbar for Options, another (vertical) toolbar for tools, and then normal palettes for everything else. Couldn't the tools and options go in a single palette at the side? One that stacks and merges nicely like all the other palettes? Please?

I find it really amazing that Microsoft can manage to put toolbars in the application windows for Windows, but not on the Mac. As a result, the Office apps on the Mac look like a crazed overlapping of a half-dozen differently shaped rectangles, none of them fitting together in a way that effectively uses space, and making the document windows jump around and re-size constantly as I switch to the print preview or master document views. It's insane!

Keynote is an excellent example of how to make a simple, clutter-free interface: a toolbar and a source pane in the application window, and a floating formatting palette. Mellel, iPhoto, Entourage, and GarageBand are also really good examples of this simple design. I know that some pro-level applications (Logic, Final Cut) require many, many windows to be useful, but even then their windows and toolbars at least fit together nicely; not so with PowerPoint.

Apple needs to get out of the floating toolbar business, and then politely insist (with the Apple HIG) that its third-party developers do the same.

Conclusion

I know this was really long but I really wanted to get this out. I find that sometimes the Mac community needs to remember that while the Mac interface is impressive, it is still burdened with a lot of clutter, inconsistencies, and cosmetic flaws. I do believe that these small changes could make the Mac easier to approach for newbies and easier to master for veterans. Thanks for reading.

- Kev

[sushiism]

I can't say I'm a fan of the iTunes style interface thats cropping up everywhere. I liked it in iTunes but I can't stand the metal finder and its awful sidebar nonsense its just built for column view that thats pretty awful. Well its ok for browsing utterly vast servers but for my own hard drives I prefer the spatial os9 style because I like to use icons and placement as visual cues that way I can navigate faster because I'll always know where my cursor should be for the next place I want to go. Not like column view where any new folders/files mean you have to rescan every time you move up or down the hierarchy.
I also can't stand the metal finder, I've been using it none stop the past month at work and its just got too many visual errors you bring it forward only to find its got windows style blocks of white where the metal hasn't been redrawn. and its just so fat and clunky and the sidebar is annoying because it removes the whole directory structure to the left so if I'm in say an image folder for a project then quickly want to go back I have to go to some awkward lengths to do that.
As for mail I think its wonderful, with the drawer your not forced to have a huge fat application like you are with finders source panel. If mail had that then my mail window would be huge and I wouldn't really be able to make it smaller without messing about constantly. With the drawer I can simply view my inbox with minimum clutter but at a single click I get the mailbox list which is neatly hidden when not in use. Don't get that with the awful source pane idea, well you could say double clicking the widget closes finders source pane but then the contents of the window are rejigged ugh awful.
Floating toolbars are terrible, especially in office but they don't seem as bad in photoshop but acrobat reader's look terrible too.

I wouldn't mind where apple was going with the UI as long as there was an option in the finder to just have the classic style finder in aqua. I used to use the browser style one in 10.2 but started using the classic one in 10.3 to escape the metal and awful source pane and now i love the os9 style spatial finder, its much nicer having all my windows correctly placed and sized when I open them. But it drives me mad when I open a new folder and its in the awful browser interface again.

[Sven G]

Some very good points in this thread topic. Personally, I certainly prefer Windows-style framed/paned interfaces and consistent maximising options: it would be good to see more of this on OS X (see, just to make another example, the Macromedia apps in Windows vs. OS X: in Windows they look far more organized and "organic", so to say).

Anyway, one thing OS X has which is very, very good is its standard Aqua toolbars: every app should use them in an optimal way (and not adopt non-standard toolbars - such as the Office:mac ones, etc.).

BTW, much of the "floating windows hell", and so on, is probably a heritage from the Classic Mac OS days, when the interface was much more "elementary" (or, rather, chaotic - see, for example, on another similar front, Gimp 1.x vs. Gimp 2.x: the latter is much better!) than today...

[powermacj7]

The brushed metal look took a little time for me to like. I did not mind it in iApps when it first appeared. When the finder took on the metal look, I thought it was to dark. A co-worker has Jaguar on her system. When I installed a program for her, I realized the Aqua look was not a clean as the bushed metal look. I actually like the organized way the new Finder works. Yes, at time it can be clumsy. I still prefer it over Windows, and the start menu.
You all bring up great points about the interface and it's short-comings. My wish list would include Apple implementing a way for peeps to customize the interface, kinda of like Windows Themes. Then again, that is just color changes, etc.

[Thorin]

I bought my powerbook just after panther came out, so all I've used is the brushed metal finder. This morning I started a new part time job (really exciting - rescaling images in photoshop 16 hours a week) and I'm using a mac running 10.2.8, the pin-stripey-ness drove me crazy in about 4 minutes flat. It's awful, I'd rather they stuck with the metal look, although I don't mind them allowing the option to swap back to the pinstripe look instead, as I do understand that some people far prefer it.

As far as drawers go I quite like them though. But yes, the Office toolbars absolutely suck - they're hideous, and an absolute pain in the ass every time I use them.

Cheers for posting though - a very interesting and in depth post.

[Landos Mustache]

You're right, the green button does totally suck. Never works the way it should.

[sushiism]

I agree 10.2 was a bit too pinstriped, if they took the softer stripes from 10.3 add them to the 10.2 look of Aqua so outset buttons and titlebars gonig transparent when inactive I'd be really pleased.

The thing is about the brushed metal finder is it just doesn't seem very mac like, if you compare it to the nice clean os9 finder windows or if you use that style in osx they take up next to no room, your icons are gorgeous and you can tell what they are, you don't need to scan columns because files are where you expect them to be and your not constantly fighting with 1 finder window when moving files and stuff because its such a hassle opening another when with os9 style finder you can just spring load yourself to where you want to go.

One thing we really need is the ability to change aqua's colours. God knows why apple have not included this it would be so EASY. All you need to do is a simple hue/saturation shift on the aqua elements and save them in a cache or whatever. Only problems this might cause would be programs using their own elements but this could be solved if they told the os which ones were standard aqua colours then it could hue shift them, because we have powerful transparency and stuff i wouldnt be a problem blending these back in if the interface was made right.

[sambeau]

I love drawers. Especially the way they freak-out windows users..

[sushiism]

drawers area great on some apps (mail) but can be very bad on others. However the floating apple palettes like in Keynote are wonderful for apps like that. Only thing I don't really like are source panes, they work great in iTunes but not in EVERYSINGLEOTHERPROGRAMEVEREVEREVER! As is the trend at the moment.

[sambeau]

Originally posted by sushiism:
Only thing I don't really like are source panes, they work great in iTunes but not in EVERYSINGLEOTHERPROGRAMEVEREVEREVER! As is the trend at the moment.

Wassasourcepane?

[Millennium]

The green button is supposed to be an "optimize" button in all cases. Exactly what "optimize" means is up to the app, because all apps are different and so there can be no One True Way to best fit the data being shown. Only seldom, if indeed ever, are maximizing (hogging all the screen space, which hinders user multitasking) and optimizing really the same thing.

Of course, the problem here is that lazy developers tend to do nothing at all with the Optimize button, either just having it maximize or letting the behavior go completely undefined.

[absmiths]

So far, "this post is way too long" is the concensus. Why can't people be brief? Do you really think I want to spend 15 minutes reading some rant about the Mac user interface?

The one thing that surprises me is that noone has quoted the entire thing yet.

[sambeau]

Originally posted by absmiths:
So far, "this post is way too long" is the concensus. Why can't people be brief? Do you really think I want to spend 15 minutes reading some rant about the Mac user interface?

Boo-hoo my poor widdle eyes will burn out..

if you don't like - don't read

[Axo1ot1]

Originally posted by lpkmckenna:
I've been a Mac user since Jan 00 and I've grown quite comfortable in the reality distortion field. I recently replaced my iMac DV with a PB G4 and have used it extensively at work for all kinds of things. Many coworkers ask about my Mac and I usually find myself explaining the interface differences between Macs and PCs, and how the Mac world seems to have it all figured out (column view, Expose, iPhoto, and the Office formatting palette being the most common subjects).

But I never mention the things about the Mac that I wish would change, and I generally feel a little guilty about recommending a Mac to friends and coworkers because of these personal dislikes. I have several issues with the Mac interface that I wish Apple and other developers would improve on...

Metal vs Aqua

I want Apple to completely replace the pin-striped Aqua theme with the brushed Metal theme. I think all the Metal apps simply look more professional, and are significantly easier on the eyes. I find that switching to an Aqua app after looking at a Metal app to be a blinding experience. I also feel that Aqua apps are simply too colorful: Metal apps have nice glassy or gray buttons, while Aqua apps usually have gaudy, overly-detailed buttons. (Occasionally, some developers create Metal apps with gaudy, Aqua-like buttons. Those apps are the worst of both worlds. For example, look at the right side of the toolbar in the new Automator for OS X 10.4 - how horrid!)

I think that the current visual interface is simply too inconsistent, without any real reason. Add the fact that GarageBand has its own appearance, and the Pro Mac apps (Final Cut, Motion) have yet another, and my favorite app (Logic) has yet another seems to indicate that no one at Apple seems interested in a fully consistent and attractive interface. To both newcomers and many veterans, the Mac looks like visual chaos. A full Metal interface would be the best.

Source Lists and Palettes vs Drawers

I hate Drawers. I find virtually every instance of them to be a poor implementation of an otherwise good concept. As examples, Mail would look so much better if the mailbox drawer was replaced with a source pane of mailboxes, and the formatting drawer used in Nisus Writer Express would look much better as a floating palette (similar to Mellel's or Word's formatting palettes).

Drawers have been replaced by Apple in several places recently, with significant improvements in usability resulting: the Help Viewer drawer was replaced with the Library menu item, and iCal now allows the Show Info to be a palette instead of a drawer. Expect the drawers in Preview and Mail to be replaced with source panes in Tiger.

Mostly, I find drawers to be an eye sore - a simple rectangular window is preferable to the odd shape that a window with a drawer makes.

Window Widget Weirdness

Ever click on a green Zoom button, knowing full well that you have no idea what will happen? The Zoom button has been my personal nemesis since the beginning of Mac OS X.

Sometimes, it's a maximize button (mostly for Cocoa apps, like iPhoto, iCal, Script Editor, and Help Viewer). Sometimes, it's an optimize button (the Finder and Preview). And sometimes, it does something completely different again (iTunes, Address Book, the MS Office apps).

I find that only the maximize zoom is predicable, but even then Carbon and Cocoa apps maximize differently; Cocoa apps hug the edges of the screen but Carbon apps tend to leave a small sliver of space all the way around the window.

Optimize zoom was a great feature for the Finder and Picture Viewer prior to OS X, but both the Finder and Preview now can't figure out what the proper window size is supposed to be, and they leave scroll bars or empty space when they shouldn't. Optimize zoom usually works for Safari, but it took me a year to figure out what TextEdit was doing when I zoomed. (In case you didn't know, the size of the window is related to the settings in the Page Setup. Seriously.) Optimize zoom has now become an unreliable feature for the Mac because of poor programming.

Ever use the Zoom button in Office? I don't know what Microsoft was thinking - I can't even decribe what what the window is supposed to be doing.

To make things simple, the green Zoom widget should only maximize; consistent and predictable. If the developer wants the zoom button to do anything else, it should have a different color (blue? purple?) and be full explained in the documentation why it does what it does.

Finally, the red Close button should only close windows, and never Quit the program. I hate the fact that Panther changed the Close button function for System Preferences and the Calculator from the right way to the wrong way. If I want a program to Quit, I'll tell it to.

Trash Talk

Ever wonder why iPhoto and iMovie have their own trash? More importantly, have you ever thought that perhaps the iPhoto way makes the most sense - with the trash in the source pane? That's where Apple should move the Trash to - out of the Dock and in to the Finder source pane.

Palette Pandemonium

Ever try Mellel? Its most outstanding feature is its formatting palette. In addition to being able to come apart, it's so smart that it knows to collapse the lower panels if opening the upper panels causes some of the palette to shoot off the screen. You should try the demo program out just to see this amazing little feat. But I would never buy Mellel - I simply require too many of the features in Word.

But the Word formatting palette is so stupid next to Mellel's. It will happily grow downwards until it sticks below the screen, requiring me to close some other panel to fix the situation. Worse, it grows horizontally too, and will typically overlap the document I'm trying to write! Annoying!

The Font Panel of TextEdit is even worse. To see all of the formatting options available, it needs to be ridiculously wide. Compare for yourself the logic and simplicity of the Color Panel versus the inflexibility and akwardness of the Font Panel. Add to that, the TextEdit toolbar is completely useless. Apple is so close to having the most amazing "free" text editor, but the impressive typography and formatting chops of TextEdit are trapped under the most obtuse GUI ever seen in a Mac program. Shame, Apple!

Floating Toolbars

My two favorite interface conventions are floating palettes and window toolbars. Everything a program needs can be found in these two features. But the floating toolbar (as found in Office, Photoshop, AppleWorks, and Palm Desktop) is the biggest, most annoying visual abomination in the Mac environment. The basic reasons: lack of consistency and visual clutter.

Some floating toolbars stretch from screen edge to screen edge (Adobe) while some are of odd lengths and shapes (Office). Some are colorful, some monochrome. Most are loaded with indecipherable glyphs without any clue as to their meanings (AppleWorks, and even worse, BIAS Peak).

I find it amazing that Adobe thinks Photoshop needs a floating toolbar for Options, another (vertical) toolbar for tools, and then normal palettes for everything else. Couldn't the tools and options go in a single palette at the side? One that stacks and merges nicely like all the other palettes? Please?

I find it really amazing that Microsoft can manage to put toolbars in the application windows for Windows, but not on the Mac. As a result, the Office apps on the Mac look like a crazed overlapping of a half-dozen differently shaped rectangles, none of them fitting together in a way that effectively uses space, and making the document windows jump around and re-size constantly as I switch to the print preview or master document views. It's insane!

Keynote is an excellent example of how to make a simple, clutter-free interface: a toolbar and a source pane in the application window, and a floating formatting palette. Mellel, iPhoto, Entourage, and GarageBand are also really good examples of this simple design. I know that some pro-level applications (Logic, Final Cut) require many, many windows to be useful, but even then their windows and toolbars at least fit together nicely; not so with PowerPoint.

Apple needs to get out of the floating toolbar business, and then politely insist (with the Apple HIG) that its third-party developers do the same.

Conclusion

I know this was really long but I really wanted to get this out. I find that sometimes the Mac community needs to remember that while the Mac interface is impressive, it is still burdened with a lot of clutter, inconsistencies, and cosmetic flaws. I do believe that these small changes could make the Mac easier to approach for newbies and easier to master for veterans. Thanks for reading.

- Kev

no.

[philzilla]

Originally posted by absmiths:
The one thing that surprises me is that noone has quoted the entire thing yet.

if anyone does that, the big red flashing light goes off on tooki's mac and he comes along and mashes that quote to a line of bold text, indicating his displeasure. haven't you been paying attention?

[ratlater]

Originally posted by absmiths:
So far, "this post is way too long" is the concensus. Why can't people be brief? Do you really think I want to spend 15 minutes reading some rant about the Mac user interface?

The one thing that surprises me is that noone has quoted the entire thing yet.

The post isn't too long. He wants to discuss the Mac UI, he has some valid and reasonable points and he is presenting an argument. If you don't want to read about Mac stuff or don't like reading long posts just skip it. I'd prefer a long thoughtful post to: "Metal is cool!! and I hate teh drawers they should all die!"

Personally I'm more of an aqua fan, but I've grown to like metal as well. Drawers I do like quite a bit though. For example Mail and OmniWeb 5 make great use of drawers for me. They are easily resizable without mucking with the window size and can be quickly hidden.

Floating toolbars piss me off too. I've never been a huge toolbar fan anyway. I like them simple with a few of the most used functions, so they look nice under the window title bar. There are menus or key combos for the other actions.

I haven't seen the Mellel floating palettes, but they sound very similar to OmniGraffle 3's floating palettes. I highly recommend you downloading a trial copy and checking them out. Each palette can be attached to any other and shrunk to only show the title bar. They are also smart enough to auto-shrink when another is opened that will push it off screen. A very slick implementation.

-matt

[shunt]

Originally posted by Axo1ot1:
no.

beautiful.

[lpkmckenna]

If you like long posts, here's more of the same...


Problems with Zoom

"The bottom line is that it is more predictable than you think. The zoom button toggles between the "user state" and the "application state". You control the user state and the author of the application controls the application state. That's why iTunes minimizes to a controller in the application state, etc. The inconsistency comes when application developers do not effectively address the application state of this button."

I understand how the zoom system is supposed to work. The problem is that almost every application that uses something other than maximize zoom implements it so poorly that it confuses even those who know what is supposed to be happening. And that is the worst part about it: I know how the zoom button on the Finder is supposed to work, but Apple doesn't!

If you use the Finder zoom on any window except column view you simply never know what's going to happen; test this with list view right now. It will re-size the vertical size okay but the horizontal size will always be too small, leaving an unnecessary scroll bar.

Preview can be just as bad. It will occasionally leave a scroll bar for the width because it just can't figure out how wide the picture is. Picture Viewer for OS 9 never had this problem.

Word's implementation is completely f*d up; I always know what's going to happen, I just don't know why MS made it this way! If you zoom a window at 100% scale in page view, it works fine, shrinking the window to exactly the right size; but if the scale is 125% or 200% it still shrinks the window the exact way, as if it were 100%. What good is that? It ought to know that the window needs to be larger (Mellel and Nisus Writer Express both do, but TextEdit also does not, making Wrap to View in TextEdit completely useless).

Going back to Word, if the page scale is "Page Width" it sets the size to almost the entire width of the screen, leaving an unnecessary gap between the right side of the window and the screen edge. Why? Not to fit the Formatting Palette, which is way too wide to fit this space. If Word were smart it would 1) fully maximize the window, unless the formatting palette was open, in which case it would 2) make the window as wide as possible, leaving room for the formatting palette. That is the way Photoshop works, anyway.

"This has been a problem for Windows users mostly. The problem happens when they hit the green button and assume the "zoom" button is intended to be a "maximize" button"

I am not a Windows user (at home, any way), not for half a decade. I am not assuming anything. But why shouldn't a user assume that the window would maximize? That's what iPhoto, iMovie, Help Viewer, iCal, Mail, Script Editor, GarageBand, Terminal, XCode, plus dozens of other Apple and third-party apps do (SubEthaEdit, LimeWire, NewsMac, NetNewsWire included). The system as it stands is now IS confusing and inconsistent. Why do you refuse to see it?

Regarding iTunes - this has become a non-issue with Expose. I leave the window in normal view, and use Expose to get at the iTunes controls, when necessary. With Dashboard, it'll be even better, using an iTunes gadget. Besides, since the mini iTunes window doesn't float above all other windows anyway (the way it should) it quickly gets covered up by other apps. The iTunes mini-window is another good example of a great idea poorly implemented.

The real bottom line: the zoom button should maximize, so that the interface is consistent. If it does anything else, it should be a different color. Simple, eh? I seem to remember saying that in my original post.

A really good example for optimize zoom is BBEdit. It has a whole list of preferences on how you can set up the zoom function. If any developer is interested on seeing a high quality system for zooming they should check out BBEdit. The sad thing is, being developers, they are probably fully aware of BBEdit's system but are too lazy to emulate it; really sad.

Problems with Drawers

"I prefer the drawers method, etc. but, again, it's personal preference more than anything else. "

No, it's not just personal preference. Yes, I hate them because they are ugly. But more importantly, they make everything twice as much work. For instance, if I often want the drawer in Preview to be wider, because the default drawer size is always too thin to see the table of contents in a pdf file. I typically need to 1) shrink the window before I can 2) widen the drawer, because the draw is often pressed up against the right screen edge. If the draw is on the left side of the window I also now need to 3) move the window to the right, before widening the drawer, to make room for it.

That's two or three actions needed to do one thing: widen the table of contents. If you were viewing the pdf in Adobe Reader (a really lousy app, if I ever saw one) or the PDF Browser internet plug-in from Schubert it (not a bad plug-in) you don't have this problem. Just re-size the column. Yes, it shrinks the contents of the page, but you can always maximize the app (if that function works!).

As I've said, I can't find any example of a drawer that wouldn't have been better as a floating palette or a source list. And, they are DIRT ugly.

Trash

"I think there is a place for application level trash. I do agree that the trash should be removed from the dock. It actually wouldn't be bad to permanently keep it in the bottom corner. Anyway, you can access files from the desktop without having a finder window open. Therefore, the trash can needs to be on the desktop."

Thanks, but the trash only needs to be accessible from the desktop IF you put stuff there. I don't. Besides, would you also put an "Color Label" or "Show Info" button on the desktop for the same reason? No, because everyone knows that those items can be found in the contextual menu, just like "Move to Trash." Even Windows users know that; their very first question on the Mac is usually "Where's the right mouse button?" So why exactly do we need trash on the desktop again?

Removing the trash, and all other volumes, from the desktop was one of the best ideas Apple (NeXT, really) ever had. The trash is a folder, and if I don't want that folder on the desktop or in the dock, Apple shouldn't make me put it there. The source pane is the most logical place to put it. I suppose I was wrong to insist that it be removed from the dock. If a user wants the trash on the dock or desktop, let them. But it shouldn't be there by default. But really, the source pane is the most easily accessible place, and Apple could provide an "empty trash" widget next to it, similar to the "eject volume" widget next to drives, disks, and volumes. But, like all other items in the source pane, its presence should be an option to turn off.

Metal versus Aqua

I'm really surprised at the reaction I am getting to this post, particularly to my preference of Metal over Aqua. Aqua is gaudy and overly-bright, with overly-detailed buttons. Metal, to my eyes, is a nice enhancement of Platinum, which compliments the aluminum-shaded hardware, and generally improves the appearance of applications of any kind. Compare Nisus Writer Express to Mellel. Compare Explorer or Camino to Safari. Compare Entourage to iCal (features aside). Even the Finder looks better now; the old Jaguar Finder was little more than a white window surrounding a white background; I always used a gray background in icon view just to get away from the endless white. Improved contrast and reduced eye-strain are NOT just issues of personal preference, but a usability issue.

This issue of contrast and brightness is even more important for word processors, which many insist are good examples of when to use Aqua only. They are the best example of when NOT to. I mean, give my eyes a bit of a break, please! Hard white text on a stark white background is just begging for a little contrast. Thank you, Mellel, thank you, for showing us all the way. You implemented a Metal word processor, with a fully-functional optimize zoom button, and the most intelligent floating palette ever seen! You guys at RedleX are interface gods! If you could just add full Word and RTFD import and output I would pay up in a second. But form must follow function! Without that 15% or so of Word that I actually use, I would be helpless in the sea of Word documents at work. (By the way, RedleX, get rid of the silly iTunes-style formatting widget in the middle of your toolbar; it's a complete waste of space.)

Theme-Changers

Both in this post and others I have made, the issue of theme-changers keeps coming up as a solution to my complaints. Since my two concerns are 1) consistency, and 2) usability, I will make this last comment with these two issues emphasized.

1) Consistency.

Theme changers CREATE more inconsistency. Most theme changers only alter the appearance of core apps - the Finder, iTunes, Safari. Perhaps they can give every Cocoa app a metal background, but can they replace the Aqua-style buttons in Nisus Writer Express with glassy, simplified Metal-style buttons. Or in SubEthaEdit. Or in Office? No? They why are you recommending these theme changers to me, since I want more, not less, consistency?

2) Usability.

This is harder to explain, but essentially any computer interface must design its visual elements with a view to increasing the users understanding of how to get something done. The iTunes interface does that really well, and the FInder interface does too (more or less). What should a "play" button like like? Obviously, a triangle pointed to the right, inside a square or a circle. What should an equalizer button look like? Well, how about some sliders? How about a "back" button or "send bug report" button? Or an italics or delete or help button?

Do any of these things improve by adding color or blob shadows? Often, the color reduces understanding: why are both "junk mail" and "address book" BROWN in Mail? Do they have something in common? Ask yourself a quick question, and answer honestly - do you have more trouble understanding the buttons in Metal apps or Aqua apps?

It's not that color or shadows are problems. For instance, activated buttons in iTunes are blue - but you understand immediately that "blue" means "activated", without having to have read all 308 pages of the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines to figure it out. Color, used without any apparent meaning or purpose in Aqua, just makes the interface look totally overdone - pretty for the sake of pretty, but not function. Apple recently introduced the idea of purple being the identifier for help-based buttons - what a good idea!

This is a bit of a design cliche, but Form must follow Function. If the use of color does not serve a purpose, it should be reduced. (There are many occasions where color does substantially increase the usability of an app - imagine Stickies without color.) Brushed Metal and Platinum are the best examples of increased contrast and subdued colors ever made for an interface.

Theme changers create a circumstance where color becomes the whole purpose of a theme. Themes in OS X generally cannot change the shape or structure of a window, so they can only change the color. And 95% of the time the color completely destroys most of the subtle signals the developer had in mind. And I've said before, most of the themes worth any time at all are merely minor changes to Apple's Aqua, Metal, or Platinum themes.

Apple should adopt a simple color plan - icons are colorful, buttons are color-subdued. I do like color in an interface, but unless it has some sort of clearly defined purpose it's simply visual noise. Excessive white in an interface is merely a recipe for continuous discomfort.

Steve Jobs insisted on a white-on-black interface for the original Macintosh because it more resembled real life - we write black letters on white paper. I am all for that concept. But give us a break and grant us simple buttons on a gray background. My eyes and yours will thank you when they are eighty.

If I needed to define, again, why Apple should change to an all-metal interface, I would say:
a) Aqua relies on excessive, unnecessary, and distracting use of color over an overly-bright background; and
b) Metal presents a subdued, professional appearance, with clear and simple buttons over a contrast-enhancing background.

I sometimes get the impression that the only people who respond to posts are those who disagree with what is posted. (Myself included.) If you agree with me, please say so - the anti-Metal brigade is out in full-force on this one.

Thanks for reading. And commenting, however you commented. I am enjoying this discussion.

[Sven G]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Only seldom, if indeed ever, are maximizing (hogging all the screen space, which hinders user multitasking) and optimizing really the same thing.

On a laptop (or on a 1024x768 desktop), it surely helps to "truly" maximise windows: personally, on my "work" PC (a ThinkPad laptop), for example, I quite spontaneously tend to maximise the Mozilla or Firefox browser window (with sidebar opened); with larger resolutions (1280x1024 and more), maximising is less necessary, of course, but the green button should certainly have a consistent behaviour also in this case.

A way of solving this issue could be, among others, to make the option/control/command/shift/etc.-clicking options on the green button consistent across all apps, maybe also with the button colour/sign changing according to the modified behaviour you want.

(BTW, multitasking can be provided in other ways than the "traditional" drag and drop, when you maximise windows: see the Taskbar/Dock/Panel buttons, Exposé, cut/copy/paste, and so on...)

[booboo]

So far your preference to have an all-metal OS X interface seems to be one of the least popular options. Thankfully!

I think the best solution would be a global appearance option. All metal/All metal toggle. Then everyone would be happy (except those that like the illogical inconsistent mix that we currently have. . . )

for what it's worth, my dislike of metal is largely due to the wasted screen-space (larger toolbar area and border that metal windows seem to require - except Safari, for some reason) and the appearance of metal windows in the background - i.e. that there appearance doesn't obviously reflect their background state.

Logic's interface if basically OS9 with the addition of some jelly Aqua-esgue buttons. For me, those round buttons embody the worst aspects of token Aqua style. Yes they look like jelly, and that fact has eclipsed their iconic function. For me - admittedly with poor eyesight - I can't distinguish between the buttons or deduce their function at a distance of 2ft. Form over function indeed.

logic still has its annoying OS7 menu behaviour where a click and hold is required to call up a (custom-coded) menu - i.e. to select an Instrument.

I agree whole-heartedly with you about drawers, and much prefer an internalized pane. I have been banging on about this for over a year now! Drawers are another example of form over function, and they are also a moving target - which side of the window will it drawer from this time. . . ?

Another inconsistency arises with the one-window-app which most OS X consumer app's have been moving towards. Supposedly if everything in an app fits in a window - iTunes, iMovie, etc, it makes sense to fill the screen with the app - and then there's no room for a drawer.

What does the drawer do when there's no screen space for it? Absolutely nothing, apparently.

The zoom button is confusing as it seems to behave differently in Cocoa and Carbon applications. In Carbon app's (FMP5.5, for example) it seems to have OS9 behaviour where it functions as a toggle between two user-chosen window sizes. I find this most useful although it's initially confusing for Windows users, allegedly.

But in Cocoa app's the behaviour is different - and it functions as a Windows-esque maximize/current size toggle.

edit: and as you point out in a later post, the Finder (typically) manages to present yet another inconsistent and unpredictable set of behaviours. Bugs, even.

This is a mess and should be made consistent. The mess is compounded by iTunes where the zoom button toggles between the mini iTunes (which should have a 'float' option) and the regular iTunes which displays the library, etc. It's annoyingly dumb to click on a + widget to make the window shrink! Wouldn't the toolbar widget be more consistent to toggle the iTunes states? Perhaps not - it's a toos up . . .

Floating toolbars I can't really comment on - In the past I've found MS icons to be less than obvious, and that has meant I've used drop-down menus instead. Likewise app's that recently gained toolbars - like FileMaker - I already knew the key commands . . . at least in Mac OS X (Cocoa app's) toolbar icons are fairly consistent - but more consistency is always a good thing in UI.

[JKT]

Don't have time to read everything here, but my view on the zoom button is that it should always do the following cycle in all apps when clicked:

1. Fit optimal size.
2. Maximise to fill screen.
3. Fit user defined size.
(Optionally - 4. Fit app writer's default size.)

[absmiths]

Originally posted by ratlater:
The post isn't too long.

That opinion is definitely in the minority. Did you ever consider that I might like reading threads here (why else click on it) but I generally only have a few minutes to read a thread and brevity is not anathema to good communication - likewise long-windedness is not essential.

[absmiths]

Originally posted by sambeau:
Boo-hoo my poor widdle eyes will burn out..

if you don't like - don't read

Some people are so immature.

[ratlater]

Originally posted by absmiths:
That opinion is definitely in the minority. Did you ever consider that I might like reading threads here (why else click on it) but I generally only have a few minutes to read a thread and brevity is not anathema to good communication - likewise long-windedness is not essential.

Brevity is great, but sometimes it takes a lot of words to explain a complex opinion. Reading his posts they don't sound long winded. I understand not having a lot of time to read long posts, but I guess those will just need to be skipped.

-matt

[leperkuhn]

There are some great points here.. where to start..

DRAWERS:
I've also disliked the way ical uses drawers. For starters, my resolutioni 1280x1024 still isn't enough to see everything comfortably. I use windows xp w/ outlook at work (blah) but you know what? i like the way the calendar and task list work in outlook. no drawers.

My point: they just take up to much room.

FINDER
In the finder, the iTunes interface could be cool, but once again, takes up way to much room. apple needs to find a way to have a more professional powerful interface. Start by decreasing the size of the borders in windows / drawers. OR, as people have been asking for, well.. forever, let us change the GUI to do what we want.

The photoshop stuff i'm fine with, I don't really use office, although I'd prefer a toolbar to the floating box thing. Same with text edit, why open a font box? put it in a damn menu.

AQUA
i really like the aqua in 10.3, but I agree, sometimes the metal can look better. i'd like to see the finder in aqua with the toolbar.

[gorgonzola]

I think the Metal/Aqua mix is totally obnoxious. It's so ridiculous having all these different UIs in the same system -- and even in the same app! Metal, though it may not be completely ugly, takes up way more screen real estate than Aqua does; in addition, it's so much heavier. Aqua is a nice, light interface that keeps to a minimum of waste in window borders and such.

Worst of all, as Apple keeps breaking their own rules on the appropriate use of metal, they keep revising the HIG.

I don't like Metal's look a great deal, but I hate the concept of it far more. It's so frustrating! =)

[lpkmckenna]

Quick comments (for the benefit of absmiths' ferret-like attention span) ...

JKT:

Don't have time to read everything here, but my view on the zoom button is that it should always do the following cycle in all apps when clicked:

1. Fit optimal size.
2. Maximise to fill screen.
3. Fit user defined size.
(Optionally - 4. Fit app writer's default size.)

I love your recommendation! The only thing: will ALL developers incorporated both optimize and maximize zoom into their apps?

booboo:

I think the best solution would be a global appearance option.

I can't agree. That would require Apple (and all other developers) to design two sets of buttons for every application. I think that would be a waste of time.

And could you imagine an Aqua iMovie or iPhoto or iTunes? We've already seen how ugly an Aqua Safari can be.

But my key point remains: Aqua is too hard on the eyes. While I can understand that many people don't like the "look" of metal, no one seems to be denying my statement that Aqua lacks contrast and is too bright. No one seems to want to address this issue at all. Yes, I think Metal is more attractive than Aqua, and perhaps my posts have over-emphasized my tastes. My key concerns remain usability and consistency.

What if Apple were to implement an "UNbrushed-Metal" appearance? Or simply replaced metal with some shade of gray? That would satisfy me; would that satisfy my detractors?

leperkuhn:

Same with text edit, why open a font box? put it in a damn menu.

Because floating palettes are capable of far more options and are much more discoverable than menus. Menus are good for picking one thing (like Open) but if you want to do many linked things (ie bold, then change font, size, and color, and then lay a shadow...) only a palette will do.

Try to imagine totally removing the print dialog, and controlling all the options with printing only thru menus.

It would be fine to give TextEdit a better window Toolbar, with choices of font, size, alignment, etc. But the OS X text services provide an incredible amount of options. They can't all fit in a toolbar.

My real problem with the Font Panel is that is needs to be far too wide to get access to all of its features. It should be rebuild to work just like the Color Panel: much thiner, with multiple panes. And it would be REALLY nice if the Font and Color panels, the spelling window, the Ligatures palette, and the find window could all be stacked and joined. Just like palettes in Photoshop or Mellel. That would be f'n sweet!

absmiths:

41 out of 91 is somewhat less that a consensus.

Cheers all!

[arekkusu]

KMFBM.

[absmiths]

Originally posted by lpkmckenna:
absmiths:

41 out of 91 is somewhat less that a consensus.

Cheers all!

Perhaps, but after 5 days, and 101 votes, it is still the single highest voted item - only 3 votes from a majority (48).

[ibobunot]

it drives me mad when I open a the finder and its in the icon view again. make the column view stick.