[Agent69]

Originally posted by bradoesch:
I find myself a little out of control with Aqua. I'm not as aware about how many programs I have running, etc. I used to like tearing away the app switcher and using the control strip a lot. I tend to block out things like hard crashes and quitting programs in order though.

I know what you mean. I emptied out my Dock and use it solely as a running process/minimized window indicator; normally it is hidden. I use QuickSilver as my application launcher.

[Geobunny]

Originally posted by m a d r a:
personally i miss the nail-biting uncertainty with the old classic 'force quit' ...

What a fantastic image - thanks for the laugh and the memory. BTW, if anyone wants a copy of The Grouch, we still have it on one of our servers at work. He makes a reappearance on users' machines every April Fool's Day...and usually for about a month afterwards until such times as we remember to remove the extension!

For what what it's worth, I have to agree with mAxximo to a certain extent. Only as regards the user interface though. Fonts, windows, menus and so on were much sharper and far more clearly defined in OS 9 - the anti-aliasing in OS X has a tendency to make these things seem slightly blurred and less clean-cut.

The other thing mentioned was cooperative multitasking. The only time I miss this is during application launch times. For example, time how long it takes Photoshop to launch in OS X vs the time it takes to launch in OS 9 on the same machine. HOWEVER, the longer launch time is more than made up for by the fact that once the program is open, I don't have to quit it in order to launch something else. So, this argument is moot. I still stand by the interface cleanness argument though.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by m a d r a:
so i don't have to wait a couple of f**king ice-ages for 'help centre' to open, just to find out what a single button or preference option is for

try Panther sometime. It's quite nice.

[m a d r a]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
try Panther sometime. It's quite nice.

hey! i resent the insinuation that i'm not a hip up-to-date kinda guy!

help centre may be slightly faster these days, but i still think it's second only to omniweb in the "slowest launching HTML browser of all time" stakes. and i still stand by my original point that help centre is complete overkill if you just want to find out what a preference option or button does - much easier in the olden days... turn on balloon help... hover over the button or option in question and read the info*... then turn balloon help off again.

[*assuming the developer had bothered to write any. to be honest, more often than not you just got a "balloon help is not available for XXXX" message]

[Judge_Fire]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
The last picture in the post above shows precisely one of the things of the Mac I miss the most. Look how crisp Geneva looks in that balloon as oppossed to the text in OS X.

Geneva 9 rocks. I used to have the whole UI set to that.

J

[Gankdawg]

Aaron Light

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macos/41

"Aaron Light makes Mac OS 8 look more like Mac OS 8. Although Apple has updated the Macintosh user interface in Mac OS 8, many third party applications do not yet take full advantage of these changes. Aaron Light patches these applications to use the new appearance, giving your Macintosh a more uniform interface. In particular, Aaron Light patches progress bars (including the startup progress bar and some indeterminate progress bars or barber poles), floating windows, and dialog box backgrounds, as well as fixing a number of menu drawing glitches."





And the best 9 shareware program ever:

Finderpop

http://www.finderpop.com/

[chris v]

Originally posted by m a d r a:
hey! i resent the insinuation that i'm not a hip up-to-date kinda guy!

help centre may be slightly faster these days, but i still think it's second only to omniweb in the "slowest launching HTML browser of all time" stakes. and i still stand by my original point that help centre is complete overkill if you just want to find out what a preference option or button does - much easier in the olden days... turn on balloon help... hover over the button or option in question and read the info*... then turn balloon help off again.

[*assuming the developer had bothered to write any. to be honest, more often than not you just got a "balloon help is not available for XXXX" message]

I had the worst habit of somehow accidentally invoking balloon help. Drove me absolutely nuts the way the balloon would then proceed to obscure whatever you were aiming for.

Help viewer is a real dog, though. And just try to figure out a logical query string. My searches in Help frequently come to naught because I don't keep abreast of the proper terminology for all the thingies and doodads in the interface. Do I search for pop-up menu or pull-down menu, or fly-out menu or flip menu? Or disclosure triangle, or reveal button or show menu or what? It often takes me two or three tries to figure out what to search FOR in help.

[Toyin]

I also miss the application that showed you all your running process on the menubar in OS9. I can't remember the name.

Originally posted by The Shadow:
Yeah I felt that way too.

After much messing about I realised that I might be able to combine the best of OS9 with the beauty and ease of use of OS X. I missed the app switcher so I came up with the plan of using TinkerTool to pin the Dock at the end of the screen in the bottom right hand corner, I then turned it vertical.

After removing every application icon and replacing them with desktop aliases I now have the best of both worlds. Every time I open an application It pops up in the Dock and the Dock gets a little taller. When I close the application the dock slips back down the screen.

It's neat and I can tell at a glance which apps are up because if they're showing in the Dock then they have to be running.

I haven't used the dock since upgrading to Panther and I've found several times when I'm changing apps (with apple-tab) that I have a bunch of things running that I don't need. I've tried your solution and I have to say it works well. At a very small scale the dock is great as an application monitor. I use Quicksilver to launch applications and the scroll wheel or apple-tab to change applications so the tiny size doesn't bother me. Good call!

[philm]

Originally posted by Gankdawg:
And the best 9 shareware program ever:

Finderpop

http://www.finderpop.com/

(sobs uncontrollably)

[Judge_Fire]

FinderPop was the greatest, yeah. I'm happy with Unsanity, though - FruitMenu is nice.


Another silly OS 9 thingy : Kineticon, animated icons for the Finder. Mostly annoying, but kinda fun anyway.


And of course :



J

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by m a d r a:
help centre may be slightly faster these days, but i still think it's second only to omniweb in the "slowest launching HTML browser of all time" stakes. and i still stand by my original point that help centre is complete overkill if you just want to find out what a preference option or button does - much easier in the olden days... turn on balloon help... hover over the button or option in question and read the info*... then turn balloon help off again.

Help Center isn't mean as a replacement for this functionality; tooltips are. Help Center is more equivalent to...the old Help Center, except it doesn't have the cool red circles. In fact, I think tooltips are such a drop-in replacement for balloon help that they're actually created by the same Carbon call.

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by Gankdawg:
Aaron Light

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macos/41

"Aaron Light makes Mac OS 8 look more like Mac OS 8. Although Apple has updated the Macintosh user interface in Mac OS 8, many third party applications do not yet take full advantage of these changes. Aaron Light patches these applications to use the new appearance, giving your Macintosh a more uniform interface. In particular, Aaron Light patches progress bars (including the startup progress bar and some indeterminate progress bars or barber poles), floating windows, and dialog box backgrounds, as well as fixing a number of menu drawing glitches."





And the best 9 shareware program ever:

Finderpop

http://www.finderpop.com/

I remember Aaron on System 7 machines. It sure bogged them down but it was cool to have the Platinum appearance on those classic machines.

Finderpop was awesome too. It ran on the first Macs I ever used and I just assumed that was the Mac's default app launcher.

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by chris v:
DragThing has an app switcher that can be configured just about exactly like the OS 9 tear-off app switcher. I keep my dock hidden and use it to switch between running apps. Although, in 10.3, the command+tab app-switcher-thingy is a pretty nice replacement. I find myself using it more and more.

It just doesn't feel the same as the app switcher. There's still something special about OS 9 that can't be replicated.

[m a d r a]

the new character palette is a big improvement over keycaps but keycaps did have one feature that character palette is sadly lacking - it showed you which keyboard combos produced which symbol or accented character. with character palette, you're not told, so you have to keep calling it up again every time you want to insert a certain symbol or accented character - instead of being able to learn the keyboard shortcut.

[ajprice]

Madra, it is there, you just have to turn it on!

http://www.maccritic.com/tips/article/294_0_12_0_M/

edit: I take it you use 10.3, its called Keyboard Viewer in System Prefs > International > Input Menu

[m a d r a]

Originally posted by ajprice:
Madra, it is there, you just have to turn it on!....

d'oh! - just before i posted i thought "i bet you i've missed it somewhere", so i had a good trawl through my apps/utilities folder and then fired up character palette and clicked everything that was clickable on it - to no avail. so i reckoned i was on safe ground there.

cheers for that!


[and thanks for resisting the call of the smiley in your reply too!]

[LeeG]

Wow, thanks for the keycaps trick- I thought it was gone...

Could they have made it more obscure by burying it in the international prefs?

One more bit of nostalgia - how many of you had literally HUNDREDS of floppies??!!

Remeber the days of downloading a 5+ floppy system upgrade!! AGGGGHHHH...
Over a 14.4!!!!!!!!!


L

[JMII]

Originally posted by LeeG:
One more bit of nostalgia - how many of you had literally HUNDREDS of floppies??!!

I was cleaning out some stuff in my home office last month and found my resume - done in Quark 3, saved on a floppy.

Funny to lock back at when the iMac first came out (May of '98) and everyone screamed at Apple for taking the floppy drive out. Now-a-days the mere mention of a floppy causes people to laugh as we live in an internet based age of file transfers (as Apple predicted).

[Geobunny]

Originally posted by JMII:

Funny to lock back at when the iMac first came out (May of '98) and everyone screamed at Apple for taking the floppy drive out. Now-a-days the mere mention of a floppy causes people to laugh as we live in an internet based age of file transfers (as Apple predicted).

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

[John Strung]

Font/DA Mover
Desk Accesories
Multifinder (at a time when DOS could only run one program at a time)
Aldus SuperPaint

[LeeG]

Looks like the moose is back!

http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/moose.htm

OS X Talking Moose!

L

[orry_main]

Originally posted by ajprice:
Madra, it is there, you just have to turn it on!

http://www.maccritic.com/tips/article/294_0_12_0_M/

edit: I take it you use 10.3, its called Keyboard Viewer in System Prefs > International > Input Menu

Is there nay way to invoke the Keyboard Viewer without having the Input Menu visible? I only use the standard English keyboard layout but occasionally need to figure out how to input symbols and accents and such. I'm on a 12" iBook, so my menu bar space is limited. I don't need the little flag there all the time to remind me what country I'm in.

[MartiNZ]

No, I'm pretty sure you have to go through the whole process whenever you want to see it if you don't have the input menu showing. I'm in exactly the same situation and that's what I do anyway. I guess the only real alternative is just to learn ALL of those keystrokes once and for all .

I think it's still better than the Windows Character Map anyway!

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by orry_main:
Is there nay way to invoke the Keyboard Viewer without having the Input Menu visible? I only use the standard English keyboard layout but occasionally need to figure out how to input symbols and accents and such. I'm on a 12" iBook, so my menu bar space is limited. I don't need the little flag there all the time to remind me what country I'm in.

The old Key Caps app still works on 10.3, so you could pull it from the 10.2 CDs with Pacifist if it's a big issue.

However, I basically agree with you that 1. the keyboard viewer is way too hard to find, and 2. it's stupid to have to have the input menu on if you only use one keyboard layout, so please send Apple feedback to fix this! Since they've already added a "Special Characters..." option to the bottom of the Edit menu, they could add a "Keyboard Viewer" option there as well.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/

[Goldfinger]

Originally posted by JMII:
I was cleaning out some stuff in my home office last month and found my resume - done in Quark 3, saved on a floppy.

Funny to lock back at when the iMac first came out (May of '98) and everyone screamed at Apple for taking the floppy drive out. Now-a-days the mere mention of a floppy causes people to laugh as we live in an internet based age of file transfers (as Apple predicted).

I was doing the same and I found System 7 and Windows 95 on floppy (lot's of them).