[cloweth]

Let�s consolidate everybody�s mock ups here. If you have or know of other mock ups, please include them (links) here. Using this as a central depository will help to avoid duplication, promote refinement, and provide inspiration.

I have seen a few screenshots of some very well thought out GUI ideas. And I feel compelled to offer my feedback.

I believe that Apple is striving for elegance in it�s GUI above all else. Why otherwise offer the Dock as a solution? With that in mind, here are my thoughts. I doubt they will be welcomed by all.

The use of modifier keys is anything but obvious or intuitive. Plus it takes two hands. For the same reasons Apple is going to stick with a single button mouse, it�s going to resist making mousing any more difficult by adding modifier keys. Of course, there are exceptions to these usage guidelines, witness contextual menus, arguably a power user feature in any event. The moral? Only use after careful consideration and then only sparingly in the OS itself. Granted certain applications use extensive use of modifier keys and many apps stretch other GUI guidelines and conventions, this is not evidence or endorsement for Apple to adopt these in their OS.

Hierarchical menus really shouldn�t be more than 2 or 3 levels deep at the most. Past that they�re a real pain to navigate. Imagine yourself as a newbie attempting to navigate multi-level H-menus. Like it or not, the GUI has to be newbie friendly.

Drop down menus should be just that-drop down. They�re much easier and quicker to navigate than pop up menus. Up pop menus are too Windowish anyway.

Results from studies conducted years ago suggest that using elements along the sides of the screen are especially difficult to use and are to be avoided. (This is a much as I remember. Can anyone cite the actual study? Perhaps it�s in the Ars Technica article.)

Here�s a link to relevant part of the article:
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/4...x-beta-13.html

Using graphical elements (sliding docks, hierarchical menus, etc.) to arrive at the Finder when it would be easier to just activate the Finder is a time waster and requires cpu overhead. It is called the Finder after all, why have other elements present just to find the Finder?

Now I will cite some discussions regarding GUI issues and accompanying mock ups.

sbenj�s contribution
This one is what got me thinking. It�s on MacNN forums. MacOS X-general discussion/How to fix the dock. http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Forum3/HTML/001616.html

This discussion refers the reader to this URL:
http://www.qubit.org/tmp

This is actually a pretty clever idea. It uses the �infinite height� principle very well. But, the menus pop up not down. It does de-clutter the Dock successfully.

mimicry.org contribution
I don�t have the exact URL but this�ll get ya in the neighborhood:
http://www.macosx.com

This is link to graphic: http://www.mimicry.org/img/sshots/dockscreen.gif

Another attractive idea. Text leaves little room for doubting what the icons mean. I see some infinite height problems tho�.

Hinson�s contribution
This individual has gone to great lengths in his mock up. It�s animated!

Appears on ManNN Forums/OS X-general discussion/Best dock idea mock-up yet http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Forum3/HTML/001703.html

Here�s link to mock up:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~hinson/macosxidea/

This is by far the most sophisticated GUI suggestion I�ve yet encountered. But, from my point of view it falls flat on a few points.

It utilizes the dreaded �side of screen� for navigation. Hierarchical menus potentially many levels deep. With all it�s sliding in/out and h-menu navigation, what do you arrive at? The Finder! Good grief. It you want to go to the Finder why don�t you just activate it? Plus, it uses modifier keys.

A wonderful animation and very entertaining. But, as a practical GUI? I don�t think so.

cloweth�s contribution
This is my contribution. I utilize sbenj�s idea for menus in the Dock, but place it just below the menubar. This is a terrible interface infraction. But if the icons are set to large enough size hitting them shouldn�t be too problematic. Still, infinite height questions abound.

Dock grows from left side. Magnification off.

The biggest variation I introduce is a new finder view which completely eliminates Hinson�s rather roundabout manner of accessing files.

Trash access is hotspot lower right corner.

Link to mock up here: http://homepage.mac.com/cloweth/PhotoAlbum6.html

I claim no originality here and freely admit to �stealing� other�s ideas. Since this is for fun with an eye towards improving the GUI, I expect no compensation other than clamorous accolades from my fellow Mac users.

The Finder view I portray is a straight rip off of this:
http://homepage.mac.com/cloweth/PhotoAlbum5.html

themexican's contribution
No graphics here yet, but he offers some compelling arguments. http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Forum3/HTML/001533.html

Chessman�s contribution
Here�s a hot topic on MacFixit Forums: He critiques the Ars Technica article.
http://www.macfixit.com/ultimate/For...ML/000892.html

The Real Steve S'es contribution
He started a lively discussion here: MacAddict Forums/MacOS X ebate/Aqua, the Dock, and Interface Design

Link: http://forums.macaddict.com/bbfarm/F...ML/000020.html

Again, instead of scattering GUI mock ups all over, let�s add links to interesting ideas here. I welcome your input, suggestions and constructive criticism. Perhaps this will help us as Mac users get a handle on the most elegant manner in which to enhance MacOS X GUI.

Thanks for your time.

I was really impressed by this:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~hinson/macosxidea/

I think the desktop-as-a-dock idea is great, as it is now the quazi-desktop is basically useless. This system keeps the idea of the old desktop together and puts it in a really useful place

[Milio]

You start by asking for all the various mock-ups, a fine idea, then you want to place your own restrictions on what qualify?

Just because you don't like that a cascading menu may only open a Finder window doesn't mean it won't be useful for someone else. Thousands of people do this by putting their drive icon in the Apple menu. Other people think that's too complicated or unnecesary. The point is, it's configurable. You want to even remove that as a possibility from the outset.

When I posted my DiskDock idea, I was inundated with people praising the idea and hoping it gets implemented. But because you don't like sliding things on the side, it's not good enough for your mock-up thread. So I won't including a link so as not to upset you.

Your attitude is exactly the problem with OS X right now. Many different interface options have been removed in the name of "ease of use" and now we have the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none Dock and the new and confusing Finder.

Bah! I hope people don't play along in this thread.

[cloweth]

In response to Milio's post above:

�You start by asking for all the various mock-ups, a fine idea, then you want to place your own restrictions on what qualify?�

How did I do that?

I am allowed to express my thoughts aren�t I?

I discussed what I believe is Apple�s prime motivating principle.

Then, right up front I offered my thoughts. Which I believe are in line with most GUI designers which I then discuss. Hey, they�re the experts, I�m not. Maybe someone who is not an �expert� will come up with some fantastic new paradigm, shattering the experts� conventions. Wouldn�t that be great? Until that happens tho�, I�m pretty inclined to agree with them.

Part of my intention was to spark discussion. Without my taking a provocative stand, it would be a pretty dull thread indeed, wouldn�t it? It got you to respond didn�t it?

I most certainly did not place any restrictions on what could be posted.

�But because you don't like sliding things on the side, it's not good enough for your mock-up thread. So I won't including a link so as not to upset you.�

Are you Hinson? At cornell.edu? If you are, I listed you third in my list. He presents a side sliding thingy. It�s the only one I know of.

If you�re not Hinson, then please, post a link. Just because you�re upset with me, please don�t deny others an opportunity to view your ideas.

**********

I just did a search for all your postings. Found your �Disk Dock- a proposal�.

�I was inundated with people praising the idea and hoping it gets implemented.�

That�s great. How did you get inundated w/o an Email address? Your �Desk Dock- a proposal� thread got 24 posts as of this writing: http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Forum3/HTML/001511.html

Dear readers, here�s the links to the graphics: http://www.geocities.com/kgraeme00/diskdock/
http://www.natural-innovations.com/aqua/docksplit.gif

With so many accolades, why does my one lonely voice prompt you to react so defensively?

Do you think that I knew of your postings and links and deliberately left them out? Why would you expect me to know such things? I�m sorry, I�ve never heard of you, I had no knowlege of your existence �til your post.

That�s the main reason I started this thread. So I, and readers of this thread, could explore GUI possibilities submitted/referred by people such as yourself.

[cloweth]

Oops. I wrote:

"How did you get inundated w/o an Email address?"

An Email address isn't listed on the post but is included in this link:

http://www.geocities.com/kgraeme00/diskdock/

My apologies.

[zythemac]

I don't mean to ruffle any feathers. I really don't care, but credit is due where it's due. This is now the second thread that I've seen this "great" idea and mock-up by Hinson. I for one feel bad for Milio. I'm not trying to be anti-Hinson, I'm really not, but everyone has been saying what a great job Hinson did, when in fact Hinson's idea and mock-up are almost identical to Milio's. When I first went to Hinson's mock-up, I thought, WTF that looks like Milio's old post, but it's taking longer to load. Then I saw the minor differences. This isn't quite a big deal, except no credit was given to Milio until after Milio confronted (very nicely I might add) Hinson. Hinson even thanked everyone for their comments and said that he had in fact sent the idea in to Apple, which I believe Milio had already done weeks earlier. Again, Hinson, if you're reading, No offense is meant, really. You totally gave Milio credit for the original idea when he asked, that's cool (I realize that you said that you also had a simialar idea a while ago). I only bring this up because, although I think Milio has been extremely cool about this, I can totally understand his frustration.

[Hinson]

Originally posted by zythemac:
I don't mean to ruffle any feathers. I really don't care, but credit is due where it's due. This is now the second thread that I've seen this "great" idea and mock-up by Hinson. I for one feel bad for Milio. I'm not trying to be anti-Hinson, I'm really not, but everyone has been saying what a great job Hinson did, when in fact Hinson's idea and mock-up are almost identical to Milio's. When I first went to Hinson's mock-up, I thought, WTF that looks like Milio's old post, but it's taking longer to load. Then I saw the minor differences.

Minor differences? Did you watch the whole thing???

I added my own idea (that I have been pushing for a while now) for pop-up menus for folders in the Dock. It's a perfect Apple Menu replacement, it allows for much greater organization, it adds a very convenient way to access the file structure from any folder the user wants to put in the Dock, etc.

I included the disk dock idea because I thought it was also very nice, though I wanted it to be a desktop dock which would hold the trash as well.

I don't mean to sound so upset at your post, but the desktop dock idea was only one small part of the whole mock-up, and you acted like it was the whole thing.

As for colweth's note about it not being a practical GUI, I'll address that in my next post.


-Jay

[zythemac]

I did see the whole thing, and like I was trying to stress in my post, the object of it was not to upset you, just to try to make it clear why Milio's post may have sounded so negative.

Listen children. Don't you guys think it is a little bit silly to be fighting about credit over a mockup that maybe 50 people are going to look up. Ditto for all those quasi-legal disclaimers on your mockups. My advice: everyone chill out. Have fun. Post your ideas. Nobody cares who did what... They are all aliases anyway. Do you think you are gaining fame for being FatDude123? Do you guys know the names of the guys who wrote the Finder? What about the guy who invented tabbed windows? Who cares. Let the best idea win.

[Hinson]

Originally posted by cloweth:
...
I believe that Apple is striving for elegance in it�s GUI above all else. Why otherwise offer the Dock as a solution? With that in mind, here are my thoughts. I doubt they will be welcomed by all.

The use of modifier keys is anything but obvious or intuitive. Plus it takes two hands. ...

Hierarchical menus really shouldn�t be more than 2 or 3 levels deep at the most....

Drop down menus should be just that-drop down. They�re much easier and quicker to navigate than pop up menus. Up pop menus are too Windowish anyway.

Results from studies conducted years ago suggest that using elements along the sides of the screen are especially difficult to use and are to be avoided. (This is a much as I remember. Can anyone cite the actual study? Perhaps it�s in the Ars Technica article.)

...

Hinson�s contribution
This individual has gone to great lengths in his mock up. It�s animated!
...
Here�s link to mock up:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~hinson/macosxidea/

This is by far the most sophisticated GUI suggestion I�ve yet encountered. But, from my point of view it falls flat on a few points.

It utilizes the dreaded �side of screen� for navigation. Hierarchical menus potentially many levels deep. With all it�s sliding in/out and h-menu navigation, what do you arrive at? The Finder! Good grief. It you want to go to the Finder why don�t you just activate it? Plus, it uses modifier keys.

A wonderful animation and very entertaining. But, as a practical GUI? I don�t think so.

....

Oh please give me a break.

First, use of modifier keys for pop-up menus has become a standard part of OS 9. If you don't want to use modifiers, then just click and hold for a second to get the same effect. This is a very nice way to add much more functionality to items that before you could only click or double-click. It's accepted in OS 9, it is very useful, it has great potential for time saving options, and it should be strongly (and intelligently) utilized in X.

Next Hierarchic menus became very widely used with later versions of the apple menu, and I find them extremely useful. Perhaps you want to have to open your control panel window in OS 9 to access a control panel (and then close it when you're done), but I'll take hierarchic access from the Apple menu any day, thank you. I use hierarchic menus in Action Menus, I use them in my Apple menu, and I use them in a great utility called DragStrip. In fact, DragStrip does a lot of things I wish the Dock would do. I have pop-UP folder menus that act just like the ones in my mock-up, and I use them heavily (I rarely find it necessary to go through the HASSLE of opening a finder window and navigating through it to a deeper level, for example).

Also, I usually don't have to go too deep in a Hierarchic menu because I keep all my most important folders in DragStrip. Thus, I don't have to navigate down from my top level to get to those folders--though I may navigate a couple of levels deep in one of those folders every now and then. The ability to drag and drop items into the hierarchy is also extremely useful. Again, I rarely open a finder window any more--I have a much quicker way of doing the same thing using the same sort of interface I advocate in my mock-up.

Further, it is true that at the end of accessing such a menu you may end up in a finder window, but you get there much faster. Also, you don't HAVE to end up at a finder window, you could end up in an application you launch from the menu (without opening an unnecessary finder window)!!!

If Apple implemented my idea, I would NOT put very many apps directly in the dock. I would make folders like Utilities, Apps, Multimedia, Internet, Games, etc. and put aliases to my most used apps in the appropriate folder. I would then put those folders in my dock and TA DA!!! I've got a nicely organized way to access a LOT of often used apps without cluttering up the dock! See what a little thought can do with something as simple as a pop-up hierarchic menu. They are VERY useful!

In short, no matter how you personally view it, hierarchic menus have proven to be extremely useful and efficient.

Finally, please note that in the Mac world, the desktop is mostly thought of as being the right-hand side of the screen. THAT is where the desktop dock should go. No matter what studies say, Mac users are used to going to the right side of the screen to access desktop icons. I haven't heard a lot of complaints about that (none, in fact), and putting a slide-in dock there is a perfect addition to Aqua, as was so beautifully shown to us first by Milio!

So, I just don't have much respect for your interface criticisms. Some things that you suggest as not part of a practical GUI are already part of one I use PRECISELY because it is more practical and efficient. Other problems you suggest just don't make sense (do you really think people find pop-up menus that much more problematic than drop-down menus??? Please! There's only so much space at the top of the screen (I would never put a Dock there too), and using the bottom means having pop-up menus. I've NEVER had even an inkling of a problem with using pop-up over pull-down.)

Anyway, I hope you will reconsider the practicality of these GUI enhancements (which have actually proven themselves already) and see that many of the ideas that you put down are actually must-haves if apple wants the Dock to be a truly great part of its GUI.


-Jay

[Hinson]

Originally posted by zythemac:
I did see the whole thing, and like I was trying to stress in my post, the object of it was not to upset you, just to try to make it clear why Milio's post may have sounded so negative.

Hi again... I do understand what you were saying about Milio's post, and I certainly believe his mock-up should have been included!!! (In fact, Milio, if you're reading this, I'll include a link to yours on my page, if you like).

I was upset because you basically stated flatly that my mock-up was nothing more than a minor enhancement to his. My point was that such a claim was simpy false.

Anyway, I'll stop being upset now

Later.


-Jay

[Hinson]

Originally posted by zythemac:
I did see the whole thing, and like I was trying to stress in my post, the object of it was not to upset you, just to try to make it clear why Milio's post may have sounded so negative.

Hi again... I do understand what you were saying about Milio's post, and I certainly believe his mock-up should have been included!!! (In fact, Milio, if you're reading this, I'll include a link to yours on my page, if you like).

I was upset because you basically stated flatly that my mock-up was nothing more than a minor enhancement to his. My point was that such a claim was simpy false.

Anyway, I'll stop being upset now

Later.


-Jay

[citoc]

Somebody has to say it: Can't we all just get along?

Now that that is out of the way . . .

So essentaly, the feeling I'm getting from all the different UI threads is that everyone is in agreement that in its current form, OS X isn't great yet. Valid point. But now all the discussion is on what is the best way to get the functionality out of OS X that everyone would like. Good point as well.

Personaly, I'm still waiting for the knock-your-socks-off, revolutionary, amazingly-easy-to-use interface to appear. Until then, OS X is not any worse or any better than any solution I've yet to see. Well, I'd say it is probably better than Gnome or KDE, but then I'd get more people upset. And we wouldn't want that

Seriously though, I'm a big fan of choice. Hirearc menues are great for people who like them. The new Finder is great for people who like it. The old Finder is great for people who like it. The Apple menu is great for people who like it. (I think you get the point) I'd like to see choice, not just for the sake of choice, but real valuble usable choices. For what its worth, modifier clicking/right clicking is great for a power user, but I have see to many newbies have no idea what that other mouse button is for.

------------------
ChangeIsTheOnlyConstant

[Milio]

I'm not really concerned with credit. My concern was that restrictions were being placed from the outset that excluded or were prejudiced against people's contributions. Cloweth has started another thread that is not exclusionary, and I think that's great.

Hinson's idea is a good one, flawed more by Apple's current OS X filesystem than anything. Not his fault. Hinson, linking to my example is up to you. If it was a source of inspiration, great. Everybody likes credit, but it's an opensource idea (openIdea?).

I personally think a sliding dock for disks is a great idea, whether I thought of it or not. It has the potential to be implemented poorly, but there are ways to remedy that. Instead, some people just want to kill the idea from the outset.

Here's my Dock Critique.

[cloweth]

This site is a compilation of screenshots of many different OS's including MacOS X. Perhaps useful for inspiration.

mhague
http://screenshots.haque.net/