[cla]

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

What about some fancy waves or some incredible visual effect while applications load?? I can't believe Apple hasn't done that!

lol! really =D

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by cla

Only the last used, minimized window in that application will show up. The others will suddenly show up minimized in the dock. Try this in a multiple window app:
Create two new documents
Minimize them both
Hide the application
Work with something else for ten minutes
Locate the very first document you created.

I'm sorry but I can still locate it...even after 20 minutes.

Interesting. I'd like to hear you elaborate on that. (no irony intended)
I find minimizing useful but the dock "stupid", so minimizing to the dock, to me, is like... like this metaphor:

You're holding the jack of spades in your hand.
You need to look at another card from on top of the deck.
In order to do so, you have to temporarily get rid of the jack.
The only way to get rid of the jack is to insert it into the deck at a random position (because YOU won't get to choose the position).

So how are you to find the jack again, 10 minuters later?
Easy! You KNOW it's the jack of spades! So all you have to do is search through the 52 cards of the deck until you find it! Unless of course all the spades were hidden, which you realize after having browsed the remaining 39 cards...

I see what the problem is now, you're not using OS features like they're intended to be used. Anyone who plasters the desktop with windows is doing something wrong. Anyone who plasters the Dock with icons is doing something wrong. Anyone who minimizes dozens of windows to the Dock is doing something wrong.

I'm sorry but the 'I should be able to use the OS the way I want to use it'-card doesn't work here. Machines, doors, windows, cars, bikes, all work a certain way...some give a bit more options than others but if you can't use your bike as a hat or the window as a door. They're not intended to work like that.

Apple won't put upper limits on the number of icons you can put in the Dock or the number of windows you can minimize or windows you got open on the screen...but generally, people with some intelligence will realize there's a certain limit to things.

Every time for every minimized window! Bah.

Post a screenshot of your workflow. I'll tell you what you're doing wrong. Also...don't be shy to post a picture of your hat.

Given two or more choices of interface methods and no rational method of choosing one above the others, I have seen the problem "solved" by expediently putting all of the proposed methods. This is rationalized as giving the user a choice, as if the user were an interface expert and will make the most productive choice

If you say so...there is a rational method though. Just seems like dense people can't figure it out.

Speaking of muscle memory: Muscle memory rhymes bad with choice. On the contrary, escaping choice is a prerequisite.

Muscle memory is what helps you access, manipulate and move things without bringing the action into consciousness. As soon as you "remember" something, you've already gotten past muscle memory and into consciousness, giving the user's brain yet another problem to wrestle.
In the case of the buttons above, muscle memory can at most guide you in the right direction (or left direction in the Macintosh case) for the very first milliseconds of the process of closing a window.
The rest of the process, however, demands consciousness and 100% visual attention, briefly taking away focus from the task at hand. Briefly taking away focus every time you need to close, move, fit-to-content, minimize or resize a window. Rediculous.

Windows are so fundamental that you should be able to manipulate them without thinking, without bringing anything into consciousness, without letting go of the task at hand.

You'll have to explain yourself better. I don't understand the link between what you've said, what I've said, and graphite buttons. Any of these buttons will demand some kind of consciousness...afterall, you wouldn't want to unconsciously close a window or minimize one.

What I'm talking about is button position. I don't sit for even a millisecond wondering which of the 3 titlebar buttons closes the window. I just know the left-most button closes the window. The only thinking I'm doing has nothing to do with muscle memory...I'm only thinking, 'do I really want to close the window.'

Are these your personal presumptions? Because you make them sound very much like facts.
(I don't mean to be rude, just don't write stuff as were they carved in stone unless you can point me to the research to back it up.)

There is nothing in that design appealing to sensory visual memory.
There is no natural mapping between their positions and their purpose.
There is no natural mapping between their colors and their purpose.
There is no cue whatsoever as to predicting the action of each button, unless you hover the mouse pointer on top of the buttons, which is plain, bad ui design.

Are human beings so inept that they can't learn or adapt?

Nothing has meaning until you attach it to something. Just like you can attach the color red to 'close window', you can attach 'left-most graphite button' to 'close window'.

There's nothing natural to any GUI.

(If I were to wake you up in the middle of the night and ask which color the fit-to-content button has, how long would you need to think? Probably not at all if there truly is a "meaning".)

Ask me anything in the middle of the night and you get a punch in the face.

As for "attaching meaning": Instead of assigning arbitrary colors that look good to the buttons, they might as well have attached arbitrary icons: the bear for closing, the bottle of rum for minimizing and the flesh wound for fit-to-content. I dare state even this design would be more efficient. At least the user would be urged to make (somewhat bizarre) associations.

( Normally I'm against icons... :> )

Ok...what are you suggesting? I'm not sure anymore. How are people supposed to manipulate windows? Tell me. I have no clue how any of this can be natural. And I have no clue how someone can't, in a matter of minutes, attach meaning to things by position, color or icons. Tell me.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally Posted by cla

lol! really =D

Well, no not really

The only possible reason for the ripple effect if you are very open minded and liberal in UI design is that it shows that the widgets are on top of the other windows and desktop. Even though it is apparent as soon as you press F12 and the screen dims and the widgets fly in on top.

Eye-candy for eye-candy sake. Some would say it is there while widgets load, but that depends. On today's computers, sure. On tomorrow's machines probably not as the widgets will load instantaniously. On yesterday's machines (the machines that REALLY need some distraction while waiting for a widget to load) there is no ripple effect.

I'm not saying the ripple effect is bad or that it is good, just that it is there for its own sake.

PS: I don't think it would be uncharacteristic for Apple today to make a CoreGraphics effect for normal application launching. I'd consider it a fantastic lack of good taste but it seems to be low at Apple these days in the software department.

Nothing but brilliance in the hardware department. There is no better designed computer hardware than Apple hardware.

cheers

W-Y

[cla]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!!

I see what the problem is now, you're not using OS features like they're intended to be used.

Never mind...

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!!

You really haven't learned a thing have you.

Muscle memory can only go so far. For simple, repetitive tasks like button posititioning or menus, it's fine...but for a spatial Finder the size of a frickin' encyclopedia, it's not. Try remembering exactly where you put everything, in every window, Yutani...I dare ya.

Promises, promises..

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!!

Since you're a lost cause, I'll just ignore you from now on.

As for muscle memory and spacialness, I remember where things are in my apartment, what is in my car, my drawers, my jacket, what books I own in my library, what CDs I own and where to find all of this.

Learning the place of thousands of things isn't hard. We are made to learn things like that. It is what we are good at. If you can't do this then perhaps there is something not quite right with you. If you find things like Spotlight a godsend, while the rest of us are less than thrilled then perhaps there is something wrong with you.

Perhaps you have a difficulty in remembering the positions of things, but I assure you the rest of us don't.

The average western man knows thousands of signs, traffic signs, commercial logos, warning signs and computer icons - each unique with a distinct meaning. People know that the Internet Explorer icon means "internet". They don't know it is called "internet explorer". They don't really think about it. I have seen this time and again.

Muscle memory, spaciality and visual memory. Word memory is another thing and it is very primitive. Imagine playing a football, controlling yourself with words. Your opponents would use muscle memory, visual memory and their feeling of spaciality.

Quite simply, stop trying to rewrite what you think people are or should be. Our innate senses are faster, better and more effective than any learned sense. Words, paths, inconsistency and irregularities slow everyone down. Even you. You are just beating your head against a wall. Your head is starting to bleed.It is sad.

cheers

W-Y

[Anubis IV]

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

What about some fancy waves or some incredible visual effect while applications load?? I can't believe Apple hasn't done that!

Splash screens and "loading" bars generally serve that purpose, and since applications take a longer time to load, that sort of feedback is more valuable than some fancy visual that has little meaning in and of itself. As for the applications that don't have any startup visuals of any sort...well, I suppose Apple has left it up to the developers...after all, developers have had total control over their apps for decades.

Widgets, on the other hand, at least as implemented in 10.4, were not around before 10.4, so Apple has had the chance to define how they'll be used and implemented from the ground up. The ripple is just their way of doing it. I do agree that it is a bit much, and just as they have done with many other effects, I bet that they'll tone it down quite a bit with 10.5 and beyond. 10.4 has the first implementation of Dashboard, and I trust that later implementations will be much more refined. A small visual here or there to help make a point or encourage someone to visualize something a certain way is a good thing. The ripple effect borders on or is excessive though.

[cla]

Originally Posted by Anubis IV

Splash screens and "loading" bars generally serve that purpose, and since applications take a longer time to load, that sort of feedback is more valuable than some fancy visual that has little meaning in and of itself.

I think the least you can expect from a modern OS is to display a linear progress bar monitoring the startup of an application. It shouldn't have to be that hard. I'm no computer scientist, so correct me if the following won't suffice:

1) Measure the time an application needs to start "fresh".
2) Display a progress bar based upon this measurement the next time the same application launches, based on:

t(x) = k * (1-x)A + c

where
t = time to start the application
x = percentage of app already in memory
A = time to start application "fresh", i e nothing already in memory.
k, c = constants in case I should be wrong :>

What do you think?

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

Promises, promises..
Even you. You are just beating your head against a wall. Your head is starting to bleed.It is sad.

Uh...what's wrong with you?

Words, paths, inconsistency and irregularities slow everyone down.

And that's why spatialness on the desktop is slow and on it's way out.

Paths slow everyone down.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by cla

I think the least you can expect from a modern OS is to display a linear progress bar monitoring the startup of an application. It shouldn't have to be that hard. I'm no computer scientist, so correct me if the following won't suffice:

1) Measure the time an application needs to start "fresh".
2) Display a progress bar based upon this measurement the next time the same application launches, based on:

t(x) = k * (1-x)A + c

where
t = time to start the application
x = percentage of app already in memory
A = time to start application "fresh", i e nothing already in memory.
k, c = constants in case I should be wrong :>

What do you think?

You'll need those constants alright because it's not as easy it may sound. You're not just loading an app into memory. You may be loading plugins, libraries, files, etc. On launch, the app has to figure how many of these are going to be loaded. There's just too many factors involved in an OS or app launch that can throw a progress bar off.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

As for muscle memory and spacialness, I remember where things are in my apartment, what is in my car, my drawers, my jacket, what books I own in my library, what CDs I own and where to find all of this.

Learning the place of thousands of things isn't hard. We are made to learn things like that.

No, you're wrong. You don't remember the exact position of any of those items. You remember that ladles go in the drawer by the stove, and when you go to get a ladle, you search for it within that space. You do not remember the exact location of everything; instead, things are organized such that they can be easily searched for in the future.

A related test: if I ask you "Do you own a stapler? Where is it?" you can undoubtedly answer with perfect precision. But if I ask you to list, with high accuracy, the contents of your supplies drawer, you will almost surely miss things.

Regardless of your claims, there is ample proof that humans are exactly not designed to memorize things. We're designed with high cognition, so we make natural connections like "ladle=cooking equipment=stored in kitchen". We don't memorize normally, we form cognitive connections that allow us to basically generate necessary information on the fly.

In user interfaces, this means that by learning just a few key things (e.g. every app has a Preferences window in its app menu), a user can just re-discover where things are as needed.

Originally Posted by cla

I think the least you can expect from a modern OS is to display a linear progress bar monitoring the startup of an application. It shouldn't have to be that hard. I'm no computer scientist, so correct me if the following won't suffice:

1) Measure the time an application needs to start "fresh".
2) Display a progress bar based upon this measurement the next time the same application launches, based on:

t(x) = k * (1-x)A + c

where
t = time to start the application
x = percentage of app already in memory
A = time to start application "fresh", i e nothing already in memory.
k, c = constants in case I should be wrong :>

What do you think?

The problem is that most major apps these days use some sort of plugin or module system. Since the load time of each module isn't known, the load time can't be added up beforehand.

Note that in Tiger, not even Mac OS X attempts to predict boot time any more: The duration of the progress bar shown is based on past boot times, saved in cache. In fact, the progress bar now simply reads a cache file that says "it's gonna take around x seconds to boot" and makes the bar last x seconds -- it is in no way tied to any events in the boot process, and can even be launched after the system has finished booting. Of course, this means that if you add something new that takes longer to boot, the boot progress bar won't be accurate until the second time you reboot with that configuration.

tooki

[moreno]

this would take more time to launch the application.

[Weyland-Yutani]

@tooki

no you are wrong and I don't own a stapler. I do own corcscrew and I know *exactly* where it is.

But you are wrong, humans can memorize anything and are incredibly more fast at finding things that way than by writing in keywords.

I remember a photo I took, I know where I put it, I'll find it in a sec. Perhaps there is something wrong with you too? It is not normal for people to work faster with words than visual thought and actions.

People usually remember faces. But have a harder time to put a name to the face.

There is no example where words come up before visual images. Even writers visualize before they write anything down.

cheers

W-Y

[tooki]

You are proving my point! Humans suck at rote memorization.

You are dead wrong that humans can memorize anything. A few very unique people can. Tell me to memorize the phone book, and i'll take it and whack you on the noggin for suggesting something that ridiculous. Average joes like me do not have photographic memory and cannot memorize large amounts of info. This has been proven repeatedly. Why do you think phone numbers are 7 digits? Cuz that's the longest number people can usually remember. (You usually only call people within a few area codes, so typically there you're remembering the area code separately.)

I suggest you read up on this before you spout more nonsense.

tooki

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally Posted by tooki

You are proving my point! Humans suck at rote memorization.

You are dead wrong that humans can memorize anything. A few very unique people can. Tell me to memorize the phone book, and i'll take it and whack you on the noggin for suggesting something that ridiculous. Average joes like me do not have photographic memory and cannot memorize large amounts of info. This has been proven repeatedly. Why do you think phone numbers are 7 digits? Cuz that's the longest number people can usually remember. (You usually only call people within a few area codes, so typically there you're remembering the area code separately.)

I suggest you read up on this before you spout more nonsense.

tooki

No I proved my point. I also proved you can't discuss with anyone who disagrees with you in a civilized manner.

BTW it is common courtecy to reply to PMs, especially if you are an admin and it is concerning your work here

cheers

W-Y

[tooki]

I do no work here. I volunteer, and until you pay me, I can't feel bad about forgetting to respond to every PM that comes my way.

tooki

[CaptainHaddock]

Originally Posted by tooki

Regardless of your claims, there is ample proof that humans are exactly not designed to memorize things. We're designed with high cognition, so we make natural connections like "ladle=cooking equipment=stored in kitchen". We don't memorize normally, we form cognitive connections that allow us to basically generate necessary information on the fly.

In user interfaces, this means that by learning just a few key things (e.g. every app has a Preferences window in its app menu), a user can just re-discover where things are as needed.

That's the best description of human memory and its relation to GUI organization I've ever read.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally Posted by tooki

I do no work here. I volunteer, and until you pay me, I can't feel bad about forgetting to respond to every PM that comes my way.

tooki

Ain't that grand

However in that case you *asked* me to continue a conversation through PMs. Else I would hardly have *expected* you to reply.

cheers

W-Y