Re: metallized interface (offtopic rant)

FROM : Simon Stapleton
DATE : Sat Nov 02 11:33:20 2002

On Friday, Nov 1, 2002, at 23:48 Europe/Paris, David W. Halliday wrote:

> Simon Stapleton wrote:
>> - Window close button now next to minimise button.  At least they
>> kept the 'closing the window doesn't kill the app' behaviour, so
>> we're not quite windows yet.
>
>    Yes!  The Close button should be separate!  Furthermore, for
> right-to-left language systems, the "most /important/ first, most
> /dangerous/ last" philosophy, that was used in /most/ of the original
> Mac OS (before it was called Mac OS), would dictate that the close
> button /should/ be on the right, while the minimize and "optimize"
> buttons should be on the left.  (Yes, I know this is exactly the
> opposite of the classic Mac OS, but I submit that that was more of an
> historical accident:  Just look at how the system evolved.)

I have no preference as to what side it's on, just as long as it's no
next to some other innocuous thing.  This is one of the few things that
really irritates me about OSX.


>> - No windowshade (except by using 3rd-party additions)
>> - Minimise button.  What purpose does that serve that wasn't served
>> by window shading?
>
>    I wouldn't mind at all having both "windowshading" and minimizing.
> I would use them for different purposes.  (Though, admittedly,
> speaking only for myself, I prefer minimization to windowshading, most
> of the time.)  One can use the "minimize" button, while the other
> would be activated by double-clicking on the title bar.  (Let the user
> decide which is which.  It certainly makes no sense to have both
> modalities for the same function.)

WindowShadeX is yor frend ;-)

I can actually see a need for minimise, although I don't use it due to
my setup.  I shade, or I hide the entire app.  I keep my dock small and
hidden, so I can't easily distinguish between minimised windows via the
dock icon, and therefore minimising serves me no purpose whatsoever.

>> - Toolbars too damn big.  Actually, I'd go as far as to say that all
>> the UI elements are now too big.  I didn't buy a 19" monitor so my
>> toolbars could take up more space, dammit.
>
>    Hopefully, there will come a day when we have a more "true" device
> independent system, where we, as users, can decide how many pixels
> represent a unit of length.  Right now there are too many aspects of
> the user interface that insist upon being drawn based upon numbers of
> pixels (though this will help shrink things as we go to displays with
> more than 100 pixels/inch).  (I look forward to the day when our
> displays will have upward of 300 pixels/inch.)

Indeed.  As resolutions go up, the toolbars become more usable, but the
aforementioned close button becomes a smaller and smaller target, and
relatively closer to the minimise button...

Simon

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