Re: Cocoa et al as HCI usability problem

FROM : Gary L. Wade
DATE : Sun May 18 18:03:09 2008

Just to add some insight, when reading the Cocoa documentation, it's
very helpful when a developer also has some degree of exposure to
Interface Builder.  Take heart, though, as Interface Builder is just a
click away.

Once you have an idea how things somewhat work within Interface Builder
and have seen it simulate the interface within Interface Builder or run
it in a sample application, lots of things in the documentation begin to
make sense, especially the date picker.

[As a caveat, the date picker class is a very easy one for me to
understand at face value, as I wrote a UI widget and class very much
like it using THINK Class Library almost 15 years ago that was used in
an industry leader's software product, and I'm a frequent development
user of date/time technologies with respect to internationalization.]

As Aaron Hillegass says in the starting pages of his Cocoa intro book,
and I'm paraphrasing, programming is hard, and if you don't get it
immediately, it doesn't mean you're not smart; it just means you need
some more time working through the examples.

By the way, you really should build and try out the examples installed
under the /Developer path.  Build them, add breakpoints in strategic
places, make changes, incorporate their code in your own, rewrite it as
needed to suit your own needs, and you'll be happier.