On 13 Feb 2005, at 08:03, Randi Joseph wrote:
Hello Everyone,
I think that it is very important that certain aspects of the
interface be
customizable. In particular, a static/floating menubar option and
left/right. Lets face it, left scrollbars might be intuitive to old
NeXT
users, but it is absolutely foreign to 99% of the world. It seems
sensible
to some degree for left-handed users, but flat out disconcerting for
right-handed people.
I don't think it's an issue of what is intuitive or handedness (I'm
right
handed) ... I guess that the fact that you think having the
scrollbar on the
right is intuitive is a testament to the pervasiveness of the
ms-windows/mac
interface based purely on an early (historical) design decision.
The reason for having the scroller on the left is that many/most
windows
contain text, and our text (in the west) tracks from left to right
and top to
bottom.
I agree that having the option of placing the scroller on the right
is useful
... but my reasoning is different ... we need that option for three
cases -
1. eastern users who have text tracking from right to left
2. people brought up with ms-windows etc who just can't or don't
want to
change the habits they learned.
3. people who just like the scroller on the right ... the fact that a
scroller on the left is fundamentally more convenient for most people
does
not mean that it's best for everyone.
Themeability is not enough.
Apple spends millions of dollars getting its interface right. Even
Steve
Jobs who manages to force a single button mouse down our throats
realized
that an made the change.
If you mean handedness of scrollers, I believe Apple/Steve *started*
the
right handed scroller (unless you count xerox) and most systems
mindlessly
copied that.
If you mean that Apple has changed to have a two button mouse, I'm
glad to
hear it ... I resent the single button on my apple laptop.
It will be easier to sell (GNUSTEP/Objective-C) to developers if
some of
apple's well thought out interface ideas are adopted.
NeXTstep introduced a lot of gui improvements (they were able to
learn from
the design errors of MacOS/MS-Windows). Some of these got into
MacOS-X, but
others were left out because of the difficulty of changing the habits
of the
existing userbase when Apple tried to move people to MacOSX.
Basically Apple
tried to make NeXTstep look as much like MacOS as they could, in
order to
minimise disruption, but that meant throwing out some improvements.
So at present in MacOS-X we have a user interface consisting of -
Many features inherited from the early MacOS, some bad, some good.
Some features introduced by NeXTstep to fix early MacOS errors.
A few features introduced recently which are genuinely new.
Given that situation, I wonder what you mean by
"some of apple's well thought out interface ideas"
What are the things that you think are good new ideas we could adopt?