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All posts tagged "ui"


Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Which UI Would You Prefer? Seems Like a No Brainer to Me

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "The Competition" @ 01:00 PM

http://macmegasite.com/2011/08/29/a...Community+News)

"Microsoft's Windows 8 team today posted a blog entry detailing the user interface "improvements" in the Windows 8 explorer. This perfectly illustrates the difference between Microsoft & Apple's user interface philosophies."

Yea, pretty much Apple rules this one. I like a simpler look, and this certainly isn't it. It just seems that they are trying to put way too much stuff in a menu bar to make it visible to the user. It seems strange to me because, as the author points out, users are more likely to use right clicks or hotkeys to issue commands. If that is the case then why clutter up the command or menu bar? I certainly prefer the Apple minimalistic view. You can read the blog post about this change here, and perhaps that will shed some light on it but I didn't find any when I read through it. What are your thoughts?

Tags: software, ui, windows, os x

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Stainless Steel Prototyping Stencil

Posted by Vincent Ferrari in "Apple Talk" @ 07:00 AM

http://www.designcommission.com/sho...ne-stencil-kit/

"Quickly sketch out iPhone UI prototypes. Brainstorm your application ideas using our precision cut stainless steel stencil and mechanical pencil."

If you do any kind of development, you know the importance of prototyping. This should make that job a lot easier and it's stainless steel, so it's automatically cooler!


Thursday, March 5, 2009

Gruber Shares Gripes With Safari 4

Posted by Vincent Ferrari in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 01:00 PM

http://daringfireball.net/2009/03/s...i_4_public_beta

"Safari started life in 2003 as a fast browser, at least by the then-low standards of Mac OS X web browsing, and it has gotten nothing but faster since. I fully expect other high-quality browsers like Firefox and Chrome to leapfrog ahead as they reach future milestones. What really matters isn’t whether Safari is the fastest web browser in the world, but simply that its performance, in actual use, is state-of-the-art. Prior to Safari, this just wasn’t true for any Mac web browser. The difference Safari and WebKit have wrought to web browsing (and HTML web view rendering system-wide) simply cannot be overstated. And so in a nut, the latest version of WebKit deserves nothing but accolades; but Safari 4? Well, we have some issues."

Most of his problems with Safari seem like minor quibbles that would be utterly transparent to 90% of the users. I do agree with him on the UI inconsistencies (including some things that were changed since Safari 3 for no apparent reason), but I don't think that's a big deal. For all we know, they're changing again in Snow Leopard and this is a preview of how things are going to be.

The one thing I'm totally sick of hearing about, though, is the damn progress bar in the address bar. Okay people, we get it. It's been over a week already. Either stop using Safari 4, put the damn thing back by hacking it in, or shut up! Seriously! I've never heard so much whinging over one stupid little feature.


Monday, March 2, 2009

Tabs in Titlebars Ruin People's Experience?

Posted by Vincent Ferrari in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 01:00 PM

http://www.macdailynews.com/index.p..._a_ui_disaster/

"To me, it seems like Apple had heard that 'Chrome has tabs on top,' but instead of just being honest and admitting that Google got it right, they set a goal for themselves to make as many arbitrary and useless changes as possible so they could still claim they were innovating. All these changes resulted in this botched and confusing tabtitlebar abomination that not only looks horribly out of place on both Mac OS X and Windows, but is also a functional disaster," Holwerda writes. "I hope Apple's Safari engineers recover from this monumental design frak-up quickly, because if this stays the way it is, I won't be using Safari on my Mac anymore."

I have to say I disagree wholeheartedly with the criticisms of the "Tabs on Top" change to Safari's UI. For me, Tabs on Top enables me to have more screen real estate on my 1440 x 900 laptop for browsing. I like that the tabs take up the same amount of space the window title does, and I think that's one of the things the Chrome team got right from day one. To call the Tab display a "UI disaster" is just patently ridiculous. It's one thing to not like something, but completely another to just shred it in such an overdramatic hyperbolic way.

People who didn't like the changes have come up with Terminal commands to hack up Safari 4.0 to look more like 3.0+, but I've never been happier with Safari than I am with it right now with no modifications. Of course, I didn't just see the new UI, freak out, and immediately figure out how to go back to the old one (yep, I actually tried it, used it, then judged it!).


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