My name is
Jack Moffett. I am an Interaction Designer with over ten years of experience. According to
Herb Simon, that makes me an expert, so I must have something worth sharing. I have started this venture as an exercise to spur critical thinking about my chosen profession. I hope that others may find it thought provoking as well.
DesignAday will present a brief thought about Design every weekday.
I’ve had an annoyance with the bouncing mail icon in the dock for quite some time. I like the notification mechanism, but I don’t like the fact that it bounces even when the Mail application has focus. In the past, I would ignore it while reading my mail. Then, I would minimize Mail, or switch to a different space, and remember, too late, that the icon was still bouncing. Clicking on the icon would stop the bouncing but bring Mail back up at the same time.
Snow Leopard hasn’t entirely fixed this, but it has mitigated the annoyance. I noticed that when an icon is bouncing in the dock, simply moving the cursor over it will stop the bouncing. It takes that as a sign that you have seen and acknowledged the notification.
Once upon a time, my applications were categorized in folders by the type of work they allowed me to do. I had a folder for my design apps, one for games, one for internet apps, one for “productivity” apps like Word Perfect and MacinTax… Yes, I’m talking pre-OS X here. When I moved to OS X, I was rather annoyed at first that I couldn’t do the same thing. OS X has an Applications folder, and by golly, that’s where your applications better be. And don’t even think about creating sub-folders. But, I came to accept that. I no longer went to the folder containing the application to launch it anyway. The apps I used regularly were in the Dock. I gave up worrying about the organization of my applications.
Then a funny thing happened. The Mac became popular again—not just for users, but for developers too. It became a hot bed of indy app development with all kinds of genuinely useful applications popping up. Many of them were freeware, many more were shareware, and quite a lot were relatively cheap. More recently, bundles like MacHeist have made it very affordable to pick up a few apps I had been eyeing but never purchased, and along with them came many other apps that, while I didn’t have an immediate use for them, may be handy to have around someday. Then there are the little utilities that I’ve downloaded for one special thing that I needed to do one time. And where does it all end up?
My Applications folder now contains 145 items, a few of those being folders containing still more applications (the Utilities folder, most noticeably). I realized the other day that I have no idea what all is in there. There are applications that I used once and haven’t touched since. There are applications I’ve never used. There are apps that I’ve forgotten I have, and some that I don’t even remember getting or know what they do.
My first conclusion is that I should take some time to clean out my Applications folder. My second conclusion is that I think I’ll try introducing a little bit of organization with some choice sub-folders. My final conclusion is that I need another application—one that helps me manage my applications the same way iTunes does my music. I should be able to say, “I need to convert an audio file,” and the app would then show me all of the tools that I have that might help me to do that.
I think I’ll start by deleting Palm Desktop. Geesh!
Here’s a simple one. Is there any way to find the original file from a shortcut in Windows? On the Mac, I can right-click on an “alias”, Apple’s name for an icon that acts as a shortcut to a file, and the contextual menu provides a “Show Original” option. When selected, a window opens, revealing the file that the alias links to. I have not been able to find the equivalent functionality on Windows (as of XP—I haven’t used Vista).
I just received instructions in email explaining how to go about reporting mid-term grades. This bit caught my attention:
==> NOTE: You should be aware that using the wheel on the mouse (if it has one) to scroll down the page could change your assigned grade for a student. We recommend using the scroll bar on the side. <==
The reason for this warning is simple. In Windows, the scroll wheel will move the selection within a menu form widget. It will do this regardless of whether or not the menu is actually open. If the menu has focus, the scroll wheel will control it. So, you are filling out a form, and you have just made a selection in a menu. The menu closes. Out of habit, you finger the scroll wheel to scroll the page down to the next form entry. The page doesn’t scroll, and your selection in the menu changes to something farther down in the list. Hopefully, you notice that this has occurred and correct it. To return to scrolling the page, you must click somewhere to deselect the menu.
The Mac OS, on the other hand, does not move the selection in a menu with the scroll wheel at all, thus avoiding any chance of accidentally changing values.
In Mac OS X Leopard, Apple added a quick preview feature. Select a document, press the space bar, and you will be presented with a preview of the document, be it PDF, MS Word, or Adobe Photoshop. Of course, there has always been a thumbnail-size preview when a file is selected in the column view, but it didn’t used to be nearly so robust. Many file types will even use the preview as the file icon.
I just noticed a few days ago that the OS renders HTML pages, resolving graphics, linked CSS files, and framesets, to create the preview and thumbnails.
Another area in which Apple’s Mac OS X outshines Windows is in taking screenshots. Up until Vista, the only way to take screenshots in Windows was to press shift + print screen. This would capture the entire screen, including multiple monitors. (Correction: As Martin Polley pointed out to me, you can also use Alt + Print Screen in XP to capture the active window.) You could then paste it into Paint and save it as a file. For any other functionality, one would have to purchase an application. Vista certainly includes more functionality, but it requires launching the “Snipping Tool”, which is buried in the Accessories. The tool allows you to screenshot a window or random area of the screen, as well as the whole screen, but you then have to create a new document to put it in before you can do anything with it.
Apple has always approached screenshots mindful of how people are using them. The screenshot functions are accessed from key combinations. Command + Shift + 3 takes a screenshot of the entire screen, creating multiple images if there are multiple monitors. Command + Shift + 4 turns the cursor into crosshairs, allowing you to draw out a rectangle around the area you want to capture. X and Y coordinates are displayed with the cursor. If you want to capture a single window (or dialog, or panel, etc.), press the space bar to change from crosshairs to camera. Rolling over elements on the screen will highlight them, and a click will take the shot. Certainly, this requires learning the key commands, but it is much quicker than launching an application and having to deal with a GUI.
Screenshots are automatically saved to the desktop using a default naming convention (Picture 1, Picture 2…) as PNGs. Screenshots of individual windows are even given a transparent drop-shadow.
Quite simply, taking screenshots in Windows has always been, and continues to be, a laborious process. On the Mac, the screenshot functions stay out of your way, but are very quick when needed, and quite robust. When I need screenshots from a Windows application, I prefer to take them through the Remote Desktop client on my Mac.
UI design gets tricky when a single action can potentially invoke many functions. Take dragging, for instance. If I depress my mouse button and then move the mouse without releasing the button, my actions are interpreted as a drag. That’s straight forward enough. But a drag can be used for several things. If I drag across a list, I could be moving one item in the list, or I could be selecting multiple items in the list.
Apple judges the user’s intent based on direction. For example, in Apple’s Mail application, you can drag to select multiple messages, and you can drag one or more messages to a folder. The folders are in a column on the left side of the window. The list, of course, is vertical. So, if the initial direction of the drag is up or down, the software interprets the drag as a selection. If the initial direction of the drag is left or right, it is assumed that the user is dragging the message that was clicked on.
Now, let’s say I’m dragging a message into a folder. Apple has gone to great lengths to make sure that I can get an item to the exact location I want it. Spring-loaded folders will open to reveal subfolders if I hover over them, and the list of folders will scroll if I drag the message down to the bottom edge of the frame. That’s very convenient, but here’s where it gets tricky. The folder that I want to drop the message into is at the bottom edge of the frame, but is not the last folder in the list. As I drag the message to the folder, I slow down and pause briefly before releasing the mouse button. The software misjudges my intent, however, and scrolls the frame. In that split second, I am already committed to my action and release my mouse button while the frame is scrolling. You might think that the message has now been dropped into whichever folder happened to be under the cursor at the time the button was released. If that were the case, I wouldn’t know what folder it ended up in. I would invoke the Undo command and try again.
Fortunately, Apple has done something very smart here. They’ve decided that dropping the message while the list is scrolling is not likely something I would do on purpose. They therefore conclude that they misjudged my intent, and I actually wanted to drop the file into the folder that the cursor was over before the list began scrolling. So, they place the file in that folder.
There are a lot of software applications out there for creating visual artifacts from slideshows to spreadsheets, any number of different types of documents, flowcharts, family trees, photo albums, calendars, and labels of all sorts. One might think that all the bases are covered several times over. Bee Docs thought of a new one.
I was reading a Macworld article about the Apple Design Awards given out last week at WWDC. The runner-up for Best Mac OS X Leopard Application was one that the columnist had never heard of. I hadn’t either.
Timeline is a tool for generating timelines. It can, for example, import events from your calendar or create a timeline based on a photo album. The results are attractive, and the 3-D view is very cool. Like Delicious Library, it is an application that takes advantage of the capabilities of the Mac OS and the familiarity of the “iApp” user interface conventions to great effect.
Now I’m trying to figure out a use for it that will make the $65 price tag worth it.
I love my Mac… which makes me all the more sensitive to its faults. I often commend Apple for their attention to detail. Now I have a question.
As smart as OS X is, why is it that if I am watching a video for several minutes, my screensaver comes on? Sure, I specified a period of inactivity after which it should start, but why is playing a video considered to be an inactive state?
Why does Time Machine perform a backup while I’m playing World of Warcraft? Or even worse, why can’t .Mac Sync and the Spotlight indexer understand that I’m doing something that will be adversely affected by the cycles they consume?
I want my system to prioritize its processes based on what I’m doing at any given moment, rather than blindly adhere to a timer.
I’ve been planning for some time now to put together my “ultimate” back-up system. I have Time Machine, part of Mac OS X Leopard. When Steve Jobs originally demoed it, he said it would work with a drive connected to an Airport base station. I figured I could back up all three Macs in my house. I was disappointed to find that feature missing when Leopard finally released. My plan was to buy the new Airport with 802.11n ($180) and a 1 TB drive (about $370).
As usual, Apple is one step ahead. During yesterday’s keynote, Steve introduced the Time Capsule, a combination Airport base station and 500 GB or 1 TB drive. It’s designed specifically for use with Time Machine. I’ll have one device instead of two, it will involve two less cables, and the price is right ($500 for 1 TB). It’s a perfect product, demonstrating once again the power of a cohesive vision for an end-to-end solution.
