I almost never use OS X’s global Recent Items list. About half the times I remember it exists, it’s because i just accidentally closed a Finder window and want it back – then I remember folders is the only thing the Recent Items list doesn’t include.
My predictable solution:
I took a moment to analyze something I encounter on an hourly basis a while ago. Ever since the moment of realization that followed, I’ve been filling others in every now and then, and I have yet to find somebody who isn’t totally enlightened after the big reveal (@verneho almost BSOD’d).
Perhaps I’m ramping this up too much. Recognize this bad boy? Find yourself constantly checking the symbols and their meanings when you’re trying to decrypt a keyboard shortcut for use? Guys, it depicts a choice. A fork, a switch. The name of the key is ‘option’ (or ‘alt’, which is also accurately represented, alternative).
See it? Assuming this is your first realization, I’ll allow you to draw your own conclusions about the other symbols used for control and command.
Have a great weekend!
A few screenshots of OS X 10.7 Lion popped up today, and the interface depicted has me pondering.
ALL images in this post are credited to macstories.net
Finder has gone the way of iTunes, totally grayscale. I get the decision to some extent, unifying everything, but this oversteps design boundaries – it’s excessively sterile. I intentionally keep all installs of OS X I control on the original OS theme (with the ‘traffic light’ window controls), because I find Graphite (which effectively grayscales those icons) borderline depressing. I think a grayscaled Finder should come with the selection of the grayscale OS theme, and otherwise they should remain colored.
Also worth noting is the new button style for the finder views. This change appears in multiple screenshots of Lion. Clearly it’s very resemblant of a touch (iOS) interface, but the connect isn’t there for me – mice, even trackpads, are not on the same level as touchscreen devices. There’s no tactile simulation, which a slideable element implies. Why are they trying to meddle with this before they’re ready to go touchscreen in any sense with OS X? Additionally, I think the UI feature makes zero sense on menus with more than two items. This is a toggle-specific interaction as far as I’m concerned – true/false, on/off, enabled/disabled. Not list/icons/details/coverflow.
Also, why the bloody crap is Coverflow still in Finder?
I’ve been using Letterbox for well over a year, perhaps two. All it effectively does is change the orientation in Apple Mail from displaying message previews above the mail list to beside it, to its right. This allows for greater vertical message list length and message preview length (and if you’re like me, you only view messages in ‘preview’ mode. In short, it makes better use of widescreen monitors. This is now unnecessary, as Apple has rethought this in Mail 5, changing the orientation and making other iPad-like interface adjustments. This, I’m excited for.
Yes, I know about Post Box and the like – to be honest, I can’t properly explain why I’ve never made the switch, though I have tried. There you have it.
I have only one thing to say about the revised TextEdit: Holy shit, TextMate supports list writing (properly)! Welcome to nearly two decades ago. I hope the OS’s global font/formatting chrome has been significantly improved as well.
Finally, one of the oddities I encountered. Quick look has always been very much a keyboard access UI for me – tap space, see if it’s what I’m looking for or scan for a piece of information in the document I was looking for, tap space again to dismiss. I don’t like that they’ve introduced a clickable button to the quick look interface here, as this is one of the last places I’d want to use a mouse. Odd.
I’ll keep this short. I’ve posted in the past about my problems with the way iTunes handles playlists and browsing while music is playing. This is one of those things that sits on the same level of annoyance for me as the way Windows 7 handles alphabetizing in its control panel (this shit is asinine).
Why on earth can’t iTunes keep in line with a user’s intended commands while both playing and browsing through a library? Why is it that, when I am in an artist view and play a song and then switch to another artist’s view just to look around, iTunes plays out the current track and then picks a new one from whatever the hell I happen to be looking at at that moment in time? This behaviour is totally unjustifiably ridiculous.
I re-tested this today to find that now, instead of continuing with tracks in the view you started the current track from, it will move on to dead silence. I’m not sure if this was changed recently or if I’m doing something differently, but if it’s the former, what a pathetic attempt at a solution to a problem when the real solution of obvious and not very complex.
The importance of this process is often overlooked or not sufficiently analyzed for shortcomings or elements which can be improved. If conversion is everything with your app, this is the first and (hopefully) only barrier separating them from the experience and utility you have to offer. Time to get it right.
I’ve always been particularly drawn to the UX involved with forms on the web. They are by far generally the most tedious and taxing commonalities for the typical user (and the rest of us too), and request the most of the poor user who probably doesn’t want to type anything more than URLs. More »
With the new Mac App store, I noticed the Mac now has the same dual icons as on the iOS – iTunes, App store. However, on the Mac, the icons are both blue whereas iTunes is purple on the iPhone. It’s a nice duo on iOS, but the already somewhat sub-par iTunes icon (it has yet to grow on me and I don’t think it will) does not sit well with its new Mac App Store counterpart. Especially if you have them both close to the Finder icon in your dock, the default App Store positioning being immediately to its right.
Another oddity is the change in symbol color – on the iPhone, they’re both white, and here we are on the Mac with a white App Store symbol and a black iTunes symbol.
Long story short, it’s not very well unified. I’m satisfied for now with one quick change, purple-izing the iTunes icon to at least resolve one of those issues.
Feel free to download here (.icns, ~255kB).
Updated to get the tone closer to that of iOS’s icon, cheers @adambetts! Could get closer, but the icon as a whole is shaded completely differently – somewhat difficult to balance it properly, additionally with the black symbol vs. white.
The HTML5 audio API as implemented in JavaScript has one of the most un-computer-like responses I’ve ever seen, and inspired the title of this post. Calling
new Audio().canPlayType('audio/mp3'), which queries the system for format support according to a MIME type, is supposed to return one of “probably”, “maybe”, or “no”.
Almost forgot about 24 Ways this year – and this post is worth a read.
Even when the PS3 came out, people seemed to marvel at its touch sensitive eject and power buttons, and not even for a second have I understood it. Design for design’s sake, form over function, etc. My current main monitor at home is a Samsung 2443BW, a 24″ LCD which I preferred over others at the time of purchase because of its particularly narrow bezil. It was also in the same line as, and only somewhat changed aesthetically from my previous monitor – the 225BW, a 22″. One key difference was the move from simple front-mounted, small, circular buttons for power and navigating the screen’s menus to capacitive buttons mounted in the same place. I’m sure that for a moment there when I unboxed the thing that I too was lured in by the cool factor, but this was quickly deflated that very night when I went to calibrate some settings and had to constantly look at the screen and down to the controls to make sure I was touching the correct square centimeter of the bezel, as there’s zero tactile interface.
Also that night, I first tried to turn on my monitor in a dark room, and that was when I decided this interface is a complete useless gimmick. The PS3 has small indented symbols on both of its buttons, and since there are only two on a relatively large surface it’s not hard to feel them out, but does this make any sense?
In short, no, and that’s all I really have to say.
Next up: The blue LED is in almost every single gadget I own that isn’t Apple-designed. #ffffffffuuuuuuuu
