On Jul 7, 2004, at 10:04 AM, The Fool wrote:
Minesweeper. Winamp 2.x Visual Studio. Notepad.
Winamp has basically the same UI as any other media player, and the
same panoply of completely nauseating skins available. Visual Studio is
Winamp did it first. Others copied. Including things like the title-bar
mode, Visualizations, plugins, etc.
I don't have dates to argue whether Winamp predates QuickTime, but I agree that Winamp has introduced many usability (if not user interface) features.
amazing simply for the fact that it has *so much* UI, but it is still very usable.
The fact that you can add, change, or delete any and all UI elements including menus?
Sure, why not. Lots of other programs permit that, too. Even vim. But I'm not arguing with you here: Visual Studio is an impressive achievement.
While it is nowhere near as configurable, I've always been very impressed with Excel's usability, considering it's many, many features.
I'm assuming that Minesweeper and Notepad are trolls.
They are simple, clean, uncluttered, minimalist designs.
Sure, whatever. They're not minimalist, they're simple: they're just programs that don't do much, so there's not much need for UI. They're also not particularly original. Any number of "one-trick pony" Macintosh Desktop accessories from as far back as 1984 are even simpler -- there's not even a menu in the window, which both Notepad and Minesweeper sport.
An example of good UI is the Macintosh designers' decision to put the menubar at the top of the screen, not the top of a window, making it MUCH easier to hit. Because it's at an edge, there's no chance of overshooting it and having to backtrack. It effectively makes the target infinitely tall -- instead of having to try to decelerate and land the pointer in a 20-some pixel-high strip near the top of a window, you can just slam the pointer up against the top of the screen and it automatically stops there.
In another message, The Fool mentioned Windows' consistent control-key shortcuts. That was borrowed from the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. And they got it wrong, too: the control key is often located where it must be pressed with the *side* of the little finger, where the Apple command-key is always located on either side of the space bar, where it is operated by the thumb. This may seem like a small thing, but I broke my little finger last year, and found that it was constantly sore when using windows, but was able to heal when using the Mac.
I'm really not trying to make this a Win v. Mac thing, but I find that Linux (and Solaris and other Un*x flavors) tend to follow Windows UI rules, and I just can't find other examples of *computer* user interfaces that are anything like the Mac in terms of ease of use.
Dave
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