When do I click once and when do I click twice? Buttons are clicked once, menus are clicked once, items/icons are clicked twice. That was the interface guideline that Apple developed with the original Mac OS in 1984, it was also used in the general desktop metaphor which became X-Windows, and was to a great extent used in Windows. It was pretty straight forward and it was not hard to learn. People still have issues with it regardless.
Now enter the web browser. Everything would very well be a link, which is essentially treated as a button, unless its a Flash link in which case its treated like a menu or sometimes like an item/icon.
Links are not denoted in any particular way, sure some are made more obvious because they are made to look like buttons, some are underlined, some are highlighted, some are bold, some become underlined when you go over them, all in all, the web is about the most inconsistent of interfaces. And web browsers use that interface as its designed for them.
Now enter the desktop. Here we have to worry about the click, double click question, when is something in IE the file browser a link and when is it a file and when is it a button, when do I click, when do I double click, when do I click and hold? When MS started using hot links within the OS itself, as a help option - wow, you are trying to help people with that? Sorta like trying to put out a fire with matches.
Its not that it isn't functional, people use it everyday, but that doesn't make it good. I drive to work in rush hour everyday, its functional, it still sucks.
The Classic Mac OS Finder was a spacial Finder. I know you may not know what that means but it comes down to the fact that windows, icons, files, whatever, all respected size and space. Windows would be where you left them and they would be the size and view settings you left them in when you returned to them. This is intuitive, why? Because when I put a book on the shelf it stays where I put it until I go and rearrange it. It is analogous to real life ...
What about Mac OS X? Mac OS X is not spacial in any regard really. Column view is an attempt to move toward database type organization, same information/files accessible from a ton of different points. In this scheme spacial regard is not always important because the idea is to be able to access data from anywhere, not go back to where you left it.
Adding a back and forward button to Windows Explorer and IE for file browsing were not more intuitive because neither was spacial nor was it non-spacial, it as most things MS tries to do, wanted to be everything and wasn't really anything. Windows is sorta almost intuitive within itself, but its never been intuitive in anyway when compared to the outside world. Adding the confusion of an interface as inconsistent as the internet to Windows is like passing the hemlock to a manic depressive. If you are trying to improve the situation, well, improve it for who might be the real question.
David
On Apr 13, 2004, at 11:36 AM, Robin Ashe wrote:
What? Did you say that with a straight face?
You are actually claiming that Mac OS Platinum and Aqua had to play "catchup" to MS using IE as their desktop browser?
Yes I am. Being able to type in the directory into the address bar, navigate
using the back/forward buttons was a hell of a lot more useful than the oudtated
interface that was used up until OS 9. OS X improved on it a bit and was
definitely a better interface but the Panther interface is really the first
thing apple has brought to the table that matches the convenience of a web
browser interface for navigating the directories on the computer.
Robin Ashe
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