The "Bring Back Translucent Menus" Thread

[stainlessliquid]

I thought it was perfect before, now its so opaque that theres no point it in having any transparency. I think it looks worse now, its more of a mistake than an intention like the old transparency. One of the rules to good design is to not make half assed decisions, either make it look intentional or dont do it at all since it will just look like you messed up. The new menu's are bad design.

I would like to change it back, there was nothing wrong with the old transparency, it wasnt noticeable unless you looked for it and it did not reduce legibility at all (seriously, wtf people), it was very opaque and just the right amount of blur so that it was completely impossible to reduce legibility. Now its very difficult to even see that its transparent when looking for it, if you look very closely then there is a very faint showing of whats behind it and it reminds me more of monitor burn-in since its so extremely light and only apparent in high contrast areas.

They should have left it alone, I dont remember a single person bitching about it like they were the transparent menu BAR and 3d dock (I cant believe they didnt include an option to turn this off but they messed with menu transparency). As it is right now it should just be 100% opaque, its using up system resources for crap you cant even see.

 

[MarlboroLite]

So has anyone found a hack to bring back the pre .2 menus back?

I had zero legibility issues with the transparent menus and in fact I loved them. I hate it now--the menu bar itself is still pretty translucent but the drop down menus are a joke, there's barely anything there...it's not "subtle" it's 90% opaque....what's the point in even describing it as translucent when it barely is. Please Apple bring back REAL transparency!!!! You got it right the first time!!!

 

[xraydoc]

I dunno. While they weren't bad in 10.5.0, I think they look a little better now. Brighter... better contrast. But I've also used the new option to turn off the menu bar translucency.

 

[iMpathetic]

I am too lazy to update, so this issue does not affect me

But, I do kinda like the ol' translucent menus. There, I said it.

 

[hempcamp]

Definition of Apple, Inc: Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

I like the opaque drop-downs better. I think they only did a high transparency initially to show off the graphics processing abilities of OS X. Kind of like all the "new features" of Vista.

--Chris

 

[MarlboroLite]

Definition of Apple, Inc: Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

I like the opaque drop-downs better. I think they only did a high transparency initially to show off the graphics processing abilities of OS X. Kind of like all the "new features" of Vista.

--Chris

Well it doesn't have to be this way. Ok people complained about it....they respond with fully opaque menus, great! But then they took away transparency for all intents and purposes....what they now describe as "transparent" barely is....just give people opaque or transparent, don't take away one to give to the other. It's not that hard of a concept to grasp!

 

[iFerd]

Although I had grown used to the almost transparent drop down menus, I was happy to see them return of better readability in the latest update. I agree with the few posters in this thread that readability is prime in this matter, and 10.5.2 improves that, at least for me.

 

[Bonsai1214]

i very much preferred it the way it was before. now you can't even notice it unless you look for it.

a slider should be implemented.

 

[bluedoggiant]

I don't care, I never even noticed in the first place

One thing that is ugly is the opaque menu bar, for a fact, turn it on, and its ugly.

 

[UMHurricanes34]

I agree.

I liked the transparent menus, and it's a shame that they took away the option completely.

I really can't even tell that they're "transparent" anymore. Looks 100% opaque to me.

 

[anjinha]

Although I perefered the old menus the new ones don't bother me much. But I do think that it's not consistent having a translucid menu bar and almost opaque menus. That's just not good design.

 

[BlakTornado]

not agree, options are absurd and confusing? please, don't belittle the intelligence of users. Each individual has their own preference, to force them into same style is truly absurd.

Exactly.

Apple is about thinking different. How can it force us into having computers that are exactly the same when they're also telling us to be completely different people?

Look at Windows. That has several different styles and user interface options. Macs have barely any. I'm not complaining - I like the Mac interface... but sometimes we need thing to be customizable.

I completely agree about the whole slider thing and that we should be able to set our own levels of transparency to fit our needs. And why not have an option for people to press a simple button in system prefs to turn the newer dock into the black one? Surely that would be safer than a terminal command.
Apple needs to get people switching over to Mac and it's not going to do it if potential switchers see people like ourselves complaining.

Really, I couldn't care less if the menus aren't transparent or not but it's just a nice touch to have. I'm not going to cry myself to sleep over it but I'm not thrilled by the decision Apple made to make them more solid... I just think there should be more customizability. Not like Linux-style but just basic little tweaks.
Sure it's not "Works out of the box" but these are things you want to play with when you get a new computer. When you get a new computer, you don't go "Hey, I better get on with some work" or whatever. You think "Wow! new computer! Time to fiddle around and see what it can do!" so that kinda stamps on the whole "IT STOPS TEH OUT OF TEh BOXNESSZZ" argument. And if people DO go "Hey, time to get on with work" then there's nothing stopping them from working with the defaults and playing around with settings when they have time to kill, is there?

 

[stainlessliquid]

It would have been much wiser to use opaque menus with the opaque menu bar turned on and transparent menus with the default menu bar.

I dont know what Apple was thinking, I imagine it was some programmer's decision to do this. I dont think a designer at Apple would think this looks better. Its something I would expect from Microsoft since they always let their programmers make design decisions which screws with the consistency.

I dont think Apple really listened. They gave the option to turn off the transparent menu bar but they ignored the biggest complaint by far: a switch to change from a 2d to 3d dock. There are dozens of programs out there to specifically do this, not nearly as many that mess with the menu bar. That should have sent a message to Apple. I dont recall anyone complaining about the menus. They have been like that since Tiger, no complaints. Why did they think they had to make it 98% opaque?

I do like the new grid view in stacks, doesnt look half assed anymore. Thats probably the only visual improvement in 10.5.2. (but it was another thing nobody complained about)

 

[bassism]

I'm surprised that Apple didn't foresee that, just like forcing people into the translucent menu bar caused a bunch of people to complain, forcing a bunch of people into nearly-opaque drop-downs would cause the other half of the people in the Mac community to complain.

Seriously, they realized that forcing that UI decision on people made them unhappy, and rectified it by providing an option, then did exactly the same thing in opposite.

 

[ltldrummerboy]

Calibrating my screen did not make a difference.

 

[durija]

I almost can't believe what I am reading. Are our lives so empty that we cnnot think of anything better to do with our time than to complain, endlessly, about the opacity of menus and our lack of control over that opacity? Seems pretty small on the total human scale. Many more important (at least to me) issues out there. i think it is worth thinking about redirecting some energy elsewhere.

 

[MarlboroLite]

Exactly.

Apple is about thinking different.

Sadly it hasn't been for a long time. They even dropped the slogan a few years ago....

 

[avalys]

Exactly.

Apple is about thinking different. How can it force us into having computers that are exactly the same when they're also telling us to be completely different people?

If you consider the level of transparency of the drop-down menus on your computer a primary factor in your individuality, you need to get a life.

Sure it's not "Works out of the box" but these are things you want to play with when you get a new computer. When you get a new computer, you don't go "Hey, I better get on with some work" or whatever. You think "Wow! new computer! Time to fiddle around and see what it can do!" so that kinda stamps on the whole "IT STOPS TEH OUT OF TEh BOXNESSZZ" argument. And if people DO go "Hey, time to get on with work" then there's nothing stopping them from working with the defaults and playing around with settings when they have time to kill, is there?

When you get a new computer, by and large, it can do everything your old one could, just faster. My PowerBook G4 has transparent menus too.

The problem with customization of the UI is that it forces the user to make decisions that the designer of the program should be making. In short, customizable UIs come from lazy developers. Apple should (and perhaps has) rely on their UI knowledge and figure out what the best transparency setting is. Making it a slider is equivalent to Apple saying "Screw it, we have no idea what the right setting is. You chumps can waste five minutes apiece figuring it out, we don't care."

This is the same for every option. If Apple gives you a choice between two Docks, it means they don't know which one is best, and they expect you to figure it out. Why the hell is that my job? I paid for the software expecting a good UI - I expect Apple to research their UI design, and present me with the optimal settings when I turn on the computer. I don't want to spend my time tinkering with it to discover the optimal settings for myself. I'm not trained in UI design. Maybe a transparent menu looks cool, but is actually not as readable, and can lead to eyestrain. Who the hell knows? Not me, and I don't want to have to know.

How many copies of Leopard did Apple sell? 2 million in the first weekend. Let's be conservative and say 4 million to date. Imagine if they included all kinds of ways to customize the appearance and behavior of the UI, like you propose. Imagine it takes the average person 10 minutes to find the optimal settings (that's a lowball estimate, since most people will never find the optimal settings, and over the course of their use of Leopard, might spend quite a bit more time messing with these options). That's 106 years of effort wasted, doing what Apple could have done in the first place.

I don't buy the argument that we are all individual, unique little creatures, and the optimal UI settings are different for all of us. We all might work differently, and prefer different UI layouts - but our visual systems all process data in the same way.

Now, whether they actually do put all the effort into UI design that I expect them to, is another question. They likely do not. But at least they are not giving in and making everything an option.

As someone else mentioned, that's one of the primary reasons why Linux on the desktop sucks so bad. Every time there is a hard decision to be made, the developers say "Who cares, we'll just make it an option!" Writing the extra code to implement the option is easier than thinking about what the right choice is.

 

[kuwisdelu]

It would have been much wiser to use opaque menus with the opaque menu bar turned on and transparent menus with the default menu bar.

I dont know what Apple was thinking, I imagine it was some programmer's decision to do this. I dont think a designer at Apple would think this looks better. Its something I would expect from Microsoft since they always let their programmers make design decisions which screws with the consistency.

I dont think Apple really listened. They gave the option to turn off the transparent menu bar but they ignored the biggest complaint by far: a switch to change from a 2d to 3d dock. There are dozens of programs out there to specifically do this, not nearly as many that mess with the menu bar. That should have sent a message to Apple. I dont recall anyone complaining about the menus. They have been like that since Tiger, no complaints. Why did they think they had to make it 98% opaque?

I do like the new grid view in stacks, doesnt look half assed anymore. Thats probably the only visual improvement in 10.5.2. (but it was another thing nobody complained about)

I agree exactly. I was expecting the translucent menu bar to imply translucent menus as well and switching the translucent menu bar off to turn off the translucent menus too. It makes perfect sense they would go together. I can't imagine why they'd do this.

Also agree on the grid view. Fan view was a little wanky, and list view isn't as usable for me, but I love grid view. I provides the functionality of fans while not trying as hard to be eye candy.

I almost can't believe what I am reading. Are our lives so empty that we cnnot think of anything better to do with our time than to complain, endlessly, about the opacity of menus and our lack of control over that opacity? Seems pretty small on the total human scale. Many more important (at least to me) issues out there. i think it is worth thinking about redirecting some energy elsewhere.

It's my only problem with 10.5.2. Is your life so empty you can't think of anything better to do than criticize what we choose to criticize in our operating system? In the total human scale, worrying about operating system at all is pretty silly. After all, why spend that $129 on Leopard when it could be going to fight world hunger? All the people who didn't like the translucent menu bar whined, too, so I think we're perfectly entitled to our chance at whining.

The problem with customization of the UI is that it forces the user to make decisions that the designer of the program should be making. In short, customizable UIs come from lazy developers. Apple should (and perhaps has) rely on their UI knowledge and figure out what the best transparency setting is. Making it a slider is equivalent to Apple saying "Screw it, we have no idea what the right setting is. You chumps can waste five minutes apiece figuring it out, we don't care."

This is the same for every option. If Apple gives you a choice between two Docks, it means they don't know which one is best, and they expect you to figure it out. Why the hell is that my job? I paid for the software expecting a good UI - I expect Apple to research their UI design, and present me with the optimal settings when I turn on the computer. I don't want to spend my time tinkering with it to discover the optimal settings for myself. I'm not trained in UI design. Maybe a transparent menu looks cool, but is actually not as readable, and can lead to eyestrain. Who the hell knows? Not me, and I don't want to have to know.

I don't think it would have to be like this at all. Personally, I don't really want a slider to choose transparency or something. I kind of agree that would be a mistake. But they provided an option to turn the translucency on the menu bar on or off, and all I want is an option to turn the translucency on the menus themselves on or off. Either that or sync it with the menu bar option. I don't care which. "On" or "off" isn't that big of a choice. Same goes for the 2D vs. 3D dock. After all, no one thinks that offering a choice between Blue vs. Graphite is the end of the world.

 

[paul.b.davis]

Notice the lack of the option in my system preferences.

And yeah, I had to check the shortcut for screen print

You are on PPC. I thought there was never a translucent menu bar on PPC macs (or some of them anyway)

 

[wilfried]

The problem with customization of the UI is that it forces the user to make decisions that the designer of the program should be making. In short, customizable UIs come from lazy developers. Apple should (and perhaps has) rely on their UI knowledge and figure out what the best transparency setting is. Making it a slider is equivalent to Apple saying "Screw it, we have no idea what the right setting is. You chumps can waste five minutes apiece figuring it out, we don't care."
...
I don't buy the argument that we are all individual, unique little creatures, and the optimal UI settings are different for all of us. We all might work differently, and prefer different UI layouts - but our visual systems all process data in the same way.

Now, whether they actually do put all the effort into UI design that I expect them to, is another question. They likely do not. But at least they are not giving in and making everything an option.

I agree insofar as I find all the griping, and gallons of spilled virtual ink over transparency humorous. I never much noticed much when it was there, and don't notice much now that it's gone. Indeed there are better things to worry about. However, you're reasoning is patently absurd. Say they give us a handful of sliders and buttons to change the look of the interface. You don't want to futz with the settings? Then don't. When you turn on the machine it's set to a default. If you can't be bothered, leave it alone, and leave it at Apple's "optimal." But if you you like to futz, and don't like their optimal, then futz away. Started futzing, and decide it's too much trouble? Just put everything back to where it was (a simple "set to default" button would do it), and you're back to where you started.

No, there is no single "optimal." There are different needs, and different tastes, and yes, different eyeballs. I may value pretty over usable. I know people who set things to the most bizarre, garish colors possible, just cause it amuses them. Or I may want stark black on brilliant white, to the point where it would make others' eyes hurt, cause my eyes aren't as sharp as they used to be. I suppose you want Ford to decide the optimal color for your car. Henry did you know. He said of the Model T, you can get it in any color you want, as long as it's black. So Ford did his job by making one model in one color, and all the auto manufacturers these days with their myriad options are just being lazy? Please.

And what makes you think there's a magic formula for deciding exactly the right appearance for the interface? You don't think there's subjective judgement, and taste, involved in Apple's decisions? Was the translucent menu so optimal? Or the not so translucent one? What about the menu bar? Or the glossy screen? Or the 3D dock? Or stacks? And if the optimal is so optimal, why is everyone arguing? Everything is a design choice. How much transparency is a choice. Giving too many options is a choice, as is giving none at all. Giving options for everything isn't necessarily the right choice, but locking everything down to exactly one isn't either.

So, I just spilled yet more ink, and wasted a lot more time than I would have playing with sliders. But how to waste my time is my choice after all.

 

[gr8tfly]

No, I haven't read through the entire thread yet - but:

They aren't opaque - they are less transparent. I'll say they went a bit further to opaque than the change list seemed to indicate, but they are still transparent.

There were many times where the pre-10.5.2 transparency affected readability.

 

[Shredster00]

Does anybody have some screen shots to compare the old vs new? I don't have Leopard (or a Mac) yet, waiting for the new MBP's.

 

[davidjearly]

No, I haven't read through the entire thread yet - but:

They aren't opaque - they are less transparent. I'll say they went a bit further to opaque than the change list seemed to indicate, but they are still transparent.

There were many times where the pre-10.5.2 transparency affected readability IMO.

Fixed.

Despite not caring one way or the other, legibility was never impacted by more transparent menus for me.

 

[MattyP30]

i actually LOL'd when i saw this thread title!!