Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
UI changes you'd like to see in Leopard
- Thread starter jellybean
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'm actually running Windows Vista at the moment on my Macbook Pro. Personally, I think Vista is focusing way too much on eye candy, especially the "glass effect", and at the same time almost completely ignoring 101 UI Usually. If you're like me, and you've used Internet Explorer 7, you'll know what I'm talking about. Just look at this:
![]()
Ok, we have the common back and forward buttons on the left of address bar. But, where are the stop and reload buttons? They're actually part of the address bar on the right! and they don't even look like buttons! We go down to the combo tab/tools/menu bar, which is a complete mess: 2 Buttons on the left, tabs in the middle, and some randomly ordered buttons and dropdown menus on the right.
That's just IE7...
Ok, we have the common back and forward buttons on the left of address bar. But, where are the stop and reload buttons? They're actually part of the address bar on the right! and they don't even look like buttons! We go down to the combo tab/tools/menu bar, which is a complete mess: 2 Buttons on the left, tabs in the middle, and some randomly ordered buttons and dropdown menus on the right.
That's just IE7...
Finder - gotta fix finder to have that smooth color like iTunes, but with more customization for example, color gradients.
Themes - more color themes instead of just blue and gray. Do something like green, red, black, also allow us to change the top filemenu to a specific color, or a certain glass effect.
Hmm... window transparency? Maybe there could be an added function to where you could set the window to a transparent opacity.
Dock, let us customize the dock more. Let us put separators between icons if we'd like. How about adding more docks? How about floating docks?
That's about it I think...
Themes - more color themes instead of just blue and gray. Do something like green, red, black, also allow us to change the top filemenu to a specific color, or a certain glass effect.
Hmm... window transparency? Maybe there could be an added function to where you could set the window to a transparent opacity.
Dock, let us customize the dock more. Let us put separators between icons if we'd like. How about adding more docks? How about floating docks?
That's about it I think...
Voidness said:
IE 7 is a UI disaster, I actually also strugled to find the reload button!
Everyone is harping on about the right click, why not have more advanced contectual finder depending on the item sellected. Also using vista and when I click on a media file in the menu bar a button becomes available that says open with default app, if you press the button and keep it down it pops down a list of available apps that can open that file, that to me is simple and intuative. the finder needs some work...
Voidness said:I'm actually running Windows Vista at the moment on my Macbook Pro. Personally, I think Vista is focusing way too much on eye candy, especially the "glass effect", and at the same time almost completely ignoring 101 UI Usually. If you're like me, and you've used Internet Explorer 7, you'll know what I'm talking about. Just look at this:
Ok, we have the common back and forward buttons on the left of address bar. But, where are the stop and reload buttons? They're actually part of the address bar on the right! and they don't even look like buttons! We go down to the combo tab/tools/menu bar, which is a complete mess: 2 Buttons on the left, tabs in the middle, and some randomly ordered buttons and dropdown menus on the right.
That's just IE7...
IE7 doesn't look that bad. Ever browser has unique features. I'm sure that Microsoft has a usability survey that they've manipulated to show that people want it that way.
The glass look goes way too far. I've seen many people complaining that it's just difficult to distinguish text from the background. I'd say that it's improved as time has progressed but it doesn't look like it from your screenshot.
I don't see much of unique features in IE7. The point is, I don't understand why Microsoft is doing this to IE7: Why are the stop and refresh "buttons" separated from back/forward buttons? Why is it when you enable the menu bar, it appears BELOW the navigation buttons (see screenshot in this post)? Why is are tabs on the same toolbar as function buttons and dropdowns? Why are some of the function buttons on the left of the tabs, while others are one the right?bousozoku said:
As for the "glass effect", it does get confusing sometimes. But you can adjust the transparency and colour, or even make the windows opaque. But even if transparency is disabled, you still get to see some sort of reflection effect when moving the windows around, pretty cool. Here are some examples:
Voidness said:I don't see much of unique features in IE7. The point is, I don't understand why Microsoft is doing this to IE7: Why are the stop and refresh "buttons" separated from back/forward buttons? Why is it when you enable the menu bar, it appears BELOW the navigation buttons (see screenshot in this post)? Why is are tabs on the same toolbar as function buttons and dropdowns? Why are some of the function buttons on the left of the tabs, while others are one the right?
As for the "glass effect", it does get confusing sometimes. But you can adjust the transparency and colour, or even make the windows opaque. But even if transparency is disabled, you still get to see some sort of reflection effect when moving the windows around, pretty cool. Here are some examples:
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
I think it's a matter of putting the most used buttons to the left and putting less used items to the right. Note that RSS is on the right of the URL field in Firefox, but somewhat haphazardly placed there.
Have you tried grabbing the menu bar in IE 7 and moving it upward? I'm surprised that wouldn't work considering that you can have something like 15 toolbars in Office to move and confuse.
well as for brushed, either apple isn't showing us the final version of safari in thier demos, or it is still here.jellybean said:Anyone else think the UI could do with a major update in Leopard? Nothing too radical, just enough to bring it a bit up to date.
I've been playing with the latest build of Vista and I must admit OS X's interface feels very dated in comparison
I think most people agree brushed metal will most likely be gone in Leopard but replaced with what? Smooth metal? Still nothing amazing. And those red yellow and green buttons in the corner of windows feel so "fisher price"
I know, i know... it's how Leopard works at the end of the day what is so important, but there are a surprising number of people in the eye candy crowd who would be won over by just what looks and feels cooler. And I really don't want Vista to steal OS X's thunder
it is getting old, but there is always uno for now, and hopefully for leopard if we need it.Nope, doesn't work. Apparently, Microsoft is trying to abandon the idea menu bars altogether. I've used the latest Office 2007 Beta, and the interface is entirely a combination of tabs and buttons. There's only one menu, which is the "File" menu.bousozoku said:
bousozoku said:I suppose they've been criticised once too often for going in the wrong direction. It's good to see that they're not doing that here.
Im asuming that was sarcasm! LOL
I really hope apple doesnt go the office 2007 route, there is nothing wrong with a decent toolbar!
Instead of quoting the Vist pics, I have some comments on them.
The UI effects, those are too much. Honestly, that's just way to much transparency and stuff like that, it looks like it can be confusing and CPU costing. If you have that much trasnparency and have to refresh your Windows, that'll eat up your CPU. Now I know you can disable it probably, but still, Aeroglass is just a candy effect, there's no difference between Vist, XP, and 2000. They're all 3 32-bit (Vista and XP have 64-bit versions) (wait is Vista pure 64-bit with a 32-bit thunk layer???) and they all use the registry and they all are prone to the same viruses.
The UI effects, those are too much. Honestly, that's just way to much transparency and stuff like that, it looks like it can be confusing and CPU costing. If you have that much trasnparency and have to refresh your Windows, that'll eat up your CPU. Now I know you can disable it probably, but still, Aeroglass is just a candy effect, there's no difference between Vist, XP, and 2000. They're all 3 32-bit (Vista and XP have 64-bit versions) (wait is Vista pure 64-bit with a 32-bit thunk layer???) and they all use the registry and they all are prone to the same viruses.
virus1 said:
Maybe, they could work on something that doesn't break the operating system.
Lollypop said:
Never assume.
MS Office has long been derided for toolbar usage. In fact, there was an early 1990s issue of BYTE magazine where they did a graphical mockup of a future version of Word. A few years later, they resurrected that graphic and put it side by side a real screen shot of MS Word covered in toolbars with enough space for one line of document. It must have been embarrassing.Proper toolbars are good. One thing I've not seen in most applications, and something I used to use, is contextual toolbars. In CalamusSL, I would select the function from the left toolbar and the toolbar running across the top of the document would change to fit the function. It saved space and it avoided confusion. Adobe applications do it to a small extent but they also waste a lot of space.
decksnap said:I know I'm not the only one who thinks Vista looks like absolute garbage. I woudn't wish OS X to look anything like it.
And XP? Did someone mention Fisher Price?
Brushed metal has seen its last days. I'll agree with that.
Meh. The fisher Price joke was cute the first 20,000 times. Now its just getting old. I actually kinda like Luna. Actually I really like the shinier version of it from Windows Media Center Edt of XP.
In my case with a slight mod to the desktop picture. *shrugs* For me OS X has more then its fair share of annoyances; as does Windows.
As for Vista. Oh where to start. The only nice thing about it is that unlike OS X you can customize the look of it until heck freezes over. Enough that you can remove 90% of the newness of Vista to revert back to an XP interface which is fine by me. The File Browser is a beautiful example of MS not knowing what the heck they are doing with their UI design. I swear as god as my witness that I'm certain that the design team went out for drinks at a local bar in Redmond, pinned up a napkin on a dart board, and made UI decisions for their file browser based on where the dart landed. And it seems as if in some cases it landed in the toilet around the corner. Seriously the screen while customizable it a cluttered mess by default. I used it for a week before tweaking the browser. Its too busy. Beyond that is their new and improved control panel. Networking is a nightmare. They tried to make things simple and since I know how a network works and the ins and outs of networking tech and TCP/IP I can understand things but for your average user they are going to be beyond lost.
It comes down to this - Microsoft does NOT know how to design a UI that is easy for the average "non-techhead" person to use. IMHO Windows has always stacked up this way from ease of use. {Way hard}Unix-Linux-[Windows here]-OS X- Pad of paper{Stupidly easy}
Vista isn't going to change this IMHO. that being said I need to give MS props for trying something new. Its a risk. It may fail. But they are trying it. Something that is becoming painfully apparent that Apple is scared of trying from there OS to their computer designs, to their iPods. Apple has stopped the revolutionary process years ago and is full tilt into the evolutionary one. I want to get excited over an Apple OS again. The last time that happened was the demoing of 10.0 and while I'm not looking for something as big it would be nice to do more then a minor refresh to the OS. compare 10.0 to 10.4. Yes MUCH of the underbelly of OS X has changed in the last 6 years but the UI? Hardly and I don't know about you guys but OS X's UI isn't godlike. can anyone really say that its perfect and should never change?
PS- Where's my piles?
Attachments
For those who haven't seen this XGL+Compiz from the linux side of the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CgqWlX_GsI
Impressive I'd say. Usable... not sure about that.
Nice to see how the GUI has evolved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CgqWlX_GsI
Impressive I'd say. Usable... not sure about that.
Nice to see how the GUI has evolved.
MacVault said:
Because you end up like Windows and Office where 99% of the functionality gets ignored because it is too complex.
You are a techie. You use computers all the time. You are a rare exception. Apple gets this. Microsoft doesn't. And apparently neither do you.
Maybe the curve below will help.
Attachments
Regarding looks, I'm happy the way it is and have no particular thoughts on it. If within 'UI changes' I can include usability then I'd like:
The ability to print more than one copy from Finder, without opening a print dialogue box. Maybe a hierarchical menu listing 1 to 10 copies.
Automatic tiling when I open two Finder windows. Why the hell would I want them cascading?
The ability to cancel an openING Dock item (after clicking the wrong one).
Double arrows top and bottom (I know there's freeware, but it should be part of the OS).
The ability to print more than one copy from Finder, without opening a print dialogue box. Maybe a hierarchical menu listing 1 to 10 copies.
Automatic tiling when I open two Finder windows. Why the hell would I want them cascading?
The ability to cancel an openING Dock item (after clicking the wrong one).
Double arrows top and bottom (I know there's freeware, but it should be part of the OS).
I can't believe that someone said apple is afraid to change the interface, or something. Apple completely changed almost everything about the interface with OS X, and people complained constantly about it. Now, we all know that OS X has the best interface out there. I'm glad that Apple was able to do it then, but there's no reason to redefine the interface as often as Microsoft does. It seems like they do it with every release of Windows. Once I got used to the stupid task pane in XP, now it's gone in Vista. It's ok to stick with a good interface once you find it (although that may be Microsoft's problem)
Just my opinion.
Just my opinion.
Blue Velvet said:Fer chrissakes, bring back the ability to print the contents of windows.
Yes, having to screen grab it is kind of annoying. I did read that you can drag a folder onto a printer icon and it will print a directory. I vaguely remember trying it once with mixed results. Your results may vary.