Re: Apple and 64 bit apps - the latest in this series

"Daniel Johnson" <danieljohnson2@xxxxxxxxxxx> stated in post
w7ydnR4aPLrkM1bVnZ2dnUVZ_judnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on 9/13/08 5:13 AM:

That is a good point; you'd think that if they got consistency religion,
iTunes 8 would demonstrates this. But it does not appear to do so.

As I said, I think they have the iTunes UI the way they do to ease
development on two platforms - though it does not seem like it would be hard
to say "use system scroll bars" and the like... so maybe not. Maybe they
have it so that Windows folks can get a Mac-ish experience and then feel
comfortable using iTunes on the Mac... but then why not just make it more
standard Mac-like? I admit, I do not get why it is different...

Well, Apple has made many of its Windows programs not "look and feel" like
Windows, but the results are pretty consistently dreadful. If anything, this
may keep people from trying the Mac: they assume it's just as a bad.

At least they relented on Safari and made it so you can re-size the windows
from any edge. Bad enough that they do not allow you to do so on OS X, but
to bring that "feature" to Windows was just silly. In their defense it was
only the beta that had that.

With that said - it is not *that* different on OS X. The scroll bars look
different for no real reason but act the same (even down to *not* showing
you when you have clicked them... why, Apple, why did you remove that when
you moved to OS X?)

I never noticed that. So... um... any other OS X flaws you'd like to share
with me? :D

Hmmm, no way of knowing if closing the last window in an app will quit the
app. Why not! No real maximize... no ability to re-size by the edges...
single menu is a bit silly on dual screens... wait... why am I helping you!
:)

Other than that it has a side bar seen in many OS X programs (iTunes was one
of the first to have it, but it now has become common) and the same style of
title bar / tool bar "unified" theme... the same search style,

I note that in these cases, the consistency came about because Mac OS X
conformed to what iTunes was already doing.

Yes... to a large degree.

same hot keys and same preferences (though Apple is transitioning to a new
style and iTunes still has the old - the styles are visually a bit different
but act the same way).

I don't know what you mean there. iTunes uses a hybrid dialog; icons at the
top like a NeXT preferences window, but with OK/Cancel buttons at the button,
which is like a normal dialog. Changes take effect when you click OK, and you
can discard them with Cancel.

Contrast Safari, which has NeXT approach: no buttons. Changes take immediate
effect, and you close the window with its close box. It's like an inspector
that way.

Hmmm, you are right. I just meant the button style:

<http://tmp.gallopinginsanity.com/prefs.png>

Somewhat ironic that the unified theme was seen in iTunes before the rest of
the OS but it has yet to make it to all of iTunes. Looking around a bit,
the new style is used by most older programs... they use the system UI bits
so they fit in even as the OS changes. Oddly iTunes does not... clearly the
UI is hard coded into it and not taken from the OS. Another boo-boo caused
by having it run on both OS X and Windows. Also likely the cause of the
"OK" buttons... making it more Windows like. How dare you point out a
difference in actual functionality!

They corner curves of the window now even match the rest of OS X - something
I believe was different in the past.

Yeah; but that's because OS X adopted what was, as of Leopard, the currency
appearance of iTunes. It may not last: iTunes has been changed many times
before.

And clearly suffers from the same silliness as MS Office on Windows - it
does not use the system services. Why can't Apple and MS consistently use
the services they provide for others to use!

[snip]
It's rather bizarre! I'm able to reproduce this on Vista by setting the
XP-compatibility option on it. Normally it uses a standard Vista save
dialog.

I don't understand what MS thinks they are doing. If they are trying to make
XP look like Vista, I don't think they've managed it.

Though a lot of programs on XP now have the close/minimize/maximize widgets
that more closely match Vista. Not a big deal - but it can lead to some
small problems (likely they are close enough where the problems would be
small... I have not done *any* studies or even close observations about it).

I do understand why some programs need to play games with those widgets
these days: They use Aero! Glass!, and they put stuff up into the title bar
area. Office Word does this with its Orb, and Google Chrome does it with its
tabs. That's fine on Vista, but when you don't have the glass, the only way
to get the same effect is with a custom title bar. So they do that, and wind
up aping the standard window widgets in the bargain.

OTOH, some programs use custom title bars just for the hell of it. The
Windows Live Whatever suite of programs all seems to ape Vista's title bars
on XP, but there's no obvious reason why they should. They don't do anything
interesting with the glass.

Interestingly, the actual programs that ship with Vista don't do this; they
extend the glass area, but leave the title bar alone. This can look a little
odd in some cases- Explorer winds up with about 30 pixels of unused glass at
the top because it *doesn't* put the breadcrumbs bar up there. But it means
it also works with the standard title bar.

What do you think of the Vista glass look? I do not like the transparency
and the outer-glow of the text just to make it at all readable. I suspect
MS will tone it down a lot as time goes on... as Apple toned down Aqua over
time (and killed the silly pin-striping).

[snip]
Would have to change the system
one to see, I suppose.

What do you mean by "change the system one"?

Modify the system one and see if the Word one changes...

I expect it would, provided you changed it in the right way.

Try TweakUI.

I do not think this program actually changes the standard dialogs; it is
just accessing registry keys to manipulate options already there. Someone
could write a completely custom standard dialog, and still obey those
options.

It was TweakUI that was used to change the dialogs in XP... the ones that do
not carry over to MS Office.

[snip]
The new ones have a print preview and a "collapse/expand" widget and more
room for program specific "stuff"... the buttons at the bottom have been
changed, etc.

That seems like quite a significant upgrade, this time. Do old apps continue
to get the old print dialog sometimes?

Not that I have seen... and not that I would expect. Let me check some
software that I have not undated in a while (if you want you can get some
coffee or something while you wait... )

[snip- waiting]

A few lack the preview area... but all seem to have the collapse/expand
widget. I suspect that they are using the new one *but* there is a great
deal of flexibility where programs can use just the basics and completely
redefine the rest.

Essentially any program that does this is going to break, unless Apple keeps
the old version of the dialog around for that purpose.

Mind, I wouldn't be shocked if Apple didn't worry about this, and you had to
upgrade your apps to fix broken print dialogs.

I have never seen a program break based on using an "old" print dialog.

Most programs, though, get the preview area for
"free"... they were designed before Apple implemented it and still have
it.
Those that do not have the "Preview" button (which you also get when you
collapse the dialog).

Well, I believe they have had print preview in there for a long time; they
are just changing the UI that exposes it, are they not? The Cocoa API has
always required you to provide a print view 'up front', before the dialog
appears.

Nope... before there was merely a button. Now there is, generally, either a
button *or* the preview area (or, as I have just found, both!). When the
preview button is not available there is the option to preview in the
program "Preview" under the PDF button.

I did find some (NeoOffice, Dreamweaver and Graphic Converter) which had a
somewhat smaller preview area but still got the "Preview" button. Odd... not
sure why that would be. Overall, though, they were substantially similar to
the "standard" dialogs (though ideally they would be the same). Wonder if it
has something to do with Carbon vs. Cocoa?

It might, I suppose. But so far as I can see, a Carbon app's print dialog
should not have the inline preview area: there's no way to supply anything
to put in there!

Hmmm... seems you are correct. Also seems I made the mistake of seeing the
small area that shows a representation of, say, how many pages will print
and assumed - at my glance - that it was a preview area. Arg! The smaller
"preview" area I talked about before was that and not a preview area at all.
They should bring back Clarus the Cowdog for that area!

The Carbon apps should be able to support only "Tiger style" preview: you
click the preview button, the dialog closes, and Preview.app starts up. It
shows the output of the print job, and the original app is done printing.

Seems you are correct.

Is that what happens when you print in iTunes, say? I don't have Leopard to
check this with.

Yes - that is what happens.

I suspect it will turn out that there are 2 forms of the print dialog in
Leopard- if you use PMSessionPrintDialog (Carbon) you can't get a working
inline preview area, and if you use NSPrintPanel (Cocoa) you should get it.

I think - now - you are correct.

I do not know, however, if the "no preview" dialog is just the same thing as
the Tiger dialog, or something intermediate thing.

Still, this is exactly the kind of issue that leads MS to keep the old
dialogs around.

[snip]
They expose the properties of elements of your data; they are just
different
UI techniques to do this.

Consistency would indicate that both use the same approach, like with
property
sheets in Windows.

Get Info is more about *getting* info... the Inspector is more about
altering it... though there is overlap.

iTunes uses the "Get Info" style to edit data. I can't think of any use of
that thing that does not; even the old OS 9 Get Info windows in the Finder
did edit stuff- comments, permissions, that sort of thing.

Hence the phrase "more about". :)

To really blow your mind, though, the Finder has both an Inspector and a Get
Info function... neither one is like the ones in iTunes and Pages.

Oooo! Nifty! Are you going to do another 'compare-and-contrast' web-page
about Windows property sheets versus OS X... thingies?

I just might.


--
The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of
limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and
great nations. - David Friedman

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