Re: Belated look at the OSXhints April Fool's front page

Jim <jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Jim <jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Why do you prefer to have to go hunting on the Dock for a thing
you've minimised, rather than have it sit in its original position on
the desktop, where it's much-Much-MUCH quicker to access?

This puzzles me greatly.

Withmore than a couple of Windowshaded windows, it started to feel too
cluttered for my liking.

<deeply puzzled>

But Windowshading windows reduces clutter.

Not from my perspective - it creates clutter. It leaves something
on-screen that's of no immediate use to me. Then another. Then another.

But there is less on screen than there had been - hence reduced clutter.
You're left with the menu bar only rather than `menu bar plus rest of
window' - less clutter, surely?

Nope. There was one widow there before, and there's still a window there
now. Granted it's a window that's no large than its title bar, but it's
still there, still cluttering up my Desktop.

But it's cluttering up *less* of your Desktop. Reduced clutter is what
I said - not `none'.

As someone said to me recently, don't exaggerate.

With the Dock it adds an icon to a group of icons that was there to begin
with - effectively not taking up any more screen space.

But you've got to hunt to find the thing that you minimised - search for
it, on a translucent UI element, in a position you don't know about
since you didn't put it there yourself, trying to identify a tiny
picture amongst a large group of tiny pictures, with no text labels
visible unless you do the slow mouse hovering thing?

I really don't feel like I'm hunting. It's about an inch of real space,
if that.

An inch or three of screen space is a lot of mouse movement when you've
got to traverse the entire screen to get there, and then you have to
hover the mouse over each icon to find out what it bloody well is - and
you tell me that's not hunting? ARGH!

And I _do_ know where it is, because the Finder shows me where
it's putting it when it minimises.

Not well enough for me to track it down. No muscle memory to help out
either.

Oh, it's a pain, it really is.

For you, yes. For me, no.

For *some* it's a major pain; for others, not.

It's not just me and you.

- and I don't understand why it's not a pain for you but I can accept
that it's not. I would like to see some comparisons made of real ease
of use tests comparing the Dock with what I reckon are methods that
should work better for most.

I don't have to close windows to get to the minimised items - with
Windowshade I had to close windows until I could find the titlebar I
wanted,

With the Dock, you have to peer and hunt to find the minimised items
you're after. With Windowshade, you can use muscle memory (*LOTS*
faster) to get back to the window where you'd left it - and if it's not
visible, what I did was whizz to the hierarchical application menu
(enhanced by Glidel) and just moused to the window by name.

Again, I never feel like I'm "peering and hunting". I know where my
icons are because they're where I put them, and I know where minimised
windows are because it shows me.

It doesn't show me where it puts them well enough for me to be able
track 'em down without having to hover over each minimised window.

I have too many icons for things to launch for me to be able to keep
track of them all in a single linear list - far too many. ~150 items on
DragThing, for example.

I know where each item on each DragThing layer is - each layer has two
rows of 12 buttons with current setup. But I'm totally stuffed when it
comes to finding stuff on the Dock, even when there are less than 24
items on it.

That's because scaling makes things move around and look different, you
don't have nice clear buttons, there are no text labels, and oh god
someone kill the translucency...

Windowshade + (Application Menu + Glidel) beats the Dock hands down if
you ask me. But if you've not got Glidel, then the need to find
Windowshaded stuff hiding under things can be a pain, I'll grant you.

or so I remember. It's been a while. I know you could go to the app
switcher, but that somehow felt...awkward. To me, anyway.

(app switcher was System 6; same place)

So you're happy hunting on the nasty fiddly translucent Dock for a
minimised window, but felt it awkward to go to the app menu? The app
menu which gave you nice clear text labels was awkward, but the Dock
with its translucency and failure to display labels unless you mouse
hover is not awkward?

Do you spot an inconsistency here?

Not for me, no. You seem to be assuming that I'm really having a hard
time with the Dock but unwilling to admit it. That's not the case.

You've got one thing wrong.

I think you're having a really hard time with the Dock and don't
*NOTICE* it.

Admitting it doesn't come into it - I think you're perfectly sincere,
just misguided (as the Pope said to the Archbish of Canterbury).

Windowshade always felt like a halfway house to me.

On its own, it's nbg. You need the old Application Menu *AND* Glidel
*AND* the hierarchical Apple Menu *AND* the Launcher (or similar things
to do the same basic jobs) - then it's magic. Oh yeah, and something
else too but I'm not sure I can recall what exactly. Written by
Turlough O'Connor, IIRC - that's all I can recall.

Quite a lot of people didn't use the Launcher, and fewer yet picked up
on the shareware Glidel. Lots of people didn't bother using the Apple
menu as their main file system access point - okay, doesn't suit
everyone, that method. XMenu gives me similar access to the file
system these days.

Oh I liked it enough
at the time, when there wasn't anything better,

It was part of a package - it had to be used in combination with other
UI elements to come into its own.

but when I used the Dock
it was like a breath of fresh air to me.

The first time I used the OS X UI I nearly wept. My opinion hasn't
changed much.

Rowland.

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