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Tog Takes on Mac OS X 10.3
Rick Zeman writes "Bruce 'Tog' Tognazzini, founder of Apple's Human Interface Group years ago, has finally pointed his electrons to Mac OS X 10.3. He's been dormant for while, and hasn't said anything since the early days of Mac OS X. His new articles include 'Panther: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly' and 'The Top Nine Reasons why the Dock Sucks,' all coming from A Guy Who Knows."
"All documents look the same" Um, no they don't. "But for the most part he is right. All documents look the same, no tagging, trash can in the dock, dragging from the dock erases what you drag. It's dangerous." No it doesn't. Dragging to the dock creates an alias (shortcut for you Windows users). Dragging away from the dock simply d-letes the alias
Most of TOG's suggestions weren't my cup of tea ( I like the Dock, but hey, I used to be a NEXTSTEP developer), but WindowShade is a wonderful program.
http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/wsx/
Actually, these guys make a lot of cool, useful little app's, but WindowShade's "minimize in place" is wonderful. When you click on the 'minimize' control for a window, it's minimized down to an icon. But unlike the dock it's minimized right where the window was, so you can arrange the icons yourself. Also, the icon is a live version of the document's contents (so you can see a progress bar's progress, differentiate between two different Photoshop images, etc.) and has the application icon superimposed (so you know what kind of window it is). Apple should at least use these icons in the Dock.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
I have used every single Mac OS since system 7.1 in 1993 and I think that Torg does have several good points.
1. I have to agree that the open and save dialogs are a bit obstrusive, I remember being able to move around the open and save dialog to see what was going on behind it at times. Now when I get an ICQ add request I can't see the request because the dialog box is sticking in the way. Perhaps Apple needs to implent ment a "Rip" button that gives you the option of ripping the dialog box off the window on a case by case basis.
2. I disagree with the trash can issue. I like it in the Dock and find it pretty usefull there. Not to mention the fact that I just rather hit apple+delete to trash things anyway.
3. Ok, so the UI is differant, but honestly I think it is the best one that apple has designed since I have used the mac. They removed a lot of the issues that plagued it in it's infancy. I love the single window option and I have not had an issue with screen density at all. Quite frankly I think the new finder is the most functional they have had since 7.5 (yeah it's flame bait but II loved 7.5). It provides everything that you would want to access quickly right there for you with minimal problems. Yeah things may be bigger, but I like that.
"If you notice in Windows XP, you can't change the size of the taskbar"
When items get added to it... something's got to give. You either need to make the items smaller or show less image data. Apple chose the wiser of the two options before it. The ability to lock the dock would be a step backwards IMHO.
"For the OS X dock this would be a good feature beacuse it is easy to accidentally remove programs from the dock by slightly dragging the mouse when you double click"
You don't double click items in the dock to launch/activate them. Its all single-click. Second, you have to drag an item relatively far outside the dock to remove it. If you slightly move it... (as per your analogy) the item snaps back to its origional position.
"and it is easy to change the size of the dock by accidentally dragging the mouse on the border."
You don't resize the dock by dragging the mouse on its border. You have to command-click the line-seperator and drag... (a combination you wouldn't be using otherwise when at the dock and so it makes the chance of accidentally re-sizing the dock almost impossible.
If the sidebar is too wide for your taste, you can make it smaller by dragging the separator bar, down to the size of the icons. If you hover over them the names will popup immediately. (This handy tip came from http://www.macosxhints.com)
Enter in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.dock pinning end
defaults write com.apple.dock orientation right
Then restart the Dock. Enjoy!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I run Windows XP, and almost everything I do is done via a command. Create a folder called c:\shortcuts. Copy shortcuts to your favorite apps, vbscripts, whatever to this folder and name them whatever you want. Add C:\shortcuts to your PATH env variable. Now all I do is hit Windows+R (Same as start run), type in my new command, and hit enter. What used to take many seconds of menus, right mouse clicks, and options, now takes less than 2 seconds. I want to start Microsoft Word, I type "word". If I want to start iTunes, I type "itunes". If I want to start device manager and connect to a remote machine, I type "mg computername".
Not all Windows users are GUI freaks...some of us are pretty proficient with our workstations without the pretty pictures.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
Correct. They are simply very very large TIFFs. The UI in general is based on display PDF, so parts of it could very well be vector based (fonts, of course.) but the icons are not.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
[panther] Try dragging docs or apps off the dock using the command key as a modifier. That moves the original item to the target window (including the desktop). You retain your dock icon that way, then you can drag it off to see the cool 'poof' effect (which justifies the whole thing if you ask me) :-) Pretty consistent, actually (the command key is a forceful modifier).
The trash stays where it is, need a haxie for getting it on the desktop.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Middle-button text editing, a popular staple of Linux geeks, is not present, but the drag & drop features are powerful enough that you will never miss it, once you get used to the new OS.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Tog writes "The same problem is plaguing the Safari browser. You can't elect to import bookmarks into Safari, and there's no way to get them back out. No corporation would support a single-source supplier, and no individual should either"
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There's a hidden Safari feature which allows you to import bookmarks
Type the following command in Terminal (while Safari is NOT running):
Quit Safari. Enter the following command in Terminal
defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
Launch Safari -- you'll have a Debug menu added to the application's bar. Amongst the Debug menu options are two ways to import bookmarks.
To get rid of Debug, quit Safari and enter the following command in Terminal
defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeDebugMenu 0