-1 karma for picking on "incredibly unique"
on
Ender in Exile
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· Score: 1
I know someone is going to point out "unique" is a boolean state, but I think that's the wrong way of thinking about it... technically, everything is probably unique, since you can just redefine your thinking of "its kind". And then again, nothing is 100% unique, because it falls under the category of "thing". So it makes sense to think about degrees of uniqueness.
Admittedly "incredibly unique" probably still isn't the deftest choice of words, but I've seen much worse.
This beautiful line of Perl code: $line =~ s/([^\t]*)\t/$1." "x(8-length($1)%8)/ge; replaces tabs with the appropriate number of spaces, respecting the tab stops. Its author Phiroze Parakh rocks
C=64 came first. In fact, I remember a David Crane interview where he pointed to it as an example of something that couldn't be done on the 2600... maybe he shoulda said shouldn't...
Hmm. Is that "all controls" the default now, and I'm just kicking around with an older OSX, or ? I'm just trying to think of what the justification could possibly be, since it adds functionality for the pro with VERY little added complexity for the novice.
I guess I don't see a lot in the foreseeable future that will really push me into a switch, though as Apple seems to be getting niftier (and I was sore tempted by the MacMini) and Windows seems to be getting more "whirlwind in a component factory", I wouldn't rule out re-evaluating the decision.
I'm not sure I see why OSX's "you have a file on your desktop that you can drag and make an attachment" is easier for n00bs than "you can hit ctrl-v in Outlook, or Word".
OH OH OH - that reminds me of one of the BIGGEST, DUMBEST things OSX does, and I RESENT it because its leaked onto my iPhone. With every Windows browser, EVERY FORM ELEMENT IS IN THE TAB-ORDER AND I CAN USE THE KEYBOARD TO MANIPULATE IT. (same goes for dialogs) *Especially* checkboxes... space on, space off. Easy and intuitive and I miss the HELL out of that when I try to use a Mac, and sometimes even my iPhone (where I've pulled up the keyboard, am in that weird half screen mode that they haven't gotten quite right in terms of making sure I can see where I'm operating (don't get me wrong I love iPhone)- I can tab from textbox to textbox, but if there's a checkbox, plbbbt. Your claims about great OSX support ring hollow when I think about that... ultimately, Mac wants you to go to the mouse.
So we gotta agree to disagree about the usefulness of jumping to word boundaries... I think the rules are pretty easy to internalize, and I think "modify the last few words I typed" is much more common and natural than operations involving the whole line-- though I find that well-supported w/ home and end, so YMMV.
The Option w/ context menus does sound pretty smart.
Never had too much problem w/ finding the right mouse button on laptops. Still not sure I like two finger scrolling... I've only done it w/ iPhone, where it's saved for "scroll textarea not whole browser window" and there it always feels like a very delicate + fiddly operation-- then again, I don't like scrolling areas on most touchpads either, usually I'll just switch to pgup/pgdn or space for just down. And am really afraid about learning to trust 2 vs 3 vs 4 finger swipes - your piano metaphor hasn't always held for me.
Don't find the having to click before scrolling burdensome, and it feels less ambiguous to me- I *know* where I clicked and am less likely to be surprised by something drifting.
I find your argument that "the Mac heads were right all along about the one button" thing kind of diluted by the praise I've heard put on context menu menus' implementation on OSX. But here it might be just my brain used to it, but it seems really great to be able to KNOW you have the context right, and that you are working in this items own little state, without having to worry about the state of any whole application.
I find alt-f style "macros" safer than any chord combo, and the time I take in carefully arranging my fingers to get the right modifiers is more than I'd take to just go bam bam. Plus, and I think this is important, a "menu macro" key combination has a structure to learn it and fall back on if you forget it. Usually you either know a chord combo or you don't, or you've deliberately learned it by studying the little reminders on the menu. menu macros can be learned more organically...(oh, and I just now realized there doesn't even seem to be a default "open the X menu w/ the keyboard behavior.)
OSX probably does have a better top level menu naming structure. (of course, whether it's better to be always floating at the top of the screen is a better of fair debate, I know there are good arguments on both sides... and I know what I'm used to.)
But the only reason cmd-shift-? is good is because shift-? is already a bundle... that would outweigh any touch typing advantage, if you're having to jump into help, the efficiency game is probably lost anyway!
S'funny, I kind of like the old Mac OS, especially that early-mid-90s color era. At least the look of it, very clean but in a pixel-art kind of way.
So, my main OSX history is 2 white ibooks i had. G3s I think. The first one was quite decent - a revelation to see that there isn't something inherent in wifi that makes a computer take like half a minute to refind its connection on resume after suspend, windows network code just sucks- but then it got stuff spilled on it, and I tried to
I live a reasonably frugal life, I still have an iPhone. It's a luxury but not a status item for me, I enjoy the hell out of it, I'm aware that its ~$500/year, and also that that tends to become a hidden cost.
And the trouble is the frugal folk here are probably preaching at the choir, including people in the choir who don't quite agree with them, but still aren't the "target audience" of idiots going nuts w/ the credit cards and 2/28 mortgages.
And yet it seems like most banks are pretty good at covering this stuff? Or not. My friend had someone take and use his Debit (w/ CC feature, letting it be used w/ no PIN) and didn't have to pay any of the resulting $1300 spending spree.
(nice asshole tactic is you make small purchases at 7-11 in between each major expenditure, so you know when the jig is up)
Oh, so cmd-shift-4 (which is right up there with alt-f4 in arbitrariness) saves a file to the desktop? alt-prtscrn, open a (non-web) mail client, ctrl-V has worked for me, though sometimes that was a large file size.
(More linux griping, yeah, having prtscrn ONLY save to file was annoying, as was firefox 2 not having right click "copy to clipboard")
I don't find the Ctrl- key that bothersome, especially because there are two of them, and they're anchored at the far corners. I generally do a poor form of touchtyping, but frankly, if I'm typing quickly I'm generally typing with characters and not doing rapid fire fiddling w/ arrow keys etc.
Nor do I find home+end difficult to get to, except on certain laptops.
I find "home and end alone don't do anything" kind of silly (and, now to think of it, frustrating in use) And I know I have trouble when different modifiers do different things... cmd-left, beginning of line, option-left, beginning of word? Now THAT'S fiddle-farty... and I would even speculate that you don't find jump to word boundary "useful" because the OSX key for it is semi-ambiguous. (When I'm composing a paragraph, fairly often I want to jump few words back, or with the shift key, I can easily highlight the last couple of words.)
So technically they do the same things, if you dislike similar-but-different (cmd vs option) modifiers, you'll give Windows the edge, and if you find the home and end key inconvenient, you'll prefer OSX. (I'm not sure if I buy that there are more "multi-key combinations"
I don't find your firefox example too useful, since home and end have the same functionality (and I don't find too hard to get to), ctrl-arrow would hop up a word at a time (which is closer to your case anyway -- sometimes the place I want to put the " is in the middle of what I had typed), and, tada, now up and down arrow can do something useful, like pull up and navigate a list of previous things you've searched for. So here I give an edge to Windows too.
So all that's left is the hardware, and if you pick on windows laptops for not always being consistent w/ home and end and mabe ctrl, I'm going to think back to all those mac laptops w/o a right mouse button. (though I guess they're FINALLY coming up w/ some kind of mouse touch replacement, and there's been some mouse modifier. Cmd- was it? or Opt- ? I always get the two mixed up.)
Well, overthinking is what I do. And I have tried OSX -- it wasn't terrible, but even a fair amount of use wasn't enough to let it feel like home.
Yeah, dock can be vertical -- actually, autohiding dock is pretty common on Macs I sit down to use, so it's often a dumb game of "ok, where did THIS guy decide to hide the dock".
I'm visual, but I read fast too. I just don't like keeping stuff in my head, so I like an everpresent taskbar over a modal switch, and I like that everpresent taskbar to show me what's I've been doing, not a mix of general things I have been doing (with the triangle) or might want to do.
I find the suite of Windows shortcuts roughly comparable w/ what you post, though I didn't know ctrl-K to go along with ctrl-L in Firefox, so thanks.
I hear you on the "no new folder shortcut", but my fingers have memorized alt-f,w,return -- no big deal, plus I had a bridge to learning it, as opposed to an arbitrary key combo.
alt-prtscrn/prtscrn is good enough for me... (and I prefer sequences, like alt-f,w,return to piles like cmd-shift-4) -- easier to remember than a arbitrary number, and if I have to duck over to a graphic program anyway, it's easy to use the normal rect tool, so I'm not too impressed by that being offered by the OS UI. sometimes alt-prnt scrn is tougher on laptops, since it needs a function key, but still.
I just tried 3 editors (Word, notepad, textpad) and ctrl-home and ctrl-end moved the cursor to the beginning of the first and the end of the last respectively, so I don't see your "in Windows you have to fiddle-fart around with first going to the first line (Ctrl+Home) and then issue another command to get to the beginning of the line. It's idiotic." comment is justified. Also, ctrl-leftarrow, ctrl-rightarrow jump to the start of the next or previous word, (with home and end do the beginning/end of the current line) -- does OSX even have a "jump to next word" default? What does home or end alone do? I think Windows might have a functionality edge here (and even if it's a wash, OSX is gonna be painful to switch to just 'cause it's different.)
So, thanks for your response. I'm learning stuff here.
I've had a few OSX laptops, and I agree with you that you have to unlearn Windows, but disagree that OSX is so Zen and beyond rational analysis. "Like working at a job you really enjoy because you're good at it." is how I operate with Windows right now, and it makes it difficult to switch... even my Gnome desktop at work that tries to imitate Windows is irksome in many ways...(which to be fair I haven't invested energy in learning how to customize) why isn't Windows key mapped to the main "Applications" button? Who the hell thought a shell should use ctrl-SHIFT-c for copy? ((having to stop and think, is this a shell, or is this ANY OTHER APP, is terrible... puTTY on windows, with its highlight top copy, right click to paste is, in practice, MUCH better)- plus this Gnome has that terrible "I'll group *IF* things get crowded" thing you hate in Windows. (and without nice-ities like "ok, close every window in this group)
But analysis of UI IS tough. I hate the stopwatch brigade, who measure time to find a button or whatever, but don't (and can't) measure the amount of "brainspace" something takes. Or who study how newbies approach a system and neglect experienced users, again because the former is so much easier to study in isolation. So we (people interested in UIs and improving their own experience, beyond little OS flamewars) have to talk things out, put themselves in others shoes, think about mental models and keyboard uses and what not. (like... on OSX I don't like how (IIRC) just the one corner is active for window resizing. I like having left and bottom side there. And a Linux user might think even that was limiting, but I'm used to it.)
When you say you don't "use the Dock, ain't that a hoot" that indicates you have a different set of needs for your UI than I do. I value the "at a glance" view of what I've been working on. And I agree Windows Grouping is generally TERRIBLE- at least when the taskbar is in its normal horizontal placement. As I've said, I tend to put it vertically on the right side of the screen (better utilizing a 16:9 layout) and in that case the grouping just keeps the taskbuttons sorted by application, which is rather nice-- an Expose-like functionality that sacrifices seeing the screen contents itself for the ability to be always present during other tasks -- a good trade off for my way of working, allowing me to mentally offload windows tasks I haven't used in a while but still have them in the periphery.
I'd like to know more about OSX keyboard shortcuts. Again for me, if it's complex I find a visual reinforcement helpful -- so the "Start" menu is great, dragging an launch icon there... I used to anally rename icons so the important apps had a unique starting letter, so it was always windowskey,letter. Since then I've relaxed a bit, and now it's more like windowskey, letter, letter, enterkey, but still that's much faster than any mouse actvity, and pretty soon you get the rhythm internalized. What was the sequence of keys for spotlight/Dictionary? I haven't had the chance to use that yet -- though Firefox's dictionary does pretty well for 90% of what I need a dictionary for. (Heheh, in fact one hack around Window's lack of that, one time I just wrote a local HTML page w/ textarea just to use Firefox's spellcheck on an ffline machine:-)
And so finally, it's that visual element that's the difference between us in cmd-tab vs alt-tab. In practice, I'm switching focus NOT between every window I have open, but between the last 2 or 3. And sometimes that might be 2 firefox windows and a shell, sometimes it might be an editor and 2 shells, sometimes it might all be different apps --and my understanding is with OSX cycling, I would *lose* the don't-think-about-it aspect of alt-tab and its very clever "stack" approach, where alt-tab = what I was just doing, and alt-tab,tab = what I was doing 2 things ago. And if it's more than 3 or 4 things ago, I really don't mind finding it on the taskbar, because
Yeah, but if some people like desktop icons, why not keep them in? Yes, you might not like them for very good reasons, esp. because other windows hide 'em, but if someone likes the the physicality of them there, why not.
Heh, yeah I noticed that. Reminds me of that cyberpunk parody http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/91q1/ozpunk.html : I needed to read the X Windows/Motif 1.1 manual, so I came to the bar and asked Ratz to fix the documentation data in liquid form for me. It made a bitter, painful drink, but it was better than spending days turning pages in realspace.
Ratz put a bucket of liquid in front of me.
"I wanted a glass of docs, Ratz. What the hell is this?" I barked.
"Motif don't fit in a glass anymore," he barked back.
I like your sig "Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about." -- there's so much frickin' negativity and mindless "can do no wrong" praise out there.
You can also remap the Expose keys to your liking if you don't mind editing a text file.
fair enough... though I'm always a little scared of getting too dependent on a customization like that, it makes it harder to work on someone else's machine. But now I'm probably just sounding whiny:-)
He quotes Alan Kay: "HTML on the Internet has gone back to the dark ages because it presupposes that there should be a browser that understands its formats... You don't need a browser, if you followed what this Staff Sergeant in the Air Force knew how to do in 1961. You just read [data] in. It should travel with all the things that it needs, and you don't need anything more complex than something like X Windows."
Whoa. I'm not sure which is worse; the idea of every screen being rendered on a server and then piped over to the user, or every interaction is an object being sent with its data, which seems like a security nightmare.
besides don't most of us download, say, the browser anyway? Kind of a boot strap thing.
It's kind of like those "enhanced" DVDs then, put in a PC, offer to install some weird ass player...
yeah, I admit expose is pretty damn cool (though the F11 or whatever keys are all awfully close to each other and easy to mix up) but alt-tab bridges the gap between "what I was working on in a different application" in a way that "let me see all my windows at once so I can hunt and find the one I want" doesn't. If there was a cmd or alt modifier that said "show me all windows for this app, now all the windows for the next app, now all the windows for the third app", that would be a bit better.
So there's a difference in mindset here. And the OSX is, inescapably, more application oriented. Which is fine. Maybe "new fresh start" vs "return to what I was doing" is more different to me than the difference between application? Sort of, not really... but just like OSX has certain things you go back to the apple menu for, "new fresh start" happens less often, and so I like that it's hidden behind the start menu.
Again, alt-tab isn't about "cycling through 50 windows", it's about QUICKLY bouncing back to what you were just doing, independent of whether that was the same app or a different app. If you're going to a very old window, use the task bar! That's what it's there for. Alt-Tab is always great at getting at the last 2-4 things you did... beyond that, any system has to switch from "Quick toggle" to "Search for window" mode anyway.
(BTW, I'd suggest using the right side for the system tray, since then it doesn't push the desktop icons around...)
I usally windows-m to hide all windows, then go back to the one thing I'm actually focusing on - that works better for me than minimizing one app at a time. But technically you're not 100% correct, a "grouped" button on the task bar has a minimize group option on the context menu. Probably not as good for you as CMD-H, but some people want to specify what they want to focus on, not just indicate what they don't.
someone else mentioned that... and I'm sure people don't use Cmd-Tab 'cause its implementation is sucky on Apple, but "press a button to let me visually scan some windows and then maybe click one" is not as fast or as good as "bounce back to my last task, whether it was this app or a different one"
No, it's close, and cool, but not not it -- I think. And honestly, I'm not JUST splitting hairs here, I think, but... Either it's "all windows in every application" or "all windows in the current application", right? There's no way to cycle through applications? Like if repeated presses (though I think letting go resets thing) brought you to all the windows of the previous application...
Oh, I dunno. I like the visual connection, something that's gently always there reminding me of stuff I should finish up or close down...
Also, bleck, I classify "magic mouse corners" right down there with "click on trackpad to click" -- I don't want to map ANY potentially startling activity to a motion I'm likely to make accidentally, like when I'm shoving the mouse out of the way or putting my finger on the trackpad to start moving the mouse. Other people love it, but I always turn that stuff off ASAP.
Some of it's just the flow. Though Windows has always had better support for keyboard shortcuts, and Macs weirdness about straightforward right mouse buttons is kind of annoying, especially after OSX supports it so well.
But Windows is getting worse. In a lot of ways they're good about letting you dial back the UI, but not with the sidebars, and in general, Guess What I Mean is getting more prevalent.
Eh, I thought it was worth a stab. Upgrade Firefox from 2 to 3, the error is along the lines of "can't connect", identical to when it's not on the Internet. IE can connect though, mostly I find boards that say "THE PROBLEM IS NEVER FIRE FOX 3. IT IS ALMOST ALWAYS A FIREWALL OR SOMETHING" So I checked the basic windows firewall, made sure it was off, still the same result. Something is blocking it, but thanks to Vista's craptapular nature, I have no idea of how to go spelunking in Vista's gnarly innards for whatever's cutting it off.
What's the difference? In both cases, you're trying to accomplish a task, right? Nope! One is "continue something I started doing before", whether it's a document, some photo-editing, some open website articles I got halfway through... I want to pick up where I left off. The second is "a clean start". I want an empty document, a blank canvas, a home page with my usual links...
To my way of thinking and working with computers, very different things.
I have a mediocre short term memory, and often -- OOH SHINY -- appreciate the reminder of -- HEY WHAT'S THAT - what I had going on before I got distracted. Just having a pile of pretty "these are applications I use" with boring little triangles to nudge me that "hey this application has something I was doing before" is wildly insufficient.
People of good conscious can differ on the task bar, and you make some good points, here are my counters: First off, I don't have experience w/ XP/Vista's startmenu, which some people like, but to me seems like a less predictable "GWIM (guess what I mean)" type thing (though I like where Firefox 3 has taken the Address Bar, and it's in some ways similar)
So, with Classic Windows, you can put icons on the desktop or quick launch bar, but you don't have to. I like things tucked "inside" the start button. Things I find myself coming back to regularly, I drag to the start menu proper, other stuff I leave in the under Applications. This actually also provides *very* handy keyboard shortcuts that I don't have to memorize, but can if I want to.
I guess the task bar can be set to autohide/disappear as well as the dock can. That does match my way of working, because I use it as an unobtrusive set of visual reminders of tasks I might want to return to -- this is what I end up most missing with the Dock, where I only get the thumbnails if I actively minimize something.
Fair point on the text-based buttons being unreadable. Windows "solution" is to offer to "group like tasks" or whatever, which I hate because it brings the taskbar back to the Dock level in terms of visual reminders, and requires an extra click and more think time. What I do is this: I drag the task bar to the right side of the screen. On the new trend in 16:9 monitors, this is actually a much better use of screen real estate. Keeping "group" on means I'm still sorting by app, but it seems like the actual collapsing doesn't happen... if for some reason I need to see the full text of menus, I just drag the bar a little wider, othewise I leave it about a normal button width, which 95% of the time works well enough for me to keep track of what's going on.
I'd say your complaint about the "exercise in futility" is only valid when you're looking for a task you did a long time ago, in which case, you'd probably be better off with the task bar. alt-tabs beauty is a SUPER intuitive stack push/pop algorithm it uses... the thing you last worked on is the first thing it pops back to, and you can quickly develop a rhythm to shuffle between your 2 or 3 windows without having to think about it and without taking your fingers off the keyboard, and the behavior is the frickin' same whether your tasks are different windows in the same app or spanning multiple applications... consistency is a great and wonderful thing, and I resent that OSX "forces" me to think in terms of "applications" rather than "tasks". (My OSX using friend resents that Windows "forces" him to think in terms of "running apps" (i.e. taskbar), and "new apps" (i.e. shortcut launches) but to my way of thinking, they're very different, because the former is "context I want to return to" and the latter is "a fresh start, please")
Windows Vista is a very sad exercise in "More is the new More!" design.
I took a snapshot of first desktop scene of my Vista laptop. Some of that's the usual OEM cruft, but man, what a visual assault! Harsh colors, the OEM cruft (icons, windows, toolbars), messages screaming at me... and then this dumbass sidebar. Because, you know, I always wanted a slideshow permanently putting up a new picture to distract me every couple minutes.
I still run w/ windows maximized, just a way of focusing, but Windows UI is running in the opposite direction.
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I know someone is going to point out "unique" is a boolean state, but I think that's the wrong way of thinking about it... technically, everything is probably unique, since you can just redefine your thinking of "its kind". And then again, nothing is 100% unique, because it falls under the category of "thing". So it makes sense to think about degrees of uniqueness.
Admittedly "incredibly unique" probably still isn't the deftest choice of words, but I've seen much worse.
This beautiful line of Perl code:
$line =~ s/([^\t]*)\t/$1." "x(8-length($1)%8)/ge;
replaces tabs with the appropriate number of spaces, respecting the tab stops. Its author Phiroze Parakh rocks
C=64 came first.
In fact, I remember a David Crane interview where he pointed to it as an example of something that couldn't be done on the 2600... maybe he shoulda said shouldn't...
Well, looks like we're winding things up here.
Hmm. Is that "all controls" the default now, and I'm just kicking around with an older OSX, or ? I'm just trying to think of what the justification could possibly be, since it adds functionality for the pro with VERY little added complexity for the novice.
I guess I don't see a lot in the foreseeable future that will really push me into a switch, though as Apple seems to be getting niftier (and I was sore tempted by the MacMini) and Windows seems to be getting more "whirlwind in a component factory", I wouldn't rule out re-evaluating the decision.
I'm not sure I see why OSX's "you have a file on your desktop that you can drag and make an attachment" is easier for n00bs than "you can hit ctrl-v in Outlook, or Word".
OH OH OH - that reminds me of one of the BIGGEST, DUMBEST things OSX does, and I RESENT it because its leaked onto my iPhone. With every Windows browser, EVERY FORM ELEMENT IS IN THE TAB-ORDER AND I CAN USE THE KEYBOARD TO MANIPULATE IT. (same goes for dialogs) *Especially* checkboxes... space on, space off. Easy and intuitive and I miss the HELL out of that when I try to use a Mac, and sometimes even my iPhone (where I've pulled up the keyboard, am in that weird half screen mode that they haven't gotten quite right in terms of making sure I can see where I'm operating (don't get me wrong I love iPhone)- I can tab from textbox to textbox, but if there's a checkbox, plbbbt. Your claims about great OSX support ring hollow when I think about that... ultimately, Mac wants you to go to the mouse.
So we gotta agree to disagree about the usefulness of jumping to word boundaries... I think the rules are pretty easy to internalize, and I think "modify the last few words I typed" is much more common and natural than operations involving the whole line-- though I find that well-supported w/ home and end, so YMMV.
The Option w/ context menus does sound pretty smart.
Never had too much problem w/ finding the right mouse button on laptops. Still not sure I like two finger scrolling... I've only done it w/ iPhone, where it's saved for "scroll textarea not whole browser window" and there it always feels like a very delicate + fiddly operation-- then again, I don't like scrolling areas on most touchpads either, usually I'll just switch to pgup/pgdn or space for just down. And am really afraid about learning to trust 2 vs 3 vs 4 finger swipes - your piano metaphor hasn't always held for me.
Don't find the having to click before scrolling burdensome, and it feels less ambiguous to me- I *know* where I clicked and am less likely to be surprised by something drifting.
I find your argument that "the Mac heads were right all along about the one button" thing kind of diluted by the praise I've heard put on context menu menus' implementation on OSX. But here it might be just my brain used to it, but it seems really great to be able to KNOW you have the context right, and that you are working in this items own little state, without having to worry about the state of any whole application.
I find alt-f style "macros" safer than any chord combo, and the time I take in carefully arranging my fingers to get the right modifiers is more than I'd take to just go bam bam. Plus, and I think this is important, a "menu macro" key combination has a structure to learn it and fall back on if you forget it. Usually you either know a chord combo or you don't, or you've deliberately learned it by studying the little reminders on the menu. menu macros can be learned more organically...(oh, and I just now realized there doesn't even seem to be a default "open the X menu w/ the keyboard behavior.)
OSX probably does have a better top level menu naming structure. (of course, whether it's better to be always floating at the top of the screen is a better of fair debate, I know there are good arguments on both sides... and I know what I'm used to.)
But the only reason cmd-shift-? is good is because shift-? is already a bundle... that would outweigh any touch typing advantage, if you're having to jump into help, the efficiency game is probably lost anyway!
S'funny, I kind of like the old Mac OS, especially that early-mid-90s color era. At least the look of it, very clean but in a pixel-art kind of way.
So, my main OSX history is 2 white ibooks i had. G3s I think. The first one was quite decent - a revelation to see that there isn't something inherent in wifi that makes a computer take like half a minute to refind its connection on resume after suspend, windows network code just sucks- but then it got stuff spilled on it, and I tried to
Amen.
There's so much self-righteousness.
I live a reasonably frugal life, I still have an iPhone. It's a luxury but not a status item for me, I enjoy the hell out of it, I'm aware that its ~$500/year, and also that that tends to become a hidden cost.
And the trouble is the frugal folk here are probably preaching at the choir, including people in the choir who don't quite agree with them, but still aren't the "target audience" of idiots going nuts w/ the credit cards and 2/28 mortgages.
No, I said "covering it", as in making the bank customer not responsible for the charges someone else made, not "covering it up"
And yet it seems like most banks are pretty good at covering this stuff? Or not. My friend had someone take and use his Debit (w/ CC feature, letting it be used w/ no PIN) and didn't have to pay any of the resulting $1300 spending spree.
(nice asshole tactic is you make small purchases at 7-11 in between each major expenditure, so you know when the jig is up)
Oh, so cmd-shift-4 (which is right up there with alt-f4 in arbitrariness) saves a file to the desktop?
alt-prtscrn, open a (non-web) mail client, ctrl-V has worked for me, though sometimes that was a large file size.
(More linux griping, yeah, having prtscrn ONLY save to file was annoying, as was firefox 2 not having right click "copy to clipboard")
I don't find the Ctrl- key that bothersome, especially because there are two of them, and they're anchored at the far corners. I generally do a poor form of touchtyping, but frankly, if I'm typing quickly I'm generally typing with characters and not doing rapid fire fiddling w/ arrow keys etc.
Nor do I find home+end difficult to get to, except on certain laptops.
I find "home and end alone don't do anything" kind of silly (and, now to think of it, frustrating in use) And I know I have trouble when different modifiers do different things... cmd-left, beginning of line, option-left, beginning of word? Now THAT'S fiddle-farty... and I would even speculate that you don't find jump to word boundary "useful" because the OSX key for it is semi-ambiguous. (When I'm composing a paragraph, fairly often I want to jump few words back, or with the shift key, I can easily highlight the last couple of words.)
So technically they do the same things, if you dislike similar-but-different (cmd vs option) modifiers, you'll give Windows the edge, and if you find the home and end key inconvenient, you'll prefer OSX. (I'm not sure if I buy that there are more "multi-key combinations"
I don't find your firefox example too useful, since home and end have the same functionality (and I don't find too hard to get to), ctrl-arrow would hop up a word at a time (which is closer to your case anyway -- sometimes the place I want to put the " is in the middle of what I had typed), and, tada, now up and down arrow can do something useful, like pull up and navigate a list of previous things you've searched for. So here I give an edge to Windows too.
So all that's left is the hardware, and if you pick on windows laptops for not always being consistent w/ home and end and mabe ctrl, I'm going to think back to all those mac laptops w/o a right mouse button. (though I guess they're FINALLY coming up w/ some kind of mouse touch replacement, and there's been some mouse modifier. Cmd- was it? or Opt- ? I always get the two mixed up.)
Well, overthinking is what I do. And I have tried OSX -- it wasn't terrible, but even a fair amount of use wasn't enough to let it feel like home.
Yeah, dock can be vertical -- actually, autohiding dock is pretty common on Macs I sit down to use, so it's often a dumb game of "ok, where did THIS guy decide to hide the dock".
I'm visual, but I read fast too. I just don't like keeping stuff in my head, so I like an everpresent taskbar over a modal switch, and I like that everpresent taskbar to show me what's I've been doing, not a mix of general things I have been doing (with the triangle) or might want to do.
For better or worse, your accented character just is not showing up correctly on my machine. "Exposé" is what I see (the accented e becomes A with a tilde and the copyright character). I use & eacute ; for most HTML stuff, which I do more often than Office-y stuff.
I find the suite of Windows shortcuts roughly comparable w/ what you post, though I didn't know ctrl-K to go along with ctrl-L in Firefox, so thanks.
I hear you on the "no new folder shortcut", but my fingers have memorized alt-f,w,return -- no big deal, plus I had a bridge to learning it, as opposed to an arbitrary key combo.
alt-prtscrn/prtscrn is good enough for me... (and I prefer sequences, like alt-f,w,return to piles like cmd-shift-4) -- easier to remember than a arbitrary number, and if I have to duck over to a graphic program anyway, it's easy to use the normal rect tool, so I'm not too impressed by that being offered by the OS UI. sometimes alt-prnt scrn is tougher on laptops, since it needs a function key, but still.
I just tried 3 editors (Word, notepad, textpad) and ctrl-home and ctrl-end moved the cursor to the beginning of the first and the end of the last respectively, so I don't see your "in Windows you have to fiddle-fart around with first going to the first line (Ctrl+Home) and then issue another command to get to the beginning of the line. It's idiotic." comment is justified. Also, ctrl-leftarrow, ctrl-rightarrow jump to the start of the next or previous word, (with home and end do the beginning/end of the current line) -- does OSX even have a "jump to next word" default? What does home or end alone do? I think Windows might have a functionality edge here (and even if it's a wash, OSX is gonna be painful to switch to just 'cause it's different.)
So, thanks for your response. I'm learning stuff here.
I've had a few OSX laptops, and I agree with you that you have to unlearn Windows, but disagree that OSX is so Zen and beyond rational analysis. "Like working at a job you really enjoy because you're good at it." is how I operate with Windows right now, and it makes it difficult to switch... even my Gnome desktop at work that tries to imitate Windows is irksome in many ways...(which to be fair I haven't invested energy in learning how to customize) why isn't Windows key mapped to the main "Applications" button? Who the hell thought a shell should use ctrl-SHIFT-c for copy? ((having to stop and think, is this a shell, or is this ANY OTHER APP, is terrible... puTTY on windows, with its highlight top copy, right click to paste is, in practice, MUCH better)- plus this Gnome has that terrible "I'll group *IF* things get crowded" thing you hate in Windows. (and without nice-ities like "ok, close every window in this group)
But analysis of UI IS tough. I hate the stopwatch brigade, who measure time to find a button or whatever, but don't (and can't) measure the amount of "brainspace" something takes. Or who study how newbies approach a system and neglect experienced users, again because the former is so much easier to study in isolation. So we (people interested in UIs and improving their own experience, beyond little OS flamewars) have to talk things out, put themselves in others shoes, think about mental models and keyboard uses and what not. (like... on OSX I don't like how (IIRC) just the one corner is active for window resizing. I like having left and bottom side there. And a Linux user might think even that was limiting, but I'm used to it.)
When you say you don't "use the Dock, ain't that a hoot" that indicates you have a different set of needs for your UI than I do. I value the "at a glance" view of what I've been working on. And I agree Windows Grouping is generally TERRIBLE- at least when the taskbar is in its normal horizontal placement. As I've said, I tend to put it vertically on the right side of the screen (better utilizing a 16:9 layout) and in that case the grouping just keeps the taskbuttons sorted by application, which is rather nice-- an Expose-like functionality that sacrifices seeing the screen contents itself for the ability to be always present during other tasks -- a good trade off for my way of working, allowing me to mentally offload windows tasks I haven't used in a while but still have them in the periphery.
I'd like to know more about OSX keyboard shortcuts. Again for me, if it's complex I find a visual reinforcement helpful -- so the "Start" menu is great, dragging an launch icon there... I used to anally rename icons so the important apps had a unique starting letter, so it was always windowskey,letter. Since then I've relaxed a bit, and now it's more like windowskey, letter, letter, enterkey, but still that's much faster than any mouse actvity, and pretty soon you get the rhythm internalized. What was the sequence of keys for spotlight/Dictionary? I haven't had the chance to use that yet -- though Firefox's dictionary does pretty well for 90% of what I need a dictionary for. (Heheh, in fact one hack around Window's lack of that, one time I just wrote a local HTML page w/ textarea just to use Firefox's spellcheck on an ffline machine :-)
And so finally, it's that visual element that's the difference between us in cmd-tab vs alt-tab. In practice, I'm switching focus NOT between every window I have open, but between the last 2 or 3. And sometimes that might be 2 firefox windows and a shell, sometimes it might be an editor and 2 shells, sometimes it might all be different apps --and my understanding is with OSX cycling, I would *lose* the don't-think-about-it aspect of alt-tab and its very clever "stack" approach, where alt-tab = what I was just doing, and alt-tab,tab = what I was doing 2 things ago. And if it's more than 3 or 4 things ago, I really don't mind finding it on the taskbar, because
Yeah, but if some people like desktop icons, why not keep them in?
Yes, you might not like them for very good reasons, esp. because other windows hide 'em, but if someone likes the the physicality of them there, why not.
Heh, yeah I noticed that.
Reminds me of that cyberpunk parody http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/91q1/ozpunk.html :
I needed to read the X Windows/Motif 1.1 manual, so I came to the bar and asked Ratz to fix the documentation data in liquid form for me. It made a bitter, painful drink, but it was better than spending days turning pages in realspace.
Ratz put a bucket of liquid in front of me.
"I wanted a glass of docs, Ratz. What the hell is this?" I barked.
"Motif don't fit in a glass anymore," he barked back.
I like your sig "Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about." -- there's so much frickin' negativity and mindless "can do no wrong" praise out there.
You can also remap the Expose keys to your liking if you don't mind editing a text file.
fair enough... though I'm always a little scared of getting too dependent on a customization like that, it makes it harder to work on someone else's machine. But now I'm probably just sounding whiny :-)
He quotes Alan Kay:
"HTML on the Internet has gone back to the dark ages because it presupposes that there should be a browser that understands its formats... You don't need a browser, if you followed what this Staff Sergeant in the Air Force knew how to do in 1961. You just read [data] in. It should travel with all the things that it needs, and you don't need anything more complex than something like X Windows."
Whoa.
I'm not sure which is worse; the idea of every screen being rendered on a server and then piped over to the user, or every interaction is an object being sent with its data, which seems like a security nightmare.
besides don't most of us download, say, the browser anyway? Kind of a boot strap thing.
It's kind of like those "enhanced" DVDs then, put in a PC, offer to install some weird ass player...
yeah, I admit expose is pretty damn cool (though the F11 or whatever keys are all awfully close to each other and easy to mix up) but alt-tab bridges the gap between "what I was working on in a different application" in a way that "let me see all my windows at once so I can hunt and find the one I want" doesn't. If there was a cmd or alt modifier that said "show me all windows for this app, now all the windows for the next app, now all the windows for the third app", that would be a bit better.
So there's a difference in mindset here. And the OSX is, inescapably, more application oriented. Which is fine.
Maybe "new fresh start" vs "return to what I was doing" is more different to me than the difference between application? Sort of, not really... but just like OSX has certain things you go back to the apple menu for, "new fresh start" happens less often, and so I like that it's hidden behind the start menu.
Again, alt-tab isn't about "cycling through 50 windows", it's about QUICKLY bouncing back to what you were just doing, independent of whether that was the same app or a different app. If you're going to a very old window, use the task bar! That's what it's there for. Alt-Tab is always great at getting at the last 2-4 things you did... beyond that, any system has to switch from "Quick toggle" to "Search for window" mode anyway.
(BTW, I'd suggest using the right side for the system tray, since then it doesn't push the desktop icons around...)
I usally windows-m to hide all windows, then go back to the one thing I'm actually focusing on - that works better for me than minimizing one app at a time. But technically you're not 100% correct, a "grouped" button on the task bar has a minimize group option on the context menu. Probably not as good for you as CMD-H, but some people want to specify what they want to focus on, not just indicate what they don't.
There's always Exposé ... Who the hell uses Cmd-Tab any more? :-)
someone else mentioned that...
and I'm sure people don't use Cmd-Tab 'cause its implementation is sucky on Apple, but "press a button to let me visually scan some windows and then maybe click one" is not as fast or as good as "bounce back to my last task, whether it was this app or a different one"
No, it's close, and cool, but not not it -- I think.
And honestly, I'm not JUST splitting hairs here, I think, but...
Either it's "all windows in every application" or "all windows in the current application", right? There's no way to cycle through applications? Like if repeated presses (though I think letting go resets thing) brought you to all the windows of the previous application...
Oh, I dunno. I like the visual connection, something that's gently always there reminding me of stuff I should finish up or close down...
Also, bleck, I classify "magic mouse corners" right down there with "click on trackpad to click" -- I don't want to map ANY potentially startling activity to a motion I'm likely to make accidentally, like when I'm shoving the mouse out of the way or putting my finger on the trackpad to start moving the mouse. Other people love it, but I always turn that stuff off ASAP.
Hmm, maybe.
Some of it's just the flow. Though Windows has always had better support for keyboard shortcuts, and Macs weirdness about straightforward right mouse buttons is kind of annoying, especially after OSX supports it so well.
But Windows is getting worse. In a lot of ways they're good about letting you dial back the UI, but not with the sidebars, and in general, Guess What I Mean is getting more prevalent.
What's wrong with my seat cushion?
Eh, I thought it was worth a stab.
Upgrade Firefox from 2 to 3, the error is along the lines of "can't connect", identical to when it's not on the Internet.
IE can connect though, mostly I find boards that say "THE PROBLEM IS NEVER FIRE FOX 3. IT IS ALMOST ALWAYS A FIREWALL OR SOMETHING"
So I checked the basic windows firewall, made sure it was off, still the same result. Something is blocking it, but thanks to Vista's craptapular nature, I have no idea of how to go spelunking in Vista's gnarly innards for whatever's cutting it off.
I have Vista's Windows firewall shutoff, I think, but Firefox 3 still can't reach the outside world. Any suggestions?
What's the difference? In both cases, you're trying to accomplish a task, right?
Nope!
One is "continue something I started doing before", whether it's a document, some photo-editing, some open website articles I got halfway through... I want to pick up where I left off.
The second is "a clean start". I want an empty document, a blank canvas, a home page with my usual links...
To my way of thinking and working with computers, very different things.
I have a mediocre short term memory, and often -- OOH SHINY -- appreciate the reminder of -- HEY WHAT'S THAT - what I had going on before I got distracted. Just having a pile of pretty "these are applications I use" with boring little triangles to nudge me that "hey this application has something I was doing before" is wildly insufficient.
People of good conscious can differ on the task bar, and you make some good points, here are my counters:
First off, I don't have experience w/ XP/Vista's startmenu, which some people like, but to me seems like a less predictable "GWIM (guess what I mean)" type thing (though I like where Firefox 3 has taken the Address Bar, and it's in some ways similar)
So, with Classic Windows, you can put icons on the desktop or quick launch bar, but you don't have to. I like things tucked "inside" the start button. Things I find myself coming back to regularly, I drag to the start menu proper, other stuff I leave in the under Applications. This actually also provides *very* handy keyboard shortcuts that I don't have to memorize, but can if I want to.
I guess the task bar can be set to autohide/disappear as well as the dock can. That does match my way of working, because I use it as an unobtrusive set of visual reminders of tasks I might want to return to -- this is what I end up most missing with the Dock, where I only get the thumbnails if I actively minimize something.
Fair point on the text-based buttons being unreadable. Windows "solution" is to offer to "group like tasks" or whatever, which I hate because it brings the taskbar back to the Dock level in terms of visual reminders, and requires an extra click and more think time. What I do is this: I drag the task bar to the right side of the screen. On the new trend in 16:9 monitors, this is actually a much better use of screen real estate. Keeping "group" on means I'm still sorting by app, but it seems like the actual collapsing doesn't happen... if for some reason I need to see the full text of menus, I just drag the bar a little wider, othewise I leave it about a normal button width, which 95% of the time works well enough for me to keep track of what's going on.
I'd say your complaint about the "exercise in futility" is only valid when you're looking for a task you did a long time ago, in which case, you'd probably be better off with the task bar. alt-tabs beauty is a SUPER intuitive stack push/pop algorithm it uses... the thing you last worked on is the first thing it pops back to, and you can quickly develop a rhythm to shuffle between your 2 or 3 windows without having to think about it and without taking your fingers off the keyboard, and the behavior is the frickin' same whether your tasks are different windows in the same app or spanning multiple applications... consistency is a great and wonderful thing, and I resent that OSX "forces" me to think in terms of "applications" rather than "tasks". (My OSX using friend resents that Windows "forces" him to think in terms of "running apps" (i.e. taskbar), and "new apps" (i.e. shortcut launches) but to my way of thinking, they're very different, because the former is "context I want to return to" and the latter is "a fresh start, please")
Windows Vista is a very sad exercise in "More is the new More!" design.
I took a snapshot of first desktop scene of my Vista laptop. Some of that's the usual OEM cruft, but man, what a visual assault! Harsh colors, the OEM cruft (icons, windows, toolbars), messages screaming at me... and then this dumbass sidebar. Because, you know, I always wanted a slideshow permanently putting up a new picture to distract me every couple minutes.
I still run w/ windows maximized, just a way of focusing, but Windows UI is running in the opposite direction.