One can get OEM Office Pro for $350 (w/ hardware purchase. I forgot to ask what the magic minimum is. Mouse? Floppy drive?) at the local Fry's. Windows XP is about $150 IIRC.
I remember Popdos! I too got it with my first (logitech) mouse. I had it set to come up on boot on my Compaq 286 lunchbox (think 3" thick laptop). It was more like Midnight Commander (2 pane text mode file manager) though IIRC.
Let me guess. Earth is hit by a devestating attack by the Suliban. Earth retailiates, then builds a huge Starfleet and expands into the galaxy, assembling a "Federation of The Willing" to prevent future attacks.
I drive by the Auto Mall sign mentioned in the article every weekday. I agree about the distraction problem. It is especially noticeable at night because the sign is so freaking bright.
Cruft. Pre-Win95 apps wouldn't know what to do with it. I suppose they could have made a drop-on-taskbar simulate a drop-on-main-window action. Then the question becomes "drop where in the main window?"
BTW, drag that something over a task bar icon (in Windows) and then _hold it_ there for a few seconds before dropping. See what happens.
Hell #1: This No-Save idea only really works if you have a good persistent Undo system to back it up. "Save" becomes "Commit" or "Checkpoint" in your own personal version control system.
Hell #2: No-one said you couldn't close your documents. The trick is deciding what to do with an app that has no documents open. Many apps ar fast enough these days to unload and load at will. For some (like IDEs. See someone else's comment earlier), the workspace is the document. For others, maybe a preload (Office, StartOffice, Mozilla) mechanism is needed. And just maybe the OS will do the right thing with VM.
Hell #3: Huh?
Hell #4: Sounds like you need a "replace" command.
At least you can't (though there are rare exceptions) accidentally bring that parent window in front of the modal dialog, like you could with the last version of KDE's KOffice I played with (try it with a save confirmation dialog by closing a document with pending edits. Then do it with multiple documents. With no indication of which dialog belongs to which document, you get an amusing UI clusterfsck).
My suggestion would be to move the modal dialog, unless your WM is one of those brain dead ones that doesn't decorate transients or whatever the appropriate jargon is (or an old MacOS app, or a really old Windows app). Of course, this advice doesn't help with multiple nested modal dialogs, but those are bad.
Actually, the 8.3 names are the cruft here, as is the apparently incomplete fs support on your UNIX system. Long files names are kludged on (in FAT32), but they aren't in a hidden place IIRC. They are documented.
As for your shell script example, that is also cruft. It is the result of a lack of forward planning of the script writers that they can't handle modern file names. Apple should be familiar with this issue. They've been bitten by it at least once when issuing updates for MacOS X.
Are normal users supposed to be restricted to studlyCaps, under_scores and other arcane crap forever because it'll break someone's fragile shell scripts?
IIRC, Netscape (back when they were a company) had been planning on something like this at least since Aurora was "pre-announced" way back when Internet Explorer 4.0 came out. It has just taken them a bit more time to get there;)
So creating applications/ desktops/ wm's/ etc that are made to look exactly like NextStep is somwhow supposed to be more "unique and earth shatteringly ground breaking"? Better maybe (only if you think NextStep was better). Hardly unique.
I got a check ($5 or something like that) from the class action settlement. I think it was because I had sent in the registration card on the monitor (NEC XP 21).
Why doesn't Apple put the apple menu all the way in the right hand corner (it is a few pixels away)? In Classic MacOS the right hand app menu was also a few pixels away from the corner.
According to Fitts's Law, corners are even better than edges (the current mouse position being best ie: right click).
Yep. The Start menu is now faster to access, unless you stretch your taskbar to two rows:)
Could have fooled me. It seems sometimes that all they(we?) care about is looks when it comes to GUIs. Some kind of cult of the screenshot. I freely admit to coming under its influence at times.
we care about perfromance....and those few cycles saved will beneifit you in the logn run.
Slashdot Mirror
That Munich can also run crappy old windoze stuff is a benifit that's not reciprocated on Microsoft's limited little GUI.
I don't suppose you are familiar with the concept of an X Server and that there are both Free and commercial X Servers available for Windows?
My God, your right!
m
http://www.bannister.org/xxx/entourage/index.ht
ROFL
One can get OEM Office Pro for $350 (w/ hardware purchase. I forgot to ask what the magic minimum is. Mouse? Floppy drive?) at the local Fry's. Windows XP is about $150 IIRC.
F6
I remember Popdos! I too got it with my first (logitech) mouse. I had it set to come up on boot on my Compaq 286 lunchbox (think 3" thick laptop). It was more like Midnight Commander (2 pane text mode file manager) though IIRC.
Those were the days.
Let me guess. Earth is hit by a devestating attack by the Suliban. Earth retailiates, then builds a huge Starfleet and expands into the galaxy, assembling a "Federation of The Willing" to prevent future attacks.
How are you supposed to know where in the window it will drop if you don't open the window?
Dolphin Brother
Flagship
I drive by the Auto Mall sign mentioned in the article every weekday. I agree about the distraction problem. It is especially noticeable at night because the sign is so freaking bright.
Too bad I don't listen to the radio.
Yup.
That would be somewhere in my "forward planning" comment. Plan for spaces by quoting filenames in shell scripts.
What about network shares in Windows or remote mounts in *nix?
More cruft getting in the way of advances like he describes.
Cruft. Pre-Win95 apps wouldn't know what to do with it. I suppose they could have made a drop-on-taskbar simulate a drop-on-main-window action. Then the question becomes "drop where in the main window?"
BTW, drag that something over a task bar icon (in Windows) and then _hold it_ there for a few seconds before dropping. See what happens.
Hell #1: This No-Save idea only really works if you have a good persistent Undo system to back it up. "Save" becomes "Commit" or "Checkpoint" in your own personal version control system.
Hell #2: No-one said you couldn't close your documents. The trick is deciding what to do with an app that has no documents open. Many apps ar fast enough these days to unload and load at will. For some (like IDEs. See someone else's comment earlier), the workspace is the document. For others, maybe a preload (Office, StartOffice, Mozilla) mechanism is needed. And just maybe the OS will do the right thing with VM.
Hell #3: Huh?
Hell #4: Sounds like you need a "replace" command.
At least you can't (though there are rare exceptions) accidentally bring that parent window in front of the modal dialog, like you could with the last version of KDE's KOffice I played with (try it with a save confirmation dialog by closing a document with pending edits. Then do it with multiple documents. With no indication of which dialog belongs to which document, you get an amusing UI clusterfsck).
My suggestion would be to move the modal dialog, unless your WM is one of those brain dead ones that doesn't decorate transients or whatever the appropriate jargon is (or an old MacOS app, or a really old Windows app). Of course, this advice doesn't help with multiple nested modal dialogs, but those are bad.
Actually, the 8.3 names are the cruft here, as is the apparently incomplete fs support on your UNIX system. Long files names are kludged on (in FAT32), but they aren't in a hidden place IIRC. They are documented.
As for your shell script example, that is also cruft. It is the result of a lack of forward planning of the script writers that they can't handle modern file names. Apple should be familiar with this issue. They've been bitten by it at least once when issuing updates for MacOS X.
Are normal users supposed to be restricted to studlyCaps, under_scores and other arcane crap forever because it'll break someone's fragile shell scripts?
IIRC, Netscape (back when they were a company) had been planning on something like this at least since Aurora was "pre-announced" way back when Internet Explorer 4.0 came out. It has just taken them a bit more time to get there ;)
I think they call it gcc and sourceforge.
So creating applications/ desktops/ wm's/ etc that are made to look exactly like NextStep is somwhow supposed to be more "unique and earth shatteringly ground breaking"? Better maybe (only if you think NextStep was better). Hardly unique.
Perhaps we should check inside it
I got a check ($5 or something like that) from the class action settlement. I think it was because I had sent in the registration card on the monitor (NEC XP 21).
Why doesn't Apple put the apple menu all the way in the right hand corner (it is a few pixels away)? In Classic MacOS the right hand app menu was also a few pixels away from the corner.
:)
According to Fitts's Law, corners are even better than edges (the current mouse position being best ie: right click).
Yep. The Start menu is now faster to access, unless you stretch your taskbar to two rows
Yup. iTunes and a couple of other bundled apps don't do this either.
Could have fooled me. It seems sometimes that all they(we?) care about is looks when it comes to GUIs. Some kind of cult of the screenshot. I freely admit to coming under its influence at times.
we care about perfromance....and those few cycles saved will beneifit you in the logn run.
Yeah. And if I could save time in a bottle ...
How does having a global menubar work out on multiple monitors? It seems like it would be a pain. Is it?