I don't think it really makes sense, though, unless the menu actions in question can represented by very simple, almost self-explanatory icons. Not sure if this approach fits Aqua... yet.
You can think of the images as reminders, after all with gestures, which are very similar in concept you get no visual reminder at all, you rely on muscle memory which pie menus can take advantage of as well.
The mozilla/firefox pie menus pop out reminder text if you pause too:
About six months ago I got a strong feeling like "I want... ...CHARCOAL theme" in OS X, additionally to the Aqua or Craphite.
No fancy colors, just pretty much like black and white and very simplified icons.
I can almost see it like it is in THAT snapshot... This is not the first time when I have "seen" things beforehand... I don't mean that I saw this coming exactly to the OS X, the idea jus felt so good, and I was working with Mac.. So it translates as a new theme to OS X...
Apple has already started to implement dashboards in their non-pro apps, well one at least: iPhoto.
The slideshow in-screen controls are the same idea. I think we'll see "dashboards" like this get into some specific places in the OS in the future, but the uses outside of big editing environments is limited. I could see it used for iTunes when you have a full-screen visualizer, in full-screen previews for iMovie and iDVD, as a password prompt if you have your screensaver lock your workstation, full-screen QT movies, maybe they would implement full-screen Safari with a basic navigation dashboard? Maybe not. I dunno, maybe that blue dot in Expose will become a dashboard. Basically, they seem most useful when you have maximum content on screen and only want some basic tools for tweaking and such. You can abuse them, but they do seem handy and easy for even non-"pro" users if used judiciously.
It would be interesting to see gestures implemented system-wide like keyboard shortcuts, including overrides like now.
This new dashboard look can also be found in iDVD 4 as the way to select the icon for a button, it used to be Aqua but now has the same look as their pro dashboard UI which was just announced.
Logic is from Emagic, who Apple purchased beginning of July 2002. Again, the name is unchanged (although recently transformed into Apple's style - instead of "Platinum" and "Gold" editions and the likes, we now have "Express" and "Pro", like with Final Cut), most of the product feature set and GUI are unchanged. It is less integrated than the other pro apps, as Emagic continues to exist as a seperate entity (like FileMaker).
Pie menus only work when the list of options is short...8 being the max before people start toppling their monitor off the desk.
If I were confronted with a 12 item pie menu, bad things would happen to the next human being I'd meet.
The dashboard concept seems neat though...and seems to be a good solution for replacing context-sensitive inspector windows. Too bad it's a custom API right now and not part of the system. I hope 10.4 introduces the API for developers to use.
Pie menus only work when the list of options is short...8 being the max before people start toppling their monitor off the desk.
If I were confronted with a 12 item pie menu, bad things would happen to the next human being I'd meet.
The dashboard concept seems neat though...and seems to be a good solution for replacing context-sensitive inspector windows. Too bad it's a custom API right now and not part of the system. I hope 10.4 introduces the API for developers to use.
Hopefully. Apple does a have a flaw of not adding enough developer requested things... And not having enough documentation.
Talking about GUI upgrades... just check out my site for what Logic 7 (AFAIK) is going to look like. This is what was shown @ Namm o4'. I have the pics on this page, and the movies are on the other page....
Enjoy... I particularly like the new 'more pro' GUI that they've given Logic... I can't wait for v.7!
Interesting. Thanks for the pics. I can't comment on the mixing boards and whatnot in that Logic preview, but it definitely looks Aqua/metal to me with a larger assortment of colors. Obviously, there are other differences, but in a nutshell anyway.
I think these icons from your pictures are quite lovely actually, and their grouping is interesting too.
Some examples: the rounded search field (first featured in iTunes, included fully into the OS as a API in Panther), white plastic buttons (first featured in Safari, included for all metal apps in Panther)..
Apropos of nothing, I remember seeing that search field in the finder windows on the OS X Beta. Albeit it was square then.
Pie menus only work when the list of options is short...8 being the max before people start toppling their monitor off the desk.
If I were confronted with a 12 item pie menu, bad things would happen to the next human being I'd meet.
I don't understand this comment. Maybe it's because I've never used pie menus in games with a controller and only used them with mice but more than 8 items in a pie menu is easy.
In the screenshot I posted above the four cardinal directions--North, South, East and West--are commands. The other four--NE, NW, SW, SE open sub-menus.
Only having 8 options total would be like only allowing gestures to be single straight horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines.
More than 8 items in a standard context menu however, now *that* is a pain in the ass.
He means more than 8 items at the top level, it does not include sub-menus or items inside them.
I hadn't really thought about sub menus...but yeah...I did mean 8 items at the top level. Any more would make the menu unwieldily. Motor memory has a limit and if someone wants to make use of Fitts Law (if the menu prevents the mouse from going further than the menu items), 8 items seems to be a good number of items since you can send you mouse in any one of the corners or the top, bottom or side edges.
But I can't begin to imagine handling a pie menu with 15 or 20 items in them at the top level. Thankfully, context menus are generally small so I think pie menus would probably be great for context-sensitive objects.
My greatest complaint was once that Apple did not follow its own Aqua UI guidelines. That's changed, now. My complaint is, rather, that it <i>does not use toolbars</i> in many of its applications, consumer or professional. It'd be a heck of a lot nicer to have a toolbar in Safari, rather than the picking of individual buttons to display from a menu. It'd be nice in iPhoto to have a toolbar—at the top of the screen—to handle some of the tasks that are currently at the bottom. iTunes would benefit from one, but it's Carbon, rather than Cocoa. Address Book, if it's not, should be using one; and various others, too. As a programmer, I suggest that the whole concept of the toolbar makes things easier to compartmentalise and also makes them more consistent across the interface.
I am aware that some switchers from OS 9 confuse the ovorectangular blob with a resize box, but that's reason only for further instruction in the page sequences when one sets a system up, rather than actually avoiding one of the niftiest features of the OS.
Comments
Originally posted by Hobbes
I don't think it really makes sense, though, unless the menu actions in question can represented by very simple, almost self-explanatory icons. Not sure if this approach fits Aqua... yet.
You can think of the images as reminders, after all with gestures, which are very similar in concept you get no visual reminder at all, you rely on muscle memory which pie menus can take advantage of as well.
The mozilla/firefox pie menus pop out reminder text if you pause too:
http://www.radialthinking.de/radialcontext/
Originally posted by Placebo
It would immediately scare thousands of potential Mac users away. The word UNIX plus this Solaris looking interface screams 'Hard to use!'.
I would, however, like to see the Pro theme as an OPTION in 10.4, in lieu of the Graphite.
Wisdom as usual is in the above? EVERYONE listen to him
No fancy colors, just pretty much like black and white and very simplified icons.
I can almost see it like it is in THAT snapshot... This is not the first time when I have "seen" things beforehand... I don't mean that I saw this coming exactly to the OS X, the idea jus felt so good, and I was working with Mac.. So it translates as a new theme to OS X...
The slideshow in-screen controls are the same idea. I think we'll see "dashboards" like this get into some specific places in the OS in the future, but the uses outside of big editing environments is limited. I could see it used for iTunes when you have a full-screen visualizer, in full-screen previews for iMovie and iDVD, as a password prompt if you have your screensaver lock your workstation, full-screen QT movies, maybe they would implement full-screen Safari with a basic navigation dashboard? Maybe not. I dunno, maybe that blue dot in Expose will become a dashboard. Basically, they seem most useful when you have maximum content on screen and only want some basic tools for tweaking and such. You can abuse them, but they do seem handy and easy for even non-"pro" users if used judiciously.
It would be interesting to see gestures implemented system-wide like keyboard shortcuts, including overrides like now.
Originally posted by Chucker
Logic is from Emagic, who Apple purchased beginning of July 2002. Again, the name is unchanged (although recently transformed into Apple's style - instead of "Platinum" and "Gold" editions and the likes, we now have "Express" and "Pro", like with Final Cut), most of the product feature set and GUI are unchanged. It is less integrated than the other pro apps, as Emagic continues to exist as a seperate entity (like FileMaker).
Logic is undergoing an overhaul as we speak.
Originally posted by Placebo
It would immediately scare thousands of potential Mac users away. The word UNIX plus this Solaris looking interface screams 'Hard to use!'.
I would, however, like to see the Pro theme as an OPTION in 10.4, in lieu of the Graphite.
I wouldnt... The Motion GUI is very hard on the eyes if you ask me...
Originally posted by Hobbes
Pie menus are definitely interesting. Still too a bit way-out for Aqua, I think.
I wouldnt say so... Command-Tab does a nice job, and its a large pie menu actually...
Explain how Cmd-tab is a pie menu??
Originally posted by Kickaha
Eh?? Pie menus are radial, not linear. Radial = circle = pie as in apple pie, mince pie, cherry pie...
Explain how Cmd-tab is a pie menu??
Oh... I thought pie was just a word for something small and contained. Not directly round!
If I were confronted with a 12 item pie menu, bad things would happen to the next human being I'd meet.
The dashboard concept seems neat though...and seems to be a good solution for replacing context-sensitive inspector windows. Too bad it's a custom API right now and not part of the system. I hope 10.4 introduces the API for developers to use.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
Pie menus only work when the list of options is short...8 being the max before people start toppling their monitor off the desk.
If I were confronted with a 12 item pie menu, bad things would happen to the next human being I'd meet.
The dashboard concept seems neat though...and seems to be a good solution for replacing context-sensitive inspector windows. Too bad it's a custom API right now and not part of the system. I hope 10.4 introduces the API for developers to use.
Hopefully. Apple does a have a flaw of not adding enough developer requested things... And not having enough documentation.
Enjoy... I particularly like the new 'more pro' GUI that they've given Logic... I can't wait for v.7!
http://homepage.mac.com/neutrix/PhotoAlbum16.html
I think these icons from your pictures are quite lovely actually, and their grouping is interesting too.
Originally posted by Hobbes
Some examples: the rounded search field (first featured in iTunes, included fully into the OS as a API in Panther), white plastic buttons (first featured in Safari, included for all metal apps in Panther)..
Apropos of nothing, I remember seeing that search field in the finder windows on the OS X Beta. Albeit it was square then.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
Pie menus only work when the list of options is short...8 being the max before people start toppling their monitor off the desk.
If I were confronted with a 12 item pie menu, bad things would happen to the next human being I'd meet.
I don't understand this comment. Maybe it's because I've never used pie menus in games with a controller and only used them with mice but more than 8 items in a pie menu is easy.
In the screenshot I posted above the four cardinal directions--North, South, East and West--are commands. The other four--NE, NW, SW, SE open sub-menus.
Only having 8 options total would be like only allowing gestures to be single straight horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines.
More than 8 items in a standard context menu however, now *that* is a pain in the ass.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
He means more than 8 items at the top level, it does not include sub-menus or items inside them.
I hadn't really thought about sub menus...but yeah...I did mean 8 items at the top level. Any more would make the menu unwieldily. Motor memory has a limit and if someone wants to make use of Fitts Law (if the menu prevents the mouse from going further than the menu items), 8 items seems to be a good number of items since you can send you mouse in any one of the corners or the top, bottom or side edges.
But I can't begin to imagine handling a pie menu with 15 or 20 items in them at the top level. Thankfully, context menus are generally small so I think pie menus would probably be great for context-sensitive objects.
I am aware that some switchers from OS 9 confuse the ovorectangular blob with a resize box, but that's reason only for further instruction in the page sequences when one sets a system up, rather than actually avoiding one of the niftiest features of the OS.