Ok...you got me. They are guidelines. And nobody is forced to follow them...however, Apple wrote the frickin' thing and it is always deviating from its own guidelines.
It's a little pretentious of Apple to have a HIG and not follow it.
That's why they're guidelines, not rules.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kim kap sol
But like I said, most people don't seem to like the new UI idea. Seriously, read the thread and you'll notice that there's only about two of you here that actually like it, you and that alter-ego, polywannacracker, that you created to support you.
It's sad when people are so insecure in their convictions that they have to tell themselves lies.
Yes, you're absolutely right buddy.... Jobs&co. has no clue how to run a company. Apparently you are the one Apple should be looking for to tell them just exactly how to fix everything. $25b in the bank in a recession and they are the only real computer company still making money even during these hard times. Thanks to the powers-at-be that we have you to guide the way.
Indeed. Creating another account to interact with has got to be the lowest thing I've seen.
...
Quote:
Originally Posted by jwervel16
Reminiscent of Quick Look. Hmm. I always loved those big friendly metal Quicktime buttons, but this is nice too. Minimalism may take some getting used to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
I was a bit worried about losing the controls but those mockups look very nice. The only issue I can see is if you are comparing movies and the distance into the movie each clip is at because the controls on background clips will disappear after a while.
As long as the editing controls are still as powerful, I welcome the change. It would be great if the Pro features did turn out to be free too. What would be interesting is if they deprecated iMovie in favor of Quicktime.
All they need is an effects window and maybe an audio track panel that sits under the movie window when active.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
As long as it's only there when you are using it, that's no problem. When you are using the controls, you are looking at them, not the video, for those moments.
This is also better, because all too often, when resizing a video to fit the screen, the control area at the bottom of the video moves below the edge of the screen, making it impossible to use it at all. You then have to resize using the menu. This is much better.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nagromme
When windowed, I don't want overlay controls. I want to see the video! Controls should be at the bottom edge. (But if other controls overlay on rollover, that's OK.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
Folks who like consistent UI across programs won't like this! Personally I see no reason why each program can't be unique, it certainly makes Expose work better. The learning curve argument doesn't hold much water because even Apple's non-standard interfaces are very intuitive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by teckstud
I like it, always hated that metal look.
But is it me or does the new bar look more than a little Vista-ish?
Quote:
Originally Posted by indiekiduk
The NicePlayer borderless UI is amazing and I'm glad Apple have based the new Quicktime app on that.
These look quite good to me. less is more. I always wonder why with every video I watch I need to see that huge metallic control surface and that big round pause button - its annoying, get rid of it.
Also, these look quite visible to me and actually why not make full screen controls and regular controls more consistent. The real thing I like here though is that we finally get a button for full-screen - that has been needed for a long time.
I guess I created all these fake accounts too huh? You and reality are at odds.
I guess I created all these fake accounts too huh? You and reality are at odds.
Did you even read some of the stuff you quoted from people?
Some of the people you quoted aren't sure about the new interface and say it would take some getting used to and some of them outright disagree with you (nagromme in particular). And others (like teckstud, jwervel16) are only talking about the superficial look of the new UI and not the functionality.
You can open new player windows, you can open movie files, you can create a new video recording, you can create a new audio recording, you can open a streamed movie from a URL.
Document-based! If QuickTime Player quit every time the last QT window was closed, it would be infuriating.
Now, if Apple created an iTunes/iPhoto-like video player -- a video library that can also handle reading DVDs --, *THEN* it wouldn't be document based anymore and would make sense for it to quit when the single-window interface is closed.
I don't understand why Apple isn't doing this. It would remove the bloat from iTunes (video playback added to iTunes as an afterthought) and would merge QuickTime Player and DVD Player into a single app like it should be.
I'm sure there are a lot of people with video cameras that would very much like to not always make a video project with their film clips but just categorize them. It's dumb that right now the only 1st-party option is iMovie which is totally not the right tool for the job of storing clips and categorize them.
I'd start working on this right away if I wasn't 100% sure that Apple would rip the idea off as soon as it saw its popularity.
You can open new player windows, you can open movie files, you can create a new video recording, you can create a new audio recording, you can open a streamed movie from a URL.
Document-based! If QuickTime Player quit every time the last QT window was closed, it would be infuriating.
Now, if Apple created an iTunes-like video player -- a video library that can also handle reading DVDs --, *THEN* it wouldn't be document based anymore and would make sense for it to quit when the single-window interface is closed.
I don't understand why Apple isn't doing this. It would remove the bloat from iTunes (video playback added to iTunes as an afterthought) and would merge QuickTime Player and DVD Player into a single app like it should be.
My bad, I meant just about every program does this. Apart from Preferences and some utilities.
But I get what you mean. Hadn't really thought about it in that perspective.
For instance, when I have a notepad open, and close the document I was working in, I don't need notepad to stay open. But maybe that's just me :-)
Apple can reinvent the metaphors when it is ready to reinvent the human-interface experience. Instead of using us as guinea pigs for future designs, Apple should use its billions of dollars to do its research internally.
I completely agree here. Way back in the day, one of the things that set Apple apart was they did extensive usability studies, created human interface guidelines based on them, and maintained a consistent user interface across all their apps.
Perhaps those HIGs are no longer relevant as people have gotten used to interacting with a window & mouse based computing environment. Apple has certainly thrown out UI consistency with their mix of Aqua, chrome, grey, black, etc. over the past several years.
Personally, I'd like to see 10.6 be an opportunity for Apple to reassert modern HIGs and pull consistency back to their OS and applications. And, IMHO, controls popping up over content is a poor UI choice; it makes sense in a screen space constrained environment like the iPhone, but not on the desktop.
Ok...you got me. They are guidelines. And nobody is forced to follow them...however, Apple wrote the frickin' thing and it is always deviating from its own guidelines.
It's a little pretentious of Apple to have a HIG and not follow it.
But like I said, most people don't seem to like the new UI idea. Seriously, read the thread and you'll notice that there's only about two of you here that actually like it, you and that alter-ego, polywannacracker, that you created to support you.
Hey, douchebag, it just so happens I am a new member of Apple Insider's forums. I was kind of hoping someone might have said 'welcome aboard' or something to that effect. But apparently that's not the kind of community you run here. I see the moderators have already asked you to reign yourself in in your personal attacks, so maybe I've just stumbled into the local a-hole in this community. I'll make myself disappear if I'm not welcome, but not before notifying the moderators.
Hey, douchebag, it just so happens I am a new member of Apple Insider's forums. I was kind of hoping someone might have said 'welcome aboard' or something to that effect. But apparently that's not the kind of community you run here. I see the moderators have already asked you to reign yourself in in your personal attacks, so maybe I've just stumbled into the local a-hole in this community. I'll make myself disappear if I'm not welcome, but not before notifying the moderators.
Your first words on the AI forums were "I don't mean to get involved in this hilarious nerd-fight."
But, yes, you did stumble on the local a-hole. So don't think everyone on AI is as rude as I am. I usually speak what's on my mind and if the mods don't like it, they usually temp ban me or could eventually ban me permanently. But I certainly won't hold myself back on anyone's behalf.
Your first words on the AI forums were "I don't mean to get involved in this hilarious nerd-fight."
But, yes, you did stumble on the local a-hole. So don't think everyone on AI is as rude as I am. I usually speak what's on my mind and if the mods don't like it, they usually temp ban me or could eventually ban me permanently. But I certainly won't hold myself back on anyone's behalf.
I guess that's as close to 'welcome' as I'll get out of you. At least I am acknowledged as an individual now.
There is a difference in getting involved in a nerd-fight and calling me out as someone else's alter ego. Some just don't have a 'filter', I guess you must be one of them. I can see why you'd spend so much time here.
Anyhow, I've been warned not to encourage people like yourself, so I'll be on my way. Have a nice life.
I completely agree here. Way back in the day, one of the things that set Apple apart was they did extensive usability studies, created human interface guidelines based on them, and maintained a consistent user interface across all their apps.
Perhaps those HIGs are no longer relevant as people have gotten used to interacting with a window & mouse based computing environment. Apple has certainly thrown out UI consistency with their mix of Aqua, chrome, grey, black, etc. over the past several years.
Personally, I'd like to see 10.6 be an opportunity for Apple to reassert modern HIGs and pull consistency back to their OS and applications. And, IMHO, controls popping up over content is a poor UI choice; it makes sense in a screen space constrained environment like the iPhone, but not on the desktop.
- Jasen.
Actually no. It doesn't matter what a design team does internally, it's what the millions of users have to say about it that matters.
Next spent all that time and research to come up with a list/column based GUI (yes, I know that's oversimplified, but it suffices for the argument). The OS, and company was a failure in the marketplace. But when Apple bought them, and introduced it to the public as the new GUI, before it was released, people responded poorly, except for some techie types. Apple listened, to peoples relief, and also supplied the Mac GUI with it.
If they didn't present that to the public first, the way they do with smaller changes to individual programs, they would not know whether people would like it or not. That's far more important that sticking to some hypothetical HIG.
That HIG is, after all, just something a bunch of people came up with before 1984. That doesn't mean that it's still relevant in many areas, or even correct. Personal computing was still very new at that time, and few people were thinking about GUI's.
Now, it's all different. Perhaps new thinking about HIG's, and GUI's is in order.
That HIG is, after all, just something a bunch of people came up with before 1984.
I'll go out on a limb here, and say I have a problem with this statement. It was 'just something people came up with' in the same way that, say, sociology, psychology, or heck, cosmological physics was.
There were a tremendous number of GUI user studies done to create the original HIG - it wasn't just created out of thin air based on personal whims and ideas, as you seem to imply.
Does it need to be re-assessed? Heck yeah. Users have changed... but basic human psychology and physiology has not. I suspect that you'd find little different in the fundamentals behind the HIG, but it could be vastly improved to take advantage of newer ideas and apply the same sort of refinement to them that was used on the original. Let's not ditch the baby out with the bathwater. Fitt's Law still applies, after all.
I like the new direction it seems Apple is choosing for it's UIs. Here is a great blog post by a cocoa developer discussing "Administrative Debris".
Static buttons and playheads just sit there as debris to the interface. You can see how Apple's approach to minimizing this in several areas. In iMovie you can just scrub through a clip just by dragging your mouse horizontally across it. In iPhoto you can flip through a stack of photos again by dragging your mouse across the pile. On the iPhone you don't see scroll bars until you grab a list to start scrolling.
Controls being hidden in an application designed merely for playback and not advanced editing, seems like a completely workable situation. It also seems to be inline with Apple's goal of reducing the number of static widgets in its applications.
Care must be taken though to make sure this new UI paradigm doesn't produce interfaces that aren't discoverable. I feel mousing onto a movie and having the controls appear is plenty discoverable. Furthermore I like this direction of removing widgets and having users interact more with the content than with controls. Core animation was developed precisely for this reason, to help developers (Apple included) create dynamic interfaces. I look forward to more...
I'll go out on a limb here, and say I have a problem with this statement. It was 'just something people came up with' in the same way that, say, sociology, psychology, or heck, cosmological physics was.
There were a tremendous number of GUI user studies done to create the original HIG - it wasn't just created out of thin air based on personal whims and ideas, as you seem to imply.
All if these "studies" some of which I read back then, were looking at something from position of poor understanding of what people can really use or understand. Assumptions were made about a new area of human endeavor, and what was thought to be difficult has turned out to not be so.
I'm sure that the original Mac team at Apple would be aghast at how far things have progressed. Gee, they has expressed that. In fact, these old guidelines are obsolete.
Quote:
Does it need to be re-assessed? Heck yeah. Users have changed... but basic human psychology and physiology has not. I suspect that you'd find little different in the fundamentals behind the HIG, but it could be vastly improved to take advantage of newer ideas and apply the same sort of refinement to them that was used on the original. Let's not ditch the baby out with the bathwater. Fitt's Law still applies, after all.
I'm not saying that it should just be thrown out. But, much of it isn't relevant anymore. Now that people are used to computing, the very strict ideas they had about HIG can be loosened up.
It used to be thought that people couldn't multitask, and that was true for adults who weren't brought up to multitask.
Now, today, it's different. My daughter does several thing at once, and while the efficiancy of each is slightly degraded, it doesn't matter overall. We can't do that the way she and her friends do. Because of that, HIG gets written by the people who are adults, and who can't understand that a newer group of people can work differently.
Most older HIG's deal with static elements in fixed places, because that's the way most people learned to operate, and the people writing these rules, as well as the people in the studies, are limited by that. But it's not necessarily true anymore.
We also get too caught up by the concept of efficiency. Efficiency also means boring, and that can be worse. Younger people today are used to movement in almost everything. We are not. What's disconcerting to me, is thought of as normal to my daughter. Those annoying Flash ads, well, she hardly sees them.
What is happening, I believe, is that younger designers are working on these interfaces. designers who were brought up to see things differently than we do. We may find some of this difficult, and distracting, but they don't.
You have to do your work for the up coming audience, not the one that is fast disappearing.
You have to do your work for the up coming audience, not the one that is fast disappearing.
Quite true - I'd like to see a next-gen HIG instead of the 'aw hell, anything goes' approach that's been the trend recently in Cupertino though. Consistency still matters - pick some kick-ass dynamic controls, sure... but don't go changing them in every app. Make the best of breed standardized, and open them up to developer use. Developers will still be pushing the envelope, which is what we need - but we also need Apple to be the baseline for the acceptable minimum of UI design.
*A* set of guidelines is needed, but it almost certainly won't be the old standby HIG.
Quite true - I'd like to see a next-gen HIG instead of the 'aw hell, anything goes' approach that's been the trend recently in Cupertino though. Consistency still matters - pick some kick-ass dynamic controls, sure... but don't go changing them in every app. Make the best of breed standardized, and open them up to developer use. Developers will still be pushing the envelope, which is what we need - but we also need Apple to be the baseline for the acceptable minimum of UI design.
*A* set of guidelines is needed, but it almost certainly won't be the old standby HIG.
I'm willing to bet that 50 years now, the GUI's, or whatever they will be, will be so alien from what we use now, that if we were taken today, and transposed to that world, we wouldn't be able to use them at all.
Yet, the people there will find them to be completely natural, while we're cringing over what they've done.
I don't take anyone seriously when they say that new elements are wrong, just because it's not what they're used to, which of course, is all it is.
As far as the "anything goes" approach, I don't see that as what's happening, though I do see people on the outside, who aren't thinking through what Apple might be intending, thinking that way.
It's not that they have new widget A, it's that they have new widget A, slightly different widget A1, another slightly different widget A', another one that just looks different but acts the same in A*, etc.
If you're going to produce a new widget, or a new methodology, make it consistent, at the very least. Optimally, make it based on feedback that indicates that it meshes well with the abilities (physiological and cognitive) of your user base.
I think that Apple is doing a lot of experimenting right now, and that's great, in my book. I just wish they'd make up their minds on some elements based on (and altering) an ever-evolving HIG, and standardize across their products more quickly, at the same time they move the functionality from /System/PrivateFrameworks to /System/Frameworks for 3rd party use.
Do we *really* need what, three variations of scroll bars? Standard 10.5, iTunes, iLife '09... I would hope that 10.6 unifies some of the experimentation into the OS. (At which point we'll have new experimentation that won't be unified until 10.7... whee. )
I agree that it seems that Apple has a methodology here. A very opaque, chaotic looking methodology, but one nonetheless. Personally, I'd like to see it made more explicit, in that each major OS version would have an updated HIG to go with it, and a caveat that "Apple will continue to innovate in the user interface in its own apps - if you wish to emulate one or more of these interfaces, be aware that they may be non-standard and in violation of the HIG for the next major update." Best of each round gets rolled into the standard, HIG is updated, cycle continues.
I can agree it would be nice if the changes where more even across all products. I was hoping they would change the old Aqua scroll bars into iTunes scroll bars with Leopard. We already know they are going to do it, I'm not sure what's taking so long.
On the other hand, if they made radical system wide changes too quickly people will complain that they suddenly made radical system wide changes. If Apple makes a radical change system wide that doesn't work out as well as Apple had planned, its difficult to make another system wide change. I think this is the reason they are moving slowly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha
If you're going to produce a new widget, or a new methodology, make it consistent, at the very least. Optimally, make it based on feedback that indicates that it meshes well with the abilities (physiological and cognitive) of your user base.
I think that Apple is doing a lot of experimenting right now, and that's great, in my book. I just wish they'd make up their minds on some elements based on (and altering) an ever-evolving HIG, and standardize across their products more quickly, at the same time they move the functionality from /System/PrivateFrameworks to /System/Frameworks for 3rd party use.
Comments
Ok...you got me. They are guidelines. And nobody is forced to follow them...however, Apple wrote the frickin' thing and it is always deviating from its own guidelines.
It's a little pretentious of Apple to have a HIG and not follow it.
That's why they're guidelines, not rules.
But like I said, most people don't seem to like the new UI idea. Seriously, read the thread and you'll notice that there's only about two of you here that actually like it, you and that alter-ego, polywannacracker, that you created to support you.
It's sad when people are so insecure in their convictions that they have to tell themselves lies.
It's sad when people are so insecure in their convictions that they have to tell themselves lies.
Indeed. Creating another account to interact with has got to be the lowest thing I've seen.
Yes, you're absolutely right buddy.... Jobs&co. has no clue how to run a company. Apparently you are the one Apple should be looking for to tell them just exactly how to fix everything. $25b in the bank in a recession and they are the only real computer company still making money even during these hard times. Thanks to the powers-at-be that we have you to guide the way.
Yup...ol' Steve often calls me up for advice.
Also, I think you meant "powers that be".
Indeed. Creating another account to interact with has got to be the lowest thing I've seen.
...
Reminiscent of Quick Look. Hmm. I always loved those big friendly metal Quicktime buttons, but this is nice too. Minimalism may take some getting used to.
I was a bit worried about losing the controls but those mockups look very nice. The only issue I can see is if you are comparing movies and the distance into the movie each clip is at because the controls on background clips will disappear after a while.
As long as the editing controls are still as powerful, I welcome the change. It would be great if the Pro features did turn out to be free too. What would be interesting is if they deprecated iMovie in favor of Quicktime.
All they need is an effects window and maybe an audio track panel that sits under the movie window when active.
As long as it's only there when you are using it, that's no problem. When you are using the controls, you are looking at them, not the video, for those moments.
This is also better, because all too often, when resizing a video to fit the screen, the control area at the bottom of the video moves below the edge of the screen, making it impossible to use it at all. You then have to resize using the menu. This is much better.
When windowed, I don't want overlay controls. I want to see the video! Controls should be at the bottom edge. (But if other controls overlay on rollover, that's OK.)
Folks who like consistent UI across programs won't like this! Personally I see no reason why each program can't be unique, it certainly makes Expose work better. The learning curve argument doesn't hold much water because even Apple's non-standard interfaces are very intuitive.
I like it, always hated that metal look.
But is it me or does the new bar look more than a little Vista-ish?
The NicePlayer borderless UI is amazing and I'm glad Apple have based the new Quicktime app on that.
http://code.google.com/p/niceplayer/
These look quite good to me. less is more. I always wonder why with every video I watch I need to see that huge metallic control surface and that big round pause button - its annoying, get rid of it.
Also, these look quite visible to me and actually why not make full screen controls and regular controls more consistent. The real thing I like here though is that we finally get a button for full-screen - that has been needed for a long time.
I guess I created all these fake accounts too huh?
I hope Apple one day will use the X to close a windows to shut down the program too.
Never understood why they do it like they do it atm.
Maybe someone can explain that to me?
I guess I created all these fake accounts too huh?
Did you even read some of the stuff you quoted from people?
Some of the people you quoted aren't sure about the new interface and say it would take some getting used to and some of them outright disagree with you (nagromme in particular). And others (like teckstud, jwervel16) are only talking about the superficial look of the new UI and not the functionality.
Are you even trying?
Maybe someone can explain that to me?
Because it's a document-based app.
You can open new player windows, you can open movie files, you can create a new video recording, you can create a new audio recording, you can open a streamed movie from a URL.
Document-based! If QuickTime Player quit every time the last QT window was closed, it would be infuriating.
Now, if Apple created an iTunes/iPhoto-like video player -- a video library that can also handle reading DVDs --, *THEN* it wouldn't be document based anymore and would make sense for it to quit when the single-window interface is closed.
I don't understand why Apple isn't doing this. It would remove the bloat from iTunes (video playback added to iTunes as an afterthought) and would merge QuickTime Player and DVD Player into a single app like it should be.
I'm sure there are a lot of people with video cameras that would very much like to not always make a video project with their film clips but just categorize them. It's dumb that right now the only 1st-party option is iMovie which is totally not the right tool for the job of storing clips and categorize them.
I'd start working on this right away if I wasn't 100% sure that Apple would rip the idea off as soon as it saw its popularity.
Because it's a document-based app.
You can open new player windows, you can open movie files, you can create a new video recording, you can create a new audio recording, you can open a streamed movie from a URL.
Document-based! If QuickTime Player quit every time the last QT window was closed, it would be infuriating.
Now, if Apple created an iTunes-like video player -- a video library that can also handle reading DVDs --, *THEN* it wouldn't be document based anymore and would make sense for it to quit when the single-window interface is closed.
I don't understand why Apple isn't doing this. It would remove the bloat from iTunes (video playback added to iTunes as an afterthought) and would merge QuickTime Player and DVD Player into a single app like it should be.
My bad, I meant just about every program does this. Apart from Preferences and some utilities.
But I get what you mean. Hadn't really thought about it in that perspective.
For instance, when I have a notepad open, and close the document I was working in, I don't need notepad to stay open. But maybe that's just me :-)
Apple can reinvent the metaphors when it is ready to reinvent the human-interface experience. Instead of using us as guinea pigs for future designs, Apple should use its billions of dollars to do its research internally.
I completely agree here. Way back in the day, one of the things that set Apple apart was they did extensive usability studies, created human interface guidelines based on them, and maintained a consistent user interface across all their apps.
Perhaps those HIGs are no longer relevant as people have gotten used to interacting with a window & mouse based computing environment. Apple has certainly thrown out UI consistency with their mix of Aqua, chrome, grey, black, etc. over the past several years.
Personally, I'd like to see 10.6 be an opportunity for Apple to reassert modern HIGs and pull consistency back to their OS and applications. And, IMHO, controls popping up over content is a poor UI choice; it makes sense in a screen space constrained environment like the iPhone, but not on the desktop.
- Jasen.
Ok...you got me. They are guidelines. And nobody is forced to follow them...however, Apple wrote the frickin' thing and it is always deviating from its own guidelines.
It's a little pretentious of Apple to have a HIG and not follow it.
But like I said, most people don't seem to like the new UI idea. Seriously, read the thread and you'll notice that there's only about two of you here that actually like it, you and that alter-ego, polywannacracker, that you created to support you.
Hey, douchebag, it just so happens I am a new member of Apple Insider's forums. I was kind of hoping someone might have said 'welcome aboard' or something to that effect. But apparently that's not the kind of community you run here. I see the moderators have already asked you to reign yourself in in your personal attacks, so maybe I've just stumbled into the local a-hole in this community. I'll make myself disappear if I'm not welcome, but not before notifying the moderators.
Hey, douchebag, it just so happens I am a new member of Apple Insider's forums. I was kind of hoping someone might have said 'welcome aboard' or something to that effect. But apparently that's not the kind of community you run here. I see the moderators have already asked you to reign yourself in in your personal attacks, so maybe I've just stumbled into the local a-hole in this community. I'll make myself disappear if I'm not welcome, but not before notifying the moderators.
Your first words on the AI forums were "I don't mean to get involved in this hilarious nerd-fight."
But, yes, you did stumble on the local a-hole. So don't think everyone on AI is as rude as I am. I usually speak what's on my mind and if the mods don't like it, they usually temp ban me or could eventually ban me permanently. But I certainly won't hold myself back on anyone's behalf.
Your first words on the AI forums were "I don't mean to get involved in this hilarious nerd-fight."
But, yes, you did stumble on the local a-hole. So don't think everyone on AI is as rude as I am. I usually speak what's on my mind and if the mods don't like it, they usually temp ban me or could eventually ban me permanently. But I certainly won't hold myself back on anyone's behalf.
I guess that's as close to 'welcome' as I'll get out of you. At least I am acknowledged as an individual now.
There is a difference in getting involved in a nerd-fight and calling me out as someone else's alter ego. Some just don't have a 'filter', I guess you must be one of them. I can see why you'd spend so much time here.
Anyhow, I've been warned not to encourage people like yourself, so I'll be on my way. Have a nice life.
I completely agree here. Way back in the day, one of the things that set Apple apart was they did extensive usability studies, created human interface guidelines based on them, and maintained a consistent user interface across all their apps.
Perhaps those HIGs are no longer relevant as people have gotten used to interacting with a window & mouse based computing environment. Apple has certainly thrown out UI consistency with their mix of Aqua, chrome, grey, black, etc. over the past several years.
Personally, I'd like to see 10.6 be an opportunity for Apple to reassert modern HIGs and pull consistency back to their OS and applications. And, IMHO, controls popping up over content is a poor UI choice; it makes sense in a screen space constrained environment like the iPhone, but not on the desktop.
- Jasen.
Actually no. It doesn't matter what a design team does internally, it's what the millions of users have to say about it that matters.
Next spent all that time and research to come up with a list/column based GUI (yes, I know that's oversimplified, but it suffices for the argument). The OS, and company was a failure in the marketplace. But when Apple bought them, and introduced it to the public as the new GUI, before it was released, people responded poorly, except for some techie types. Apple listened, to peoples relief, and also supplied the Mac GUI with it.
If they didn't present that to the public first, the way they do with smaller changes to individual programs, they would not know whether people would like it or not. That's far more important that sticking to some hypothetical HIG.
That HIG is, after all, just something a bunch of people came up with before 1984. That doesn't mean that it's still relevant in many areas, or even correct. Personal computing was still very new at that time, and few people were thinking about GUI's.
Now, it's all different. Perhaps new thinking about HIG's, and GUI's is in order.
That HIG is, after all, just something a bunch of people came up with before 1984.
I'll go out on a limb here, and say I have a problem with this statement. It was 'just something people came up with' in the same way that, say, sociology, psychology, or heck, cosmological physics was.
There were a tremendous number of GUI user studies done to create the original HIG - it wasn't just created out of thin air based on personal whims and ideas, as you seem to imply.
Does it need to be re-assessed? Heck yeah. Users have changed... but basic human psychology and physiology has not. I suspect that you'd find little different in the fundamentals behind the HIG, but it could be vastly improved to take advantage of newer ideas and apply the same sort of refinement to them that was used on the original. Let's not ditch the baby out with the bathwater. Fitt's Law still applies, after all.
Static buttons and playheads just sit there as debris to the interface. You can see how Apple's approach to minimizing this in several areas. In iMovie you can just scrub through a clip just by dragging your mouse horizontally across it. In iPhoto you can flip through a stack of photos again by dragging your mouse across the pile. On the iPhone you don't see scroll bars until you grab a list to start scrolling.
Controls being hidden in an application designed merely for playback and not advanced editing, seems like a completely workable situation. It also seems to be inline with Apple's goal of reducing the number of static widgets in its applications.
Care must be taken though to make sure this new UI paradigm doesn't produce interfaces that aren't discoverable. I feel mousing onto a movie and having the controls appear is plenty discoverable. Furthermore I like this direction of removing widgets and having users interact more with the content than with controls. Core animation was developed precisely for this reason, to help developers (Apple included) create dynamic interfaces. I look forward to more...
I'll go out on a limb here, and say I have a problem with this statement. It was 'just something people came up with' in the same way that, say, sociology, psychology, or heck, cosmological physics was.
There were a tremendous number of GUI user studies done to create the original HIG - it wasn't just created out of thin air based on personal whims and ideas, as you seem to imply.
All if these "studies" some of which I read back then, were looking at something from position of poor understanding of what people can really use or understand. Assumptions were made about a new area of human endeavor, and what was thought to be difficult has turned out to not be so.
I'm sure that the original Mac team at Apple would be aghast at how far things have progressed. Gee, they has expressed that. In fact, these old guidelines are obsolete.
Does it need to be re-assessed? Heck yeah. Users have changed... but basic human psychology and physiology has not. I suspect that you'd find little different in the fundamentals behind the HIG, but it could be vastly improved to take advantage of newer ideas and apply the same sort of refinement to them that was used on the original. Let's not ditch the baby out with the bathwater. Fitt's Law still applies, after all.
I'm not saying that it should just be thrown out. But, much of it isn't relevant anymore. Now that people are used to computing, the very strict ideas they had about HIG can be loosened up.
It used to be thought that people couldn't multitask, and that was true for adults who weren't brought up to multitask.
Now, today, it's different. My daughter does several thing at once, and while the efficiancy of each is slightly degraded, it doesn't matter overall. We can't do that the way she and her friends do. Because of that, HIG gets written by the people who are adults, and who can't understand that a newer group of people can work differently.
Most older HIG's deal with static elements in fixed places, because that's the way most people learned to operate, and the people writing these rules, as well as the people in the studies, are limited by that. But it's not necessarily true anymore.
We also get too caught up by the concept of efficiency. Efficiency also means boring, and that can be worse. Younger people today are used to movement in almost everything. We are not. What's disconcerting to me, is thought of as normal to my daughter. Those annoying Flash ads, well, she hardly sees them.
What is happening, I believe, is that younger designers are working on these interfaces. designers who were brought up to see things differently than we do. We may find some of this difficult, and distracting, but they don't.
You have to do your work for the up coming audience, not the one that is fast disappearing.
You have to do your work for the up coming audience, not the one that is fast disappearing.
Quite true - I'd like to see a next-gen HIG instead of the 'aw hell, anything goes' approach that's been the trend recently in Cupertino though. Consistency still matters - pick some kick-ass dynamic controls, sure... but don't go changing them in every app. Make the best of breed standardized, and open them up to developer use. Developers will still be pushing the envelope, which is what we need - but we also need Apple to be the baseline for the acceptable minimum of UI design.
*A* set of guidelines is needed, but it almost certainly won't be the old standby HIG.
Quite true - I'd like to see a next-gen HIG instead of the 'aw hell, anything goes' approach that's been the trend recently in Cupertino though. Consistency still matters - pick some kick-ass dynamic controls, sure... but don't go changing them in every app. Make the best of breed standardized, and open them up to developer use. Developers will still be pushing the envelope, which is what we need - but we also need Apple to be the baseline for the acceptable minimum of UI design.
*A* set of guidelines is needed, but it almost certainly won't be the old standby HIG.
I'm willing to bet that 50 years now, the GUI's, or whatever they will be, will be so alien from what we use now, that if we were taken today, and transposed to that world, we wouldn't be able to use them at all.
Yet, the people there will find them to be completely natural, while we're cringing over what they've done.
I don't take anyone seriously when they say that new elements are wrong, just because it's not what they're used to, which of course, is all it is.
As far as the "anything goes" approach, I don't see that as what's happening, though I do see people on the outside, who aren't thinking through what Apple might be intending, thinking that way.
If you're going to produce a new widget, or a new methodology, make it consistent, at the very least. Optimally, make it based on feedback that indicates that it meshes well with the abilities (physiological and cognitive) of your user base.
I think that Apple is doing a lot of experimenting right now, and that's great, in my book. I just wish they'd make up their minds on some elements based on (and altering) an ever-evolving HIG, and standardize across their products more quickly, at the same time they move the functionality from /System/PrivateFrameworks to /System/Frameworks for 3rd party use.
Do we *really* need what, three variations of scroll bars? Standard 10.5, iTunes, iLife '09... I would hope that 10.6 unifies some of the experimentation into the OS. (At which point we'll have new experimentation that won't be unified until 10.7... whee.
I agree that it seems that Apple has a methodology here. A very opaque, chaotic looking methodology, but one nonetheless. Personally, I'd like to see it made more explicit, in that each major OS version would have an updated HIG to go with it, and a caveat that "Apple will continue to innovate in the user interface in its own apps - if you wish to emulate one or more of these interfaces, be aware that they may be non-standard and in violation of the HIG for the next major update." Best of each round gets rolled into the standard, HIG is updated, cycle continues.
It'd just be nice if it were more explicit.
On the other hand, if they made radical system wide changes too quickly people will complain that they suddenly made radical system wide changes. If Apple makes a radical change system wide that doesn't work out as well as Apple had planned, its difficult to make another system wide change. I think this is the reason they are moving slowly.
If you're going to produce a new widget, or a new methodology, make it consistent, at the very least. Optimally, make it based on feedback that indicates that it meshes well with the abilities (physiological and cognitive) of your user base.
I think that Apple is doing a lot of experimenting right now, and that's great, in my book. I just wish they'd make up their minds on some elements based on (and altering) an ever-evolving HIG, and standardize across their products more quickly, at the same time they move the functionality from /System/PrivateFrameworks to /System/Frameworks for 3rd party use.