GUI ideas for Mac OS X.3? X.5?

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  • Reply 21 of 134
    I don't know about 10.2, but while we're talking about the dock, it would be nice if almost every app recognised the dock and resized itself next to it, not behind it. 'seems ironic that the only app I know which does is Internet Explorer ...



    Sincere question: Is this a problem with the apps or with the OS?



    Hmm,



    Tobes.



    [ 08-08-2002: Message edited by: crazed_ebot ]</p>
  • Reply 22 of 134
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    actually, crazed, this was in apple's edict on developing applications -- all developers are supposed to, in apple's words, "respect the dock." few actually do.



    another things that i THINK installers are supposed to do is give you a choice of installing for the localhost user, all users on a computer, etc. (due to the various levels of permissions under unix).



    funny thing is, the ONLY app installer i know that does this correctly... tinkertool. funny, huh?
  • Reply 23 of 134
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    "respect" for the Dock (sounds like Cartman, "Respect my authori-tie!") has to be done by Carbon programmers themselves. Cocoa apps should do this automatically in 98% of cases. I'm sure this is just one of the side effects from the first round of Carbon ports of major OS 9 apps.
  • Reply 24 of 134
    sc_marktsc_markt Posts: 1,401member
    [quote]Originally posted by crazed_ebot:

    <strong>I don't know about 10.2, but while we're talking about the dock, it would be nice if almost every app recognised the dock and resized itself next to it, not behind it.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    That's why I'd like to be able to set the dock as a bottom menubar (with different size options). This way, it'd never get in the way of open app windows and I think the desktop would look cleaner.

    I personally don't like the way the dock sits within your screen space but I like everything it does. I know you can autohide it but if you have stock tickers or other status indicators in it, then you have to move your mouse to get the thing to pop up. I just want to be able to glance down at the bottom of the screen to see what's going on in the dock.
  • Reply 25 of 134
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    Animated Icons in the Dock:
    • Make the Finder window wink, for some reason or another, i would like it to wink at me

    • Make the mail eagle fly when it is doing some process. like checking for new mail.

    • iTunes spin the CD when it is importing.

    • iPhoto Icon can display your own icon in the space where there is a photo

    • iMovie, do something!

    • Make the @ spring, actually spring when you click on it

    I think the dock is fine now, just more customization avaliable <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
  • Reply 26 of 134
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Apple should have public service messages for a screen saver...



    "Don't beat your wife."

    "Tell your kids you love them."

    "Have you seen this boy?"

    "The fire department will be conducting controlled burns in your neighborhood on August 21st."



    ...
  • Reply 27 of 134
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    Apple should bring back that screen saver that scrolls the news and stuff, but bring it on with updates <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
  • Reply 28 of 134




    [ 08-09-2002: Message edited by: Mac OS X ]</p>
  • Reply 29 of 134
    evoevo Posts: 198member
    I just started using the SmoothStripes 2.0.1 theme for Duality, and man.... it sure is nice! I really wish Apple would adopt the pinstripe-less look. It really makes everything look cleaner and simpler.
  • Reply 30 of 134
    kaboomkaboom Posts: 286member
    For pscates and others looking to change the dock poof:

    <a href="http://www.resexcellence.com/user_poofs.shtml"; target="_blank">http://www.resexcellence.com/user_poofs.shtml</a>;



    And the ripple pscates wanted it there too!
  • Reply 31 of 134
    wyntirwyntir Posts: 88member
    Here's some ideas for the dock. I dig the idea of it minimizing in a smarter fashion (as it is, a minimized dock is worse than useless). It could collapse into a control-strip style tabbie on the side (or top/bottom, if that's what floats your boat). You could set it to display when you moused over it, clicked it, etc., or you could customize it further. Say, it could just display the icons of open programs. Or it could show programs that you have used in the last 10 minutes (in order of use). Or any of those, plus files you have added. (You could click the tabbie at any time to expand it to the full dock.) That would be insanely useful, I'd say. Of course, spring-loaded dock-mounted folders need to be fixed



    This is a little bit of a smaller issue, but I would absolutely kill for a universal context-menu item: Services. Any service you want is a right-click away. I love the concept of services, but when I'm browsing and, say, want to email text to someone, it's a lot easier to just select, copy, and click mail.app in the Dock than it is to open the Services menu, find the Mail submenu, find 'Send Selection'. And, at least in Jag 6c115, the keyboard shortcuts for Services don't work unless you've opened the Services menu in the recent past (?) which is just fugging ridiculous and removes 90% of the Services functionality for me.



    Of course in the best of all possible worlds, Apple would implement Jef Raskin's Humane Interface in X.3
  • Reply 32 of 134
    Since no one else is seconding this, I will.



    PLEASE APPLE, TELL ME THE TOTAL SIZE OF THE FILES I HAVE IN THE TRASH! It's pretty stupid when I have to either empty the trash to find out how much disk space I'd save by throwing xy&z away; or take them out of the trash, make a new folder to put them in, get info on it, then put them back in the trash; or...whip out the calculator. COME ON, how freakin hard can it be to make the empty trash message function like it did in 9.



    Beggin on my hands and knees here, this is probably the most annoying thing in 10.



    solfege



    [edit: too many capitals in all the wrong places...that was before ]



    [ 08-10-2002: Message edited by: solfege ]</p>
  • Reply 33 of 134
    enderender Posts: 353member
    I'd like to third the Trash Can Size sentiment.



    True story:

    I was browsing through my hard drive and noticed some folder that I no longer needed (started with G, can't remember what it was). No prob, Apple-Delete, it's gone. So I go for the "Empty Trash" sortcut... Apple-Shift-Delete. I press it once, nothing happens, so I press it again, message pops up and away we go. Then it starts counting the items... wow, all the way up to 3500 items. Proceeds to start deleting.



    I'm thinking... "that folder didn't really have that much stuff in it." "Ah !@#$%, STOP THE TRASH MAN!" Half of my "Games" folder is gone. Apparently the first time I'd pressed Apple-Shift-Delete I missed the shift, so it threw my Games folder in there.



    Nothing horrible lost, but it could have been averted if it told me I had 6 GB in the trash can rather than 10 MB.



    -Ender
  • Reply 34 of 134
    ibrowseibrowse Posts: 1,749member
    For the person that wanted the dock to go the whole way across the screen; What would you do with all the extra space? You would either have to have the icons get spaced farther apart or they would be distorted horizontally



    I would also like the trash to show you the size of what's in it.



    I would like a LOT more options under the rightclick menu. I know that 'Open with...' and 'Change Desktop Picture' are nice additions, but I want more.



    And of course, easier theme-ability!
  • Reply 35 of 134
    cliveclive Posts: 720member
    The Dock: let's face it, the dock is a total piece of crap - always has been, always will be.



    No amount of "features" will put it right, it's just flawed from the start.
  • Reply 36 of 134
    pyr3pyr3 Posts: 946member
    [quote]Originally posted by Clive:

    <strong>The Dock: let's face it, the dock is a total piece of crap - always has been, always will be.



    No amount of "features" will put it right, it's just flawed from the start.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I guess you want a windoze taskbar? It's easy to say something is wrong, but it's harder to make something right. It's just like all those critics that say "The current GUIs are too old, we need new GUIs", but they never present any new ideas. They just like to tear other people down for not having better ideas. That's retarded in my opinion. Unless you can do something better, who are you to criticize? Present your ideas on why the dock is broken and will never work. Tell us what you would rather have. Else you are just a troll.



    [quote]iBrowse stated:<strong>

    For the person that wanted the dock to go the whole way across the screen; What would you do with all the extra space? You would either have to have the icons get spaced farther apart or they would be distorted horizontally</strong><hr></blockquote>



    It could be just space. Nothing says that the entire dock must be filled with something. The Dock icons are squares as far as res goes. All that have to do is scale while keeping aspect ratio. Therefore (assuming the dock is on the bottom of the screen) the height of the dock determines the size of the icon, and the leftover space is just blank. I'm not saying this is the best way, but it's such an easy question to answer... You assume that the dock has to be completely filled at all times. Why does this have to be the case?



    [ 08-11-2002: Message edited by: pyr3 ]</p>
  • Reply 37 of 134
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Not much of an idea, there Clive. The more I see the direction of Apple's application and document model, the more I tend to agree that it's flawed, though I wouldn't put it in such dire terms. The biggest problem i have with the Dock is that I'm not sure if it's conceptually an organizational element or "slop space" as I call it. For example, the Desktop is slop space. Finder windows are organizational elements. The Dock right now is neither here nor there. But maybe that's OK? More on that in a minute.



    Any ideas for a better mousetrap? One simple idea that others (including NeXT) have toyed with is a tabbed Dock. Another obvious one is a menu system. And of course there's the taskbar idea too. Anything out of left field anyone is thinking of?



    I was thinking about something combining Tog's "pile" idea (which I find of limited use in itself aside from visual feedback about the pile's size) and the single Dock bar.





    (Hopefully this won't turn into a "Dock sucks/rules" thread. Hopefully we won't get "it was perfect before OS X" responses either. Everything under the sun can stand some improvement, right? )
  • Reply 38 of 134
    Let me empty the trashcan in Classic. It always bothers me that I work with photoshop, go to print something, and the computer either can't print or crashes (because I like to print really big things.)



    When I boot into OS9 I find several huge (500M+) files in an invisible temporary 501 folder... Once it was almost 3G worth of unprinted files, which I could not see in OS10.



    The other thing which would be useful is if you are in the column mode, and make a new folder, you whould automatically be allowed to rename it. Right now, it creates an untitled folder, but if you start typing, it bounces you around through the list of folders in the heirarchy, with an 'untitled' folder sitting close to the bottom.



    Other than that, I don't reaally want much except for an updated 'rate of flow' icon for the internet connect program.



    Of course, I could go on...
  • Reply 39 of 134
    [quote]Originally posted by Ender:

    <strong>I'd like to third the Trash Can Size sentiment.



    True story:

    I was browsing through my hard drive and noticed some folder that I no longer needed (started with G, can't remember what it was). No prob, Apple-Delete, it's gone. So I go for the "Empty Trash" sortcut... Apple-Shift-Delete. I press it once, nothing happens, so I press it again, message pops up and away we go. Then it starts counting the items... wow, all the way up to 3500 items. Proceeds to start deleting.



    I'm thinking... "that folder didn't really have that much stuff in it." "Ah !@#$%, STOP THE TRASH MAN!" Half of my "Games" folder is gone. Apparently the first time I'd pressed Apple-Shift-Delete I missed the shift, so it threw my Games folder in there.



    Nothing horrible lost, but it could have been averted if it told me I had 6 GB in the trash can rather than 10 MB.



    -Ender</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I almost deleted 10 GB of mp3's by accident in an incident similar to this. Luckily I caught my mistake immediately... but still... I had myself really freaked out for a second. <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" />
  • Reply 40 of 134
    [quote]Originally posted by Clive:

    <strong>The Dock: let's face it, the dock is a total piece of crap - always has been, always will be.



    No amount of "features" will put it right, it's just flawed from the start.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I just want it to make coffee dang it! Is that so much to ask?
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