The new look of Mail 2.0
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/mail.html
BuonRotto called this a while back and it is more apparent for every change made to the Mail 2.0-interface. Aqua and Brushed Metal is merging. The latest hint at this? Mail now sports buttons rather than mere icons in its toolbar.
BuonRotto called this a while back and it is more apparent for every change made to the Mail 2.0-interface. Aqua and Brushed Metal is merging. The latest hint at this? Mail now sports buttons rather than mere icons in its toolbar.
Comments
Too bad in the meantime they don't look very good.
C'mon guys, try again.
It's definitely a win to have buttons that look like buttons. Having icons just floating in space definitely looks cool, but IMHO if there's a conflict between clarity of purpose and looks in an interface, looks should lose. Buttons should be immediately identifiable as buttons.
I noted a wildly different design for the new iLife. They're doing colored blobs bordered by thick, wobbly lines now. And the button appearance on the Apple site overall is beginning to adopt that general vocabulary, only with shades of grey and straight lines.
Originally posted by Amorph
That looks more to me like a merging of Aqua's overall design and Platinum's colors. It's clear, spacious and easy on my eyes.
I think the "aluminum Aqua" -- Brushed Metal's lack of title bar divider + silver-white gradient -- looks great. But the buttons are surprisingly clunky. There's some more tweaking to do, IMO.
It's definitely a win to have buttons that look like buttons. Having icons just floating in space definitely looks cool, but IMHO if there's a conflict between clarity of purpose and looks in an interface, looks should lose. Buttons should be immediately identifiable as buttons.
Agreed, but you also want buttons that aren't clumsy-looking. (Remember the Public Beta? ) Here's my take on it: Aqua toolbar buttons are nice and big (but customizable), easy to hit, and look great. However, a drawback is that it's possible that they're not immediately recognizable as buttons. Upside: they all look the same way -- figure out one set, and it applies to just about every application with a Aqua toolbar.
iTunes and Safari introduced the glossy button that was clearly a button, with a minimal dark gray shape showing the button's function. These work great, too, for slightly different reasons; they work esp well in applications with a small number of important controls (back, forward, create a new something, etc).
Tiger's Mail meanwhile attempts to combine photorealistic Aqua icons inside glossy button shapes. It's a mish-mash, though; it works OK for the simple Reply and Forward buttons, but less well for Get Mail and New Message. The button shapes tend to overpower the icons they contain.
I noted a wildly different design for the new iLife. They're doing colored blobs bordered by thick, wobbly lines now. And the button appearance on the Apple site overall is beginning to adopt that general vocabulary, only with shades of grey and straight lines. [/B]
Well, the packaging design for iLife / iWork, anyway (which I also think is great-looking), not the UI for iLife itself, no? Apple.com is just an extension to market + sell these products, for the most part. It is an interesting new design direction for Apple, though.
I do like the sans button look myself, but I can live with button profiles I guess. I mean, we've figured out that many well-designed web pages use images as links. Buttons seem a bit, I dunno, flagrant? Anyway, if we do go with buttons now in the toolbars, either the toolbar gets shorter or the buttons get taller because right now there's a good waste of space vertically. Also, the centered thing )except for the Spotlight field on the right) is anoying. Finally, the icons in the buttons are kind of squished in there right now. They need a bit of breathing room!
Personally, I like the rest of the GUI changes. But the buttons are cheesy. They look like something MS would have designed for their Mac software when OS X first came out.
Here is the feedback link:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/
I know there is still a lot of time for things to change before it is developed, but all the more reason to let them know now before things are set in stone.
However, visually I think the single buttons look odd, and they overpower the current icons (Junk, New, Get Mail).
Not too sure about the next row down in the searh interface: the choice of folder and fields to search and the save button. The drop-down looks like a button, the toggle buttons look like text and the action button looks squashed.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
Finally, the icons in the buttons are kind of squished in there right now. They need a bit of breathing room!
Now that I've had a more close-up look at the buttons, they do look too much like exhibits at a freak show.
They definitely need to be let out of those claustrophobic little cells. That really doesn't work.
When are they going to update that fugly Mail icon?!? It looks terrible next to Safari, Address Book and ally my iApps in the Dock.
I like the grouping function of the buttons, and I like the usability benefit of it
Yes this idea I like, too. It's in Safari. But why couldn't they make the buttons the full height. And not freakin ugly. Nice colorful pictures like before. Actually...why change? If it ain't broke don't fix it. Will the Aqua UI EVER be done?!
...er... buttons. Somehow i can understand
this attitude. Guess this is not the most
sophisticated job ever passed jobs sight.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
I'm willing to withhold judgment until later since this kind of thing can be put off until almost last, and we have a lot of time between this build and Tiger's release which assumably will be towards June.
I agree. Its not like the interface desn't change with every new build. It was funny though. At MWSF I ran into an Apple guy I had met at WWDC. I commented about the changes to the interface, specifically Mail and the new Spotlight icon. He laughed and said the CEO had just decided to make a few adjustments, and everyone was scrambling to get the build ready for the floor. I asked if the show build would be released to ADC members and he wasn't sure.