RE: OS X (was Re: Windows ME)

[Bill Briggs <web@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 5:13 PM +0800 04/10/00, Stuart Burnfield wrote:
>Do you think the sales problem is because the UI looks 'un-Adobe'  

 Not at all.


>or
>because it looks old fashioned and non-standard? That's how it is
>on Windows at least. Maybe that's more of the problem?

The non-standard I can see (though it's not much of a problem), but the "old fashioned" I don't see. Maybe I'm old fashioned and it's a good fit.


>> As Lee observed, the adherence to keeping the UI the same between
>> the platforms, while having value, serves to restrict things. Look
>> at the Color Definitions dialog: Unix doesn't have a "color wheel"
>> method for selecting colors, so Mac and Windows don't get to have
>> one, either.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "color wheel", but if you mean the HLS and HSV type of color selectors, you most certainly do have them on the Mac. When you open the color definitions dialog you are met with CMYK/process by default, but if you select the first item from the Color Libraries popup, which is Apple Color Picker, you are then plugged into the Macs color selection mechanism and there you have access to a variety of color models from which to choose, including CMYK, HLS, HSV, RGB, HTML and Crayon. I'm not sure if the color wheel you talk about is included in this, but I'm thinking it's one of HLS or HSV.


>I can think of several UI differences where different features are
>supported in Windows and Solaris: keyboard macros; screen capture;
>the Print and Preferences dialogues, and probably more. (And I
>believe Frame on a Mac has some unique features such as trapping.)

Last time I used a Unix version of FrameMaker (4) there was no facility to double-click an imported bitmap to invoke the dialog in which to change the ppi setting. You can do this on a Mac. I haven't noticed on the Windows version. And the Mac has had a steadily improving implementation of AppleScript in FrameMaker, starting with v5 and continuing even through otherwise minor decimal upgrades. This is something most users don't even notice, but it has now made possible some very heavy automation of FrameMaker tasks through scripting and the tying of FrameMaker and other applications together in workflows.


>My point is that if the UI can accommodate some platform-specific
>features and OS dependencies, it could handle others. Using your
>example, have a colour wheel on Mac and Windows and use some other
>colour selection widget on UNIX. Another example: in 5.x the Table
>and Para Designers had tabs on Windows but not Solaris, but that
>wasn't a problem.

They're not tabbed on the Mac either. Just the old popup menus.


>Deneba Canvas is available on Mac, Windows and now
>Linux. Presumably it has a colour wheel on all three.

It's likely tied to the Mac's own color picker too. That's the standard way of doing things.


>Yes, for sure. It would be difficult and expensive to go for a 100%
>match. I think there is a sort of "threshhold of differentness"
>below which most users just won't notice.  

 Agreed.


>The main things are:
>
>- Frame on Mac must generally look like a Mac application
>- Frame on Windows must generally look like a Windows application
>- features that are supported cross-platform should where possible
>  look similar and work in a similar way.

 Agreed. 


>After these are taken care of, it's desirable though to me less
>important that Frame should look like other Adobe applications.
>Even there, I'd rate things like tear-off palettes a low priority.
>I'd rather see things like index and TOC properties moved from the
>reference pages, where they cause new users some anguish, to the
>Set Up File dialogue.

 I can think of lots of things that would be a lot higher priority than the UI overhaul. I'm betting most users are of similar mind.  


>If most of the development resources are taken up in
>reimplementing the UI there will only be time left for superficial
>enhancements. Who will pay for the upgrade? 

Few.

- web



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