Subject: Re: [X4U] Widgets? - Unrelated

[David Ledger]

At 06:26 -0700 14/4/09, Jim Robertson wrote:
>I think it's a user interface issue. They're one-trick ponies, but they
>don't do the trick the way they should. Those of us with gray or no hair, or
>who can remember Guy Kawasaki's mantra "cut me, and I'll bleed 6 colors", or
>even the use of reversed angle brackets in the "Apple ][" logo may also
>remember Desk Accessories, those little items that proliferated under the
>"Apple" menu as the first fruits of independent programmers for the Mac back
>in 1984.
>As far as the user experience is concerned, those little suckers did their
>job BETTER than do Widgets. If you wanted one, it was right there, right
>now, and it didn't go away unless you wanted it. With Widgets, you ask for
>one, you get them ALL, and as soon as you copy something from one to an open
>application, it runs away and hides!
>Still, I find it the most convenient way to find out what presentations are
>going on at the Apple Store in San Francisco. It's accessible also on the
>Apple Store webpage, but it's not obvious and I have to struggle to remember
>how to find it each time I look there!
>If I could bring up ONE and have it stay in an unobtrusive or unused corner
>of my screen until I had no more use to it while continuing my other work,
>I'd be much more of a Widgets fan. Amazing to me that a company that spends
>so MUCH time on the human user interface hasn't a clue what's basically
>wrong with these little code snippets.
>Anyone disagree with that?

Got it in one! or several, anyway.

I think it's all part of the 'that was old - this is new' that we got 
with OS X. We got it right before so you're going to have to have it 
wrong now. OS XI anyone?

Another thing they haven't realised is that you most easily move a 
mouse in an arc from the wrist. The bottom of the screen is that last 
place you want a left <-> right selection thingy. The sides (for me) 
haven't the space. So I use 'MoofMenu' from lobotomo.com. It's not a 
Haxie, but a proper app. I used to use something similar under 
pre-OSX.

David


-- 
David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
david.ledger at ivdcs.co.uk
www.ivdcs.co.uk