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* enter to rename files, best keyboard shortcut ever. someone please enlighten me on an easy way to rename in windows. * F2. It's the universal rename key in a

* enter to rename files, best keyboard shortcut ever. someone please enlighten me on an easy way to rename in windows. * F2. It's the universal rename key in almost every renamable control in the OS. You can also do two slow clicks. But the timing is fidgety. You can also right click and rename in most context windows in most pieces of software that have a renamable control. * closing last window doesn't quit application. the decluttering effect of this is amazing. * How precisely is leaving stuff around you aren't going to use decluttering? * windows NEEDs maximize designed the way it is because all those fancy borders and menus are so full of CLUTTER. macs are more true to the "windows" philosophy, windows should be called "screens" from how i've seen people abuse maximize. * Ugh, the visual cacophony going on the background behind my applications in OSX are so f-ing distracting, I spend most of my time on a Mac moving the damn windows around and individually minimizing them so I don't have to look at them all the time. I really really really don't need to see the last 4 photos I opened up in Photoshop, a terminal window and browser and whatever other random stuff I happened to have opened over the last 6 hours sitting around in my visual field in the background while I do something else. Really, I don't. There are times when having more than one thing on the screen in different applications is useful. But 90% of the time it's a visual distraction that breaks focus. I always find this counter argument amazing coming from a community that made worshiping full screen minimalist text editors an art form. http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom Doesn't anybody in OSX user-land want to read a document or write music in full screen so they can focus on it? Or is that only for writing (it's clearly not for any other kind of production work)? Gah! * as a follow up, people maximize on windows in order for the menus to comply with Fitt's Law. as noted, not necessary on mac. * No they don't. They maximize the windows so they can focus on the thing their actually working on instead of the visual field garbage cluttering up their peripheral vision. Side rant: I wish beyond all that's holy that OSX users would stop excusing the obviously bad OSX menu bar design by bringing up Fitt's law when that's pretty much the only place in the entire OS that concept is followed. Pick an application, ANY application, and they jam all kinds of controls all over the screen. Web browsers don't just line up links along the edges of the screen, they embed them all over the screen, Photoshop's toolkit isn't jammed against the side of the screen, it's a floating window, iPhoto doesn't just give you a linear list of photos along the bottom of the screen, iTunes playback controls aren't lined up directly along the bottom, Safari has almost no major control surfaces on the edges of the screen...etc. etc. etc. If you rely on Fitt's law to save a novice mouse user from OSX's incredibly bad (and non-configurable) mouse acceleration curve, you'll be very sad. For all of the gods sakes (past and present), stop bringing up the example of the one singular interface component in the entire OS that happens to adhere to Fitt's law if nothing else in the operating system follows it. (btw, all those windows floating around that you can't maximize in OSX? yeah. those don't follow Fitt's law of an infinite mouse target either by definition) Gah!

qwzybug 16y ago
Ugh, the visual cacophony going on the background behind my applications in OSX are so f-ing distracting, I spend most of my time on a Mac moving the damn windows around and individually minimizing them so I don't have to look at them all the time. Command-option-H. You'll like it. I like the deemphasis on full-screen windows in Mac OS; one of the biggest losses in OSX UIs of the last decade is that they've moved from the exceedingly customizable palette-style UI (see ircle, for example—an IRC client with the entry box in a different window from the chat log!) to the iTunes-inspired, all-features-in-one-window style. The ability to use the windowing system to split your focus between different documents and apps for the same task (instead of maximizing every damn thing, like most Windows users I know) was powerful; the current approach reeks of MDI. (As does Adobe CS5—git yer damn tabs outta my Photoshop, Adobe.) PS - Personally, I can't stand the mouse acceleration curves on Windows. "In matters of taste, there can be no dispute."
- elblanco 16y ago
  Ircle - Gah! That's like everything that was ever wrong with GUI design. Disconnected windows implies disconnected functionality, overly complex design, buttons . There's no indicator that the input area has anything to do with the chat log. I can see why the interface styles are moving away from that type of design. IRC is supposed to be simple Ircle makes it look like I'm piloting a nuclear sub and a squadron of UAVs at the same time. I know it's old, so it gets a free pass for not being up to date on UI design. But the thing I find hard to believe about Ircle is that it lives on Macs -- the holy sanctuary from bad UI design. (and I'd like to point out how very few controls they jam into the menu bar at top, Ircle is a perfect example of Fitt's law in non-use). CS5 - Tabs can be a powerful thing when done right, CS5 does not do them right. I strongly dislike Photoshop's tab implementation. Though I'd never in a million years hold up Photoshop (with its aging wretched evolutionary interface cruft) as an example for people to follow in UI design. Maximize - I've known many people who use the exact phrase "maximize every damn thing" when referring to people's desire to maximize windows to focus on one thing at a time. I've actually sat down with them to discuss their UI behavior and observe how they use their smaller non-maximized windows. What I discovered was fascinating. Instead of focusing on one particular thing at a time, and moving their mouse around inside screen sized real-estate, with nothing else cluttering up their visual field, they focused on one particular thing at a time except they had a much smaller area to work in, things became cluttered and they often got distracted or confused by non-relevant stuff in the background. They spent inordinate amount of time moving windows around to get them positioned well to not be distracting or so they could see them all well (as if the other document they were writing was going to suddenly change state without their notice and they wanted to see that happen - yes this was how it was described exactly to me), and fiddling with toolbars so they were "just so". If I didn't know better, I'd classify most of the behaviors as OCD type worry twitches. The real problem is that if you want to maximize and focus on a Mac, you simply can't. Whereas on Windows or many Linuxes, I can choose either method of operation -- like if I writing some code and have a separate app up logging network activity or something, I can do that. But if I'm having a particularly bad time killing a bug, I simply can't maximize and get everything else out of the way. There is a built in efficiency in killing off tasks serially that you sometimes can't get when operating in parallel. Thanks for the command-option-h tip.

qwzybug 16y ago

Ugh, the visual cacophony going on the background behind my applications in OSX are so f-ing distracting, I spend most of my time on a Mac moving the damn windows around and individually minimizing them so I don't have to look at them all the time. Command-option-H. You'll like it. I like the deemphasis on full-screen windows in Mac OS; one of the biggest losses in OSX UIs of the last decade is that they've moved from the exceedingly customizable palette-style UI (see ircle, for example—an IRC client with the entry box in a different window from the chat log!) to the iTunes-inspired, all-features-in-one-window style. The ability to use the windowing system to split your focus between different documents and apps for the same task (instead of maximizing every damn thing, like most Windows users I know) was powerful; the current approach reeks of MDI. (As does Adobe CS5—git yer damn tabs outta my Photoshop, Adobe.) PS - Personally, I can't stand the mouse acceleration curves on Windows. "In matters of taste, there can be no dispute."

elblanco 16y ago
Ircle - Gah! That's like everything that was ever wrong with GUI design. Disconnected windows implies disconnected functionality, overly complex design, buttons . There's no indicator that the input area has anything to do with the chat log. I can see why the interface styles are moving away from that type of design. IRC is supposed to be simple Ircle makes it look like I'm piloting a nuclear sub and a squadron of UAVs at the same time. I know it's old, so it gets a free pass for not being up to date on UI design. But the thing I find hard to believe about Ircle is that it lives on Macs -- the holy sanctuary from bad UI design. (and I'd like to point out how very few controls they jam into the menu bar at top, Ircle is a perfect example of Fitt's law in non-use). CS5 - Tabs can be a powerful thing when done right, CS5 does not do them right. I strongly dislike Photoshop's tab implementation. Though I'd never in a million years hold up Photoshop (with its aging wretched evolutionary interface cruft) as an example for people to follow in UI design. Maximize - I've known many people who use the exact phrase "maximize every damn thing" when referring to people's desire to maximize windows to focus on one thing at a time. I've actually sat down with them to discuss their UI behavior and observe how they use their smaller non-maximized windows. What I discovered was fascinating. Instead of focusing on one particular thing at a time, and moving their mouse around inside screen sized real-estate, with nothing else cluttering up their visual field, they focused on one particular thing at a time except they had a much smaller area to work in, things became cluttered and they often got distracted or confused by non-relevant stuff in the background. They spent inordinate amount of time moving windows around to get them positioned well to not be distracting or so they could see them all well (as if the other document they were writing was going to suddenly change state without their notice and they wanted to see that happen - yes this was how it was described exactly to me), and fiddling with toolbars so they were "just so". If I didn't know better, I'd classify most of the behaviors as OCD type worry twitches. The real problem is that if you want to maximize and focus on a Mac, you simply can't. Whereas on Windows or many Linuxes, I can choose either method of operation -- like if I writing some code and have a separate app up logging network activity or something, I can do that. But if I'm having a particularly bad time killing a bug, I simply can't maximize and get everything else out of the way. There is a built in efficiency in killing off tasks serially that you sometimes can't get when operating in parallel. Thanks for the command-option-h tip.