5 ms·

It's not a perfect equivalency but putting the drawer on the right side seems to be a bit inconsistent with their own Finder display (Show Items as Columns) whe

It's not a perfect equivalency but putting the drawer on the right side seems to be a bit inconsistent with their own Finder display (Show Items as Columns) where you drive from left-to-right with the right-most being a preview of a media asset such as a picture for example. But I wasn't an early user of MacOS, I don't know when this Column layout was first introduced. > The Preview app is about the content. The content is king. If "left-hand" is king I wonder if they would have reversed the drawer's position for localization in countries with RTL languages.

JKCalhoun 8mo ago
"I wonder if they would have reversed the drawer's position for localization in countries with RTL languages." I believe AppKit did so.
wtallis 8mo ago
> But I wasn't an early user of MacOS, I don't know when this Column layout was first introduced. 1989. See the screenshot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP Instead of the drawer on the side, NeXTSTEP had the Shelf on top: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_(computing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_(computing)
- vunderba 8mo ago
  Thanks TIL. Tangentially related, I'm a huge fan of the aesthetics of the NeXTcube (even if by all accounts it was a bit of a nightmare to build from a engineering perspective). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTcube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTcube
  - manarth 8mo ago
    But will it burn? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34585754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34585754
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
budgefrankly 7mo ago
Drawers were a big feature of early MacOS X, as an alternative to NEXT's multiple columns. App's inherited from NEXT (email, finder, etc.) used columns still, but newer apps used drawers. It was really well integrated, if the window was too close to the edge, the window would move as the drawer opened in a single smooth animation. XCode in particular had drawers everywhere. As iTunes became successful, and everything wanted to be brushed metal, drawers began to disappear in favour of columns. It's quite hard on the modern internet to find images of that old UI, but here's Preview with its right-hand-side drawer: https://mac.elated.com/2007/05/09/displaying-images-in-the-right-order-in-preview/ https://mac.elated.com/2007/05/09/displaying-images-in-the-r...

JKCalhoun 8mo ago

"I wonder if they would have reversed the drawer's position for localization in countries with RTL languages." I believe AppKit did so.

wtallis 8mo ago

> But I wasn't an early user of MacOS, I don't know when this Column layout was first introduced. 1989. See the screenshot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP Instead of the drawer on the side, NeXTSTEP had the Shelf on top: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_(computing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_(computing)

vunderba 8mo ago
Thanks TIL. Tangentially related, I'm a huge fan of the aesthetics of the NeXTcube (even if by all accounts it was a bit of a nightmare to build from a engineering perspective). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTcube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTcube
- manarth 8mo ago
  But will it burn? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34585754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34585754

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

budgefrankly 7mo ago

Drawers were a big feature of early MacOS X, as an alternative to NEXT's multiple columns. App's inherited from NEXT (email, finder, etc.) used columns still, but newer apps used drawers. It was really well integrated, if the window was too close to the edge, the window would move as the drawer opened in a single smooth animation. XCode in particular had drawers everywhere. As iTunes became successful, and everything wanted to be brushed metal, drawers began to disappear in favour of columns. It's quite hard on the modern internet to find images of that old UI, but here's Preview with its right-hand-side drawer: https://mac.elated.com/2007/05/09/displaying-images-in-the-right-order-in-preview/ https://mac.elated.com/2007/05/09/displaying-images-in-the-r...