Patch day

En attendant le patch 1.1 QUI MARCHE de Battlefield 2 (grmbl), c’est le moment d’updater vos Firefox et Mac OS X (10.4.2 out en autoupdate). J’en profite pour vous balancer tout le texte du dieu vivant qui code le DeskManager freeware de Mac OS X à propos des screens de Longhorn récemment publié sur le Net. Je suis vraiment d’accord avec les dire du monsieur. ;)

Longhorn screenies: « I’m not in any way a professional UI designer but I, unlike many developers I know, at least try to give more than a passing thought to my interfaces and do actually read any HIGs that might exist. I also know what I like and what hasn’t worked for me in the past. Hence I provide my entirely unscientific and totally subjective appraisal of the Longhorn beta UI:

Screen 1: Oh dear. Someone equates the ability to have RGBA windows with the need to have RGBA windows. Firstly OS X has already been down the path of translucent titlebars and it is just too much at the mercy of your wallpaper or the contents of windows underneath. You can’t guarantee that the contrast will be high enough. In Panther and Tiger Apple finally did away with them. At least the earlier OS X’s didn’t have translucent active titlebars. In this shot, aside from the ordering, I would be very hard-pressed to tell you which is the active window. It is nice they have jumped on the desktop-search bandwaggon though. The ‘Control Panel’ now has a Spotlight-esque search bar. OTOH since Windows thesedays tends to blur the distinction between applications and Internet Explorer this could just be the MSN search box :(.

Screen 2: Aha! Tabs. Excellent and about time. But wait! These tabs are above the tool and menu bars! I don’t know if this is better UI-wise than tabs on individual web-pages but it would make me think there should be a separate menu bar and tool bar for each window which would be wierd. OTOH if the MS version of XUL takes off this might actually be required. The problems with translucent titles are now compounded with the translucent location bar! The one thing that should be easy to read in a web-browser aside from the page itself has been blended into the background. Wierd.

Screen 3: The Start Menu is as clunky as ever. Speaking as a Linux and Mac user I have really come to appreciate an app launcher beyone just the ‘Quick Launch’ part of the taskbar. The dock in both OS X and GNUStep/WindowMaker provides a nice blend between a launcher and a taskbar IMHO but something like the GNOME panel would be cool here.

Screen 4: I like drop-shadows as a UI-concept as long as they are a) subtle and b) consistent. I didn’t actually notice the shadows in the previous shots but they added to the appearence. Here I did notice them due to the glaring lack of shadow on the Media Player. Why? And why also does the sodding media player have to look like it is made out of goo. For once Real got it right with RealPlayer 10 for Linux by making it Just Another Sodding Gtk App. If skinning an app means one loses the important OS features like drop-shadows at least skinned apps might decrease in numbers.

Overall it looks just like Windows XP but with rather too much glitz added. Also there needs to be virtual desktops :).

(Via 410.)