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Re: ::scr Ramblings of a Classic Refugee or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love OS X



WARNING - LARGE RAMBLING POST AHEAD


>>>> unixy goodness <<<<


taken as read :)


>>>> classic feel (if not look) <<<<


I figured that the first things to attempt would be to make OS X's
interface less offensive through the use of the built-in prefs before I
got going installing any hacks.

Too right. And kudos to Apple: quite a few of the "hacks" I installed have already been subsumed into the built-in prefs. (But let's hope they pay off developers who pioneer great new functionality rather than just rip off the idea - in this respect Apple has always seemed to lag behind Microsoft's much better business sense)


1) Reduce the default icon size to less than the size of a dinner plate

CHECK


2) Sort out the Dock:

	a) Reduce the size
	b) turn off the cycle-sapping magnification.
	c) anchor it to the right of the screen.

CHECK


And auto-hide it.
And not use it for launching apps or minimising windows. Then it makes a pretty good open apps list.


http://homepage.mac.com/vercruesse/cocoa/asm/

CHECK


Except I switched to X-Assist as it also automates the focusing of all of an application/the finders windows. Actually when that is built-in pref configurable I'll probably just use the dock. Maybe there's already a better way to do it...

Another thing I thought was missing was the familiar trashcan in the
bottom-right of the screen: http://homepage.mac.com/northernSW/trashx.html

Actually I think the trash in the dock is the biggest UI improvement in OSX. It's always there rather than hiding on the desktop obscured by some window or other. And since I've anchored the dock to the bottom right it's even where (it should | I've come to expect it to) be. Fitts Law++


Pisspoor tabbed app switching

I can live with that (although it would be nice if the behaviour was configurable) but I've always found extra gui approaches to just be so much additional gui cruft that actually slows you down


Apple Menu
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/fruitmenu.html

CHECK


I'd say that it has the makings of being better than the original Classic version. I would be surprised (and annoyed) not to see Apple fold this into the mix.

WindowShadeX

CHECK


I hadn't bothered with it but I've just given it a go. I like it. The ability to make windows as transparent as you like them is nice. Although leaving the title bar opaque would be better still (but I guess rather hard if not impossible to implement). I'd also like to see selecting the window from the window menu automagically unshade it though. But those niggles apply to Classic too. It's good. And you can still minimise if you want too.

Note that WindowShade is by the same guy as FruitMenu. And ShadowKiller. He knows Macs all right :)

Pop-up folders. I *really* miss them, but I've been unable to find a way
to duplicate their functionality.

Not a biggy for me. However there is this:


PopUpX
    http://www.madoverlord.com/projects/popupx.t
Haven't tried it though

Alternatively you could just adapt and bung your folders on the dock ;)

Spring-loaded folders. They should never have got rid of these. I was
gobsmacked that they did since they're so *useful*. Ah well, it's due in
the next release, I hear.

But still nowhere as good as the functionality provided by PopupFolder (which OS8's introduction of spring-loaded folders tragically broke, inspiring the developers to give up on the Mac) - springloadedness++ in the finder and dialog boxes. Can we have some of that please?




But am I doing the right thing? Is this not just head-in-the-sand
behaviour? Should I be embracing the new UI and fitting myself to it
instead of jumping through all these hoops in order to remain "living in
the past"? Surely I'm rejecting progress?

No. You are doing the right thing. You are doing what Mac users have always done. That *is* progress. If the ui doesn't suit, change it to suit. It's your machine. You sit in front of it all/most of the day.



In that vein, here are my demands:



>>>> I want candy <<<<


There are Kaleidoscope-style replacements (front runner: Duality, formerly X-Morph) but - as I fortunately read just before installing it and Stuart Wyatt piped up about in another place - these are known to still have a tendency to leave you with unrecoverable blue screens on startup. Blinking question mark macs - yes, blue screens of death - no. If I wanted that I'd be using a whole other OS, wouldn't I?

[Didn't stop me tinkering with the Visage pref pane and managing to make the OSX splash graphic vanish leading me to fear that I was experiencing blue screen. Now I like it, seeing the system startup messages in a vast sea of nothingness - it just seems so leet ;)]

Hopefully these will mature and be even better than the original Kaleidoscope. Given the sheer scope and the consistency of the underpinning of interface elements by Aqua, the possibility for as much customisation as the user can stand seems eminently doable, seems mouthwatering and if done right should avoid the potential "it looks great but you've made it unusable" problem of themes (sorry - that sentence extremely poorly thought out). If done really right, ancillary services such as help systems should be able to reflect the user's theme choices creating a truely seamless experience (or am I smoking crack here?).

Of course, those familiar with my theme rants already know that what I want from a theme manager is not more eye candy but less (even OS7 is fussier than I need).

>>>> I want chrome <<<<

You know what I mean. Chrome all around the window. Not just a title bar. So I can grab a window on any side and move it. So I can avoid trying to scroll and ending up in some other window/app entirely :(

Perhaps theme managers can deal with this one, much like Kaleidoscope enabled the amount of chrome under Classic to be altered. (whoops, freudian past tense, guess who's not booting into Classic these days). But I am probably misunderstanding how windows get done in OSX.

>>>> I want desktops <<<<

Not SpaceDock-alike desktops. Real unixen-grade desktops. Nuff said.

>>>> I want docks <<<<

And fully customisable at that
    http://www.wpi.edu/~phoenix/macosx/dock.html

In some ways the dock could become great. But it's currently too laggy to compete with FruitMenu as for decent nested access to folders/files or collections of aliases (of course you can press ctl but with a trackpad that's a somewhat cumbersome operation - if I was using a mouse or, mmm, a graphics pad maybe I'd feel differently).

>>>> I don't want open/save dialogs <<<<

Well in an ideal world that would be lovely, making it all happen in the finder
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06594


[Comments about suckiness of current implementation (apart from the much improved, if not perfect, navigation services) are spot on too - the worst thing being not being able to type letters and jump to the files/folders starting with those letters]

However, in the absence of such a bold step, I'd like to be able to do the following (all of which I can under Classic - granted using DefaultFolder) in dialog boxes:

* Click on a file and copy its name to the new file
* Rename files
* Delete files (Oh you can, can't you?)
* Open folders in the finder
* Click on a folder in the desktop and change to that folder in the dialog (obviously some hotkey would be necessary given the modeless nature of the dialogs now)


[Please somebody tell me I'm an idiot and that it is possible to do these things in OSX]

>>>> I want glue <<<<

that allows:
* the recording and playback of any action or task, such as typing key commands or text, selecting menus and dialog box options, clicking on controls, rearranging and resizing windows, opening applications and documents, and prompting the user for input.
* the assigning of any sequence of these actions to keyboard commands, toolbars, menus, and scheduled shortcuts.
* the resulting scripts to be fully editable (or written from scratch).
* the resulting toolbars and menus to be fully customisable.


Under Classic OneClick almost achieves this. And OneClick's developers may join the fray (XClick?) but equally possibly they may just give up as the PopupFolder guys did (although fairs fair, OneClick can't be incorporated into OSX whereas Apple simply refused to buy up PopupFolder and introduced their own inferior version)

Quickeys can do some of these things, but it's plodding, flaky and is not scriptable so you can't get under the hood.

I've heard talk that Route 66 have a RealBasic plugin that promises to do these things but their website doesn't mention it so hmmmm.

>> The contenders

I've come across a couple of apps that show promise and point in the right direction:

ShellShell
http://www.madoverlord.com/projects/shellshell.t
A simple macro writing tool to create aqua interfaces for your favourite commands - or rather for people who are scared of the command line or can never remember the right commands.


ScriptGUI
http://www.scriptgui.com/
Let's you run scripts from the finder. Which can be double-clickable. Or even better, drag-and-droppable with the dragged and dropped files/folders being accepted as <stdin>. Mmmm nice, even if currently it still has some rough edges. I like the suthor's combative distribution notes too:


"A Note to Apple Computer
I suspect you left this sort of functionality out of MacOS X deliberately. Otherwise a whole group of UNIX developers might have simply used it to port their command-line tools over to OS X and been done with it. But in making this decision, you made OS X less useful to people who really understand both MacOS and UNIX. And you lost the opportunity to entice them into the MacOS X fold. Please consider putting functionality like this back in. I might even negotiate the rights to distribute ScriptGUI."


>> The great white hope

AppleScript Studio looks like it's shaping up to be funky funky functional. But a) while it's going to be great for writing apps it's a bit too laborious for knocking out everyday run-o-the-mill scripts b) Applescript support remains patchy in many (most?) apps and where it exists does so in a sometimes truncated form and certainly wildly diverging functions and keywords from app to app.

What I dream of most though is a kind of FinderPop style contextual thingy (hell, it could even be FinderPopX with whistles) that not only executes such scripts but enables users to build the scripts in a pop-up fashion (Perhaps accessing AppleScript's dictionaries, thusly overcoming the problem of having to learn those diverging dictionaries?) without having to manipulate the apps and finder directly. And then group the scripts as the user sees fit.

[Actually this kind of approach seems to me a good way of constructing complicated searches, presenting the user with only the relevant options/prompting for the necessary input, rather than cluttering up the interface with masses of input boxes, some of which may or may not impact on others.]


>>>> I don't want a finder <<<<


Hang on you say. What the fuck am I talking about? Especially considering what I've just said about wanting open/save dialogs to dissappear and magically just be finder operations.

OK, the finder can stay, it's folders/directories I want to see the back off replaced by user-configurable attributes/categories - Isn't it obvious that the OS should be a database too? The finder becomes a collection of aliases to specific files or searches for files that match specific attributes. (No Gerstner Scopeware 3d timelines though, well not unless you really, really want that). [0]

Actually I also want auto versioning and trashing ;)

Whereas Apple's advance down the path of filename extensions and the abandoning of the resource fork is a step in very much the opposite direction :(


*cough*



[0] I've wanted this since 1996 when I encountered Apple's .mcf format - the whizzygee fly-through mode was pants (and all those Brain/Fractal Map style visualisations suck too), but the simple tree-style browsing (lists, lists, lists) opened my eyes to how things could and should be organised. I even toyed with learning Frontier to attempt to implement my own system but (un)fortunately the learning curve at the time was just too steep. As well as the fact that the task itself would have been, er, still is, beyond my capabilities. And then sometime late last year I read that piece about that BeOS guy's conversion to OSX - the future has been and gone.