Comments on: Heavy Metal

By: Ben Kazez

Ben Kazez — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:31:13 +0000

Synaptic Pulse: No need for pixel-counting in Interface Builder; just hold down option while nudging an element with the arrow keys. Nice feature of Interface Builder; I just wish those little yellow boxes appeared when resizing the enclosing window.

By: Buzz Andersen

Buzz Andersen — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 16:18:01 +0000

Well, Chris, there’s no accounting for taste I guess.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 16:09:41 +0000

Eh. I think you’re missing the point, which is that Metal is an ugly throwback to the NeXTstep DeathStar UI. For some of us, it will never look good, no matter what amount of it is visible beneath your content views.

If I could make all the Metal apps on my system use the “Unified Toolbar” look (without hacks), I certainly would.

Metal is like bell-bottoms in 1983 — time to let it go…

By: Buzz Andersen

Buzz Andersen — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 21:31:43 +0000

Wow–someone should tell Dave (unless he did it for them)! I thought their icons were unusually good relative to the rest of their UI design.

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 15:07:10 +0000

(see, for example, Cinematics, which I’m not picking on–I just happen to have found it through Daniel Wilson’s del.icio.us links today)

At the rick of being off topic … I was looking at Einstein’s Legacy for the Cinematics app you mentioned when I noticed that another of their apps,Frame Vault, uses an icon that’s a totally stolen and reworked copy of the “Illegal MiniDiscs” icon from David Brasgalla’s “Matrix Rebooted” icon set!

Poor window margins may be the least of their problems.

By: Peter Ammon

Peter Ammon — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 22:50:19 +0000

This is wonderfully practical advice. I would love to see a Will Shipley style GUI Insulting service, but I’m not qualified. Any takers?

By: Frédéric BLANC

Frédéric BLANC — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 18:25:26 +0000

And what about… fennel DVDManager (http://dvdmanager.free.fr/) ?
Note: The screenshot on their website is not sync’ed with their latest version (where margins have been reduced).

By: Peter da Silva

Peter da Silva — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 23:32:31 +0000

“Metal drawers look ugly”

Friend, ALL drawers look ugly.

I want to know what files I need to edit in /System to change that horrible lip on Aqua drawers. Surely I can find some .pngs somewhere I can replace to make those things look less like something that belongs in Microsoft Bob.

By: Synaptic Pulse

Synaptic Pulse — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 21:29:09 +0000

“Use small window margins. Even smaller than the ones specified by Apple’s UI guidelines. Look at iTunes, iPhoto, or iCal for examples.”

But iTunes do follow the Aqua Human Interface guidelines which specify different margins for metal windows and aqua windows. Sadly, Interface Builder does not follow the HIG for metal window layout so the pixels need to be counted by hand when laying out your GUI. ( the zoom-in universal access feature may come in handy here) iCal however, does not follow the guidelines with regard to border size.

By: Justin Williams

Justin Williams — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 02:33:02 +0000

This post fits in pretty well with my review for MacZealots on Friday. I am reviewing FrameVault: another application from the makers of Cinematics. The company doesn’t seem to understand anything about Mac OS X interface design. They make functional apps and then stop. There is no polish whatsoever.