What happened to "OK, Apply, Cancel" - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: fubar.gr
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 07:45:23 am
content: Up to some time ago, all configuration windows had the options OK, Apply, Cancel at the bottom.You could mess around with the settings and if things went wrong, you could simply hit Cancel and start over again.But nowadays these buttons have disappeared from most programs. All you can do is to close the window, but doing that will automatically apply any changes. If you made some changes but want to revert them, sorry but you're screwed!Does anyone else find this new style configuration window annoying?

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 07:49:35 am
content: Which environment are you referring to?

author: fubar.gr
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 08:01:30 am
content: WindowsThe first time I noticed this style of config window was in Google Chrome's settings. Soon after Firefox followed suit. Then Windows 8 and 10 got the same style menus too.

author: MarkS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 08:02:15 am
content: Quote from: fubar.gr on April 13, 2017, 08:01:30 amThis is bad interface design, although a major software manufacturer *cough*Microsoft*cough* decided to forget decades of past experience for some nut job's "study" saying his way is better, so bad interface design is slowly becoming mainstream.

author: hendorog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 08:21:04 am
content: Apple started it, not Microsoft.Not sure why I'm defending Microsoft, never thought that would happen...

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 09:06:49 am
content: One of the many, many reasons why Windows XP and Windows 7 are probably going to be the last versions of Windows I'll use on my primary home machines. I'll be switching to Linux within the next 5 years it seems.

author: MarkS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 10:20:04 am
content: The GUI of Windows 8/10 is based off of a study done by *someone* that discounted decades of GUI research and experience, as though we've been gimping along all these many years. The result is an abomination.Contrasting colors and patterns for interface elements? Multicolored icons? Standard buttons like "OK", "Cancel" and "Apply"? Pfft! Those are all so 1990's!

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 10:38:39 am
content: Quote from: MarkS on April 13, 2017, 10:20:04 amAgreed. They are trying too hard to be like Android, an OS which runs, quite well might I add, on a wide variety of devices.Microsoft have obviously realised "Oh shit, we need to turn our attention to phones, tablets, cars, everything else..." and have made this bastardised version of Windows which kinda-sorta works on "every" device.The result is a disaster.I mean, the fact you have several different places to adjust system settings is bad enough... you have some new "Settings" option which makes it difficult to find what you want, you still have the traditional Control Panel which has done the job just fine since the 1980's, then you have a dedicated "Printers and Devices" box... It's just horrid.I've used Windows 10 now on a test machine for about 3-4 months and I've tried to like it, but I just can't. I find I have to hunt around for options and items which should be obvious (but aren't) and the fact they refer to everything as "Apps"... c'mon! It's akin to your uncool and daggy mother and father using "LOL" -- It's APPLICATIONS people (or Programs if you like). They may as well have dumbed the 'Start' button down to "Apps 'n' Shit".

author: Groucho2005
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 11:13:33 am
content: Quote from: MarkS on April 13, 2017, 10:20:04 amCouldn't agree more.Back to topic - The APIs for the good old "OK, Cancel, Retry, ..." message boxes are present in all modern Windows versions. It's up to the application developers to use them properly.As for interface design, either devs roll their own shiny interface elements that look like hot wax accidents or they use the standard, incredibly bland Win8/10 elements, both of which largely neglect the above mentioned proved and tested GUI guidelines.Quote

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 11:22:02 am
content: I agree strongly, some of the web interfaces i deal with i have been able to wear them down and get them to atleast break it down to "save" and "cancel", pretty much yes or no, and pressing "X" to close the program works the same as cancel. and doesnt change things. (uphill battle there aswell),Funny thing about windows 8, after the company replacing my work computer with a windows 8 one while i was on a working trip (unnanounced), they noticed the amount of work i got done fell to about half, which i solely attribute to how much time i wasted by not being able to navigate by muscle memory. and no bloody start menu (was not allowed to install software), so within a week i had my old machine back. and i think for now they learnt there lesson to ask first.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 11:39:48 am
content: Quote from: hendorog on April 13, 2017, 08:21:04 amYes they did.I occasionally have to use a Mac and it is almostscary; example:Touching any of those controls causes an instant change in display resolution, whether you actually wanted to or not. There is no undo. In theory, they make it "smart" enough to not let you change to a resolution outside of the monitor limits, but of course that doesn't always work in reality.

author: MarkS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 02:29:37 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on April 13, 2017, 11:39:48 amPretty sad considering they practically wrote the book on window-based GUI design. I had the original "Inside Macintosh" books decades ago that Apple released for developers that detailed exactly how any program written for their OS should look and function. You would NEVER have a dialog without "OK" and "Cancel". There was an entire chapter devoted to proper dialog box layout! What you showed just wasn't done. Jump forwards 30 years though...

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 02:53:31 pm
content: "OK, Apply, Cancel" were changed into "Yes, I obey"

author: jonovid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 03:54:31 pm
content: the menu was designed by a committee.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 05:14:41 pm
content: I never liked Steve Jobs when he was alive, but after he died it really became apparent how much his obsessive attention to detail made Apple what it was. I never liked the extreme lack of flexibility and dumbing down of the interface, complete lack of a command line prior to OSX, etc but other than that they had UI design nailed. Polish, attention to detail, and most importantly, consistency. Menus and dialogs in one Mac program looked and worked just like menus and dialogs in another Mac program.Today Windows is a complete mess, it has taken on the look and feel of the typical open source hodge podge of 10+ years ago. MacOS is still somewhat consistent but even it has thrown out the slick glossy clean look for the stark, flat, unfinished look that has become popular in recent years. I'm surprised housing trends haven't gone to unfinished drywall or bare studs, with light switches, sockets and plumbing fixtures of different styles installed in nonstandard spots in every room.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 08:40:31 pm
content: That horrible 'flat' look originated at Apple and was blindly copied by Microsoft for some godforsaken reason. Oh yeah, the previous style was considered "old fashioned" and the throw away consumer of today simply will NOT have something that looks 'old' even if it was better.At least they haven't reverted on the ability to type the app name and run it - most common apps I use in Windows I never click anything but the Start button, I just type in the program or applet name.Microsoft too has or at least had books on how to use the OS to generate consistent UIs. Problem is, even their own internal app teams don't follow the guidelines. Some third party stuff though - it's obvious the UI team was 5 different developers, none of whom actually talked to one other.

author: RGB255_0_0
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 08:47:16 pm
content: It seems people need a safe space from instant changes.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 08:53:32 pm
content: If the settings are updated in real time, the "OK" button is superfluous: the change is already made. Likewise, you can see the results instantly, and there is no need for an "Apply" button to preview the change.The "Apply" button is perhaps best seen as a performance compromise on early, underpowered machines: the update may take a while, so it's more efficient to group multiple changes together, and to leave that update (which will likely freeze the application for the duration of the update) at the will of the user, rather than doing it arbitrarily.(Some applications take the best of both worlds: GIMP for example begins updating the image preview shortly after entering a change, but interrupts the update if another change is made, and so on. This thrashes the CPU, but cores are plentiful these days, so it's no problem for responsiveness of the OS or the application.)A "Cancel" button, to revert the settings back to the state when the dialog was first opened, would still be handy. This is excusable on the basis that, if you're seeing your results in real time, you'll know precisely which change had which effect, and it's reasonable to expect the user to remember the previous value of one item at a time.Tim

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 09:05:48 pm
content: I've quickly adapted to each new version, no worries for me. I do see so many people who out of habit will make a change, click Apply, and then click OK, when OK does the apply AND closes the dialog for you. I still do my Visio diagrams with the older 3D models, the news ones included with 2013/2016, at least the server and data center stuff, look horrible to me.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 09:12:50 pm
content: Quote from: MarkS on April 13, 2017, 02:29:37 pmLooking back 25 years:There are no "OK" or "Cancel" buttons in the Mac System 7.0 Monitors control panel. It works exactly the same as the OSX 10.7 (at a guess) screenshot above. When the user selects a new resolution, the display instantly changes, with a modal dialog to Confirm or Revert. If neither choice is made within 5 seconds, it automatically reverts.If the system can know the supported resolutions, it can skip the confirmation step, but this is tricky in the presence of hardware that converts display formats.What I miss is that the choice of resolutions was taken away on later versions and replaced with "small, medium, and large" text sizes (since display scaling will result in larger text at lower resolutions). You have to use a hidden setting to access the resolutions now.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 09:36:32 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on April 13, 2017, 08:53:32 pmDing ding ding, we have a winner!For System Preferences settings I have never once missed having "OK, Apply, Cancel" options. Since changes take effect immediately, I can always easily revert the last change I made.I don't see macOS as dumbed down, rather I see it as a powerful OS that stays out of my way and lets me get work done. It doesn't overwhelm me with a plethora of options that I rarely (if ever) need to change (but if I *do* need to change them I can do it from the terminal).I felt like when I used Windows I spent more time keeping the OS clean and running than I did doing actual work. You know, sifting and applying updates, keeping cruft out of the registry, making sure anti-virus and anti-malware were up to date, fixing broken libraries and DLLs, doing backups and so on. It was *always* something and it was exhausting.For me, macOS has always "just worked" and it never gets in my way. I get sooooo much more done on it compared to Windows. (Unfortunately I have to use a Windows VM for PCB design, but I keep all my EDA files and libraries on macOS and share them to Windows through the VM, which means I can use the snapshot feature to roll back the entire virtual Drive a day, a week or even to the initial snapshot I took after the clean install. I wish I could do that on a real PC!)

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 11:50:43 pm
content: I don't think the flat look originated with Apple, I recall seeing it first in Android, then Apple went flat with IOS 7, then Microsoft pulled a "Hold my beer and watch this!" move and decided if Apple was going to go flat then Microsoft would show them how it's done and take flat to the extreme. Beats me why, Aero Glass was a popular feature in Win7 and during the Win10 development process it was the #1 feature request which of course Microsoft completely ignored.I lived without glass and would continue to get by without it but Win8/10 went way beyond the removal of that. They removed *all* of the polish and refinement from the UI and left it with a stark, unfinished look that removes all visual cues in the name of extreme flatness. It's like they saw Android and iOS succeeding and decided to copy all the worst aspects of both and forgot about the reasons they actually are successful. I spend the majority of my waking hours staring at a computer screen and I want it to look nice. It's no different than wanting nice furniture, attractive carpet, some pictures on the walls and decorative trim in my house. To me Win10's "clean" look with so much bland white space feels like a big empty room with a white concrete floor, plain white walls and bright fluorescent lights.

author: mtdoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 11:59:15 pm
content: Quote from: timb on April 13, 2017, 09:36:32 pmYep. Been using both Macs and Windows machines regularly for 30 years. Apple gets this part right. The fact that a Windows user finds this scary is a testament to how poor Windows deals with the user interfacing with changing system settings. Itisoften scary on a Windows machine since you often aren't sure what change is being applied and when. If I was a regular Windows user and wasn't familiar with a Mac and I was faced with having to change a setting on it without understanding that it immediately takes effect and I can therefore immediately revert to my prior setting if I don't like the change, then I can see how that would seem scary. It's the Windowstraumaconditioning coming through.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 12:29:33 am
content: This may boil down to the fact that historically a Mac could always tell what monitor was plugged into it and knew exactly which modes that monitor could support and hid anything unsupported. Given that, it was quite difficult to get oneself into a state where the monitor couldn't display the signal and the user then would have a difficult time selecting something else.These days PCs have mostly caught up, monitors identify themselves, though not always with perfect support in Windows. Most monitors support a wide range of resolutions so it's less likely to get stuck and need a way out. Some of the vestiges of the old ways still exist and remain because that's the way it's always worked.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 12:32:02 am
content: Quote from: mtdoc on April 13, 2017, 11:59:15 pmYeah, I spent the first 10 years of the my computing life on Windows (and another 5 as I slowly transitioned to Mac, starting in 2001) and still, to do this day, I have this compulsive need to hunt down any and all files (preferences, plists, etc.) left behind by an application when I uninstall it, even though I know they're completely inert! The dreaded registry bloat of Windows has put this innate fear in me; if I don't get rid of *everything* it'll slow my computer to a crawl.I know that doesn't happen with macOS, but I've just been conditioned to fear it from my time with Windows.Speaking of which, that's another thing I love about macOS, no installers/uninstallers! For properly designed applications you just download, unzip (or mount the DMG), drag to /Applications and run. To uninstall, simply drag the .app to the trash. So simple!

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 12:43:17 am
content: As a long time Windows user, that's something I've never understood. Why must applications poop random files all over the system? Why not install *everything* in the program files directory and put any settings file in a settings folder, and store user files in the Documents folder? Why can't uninstall keep track of all that and remove it? If the program needs specific external libraries, just put them in the folder with the rest of the program. Disk space has been cheap long enough that IMO it isn't worth the hassle to try to keep all that stuff centralized.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 01:00:02 am
content: Quote from: james_s on April 14, 2017, 12:43:17 amBecause Microsoft invented the Registry and told all the developers to use it. As far as I'm concerned, the Registry should be used only by the OS. Nothing else should ever touch it.Today, I am almost 100% on "portable" software.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 01:10:45 am
content: Quote from: james_s on April 14, 2017, 12:29:33 amOn the contrary, it was quite easy for this to happen. Many users (particularly in graphics and prepress industries) used monitors from third parties without identification signals. The wires (and later, diodes) to identify the resolution were in the cable, or missing altogether. The Mac architecture provided non-volatile settings for I/O cards: the resolution for each video card was stored in the computer's "PRAM" between restarts. If this memory was corrupted or cleared, the settings would be lost, and the display would be rendered unreadable. There were specific key combinations you needed to hold down during restart to cycle through the supported resolutions until you hit on one your monitor synced to.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 03:18:54 am
content: Ok well the Mac was *supposed* to be able to tell what monitor was plugged in and what resolutions it supported, and Apple has never been one to advocate using 3rd party accessories. Under the "appliance" closed system philosophy it's not unreasonable to omit a straightforward way of correcting a situation that was not supposed to occur.

author: MarkS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 05:21:33 am
content: Quote from: helius on April 13, 2017, 09:12:50 pmYou are correct. I haven't messed with the Mac in nearly 20 years. Control panels are not/were not dialog boxes, but rather, small applets. It was expected that the choices made in a control panel would have immediate effect. They had their own set of rules.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 08:11:52 am
content: Quote from: james_s on April 14, 2017, 03:18:54 amBy the mid-'80s, the leadership at Apple was not trying to sell "appliances". They wanted to sell advanced computer products with the highest capabilities and highest margins. The vision of the company was not from Steve Jobs—he was fired. It was from Jean-Louis Gassée. By decade's end, Apple had products like the Mac IIfx for $5000base price, with minimum memory and disk and no monitor or video card, equivalent to something like $12K in today's inflated money. This was hardly an "appliance".

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 02:37:51 pm
content: Everyone always talks about registry bloat slowing their computer down. I've NEVER had to nuke and pave any of my Windows installs, I install it when I build the machine and that same install works just fine until I replace the hardware with a new machine. That timeframe can be years and yes, I do install and uninstall programs over those years. I also do not use any of those reg cleaner utilities, because half the time they want to delete stuff that is still live.As for settings - I think it's been covered. THere's just too much hardware variety that Windows needs to work with and without the monitor reliably talking to the video card to limit options to only resolutions that the monitor can display, it's not fear to miss some additional control. It's too easy to select something that results in no display and then how do you get back? Windows gets around this by displaying in the selected resolution for a few seconds and then reverting and asking for a confirmation before applying the change. Devices and drivers have always been the source of most Windows issues, when everyone and their brother builds a hardware device and may or may not have the actual skill to write working drivers for said device (or even when they theoretically should do absolutely idiotic things like having print drivers write to system folders - HP I'm looking at you. That's not following some Microsoft standard, that's just idiotic - and then on top of it the 'driver' is also ridiculously huge. Had to put so much marketing material in the driver you didn't have room to include the code to properly redirect the temporary files to a user folder?

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 02:53:03 pm
content: Quote from: helius on April 14, 2017, 08:11:52 amSure, but Apple sold a whole selection of parts to equip the machine as desired, everything Apple branded and designed to work together, and priced accordingly. Third party accessories were available, but Apple didn't go out of their way to support them. They wanted you to buy a monitor from them.The IIfx was a cool system, I have one, although I need to piece it back together. The original motherboard was destroyed by the lithium batteries leaking.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 02:56:29 pm
content: Quote from: rrinker on April 14, 2017, 02:37:51 pmMost of those printers with huge "drivers" are the sort where the printer hardware is simplified and most of the image processing is done on the host PC, a bit like the old "WinModems" that were around for a while. I forget what the printers are called but they're best avoided.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 03:24:20 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on April 14, 2017, 03:18:54 amOriginally, Macs didn't do on-the-fly resolution changes, because it wasn't a common use case at the time. Apple's early CRT monitors were single-resolution (typically designed to be about 67ppi physical resolution, slightly magnified over the logical 72ppi), so 640x480 for 14", 832x624 for 17", and 1152x870 for 21". Sense pins on the display connector told the Mac what resolution to use, and this was only sensed at startup. (Color depth could be changed on the fly, though, unlike early Windows.) If using a third-party display, you'd use an adapter (from the Mac's DE-15 display connector to the DB-15 VGA connector) with a bunch of DIP switches on it for setting the resolution.Only years later, when they'd become fairly common, did Apple introduce support for multisync monitors that could support multiple resolutions. The sense pins were first extended to include a few multisync configurations, and later extended again to support the modern DDC monitor ID types.I will be able to fool around with this soon, as I am intending to pull my old Performa 475 out of storage and give it a fresh battery, ethernet card, etc. for shits and giggles. I already have the display adapter ready.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 04:53:30 pm
content: I remember seeing an adapter once that had a rotary switch to select the mode, I only ever had the fixed type though with no adjustments. I was always a PC guy back in the day but somehow ended up with a bunch of old Macs. Sold several of them but I still have my IIci with a 68040 accelerator card, an original Mac II, a IIfx, LCIII and an SE/30. Except for the IIfx they are all complete and working, I pull one out now and then to play around with it. Never cared for Macs when they were modern, but today you can certainly see just how far ahead of PCs of the era they were in many ways. A 30 year old Mac is still quite usable and feels familiar to one who has used a modern GUI. A 30 year old DOS PC is another story.

author: Nerull
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 07:50:06 pm
content: All the people running to Linux to escape the lack of 'apply' buttons are going to be shocked when they found out it doesn't have them either.It's pretty rare for the windows registry to actually have problems, at least until some "power user" comes along and starts fucking with it. Running registry cleaners and such is quite likely to make things worse.The major linux desktop systems all implement their own version of a registry, so it's not something you're going to escape there either.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 08:22:03 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on April 14, 2017, 02:56:29 pmThose are particularly bad, just like Winmodems. However fairly fancy HP inkjet and Laserjet printers aren't dumbed down in the printer, they have full processors and their only page rendering memory - but the drivers are HUGE - because they contain a whole lot of bullshit - the last inkjet I bought (and I mean last in multiple meanings of the word) included in the print driver software that would dump you to the HP site to buy fresh ink when it ran low. AMong all the other junk it installed that was not really necessary to actually print a document to it. I thought I uninstalled it all a while ago when I trashed the printer, but the other day I happened to notice there was STILL some HP printer thing showing in control panel/programs. NOW it's all gone. The drive for my Canon color laser is super compact, no extra junk - it's actually built in to Windows 10 so all I had to do was connect the printer to the network and all my windows machines just automatically added the driver. There seems to be a bunch of other stuff on a CD that came with it but I never bothered. I can print color and b&w and scan with it with what I have, the extras are not needed and not installed unless you actually install them, unlike HP.

author: Vtile
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 09:35:34 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on April 13, 2017, 10:38:39 am

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 10:00:38 pm
content: Quote from: MarkS on April 14, 2017, 05:21:33 amSame with Windows.Quote from: Nerull on April 14, 2017, 07:50:06 pmTotally different. That's just the desktop and is on a per user basis. Windows' registry contains important system settings.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 10:35:55 pm
content: So far I've found that Windows 7 seems to hold up reasonably well, like other versions it does seem to degrade a bit over time and gradually take longer and longer to boot, but so far I haven't had it get just plain flaky the way some did. Windows XP seemed to eventually get really slow, and Win9x was just horrible in that regard. It was rare that I could go a year without having to reinstall due to something deteriorating. I don't know whether it's the registry or something else but it's definitely a real phenomenon. I generally wasn't doing a lot of hacking and tweaking either, just heavy use, installing and uninstalling programs, occasionally swapping out hardware.I haven't had that particular problem with Linux but that's not to say it's been entirely smooth sailing either. More than once I've had Linux installs just completely fail, turned it on one day and it wouldn't even boot, never did figure out what happened and had to reinstall. I'm sure a Linux expert could have fixed it but while I consider myself competent and know my way around, I'm still not really an expert, most of my experience is in the DOS/Windows world. Now I'm a big proponent of Linux and open source in general but it's not all roses, and not everything Microsoft has made is crap. Can't say I'm a fan of the general direction the company has gone over the last 5-10 years though. IMO Win7 and Office 2003 were the pinnacle of Microsoft tech and it's been downhill ever since. They still do the back end stuff pretty well but their UI and UX has gone to hell in a handbasket. There were always grumbles about new OS designs, but generally the design was a genuine improvement and the grumbles died down by now. Win8 on the other hand remains as reviled as ever, and Win10 is extremely polarizing with some people loving it and others hating it. The fact that it struggles to reach 30% market despite being forced on users "free" with extremely heavy handed and deceptive practices suggests that it is not widely popular. Most of the people I know who upgraded either had it happen automatically without asking for it, or decided to try it and now regret it. I know a few happy users but they are the minority.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 10:46:43 pm
content: If you'd like to learn some interesting facts about what some of the information Windows stores in the Registry is, just Google shellbags.https://www.google.com/search?&q=shellbags

author: apelly
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 10:57:37 pm
content: Flat UI? There must be some actual research about this somewhere. Have any of you guys stumbled across any papers about it?I can not understand who it helps to take away clues about interactivity. Buttons/links that look like ordinary words/titles? Low contrast windows? Comeon.And:Give my bloody menus back!You have software with five thousand options. And you want me to wade through 5k icons to find what I want? Nope.Youdecide what I want, and only make it easy to use those ten features. Wow! You've just made your software really easy to use. And useless.Quote from: james_s on April 14, 2017, 02:56:29 pmGDI? Graphics device interface? Something like that, I think. In the beginning it enabled super cheap laser printers.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 11:27:23 pm
content: Yeah, GDI, that sounds right.The flat UI thing is a fad, or a trend, or whatever you want to call it. Like architecture, clothing styles, haircuts, kitchen appliance colors, and everything else various styles come and go because most people are attracted to new and different. It's popular with hipsters and millennials who aren't old enough to have experienced it in the days of the primitive MS-DOS shell and Windows 2.0 on EGA monitors. Eventually people will get tired of the stark flatness and someone will "invent" visual cues to differentiate clickable controls from static text and glossy UIs that take advantage of modern hardware and the cycle will continue. Whether this happens next year or 10 years from now is anyone's guess but it will happen.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2017, 11:44:11 pm
content: Quote from: Nerull on April 14, 2017, 07:50:06 pmTo the best of my knowledge, no OS before or since Windows has implemented anything quite like the Registry, recognizing it as a singularly terrible idea. Just one example: file associations. Wanna see how not to do it? Look at Windows, where the Registry supports only a 1:1 relationship between a file extension and single application to run it. (And AFAIK, there is no Registry entry at all for which file types an application can open, though my confidence level on this claim is low.) And every installer and application wants to claim it, so it gets set back and forth constantly if there are competing apps for a file type. Wanna see how to do it right? Look at the Mac's LaunchServices database, which is compiled dynamically, on-the-fly, as storage volumes are mounted or ejected. It knows not only which file types are an application's native filetypes, it also knows (separately) which types it can open. And then there's a system default for "unclaimed" files of a given filetype, but with a mechanism for per-document overriding (so that, for example, you can set one .jpg file to open in Photoshop, and another to open in Preview). And this happens completely without the use of an installer -- connecting a disk containing an application is all it takes for it to be integrated into LaunchServices intelligently.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 12:00:23 am
content: I don't find the registry itself to be all that poor of a concept, as someone else mentioned the issue is allowing everything to store and modify stuff there. The registry ought to be for the operating system to keep track of internal things, nothing else should be messing with it and the user should not have to edit it themselves.I haven't had too many issues with file associations, Windows let's you right-click and "open with" in most cases and will remember the choice if you let it. I still remember what a hassle it was on the pre-OSX Macs the way file extensions were not used and if you wanted to change the type of the file you had to use a tool like ResEdit. The separate resource and data forks made it a hassle to transfer data between platforms.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 12:11:33 am
content: Quote from: james_s on April 15, 2017, 12:00:23 amExcept that that everything under the sun writes to the Registry, to the point that users DO have to edit it.Quote from: james_s on April 15, 2017, 12:00:23 amWindows only remembers that choiceglobally-- you can't override the preferred application for asinglefile. HUGE difference.As for Classic Mac OS, file extensionsweresupported from around the early 1990s, when System 7 included the PC Exchange control panel. But they were clearly subordinate to the Creator and Type codes that indeed needed a tool to edit -- but the overwhelming majority of Mac users never evenheard ofthose codes, never mind needed to edit them. (Apple has since effectively recreated those codes, in an even better way, using extended file attributes, which are now widely supported across various filesystems.)As for the data and resource forks (which are only tangentially related to the question of file associations, since the creator/type codes weren't stored in the resource fork): the fact that other systems didn't support them didn't make them a bad idea. If anything, the fact that other OSes/filesystems added and even extended the idea (e.g. NFTS's support for multiple file streams, not just data and resource) confirms that the idea was very sound. Apple's current re-implementation of this idea, in the form of bundles/packages, is brilliant, and remains IMHO one of the Mac's strongest implementation advantages, in terms of providing a user-friendly and technically robust solution to the common problem of needing something in between a dumb folder full of files, and a giant monolithic file. I am not aware of any other OS that has anything like the Mac's bundles, and they suffer for it.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 12:16:01 am
content: Windows 7 has no built in way to remove a file association, you can only change it.Once a file extension exists it is stored in the registry, whether it was opened by a program or even can be opened is irrelevant. It stores it anyway. You can make a typo changing an extension, then go back and fix it, but your typo is stored forever. Brilliant, eh?

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 01:52:59 am
content: Quote from: tooki on April 15, 2017, 12:11:33 amBundles were created by NeXT in the late '80s, during the period when Resources were being used by Apple. They were not "Apple's current re-implementation of the idea" insofar as Apple did not create them to replace Resources. Resources were elegant in some ways, but they were also very tightly tied to the Memory Manager and part of the reason that protected memory never made it to Classic MacOS.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 08:01:24 am
content: Quote from: helius on April 15, 2017, 01:52:59 amYes, bundles were born at NeXT, but because NeXT was Jobs' second computer company, and as such in many ways the NeXT hardware and software was the Mac reimagined with a few years' added experience, and since NeXT in essence became Apple later on*, it's absolutely fair to describe bundles as a re-implementation of Resources, since the idea clearly came directly from them and today's AppleisNeXT in almost every sense of the word.::must remember to always be achingly pedantic when replying on eevblog... must remember to always be achingly pedantic when replying on eevblog... must remember to always be achingly pedantic when replying on eevblog... ::*Apple's purchase of NeXT has been referred to as a reverse acquisition, insofar as Apple paid for NeXT, but NeXT's technology and staff pretty much entirely replaced Apple's. In a sense, NeXT paid negative dollars to acquire the Apple trademarks, IP, and real estate.

author: Groucho2005
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 08:48:30 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on April 13, 2017, 10:38:39 amThat would go well with customers who use this product:

author: MarkS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 09:04:39 am
content: Quote from: tooki on April 15, 2017, 08:01:24 amI know! Engineers! Sheesh!Quote from: Groucho2005 on April 15, 2017, 08:48:30 amOMG! Too funny!

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 09:47:23 am
content: That version of Word has an awkward spell checker. When I type "gangster" it changes that into "gangsta" for example. It's really annoying.

author: Groucho2005
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 10:18:34 am
content: Quote from: madires on April 15, 2017, 09:47:23 amIt's a feature, not a bug.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 10:51:36 am
content: That's Apple for you, deciding that saving is too complicated and that everything should apply straight and always come back to the last state it was in when closed. Now users are formatted to that, so saving actuallyhasnow become too complicated for them, so everybody does the same

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 01:08:18 pm
content: Quote from: Groucho2005 on April 15, 2017, 08:48:30 amI would use that. Instead of Clippy you could have a little cartoon Biggie Smalls (or Tupac if you're on the West Coast), complete with angel wings and gat."Yo homie, I see you be writin' a list, here's some things from The Ten Crack Commandments you can add, aight?"The spellcheck should also be Ebonics.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 08:01:02 pm
content: Quote from: Kilrah on April 15, 2017, 10:51:36 amThat's the way itshouldbe, provided that undo is properly implemented, and that harmful operations thatcan'tbe undone provide warning. The entire concept of having to save things isn'thard, but it's contrary to how pretty much everything in the real world works.Remember, we are engineers, but 99% of people are not. Most people struggle with abstract mental models.

author: MarkS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 15, 2017, 08:35:03 pm
content: Quote from: Kilrah on April 15, 2017, 10:51:36 amYou have to understand the original Mac OS at the time this was developed. It wasn't a multitasking OS for many years. When the computer started up, the Finder (think Windows Explorer) ran. You opened the application you wanted, the Finder quit and your application ran. You quit the application and the Finder ran. Any changes being made in a control panel only had one application, the currently running one, to contend with. Add to that the relatively small subset of available choices and it just didn't make sense to ask the user to accept the changes. If you increased the mouse tracking speed and found it too fast, you changed it back. If the volume adjustment was not to your liking, you fixed it. There simply wasn't the option to make a change that could have negative global effects; The hardware and software was far too limited. When the Mac OS became multitasking and when the hardware became more capable, this started to pose problems. I ran into this many times on early color Macs. 8-bit color depth was standard, but I could increase it to 16 bits. If a running program, typically a game, was written specifically for 8-bit color, it would crash once brought to the front. That being said, how would have an "Apply" button fixed this? The application still would have crashed.An interesting aside: The original Mac Control Panel (not plural) was a single window. With it, you could change the volume, time and date, menu item blink rate, caret blink rate, mouse tracking speed (fast or slow, no in between), keyboard response times (don't remember how this worked) and desktop background pattern (8x8 pixels, B/W). It wasn't until System 7 that the now ubiquitous individual control panel for each option appeared.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 16, 2017, 11:32:19 am
content: And even now it is essentially a tabbed window, insofar as you can only show one preference pane at a time. I still miss System 7 - Mac OS 9.2's standalone control panels.That said, I don't think your reasoning - while sound - is the reason for not having Apply buttons on early Macs. It's simply that they have no reason to exist in most cases. They were often used by programmers who are either lazy (because they didn't want to think about when to intelligently apply changes automatically), or because it was too computationally expensive to apply changes in real time. On Windows,cargo cult programmersstarted using them even where unnecessary, causing endless confusion to users who didn't understand the semantics of OK/Apply/Cancel, especially since they differ by application (in particular, whether changes applied by Apply are reverted if you press Cancel; in some apps they are reverted, in others the changes remain. What about OK? Does it retain changes if you don't press Apply first? If it doesn't, what's the difference between OK and Cancel?). As I see it, the only unambiguous choices are "OK/Cancel", "OK/Preview/Cancel" and "Apply/Done".As a user interface professional, I consider the Apply button to be something that should be used only in very, very restricted circumstances. The modern model of instant results, combined with a robust, unlimited undo stack, is by far the more user friendly one.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 16, 2017, 02:54:05 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on April 15, 2017, 08:01:02 pmThat's the problem - never seen such a thing yet.Unsurprisingly any automated versioning I've ever seen does an appalling job of figuring out what needs a "restore point" and what just results in useless clutter with dozens of meaningless steps.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 16, 2017, 07:37:22 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on April 16, 2017, 11:32:19 amAbort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?Quote from: Kilrah on April 16, 2017, 02:54:05 pmVersioning proper is a little bit different, it implies the ability to view changes in list form and put tags on them. Incrementing the version should be a voluntary user action; undo history should be automatic.But combining undo steps does work pretty well in some limited contexts like text editing. Both TextEdit and vim combine keystrokes into blocks for undo, and moving backwards/forwards is fast enough that you can scan through dozens easily. The different use case of "show me what it looked like on April 11" is best served by actual versioning (although vim does let you do that with undos).

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 16, 2017, 11:11:42 pm
content: Quote from: helius on April 16, 2017, 07:37:22 pmBut that means bringing back the "save" action or equivalent which is precisely what some want to get rid of... I'm all for it, but...

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2017, 08:37:07 am
content: Quote from: Kilrah on April 16, 2017, 02:54:05 pmThere is no such thing asperfectundo, butgoodundo is common on the Mac, for various reasons. On Windows, good undo is rare, frankly.Quote from: Kilrah on April 16, 2017, 02:54:05 pmVersioning is something most people never do (though they arguably should more often). Things that need it usually have it. For consumer use, forget it. Again, most users aren't engineers...

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2017, 08:42:22 am
content: Quote from: helius on April 16, 2017, 07:37:22 pmhahahah yes! The joys of bad (and initially, nonexistent) error handling!!

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 17, 2017, 08:48:35 am
content: Quote from: helius on April 16, 2017, 07:37:22 pmLOL had missed that. I doubt anyone ever understood those, even the guy who "designed" it...

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2017, 09:13:25 am
content: Quote from: Kilrah on April 17, 2017, 08:48:35 amI just looked up the wiki page on it, which explains it well. (I never owned a DOS PC so I never had any reason to actually learn what the difference is. Apparently Abort kills the process, Retry retries (e.g. if you didn't close the drive door first), Ignore returns "success" even if it actually failed, and Fail actually tells the process that the action failed. Amazingly, Fail wasn't even available till DOS 3 or something...)

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2017, 03:41:21 pm
content: My recollection is that it made little difference which option you selected, sometimes Abort or Fail would prevent it from trying a bunch more times, they had essentially the same effect. Retry and Ignore did the same thing from a user perspective in most cases, the drive would try reading again and report the same error.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 17, 2017, 03:55:00 pm
content: Yeah that's the point, firstly it's at least one choice too many if not 2, then while the intention might have been there in practice the implementations that likely didn't exactly follow the intended behavior meant that once you had that pop up either it was something simple like disk ejected prematurely where you'd just shove it back in, or you'd end up having to kill the program because none of the 4 options would do anything visibly different.