{"id":220,"date":"2003-02-16T22:17:31","date_gmt":"2003-02-17T03:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=220"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T04:00:00","slug":"inconsistencies_and_iapps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2003\/02\/16\/inconsistencies_and_iapps\/","title":{"rendered":"Inconsistencies and iApps"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\nJohn Gruber<\/a> synthesizes the recent discussion on Apple’s (lack of) interface consistency. I can now scratch that off my to-blog list, since he’s said most of what I was going to say, better than I would have said it. I like<\/em> Apple’s new rounded text field because, when used consistently, it hints that it’s for live filtering. (I first saw this use of a text field in Emailer, though iTunes gets the credit for popularizing it.) Apple has already recognized that it’s generally useful and included it in Jaguar. Unfortunately, the white-on-gray X that takes you out of search mode is not<\/em> part of the standard control, so each program has to roll its own.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gruber doesn’t quite come out and say it, but consistency and innovation are not at odds. If you need<\/em> a new control, you should<\/em> innovate and make one, and it should not<\/em> be consistent with the standard controls. Controls with different behaviors should look different. But most of the time you don’t need a new control, and you shouldn’t make something that’s superficially different and try to tell me it’s an innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erik Barzeski’s Ken Burns post<\/a> is also on target. I was going to wait and link to it when I discussed iMovie 3 and iPhoto 2, but that might not be for a while. In the meantime, here are some of the links I was going to discuss:<\/p>\n\n\n\n