{"id":419,"date":"2003-05-03T15:45:02","date_gmt":"2003-05-03T19:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=419"},"modified":"2020-12-11T15:49:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T20:49:17","slug":"interface_criticisms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2003\/05\/03\/interface_criticisms\/","title":{"rendered":"Interface Criticisms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\n<a href=\"http:\/\/daringfireball.net\/2003\/05\/interface_details_itunes_vs_safari.html\">John Gruber<\/a> rightly blasts Safari&rsquo;s use of click-through. And <a href=\"http:\/\/nslog.com\/archives\/2003\/05\/02\/disliking_drawers.php\">Erik Barzeski<\/a> voices some of my criticisms about drawers. There are only two drawers that I recall liking: the pages\/thumbnails drawer in Preview and the Preview drawer in Path Finder. Apple&rsquo;s <a href=\"http:\/\/developer.apple.com\/techpubs\/macosx\/Essentials\/AquaHIGuidelines\/AHIGWindows\/chapter_5_section_16.html\">guidelines<\/a> for using drawers are vague.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/developer.apple.com\/techpubs\/macosx\/Essentials\/AquaHIGuidelines\/AHIGWindows\/chapter_5_section_16.html\">\n\nUse drawers only for controls that need to be accessed fairly frequently but that don&rsquo;t need to be visible all the time. (Contrast this criterion with a utility window, which should be visible and available whenever its main window is in the top layer.)\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>\n\nHuh? Utility windows aren&rsquo;t visible all the time, either, because you can hide them. So where is the guideline that tells me when to use a drawer rather than a utility window? Presumably we should learn by example:\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/developer.apple.com\/techpubs\/macosx\/Essentials\/AquaHIGuidelines\/AHIGWindows\/chapter_5_section_16.html\">\n\nSome examples of uses of drawers include access to favorites lists, the Mailbox drawer (in the Mail application), or browser bookmarks.\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>\n\nIn my experience, favorites and bookmarks work much better in separate windows, because of width issues. I&rsquo;ve used programs that put the mailbox list in panes, and others that put it in a separate window. Both worked better than Mail&rsquo;s drawer, which isn&rsquo;t even in the keyboard loop.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/developer.apple.com\/techpubs\/macosx\/Essentials\/AquaHIGuidelines\/AHIGWindows\/chapter_5_section_16.html\">\n\nA drawer&rsquo;s contents should be included in the window components that the user can select by pressing Tab.\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>\n\nI think the key difference between a utility window and a drawer is that you never have more than one copy of a given utility window on screen at a time. So you would use a drawer when you want to be able to see two drawers at a time. For instance, Transmit uses drawers to show FTP transcripts. That&rsquo;s potentially useful. But I&rsquo;d still prefer separate windows because I probably don&rsquo;t want the width of the transcript to be the same as the width of the connection window. And I might want to view a full screenful of the transcript next to a screen-high connection window.\n\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Gruber rightly blasts Safari&rsquo;s use of click-through. And Erik Barzeski voices some of my criticisms about drawers. There are only two drawers that I recall liking: the pages\/thumbnails drawer in Preview and the Preview drawer in Path Finder. Apple&rsquo;s guidelines for using drawers are vague. Use drawers only for controls that need to be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2020-12-11T20:45:06Z","apple_news_api_id":"5af6d950-b05a-4782-b62a-9f6405a99fcb","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-12-11T20:49:20Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AWvbZULBaR4K2Kp9kBamfyw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[353],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-pathfinder"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30989,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions\/30989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}