{"id":744,"date":"2004-01-05T17:12:55","date_gmt":"2004-01-05T22:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=744"},"modified":"2025-07-03T18:50:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T22:50:39","slug":"ui_habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2004\/01\/05\/ui_habits\/","title":{"rendered":"UI Habits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/daringfireball.net\/2004\/01\/die_hard\">John Gruber<\/a> discusses some old UI habits that give people trouble with Mac OS X. These examples don&rsquo;t particularly affect me as <em>habits<\/em>. That is, I don&rsquo;t accidentally click the desktop to activate the Finder, and I never used the Finder&rsquo;s keyboard shortcut for creating aliases. However, they do point to some things about Mac OS X that could be improved.\n<\/p>\n\n<p>\nI still think Mac OS X should combine the window-by-window and app-by-app layering policies to get the best of both worlds. Clicking on a window with a modifier key (not Option or Command; they already mean other things) held down should activate the app.\n<\/p>\n\n<p>\nHow many OS X users actually minimize windows to the Dock? Not many, I would guess.\n<\/p>\n\n<p>\nI don&rsquo;t think Apple needed to steal Command-H for hiding the current application, given that we already have the more expressive Option-click.\n<\/p>\n\n<p>\nUsing Put Away with items on the trash or desktop&hellip;those were the days.\n<\/p>\n\n<p>\nThat proxy icons (easily identified by their poofability) don&rsquo;t behave like normal icons has long been a problem. However, as to the specific example of Script Editor, you <em>can<\/em> drag an application&rsquo;s Dock icon onto Script Editor&rsquo;s Dock icon if you hold down Command-Option. I do that all the time with Script Debugger.\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Gruber discusses some old UI habits that give people trouble with Mac OS X. These examples don&rsquo;t particularly affect me as habits. That is, I don&rsquo;t accidentally click the desktop to activate the Finder, and I never used the Finder&rsquo;s keyboard shortcut for creating aliases. However, they do point to some things about Mac [&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":"2025-07-03T22:47:44Z","apple_news_api_id":"c89123c4-0469-4415-9a4e-a430852352bf","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-07-03T22:50:42Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AyJEjxARpRBWaTqQwhSNSvw","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":[2786,458],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-aliases","tag-finder"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744","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=744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48329,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions\/48329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}