🚀 go-pugleaf

kent@sunfs3.camex.uucp (Kent Borg) writes:
>Remember, no one buys Macintoshs because we think they are a cheap way
>to get lots of computing horse power on our desks.  We buy Macintoshs
>for their user interface, and once 7.0 is out, MultiFinder will become
>more and more important to the user interface.

I complained about this a long time ago :-), but now it really hits me:
/everyone/ is going to have to put up with the MultiFinder silliness, if
they want to go System 7.0.

Perhaps I should defend that obvious bias a little bit.  First of all, I
completely agree that Multitasking is nice stuff, regardless of the flavor
(pre-emptive or not).  In fact, "way back when", I thought Switcher was
about the neatest thing on the Mac at that time. :-)  However, the way in
which Multitasking has been brought into the interface really worries me.

The context-switching between different applications in MultiFinder is really
not necessarily obvious all of the time.  Sometimes, when you switch between
applications (perhaps by accidentally clicking just a few pixels away from
that scroll bar :-), your current window becomes inactive, and the title
bar changes.. more-or-less.  The standard "Apple, File, Edit" menus are nearly
always there, and if the application you've just switched into doesn't happen
to have any windows up at the time (like Stuffit), a user can easily be
lead to believe that he's at the "Finder Layer" of "windows".  Some of you
may not think this is such a big deal, since it's pretty obvious what happened
once you try to do something, but the point is that the frustration and
confusion exist.  Surely I'm not the only one that this type of thing has
happened to?

The Mac Interface, which we [nearly? partly?] all love, should /never/ be
frustrating for a user, and the user should never have to guess where he "is";
whatever is going on should be obvious merely by looking.  I don't yet have my
own personal copy of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines book, so I don't
know the "exact" specifications of The Macintosh Interface.  Instead, I'm
reaching blindly for what is "intuitive" (which is, after all, a word that is
often used [wrongly] in describing the Mac interface).  "Intuitiveness" is not
exactly a goal that can really be reached, but nonetheless, it can be strived
for.  [was that a word? :-)]  If nothing else, the Mac interface should be
"easy" to use.  Confusing the user by constantly changing the menubar is not
"easy" in my personal opinion.

In article (something_in_the_future), hypothetical_user@wherever says:
>
>  Ok, fine, so you've complained enough already, how about some suggestions?
>

I'm glad you asked. :-)

Quite frankly, it's my opinion that Switcher did a far better job of making
context switching obvious, especially if you turned on animation.  For those
of you who may not have ever seen Switcher, it was a program, around the
time of System Software 5.0 (I think? Perhaps even earlier.) that would let
you run more than one application at once.  You started Switcher up as a
normal application, and from there, you launched other applications.  You could
then switch between them by pressing a key (which you defined), or by using
small left and right arrows in the menu bar, where the MultiFinder Blob exists
now.  Switcher kept each application ignorant of the others; each one had an
entire Mac screen to itself.  Additionally, you could specify that Switcher
"animate" the context switching between applications, which would make the
next application's screen scroll in from the left or right (depending on which
way through the "loop" you were moving.  If this short description doesn't
help, you might be able to find a copy of Switcher at Sumex or Simtel...  Just
be careful when you run it.  Don't run it in MultiFinder :-).  In fact, it may
not even work at all with System 6.0.x.

Well the whole point of that was that context-switches were never a mystery.
It was always /very/ obvious when you were switching to the next application.
MultiFinder did take a few hints from Switcher, and it's descendant, Servant
(no, I'm not going to try to explain Servant here :-).. perhaps not enough
though?  So here's the suggestion:  If we /really/ must keep MultiFinder
around (it looks like we have no choice), then how about changing the way
that windows are "deselected" when another is selected?  Right now, they in
fact get /brighter/ (i.e., they make themselves /more/ visible when they are
/not/ active) when such a change occurs.  Does that really make sense?  So,
how about if instead, a window that is deselected because of MultiFinder is
"greyed out", by greying the scrollbars and perhaps titlebar area.  This is,
if nothing else, consistant with the way menus are handled; menu options that
are not relevant at that time are "greyed".  Certainly, scroll bars of inactive
windows are not "relevent". :-)

That's the realistic solution.  What I would much rather see is this: (and this
has no chance until the "Compact Mac" line is dead, so in other words, it will
never happen.)  Put the menubar for an application /in/ that application's
window, and leave the menubar at the top of the screen for exclusive use by the
"Finder".  This eliminates a /very/ modal aspect of the MultiFinder interface
(where the exact same menus and menu items do /very/ different things at
different times, and what they do is not always obvious.  (BTW: The ugly
MultiFinder Blob in the menubar is not exactly "obvious" :-), often it's very
difficult to figure out what it's supposed to be, and the act of clicking on
it is pretty lame as well.  There is no feedback to the user (like highlighting
the thing, which is very easy) to tell him that he /did/ click on it, and once
your click has been noted, you go to some application that you may or may not
have known was "next" in the loop.)

Perhaps the simplest way of doing this is to give each application it's own
"virtual screen", similar to Switcher, but put that screen in a window, on
the Finder's desktop.  This brings up a /lot/ of Interface Design issues, like
how do you scroll around in that window; what if the window contains a
document window that also has scroll bars; is this too confusing? etc etc.

Well, I think I've rambled far enough; I'd be quite interested to see if
other people think that MultiFinder is a hack (see also "kludge"), and that
there does exist the possibility that something better may be possible, yet
still be "Mac-ish".

PS: I should have said this earlier, but: Switcher and Servant were both
written by Mac God Andy Hertzfield.  I only hope I didn't mutilate the
spelling of his last name :-).  He no longer works for Apple.  Go figure.

-/ Dave Caplinger /---------------------------------------------------------
 Microcomputer Specialist,   Campus Computing,   Univ. of Nebraska at Omaha
 mspecial@zeus.unl.edu       ...!uunet!unocss!dent          MSPECIAL@UNOMA1