Mac is for usability
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@blakeyrat said:
Meanwhile, Windows applications that follow all of Windows 3.11's rules still run flawlessly …
Except that you have to keep rebooting because your handle IDs got too large!
@blakeyrat said:
I think we as an industry have decided the best way to accommodate that situation isn't to re-arrange the controls in the window, but rather to show the window in a "virtual DPI" that differs from the screen DPI.
That doesn't deal with the difference in text length in translated strings, and it doesn't give you resizable dialogs.
@blakeyrat said:
Yup, and yet in practice, it was as stable as Win32-based OSes. Go figure.
This is possibly true if you're comparing it to Win9x! Granted, my longest uptime for 9.1 was over 90 days, but I spent every one of those 90 days feeling uneasy, scared that any wrong move would bring the whole system crashing down, afraid to touch anything.
@blakeyrat said:
It did have a system-wide scripting language, AppleScript, that was significantly better than a command line for most uses. (For one thing, it could remote-control GUI apps without the GUI application's author needing to do anything special.) So griping about the lack of a command line seems... daft.
I never liked AppleScript as a language, but Apple Events were fantastic, and the lack of anything similar in Windows was quite a hindrance I feel. I didn't particularly miss the command line: I was simply saying that it was one of the most prominent reasons why smart, technical people scorned classic Mac OS and refused to go near it. Of course, you consider that to be a good thing, too, but I feel that the technical community has self-deprived itself of a lot of powerful knowledge in system and interface design.
@blakeyrat said:
Eh, I'll grant you that one. But, again, I don't think it was any worse than Win32.
I never used Win 9x enough to know if it sucked that bad. It was Win16 that didn't have pre-emptive multitasking: remember "The system is either busy or has become unstable"?
I realise that my posts probably read as arguing both for and against classic Mac OS at the same time: I truly loved that system, even if there was an awful lot wrong with it, problems that kept too many people away from it who should have been learning from it. Trying to get anyone to play with classic Mac OS is like pushing identical magnetic poles together.
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@Daniel Beardsmore said:
@blakeyrat said:
Yup, and yet in practice, it was as stable as Win32-based OSes. Go figure.
This is possibly true if you're comparing it to Win9x!
Wow you are a true expert at pedantic dickweed. Kudos.
Yes, technically NT-based Windows can run the Win32 API. But when people say Win32, they generally are referring to Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME. As an alien masquerading as a human, I'm sure you will find this information handy when reporting back to your home planet about the strange behavior of these human-animals.
@Daniel Beardsmore said:
I spent every one of those 90 days feeling uneasy, scared that any wrong move would bring the whole system crashing down, afraid to touch anything.
It had a save command, moron.
@Daniel Beardsmore said:
Of course, you consider that to be a good thing, too, but I feel that the technical community has self-deprived itself of a lot of powerful knowledge in system and interface design.
Yeah I mentioned that. You might recall.
@Daniel Beardsmore said:
I never used Win 9x enough to know if it sucked that bad. It was Win16 that didn't have pre-emptive multitasking: remember "The system is either busy or has become unstable"?
You seem to treat it as a given that all pre-emptive multitasking systems are better than all cooperative multitasking systems. You're wrong-- Mac Classic's carefully-engineered-over-a-decade cooperative system was more stable than Windows 95's pre-emptive system. I would say Windows 98 made them even-steven, and of course WinNT blew the Mac Classic shit away.
Sure, "in theory" the Windows 95 system was far superior. In daily usage, Windows 95 was far less stable than OS 7.5 (the contemporary Mac OS version.) I will say this, though: when Windows 95 applications bombed, there was less chance they would take down the entire system. (The chance was still high, but it was better than OS 7.5.)
Hell, "in theory" Windows 95 had spatial file browsing too, and we all know how that turned out.
@Daniel Beardsmore said:
I realise that my posts probably read as arguing both for and against classic Mac OS at the same time: I truly loved that system, even if there was an awful lot wrong with it, problems that kept too many people away from it who should have been learning from it. Trying to get anyone to play with classic Mac OS is like pushing identical magnetic poles together.
Now it's as dead as Latin, which is a shame because every day you see people repeating the mistakes Apple made and fixed back in 1991. Also, we're stuck with these shitty PC keyboards-- one of the best things Apple did was design an actual usable keyboard.
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@blakeyrat said:
Pure software emulation doesn't work due to inter-process communication. Unless you run the entire Windows 3.11 thing in a complete virtual environment with a window bordering it so its clear that those apps can't really interact with the rest of the system like... oh lookie there! You can already do that with the free Microsoft VirtualPC!
It worked well enough in NT 3 and 4 - Microsoft simply plugged ntvdm into SoftPC (on MIPS - IIRC they used other products on PPC and Alpha):
<center>
</center>
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@ender said:
It worked well enough in NT 3 and 4 - Microsoft simply plugged ntvdm into SoftPC (on MIPS - IIRC they used other products on PPC and Alpha):
... ok. What is it you want from me, exactly?
Also I have absolutely no idea what information is supposed to be conveyed from that screenshot. Yay, you're running an old version of Word in an emulator. That certainly proves... some... thing?
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@blakeyrat said:
Best IM client I've ever used, by far.
I take it you've never used Psi, darling of the FOSS community:
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@blakeyrat said:
I'm sure you will find this information handy when reporting back to
your home planetKhan about the strange behavior of these human-animals.FTFY.
@blakeyrat said:
It had a save command, moron.
Classic Mac OS is where I developed my obsessive need to hit Cmd+S all the time. It was years before I got a browser with session save capability that would remember what I was doing if I crashed (that was late on in iCab's 2.6 series, I think). I've also had program crashes destabilise Photoshop (and everything else running) and cause that to crash on exit, destroying all my settings.
@blakeyrat said:
Also, we're stuck with these shitty PC keyboards-- one of the best things Apple did was design an actual usable keyboard.
I presume you mean the thoughtful modifier system. The Mac modifier system is awesome. The problem is that they haven't shipped a keyboard that's actually pleasant to type on for many years – shallow scissors have replaced mushy domes.
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@blakeyrat said:
Also I have absolutely no idea what information is supposed to be conveyed from that screenshot. Yay, you're running an old version of Word in an emulator. That certainly proves... some... thing?
The System Properties dialog shows that the machine isn't x86, it's Intel.
Word 6 is 16-bit, which you can see both from Task Manager, and from the old ctl3dv2-style dialog box from Word.
16-bit x86 software running on MIPS Windows.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@blakeyrat said:
Best IM client I've ever used, by far.
I take it you've never used Psi, darling of the FOSS community:
It looks awesome but the font is a bit blurry, I wonder how can you read it (text to speech?).
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@blakeyrat said:
That certainly proves... some... thing?
It proves this wrong:@blakeyrat said:Pure software emulation doesn't work due to inter-process communication.
(emulator in the screenshot is emulating a MIPS system, not x86)
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@Daniel Beardsmore said:
@blakeyrat said:
Also, we're stuck with these shitty PC keyboards-- one of the best things Apple did was design an actual usable keyboard.
I presume you mean the thoughtful modifier system. The Mac modifier system is awesome. The problem is that they haven't shipped a keyboard that's actually pleasant to type on for many years – shallow scissors have replaced mushy domes.
The fact that it had a modifier SYSTEM instead of just "eh randomly use modifiers whenever, oh and add a Windows key which is sometimes a modifier and sometimes not because that's not at all confusing as shit."
The removing of pointless and HARMFUL legacy keys, like "Scroll Lock", "Pause", "Num Lock" and "Insert". (Windows keyboards have a LOT of support-call-bait keys.) The creation of a "Caps Lock" key that actually... locked capitals. Instead of the Windows one, which should be labeled "Caps Reverse".
The realization that "Enter" and "Return" are two completely different things, and providing a separate key for both functions.
All that good stuff. Windows keyboards were "congealed". Mac keyboards were (at one time) DESIGNED.
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@Daniel Beardsmore said:
@blakeyrat said:
Also I have absolutely no idea what information is supposed to be conveyed from that screenshot. Yay, you're running an old version of Word in an emulator. That certainly proves... some... thing?
The System Properties dialog shows that the machine isn't x86, it's Intel.
Word 6 is 16-bit, which you can see both from Task Manager, and from the old ctl3dv2-style dialog box from Word.
16-bit x86 software running on MIPS Windows.
Yeah, ok, with an explanation the image makes sense but I still don't give a fuck.
But maybe next time, Ender could explain his random screenshots instead of just plopping them down and assuming we're all fucking Sherlock Holmes. Or have psychic powers.
Hey, the kind of people who run Windows on MIPS are also the kind of people who are FUCKING AWFUL AT COMMUNICATION what a shocker.
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@blakeyrat said:
The realization that "Enter" and "Return" are two completely different things, and providing a separate key for both functions.
I am going to assume that on a Mac, hitting return does not send the carriage back to the far-left of the typing assembly. Given that, what is the difference? (Not trolling, just curious)
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@pkmnfrk said:
@blakeyrat said:
The realization that "Enter" and "Return" are two completely different things, and providing a separate key for both functions.
I am going to assume that on a Mac, hitting return does not send the carriage back to the far-left of the typing assembly. Given that, what is the difference? (Not trolling, just curious)
Return is carriage return, i.e. inserts a new blank line to type on. Enter submits data to the computer.
Think of an IM client-- adding a new line in the textbox and submitting the message to be sent are two different things. "Hello,[Return]How are you today?[Enter]" Or imagine editing a multi-line cell in a spreadsheet. Typing an email, then wanting to send it. There are a million cases where you want Enter and Return to be two separate functions.
I don't blame Microsoft for that specific fucked-up, since IBM was doing it on keyboards long before Windows came along. Apparently never imagining that a computer might also be used as a word processor. Microsoft just adopted the same shitty layout, and hasn't ever fixed it-- even when the keyboard has two separate keys-- Enter/Return on the main keyboard, and Enter on the numpad (and yes even in 2012 on this HP keyboard, the main Enter is labelled as "Return/Enter")-- Windows doesn't have any API support for treating them as different keys.
Oh and BTW, on modern Macs there is literally no difference-- they work just like Windows. What I'm lamenting is that the correct Mac Classic behavior is gone, Apple put it in the trash can of history and selected "Empty Trash" from the Special menu.
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@blakeyrat said:
@boomzilla said:
Can you explain what this means? Does it still require the developer to manually size and position stuff?
Duh?
The developer is always going to have to manually size and position stuff-- and even if they don't "have to" they're always going to want to-- so a OS designed by sane people who understand human beings (i.e. not an open source group like GNOME or Mozilla) will need to accommodate that.
You only "want to" until you've figured out how easy it is to work with stuff that does it for you. IOW, lay it out and let your framework resize, etc, as stuff resizes. Or, if the text on a button changes, automatically resize it and everything else that changed for you. When the user changes the size of the window, you've already specified which widgets should grow, so it just happens for you automatically.
@blakeyrat said:
But I think we're talking at cross-purposes. I wasn't talking about manually sizing and positing controls, I was talking about ensuring controls are usable regardless of the DPI of the display device.
OK, yes, that's completely different.
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@ender said:
@Salami said:
I have Excel 2010, and this is not the case for me. Maybe you need to try it again.
I tried it several times before I posted, and while I was posting just to be sure that I'm documenting what I'm doing right. Windows 7 x64 Ultimate SP1, Office 2010 x64 Home & Student SP1." Or try this: select some cells, hit Ctrl+C, go to another cell, hit Ctrl+V, go to yet another cell, type something, then try pasting again - it won't work"
My mistake. I glossed over this part of what you were saying. " go to yet another cell, type something".
However, there is a workaround.
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Copy your cells.
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Click the little arrow to the right of where it says Odlozisce (Clipboard)
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Highlight another cell and/or type in other cells
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Instead of clicking Paste, click the the item in the list that opened up after 2
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@blakeyrat said:
Think of an IM client-- adding a new line in the textbox and submitting the message to be sent are two different things. "Hello,[Return]How are you today?[Enter]" Or imagine editing a multi-line cell in a spreadsheet. Typing an email, then wanting to send it. There are a million cases where you want Enter and Return to be two separate functions.
No way, I love trying to figure out what special key combination the current program uses to enter a newline instead of submitting the data.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@blakeyrat said:
Think of an IM client-- adding a new line in the textbox and submitting the message to be sent are two different things. "Hello,[Return]How are you today?[Enter]" Or imagine editing a multi-line cell in a spreadsheet. Typing an email, then wanting to send it. There are a million cases where you want Enter and Return to be two separate functions.
No way, I love trying to figure out what special key combination the current program uses to enter a newline instead of submitting the data.
Well duh. It's Shift-Enter. Unless it's Control-Enter. Or Alt-Enter. About the only one I haven't seen is Windows Key-Enter.
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@blakeyrat said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@blakeyrat said:
Think of an IM client-- adding a new line in the textbox and submitting the message to be sent are two different things. "Hello,[Return]How are you today?[Enter]" Or imagine editing a multi-line cell in a spreadsheet. Typing an email, then wanting to send it. There are a million cases where you want Enter and Return to be two separate functions.
No way, I love trying to figure out what special key combination the current program uses to enter a newline instead of submitting the data.
Well duh. It's Shift-Enter. Unless it's Control-Enter. Or Alt-Enter. About the only one I haven't seen is Windows Key-Enter.
Or it doesn't exist at all, like in Facebook. In hindsight, that's what killed Facebook for me, when I stopped being able to insult people in multi-paragraph form.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@blakeyrat said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@blakeyrat said:
Think of an IM client-- adding a new line in the textbox and submitting the message to be sent are two different things. "Hello,[Return]How are you today?[Enter]" Or imagine editing a multi-line cell in a spreadsheet. Typing an email, then wanting to send it. There are a million cases where you want Enter and Return to be two separate functions.
No way, I love trying to figure out what special key combination the current program uses to enter a newline instead of submitting the data.
Well duh. It's Shift-Enter. Unless it's Control-Enter. Or Alt-Enter. About the only one I haven't seen is Windows Key-Enter.
Or it doesn't exist at all, like in Facebook. In hindsight, that's what killed Facebook for me, when I stopped being able to insult people in multi-paragraph form.
Pretty sure Facebook does have this functionality. I use Shift-Enter (I think) to post multiple-line insults on Facebook all the time.
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@ShatteredArm said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@blakeyrat said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@blakeyrat said:
Think of an IM client-- adding a new line in the textbox and submitting the message to be sent are two different things. "Hello,[Return]How are you today?[Enter]" Or imagine editing a multi-line cell in a spreadsheet. Typing an email, then wanting to send it. There are a million cases where you want Enter and Return to be two separate functions.
No way, I love trying to figure out what special key combination the current program uses to enter a newline instead of submitting the data.
Well duh. It's Shift-Enter. Unless it's Control-Enter. Or Alt-Enter. About the only one I haven't seen is Windows Key-Enter.
Or it doesn't exist at all, like in Facebook. In hindsight, that's what killed Facebook for me, when I stopped being able to insult people in multi-paragraph form.
Pretty sure Facebook does have this functionality. I use Shift-Enter (I think) to post multiple-line insults on Facebook all the time.
It may now, it didn't then.
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@blakeyrat said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@blakeyrat said:
Think of an IM client-- adding a new line in the textbox and submitting the message to be sent are two different things. "Hello,[Return]How are you today?[Enter]" Or imagine editing a multi-line cell in a spreadsheet. Typing an email, then wanting to send it. There are a million cases where you want Enter and Return to be two separate functions.
No way, I love trying to figure out what special key combination the current program uses to enter a newline instead of submitting the data.
Well duh. It's Shift-Enter. Unless it's Control-Enter. Or Alt-Enter. About the only one I haven't seen is Windows Key-Enter.
adds to requirements list of next interactive program
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@morbiuswilters said:
It may now, it didn't then.
It flopped back and forth for a period of two weeks or so. I think the old behavior was that Enter did carriage return, Shift-Enter didn't exist, and you had to click the button to post something. Then one day Enter submitted the post and Shift-Enter did carriage return, and the button was gone. Two days later the button was back but there was a little check box to turn on/off Enter submitting the post. Now I think it's back to Enter to submit and Shift-Enter to carriage return and the button is gone again.
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@lettucemode said:
It flopped back and forth for a period of two weeks or so. I think the old behavior was that Enter did carriage return, Shift-Enter didn't exist, and you had to click the button to post something. Then one day Enter submitted the post and Shift-Enter did carriage return, and the button was gone. Two days later the button was back but there was a little check box to turn on/off Enter submitting the post. Now I think it's back to Enter to submit and Shift-Enter to carriage return and the button is gone again.
Stack Overflow uses enter to submit the comment form (when replying to an answer), instead of generating a newline as one would expect in a
<textarea>element. One would imagine that the intended audience would be capable of pressing tab, enter to submit the form, but instead, pressing enter exhibits unexpected and annoying behaviour. There are times and places to violate convention, and that isn't one of them IMO.
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@Daniel Beardsmore said:
@lettucemode said:
It flopped back and forth for a period of two weeks or so. I think the old behavior was that Enter did carriage return, Shift-Enter didn't exist, and you had to click the button to post something. Then one day Enter submitted the post and Shift-Enter did carriage return, and the button was gone. Two days later the button was back but there was a little check box to turn on/off Enter submitting the post. Now I think it's back to Enter to submit and Shift-Enter to carriage return and the button is gone again.
Stack Overflow uses enter to submit the comment form (when replying to an answer), instead of generating a newline as one would expect in a
<textarea>element. One would imagine that the intended audience would be capable of pressing tab, enter to submit the form, but instead, pressing enter exhibits unexpected and annoying behaviour. There are times and places to violate convention, and that isn't one of them IMO.That's because you're not allowed to have linebreaks in a comment. It is, conceptually, a single-line text box. It simply uses vertical space and word-wrapping instead of either making the textbox arbitrarily wide or forcing the user to scroll.
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@pkmnfrk said:
@Daniel Beardsmore said:
@lettucemode said:
It flopped back and forth for a period of two weeks or so. I think the old behavior was that Enter did carriage return, Shift-Enter didn't exist, and you had to click the button to post something. Then one day Enter submitted the post and Shift-Enter did carriage return, and the button was gone. Two days later the button was back but there was a little check box to turn on/off Enter submitting the post. Now I think it's back to Enter to submit and Shift-Enter to carriage return and the button is gone again.
Stack Overflow uses enter to submit the comment form (when replying to an answer), instead of generating a newline as one would expect in a
<textarea>element. One would imagine that the intended audience would be capable of pressing tab, enter to submit the form, but instead, pressing enter exhibits unexpected and annoying behaviour. There are times and places to violate convention, and that isn't one of them IMO.That's because you're not allowed to have linebreaks in a comment. It is, conceptually, a single-line text box. It simply uses vertical space and word-wrapping instead of either making the textbox arbitrarily wide or forcing the user to scroll.
Yeah, there are ways to disallow newlines without causing people to inadvertently submit a half-written comment. But this is Stack Overflow we're talking about, the progeny of Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky; you're just lucky it hasn't found a way to infect you with HIV.
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@pkmnfrk said:
That's because you're not allowed to have linebreaks in a comment. It is, conceptually, a single-line text box. It simply uses vertical space and word-wrapping instead of either making the textbox arbitrarily wide or forcing the user to scroll.
I know you're not. Since modern generations no longer understand paragraphs, they must have caved in to popular demand. I would still expect the return key to do nothing in that case, although I'd rather they removed the paragraph limitation instead.
I was more annoyed that they wiped an old question I posted, that no-one had been able to answer. I guess the shame and embarrassment is devastating, can't have unanswered questions visible to the world! I was going to post a nice solution to the problem, and couldn't find the question. Took me a while to figure out it was gone, as I wasn't 100% sure which site I posted it to. (There's a general rule: if I ever do post a question to any such site, it will yield either silence, or clueless responses. I don't know where you're expected to go if you want someone with a clue to respond …)
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@Daniel Beardsmore said:
I don't know where you're expected to go if you want someone with a clue to respond …
TDWTF Forums, silly.
No, seriously, there's nowhere.
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@morbiuswilters said:
No, seriously, there's nowhere.
As time passes, I find myself agreeing with the Borg more and more.
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@Daniel Beardsmore said:
@morbiuswilters said:
It's not that you agree with us more, it's that your we have slowly eroded your ability to think critically.No, seriously, there's nowhere.
As time passes, I find myself agreeing with the Borg more and more.
Welcome.
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@Daniel Beardsmore said:
As time passes, I find myself agreeing with the Borg more and more.
I wouldn't "resist" if a cube appeared in orbit.
The only real disconcerting thing is that I'd have to share a hive mind with the idiots on this planet.
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@nexekho said:
The only real disconcerting thing is that I'd have to share a hive mind with
the idiotseverybody else on this planet.
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@Scarlet Manuka said:
HOLY CRAP THEY FIXED IT?? Please excuse me, I need to find out when we're upgrading to 2010 and whether I can be first in line.
No, they didn't fixed it. It might behave a bit better than previous versions in some limited instances, but it's still Excel. It will still dump the clipboard at random events including but not limited to user action, passage of time, phases of the moon, outing of various members of parliament, and so on.
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@oheso said:
It will still dump the clipboard at random events including but not limited to user action, passage of time, phases of the moon, outing of various members of parliament, and so on.
I like how certain actions resurrect the clipboard (not just undo, and not necessarily with the same content that was originally copied).
