Letter sent to Apple on Sept. 26, 2000:
I am currently testing OS X beta as a huge Mac fan and someone who
is very interested in the art of interface science.
This message concerns issues of the dock, and how it could better
replace the Apple Menu and Control Strip.
I am just getting used to using the dock and really love the basic
concept and utility, but with some minor tweaks it could be greatly
improved and quiet all the complaints about the lack of the
Control Strip and Apple Menu.
First the short part, moving and hide/show of the Dock. The
magnification option, auto show/hide and the easy resize are very
intuitive and wonderful features. There are some things that could be
improved. The auto hide and show should have a user adjustable amount
of hysteresis included (perhaps the control of it could be implemented
similarly to the former control of hyst. for spring-loaded folders). It
pops up by accident too often, and when the mouse slips away off of the
the top, the dock recedes too quickly. Building in adjustable
hysteresis would help greatly. Also, if you really want to add
configurability, allow the dock to be dragged to the left or right side
of the screen. With hyst. implemented correctly, it might even work to
have it at the top of the screen. A shareware utility for OS 9
called A-dock already uses this dragging and hysteresis if you would
like to see an example.
It is available at the following URL: <http://jerome.foucher.free.fr/ADock.html>
Please don't have any qualms about using ideas existing in
shareware. The designers are readily contactable. I'm sure Apple has
done it before, and I'm also sure these guys would be thrilled to see
their metaphors inline with the Mac OS.
Secondly, there is the issue that causes much fear and loathing; the
missing Apple Menu and Control Strip. I believe that this issue could
be solved by implementing popup hierarchical content menus when
clicking and holding on icons. This could be used in and outside of the
dock.
Outside of the dock it would be a wonderful way to navigate the
desktop, you can very efficiently and intuitively work with this
method. This metaphor applied to files is powerful; if applied to the
dock, it could be magical. Now, the features of the apple menu could be
reimplemented in the desktop icon in the dock and activated by clicking
and holding.
Clicking and holding on the Desktop app icon would release a drop-up
menu organized with the modifiable folder and hierarchical options of
the old apple menu.
This pop up folder contents feature would be beautiful to implement
systemwide for all folders and folders in the dock. Using this feature
for folders in the dock would be amazing. That feature, along with its
cousin menu from the desktop icon, would give users a truly superior
replacement for the Apple Menu. Much of this code existed in the
Classic OS (for hierarchical menus). With the NeXT style directory of
icons as folders, it should be made that much easier and was
implemented in this manner by a shareware utility called FinderPop.
If you want to go all out to please Finder Pop fans, you can
implement hold click contextual menus with options like moving to
favorites, moving to trash labels, and setting file type.
This exact same feature could be used for a control strip type menu
housed in the dock's system settings icon. A menu would popup
containing the icons and perhaps names of the various control items,
and each item would have a menu pop up from it that would not open the
settings app, but implement changes the exact same way the control
strip did.
Once again, please seriously consider implementing these minor, but
powerful, changes to the Mac OS X interface. You will make many users
very happy, make many old users more comfortable with the new OS, and
make the whole system more intuitive and beautiful. I love it now, but
these changes would be a great help for everyone concerned.
Sincerely,
David Getzin
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