OS X Menus Anger Me

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Blaine Fergerstrom on June 30, 2008 at 10:49pm

Maybe other users don't regard this as a problem. It may bug you, coming from a Windows world, but it does not bother someone who has been Mac since 1984.

I will agree, however, that it would be a really cool thing if Apple would let the user set a preference to their liking. That would be just brilliant.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Leuck on July 1, 2008 at 10:12am

Hi Blaine, I just want to clarify that I am not exactly "coming from a Windows world". I'm a Java programmer that happened to have Windows on my laptop. Our office is mostly OS X and Linux. Mika hates Windows and she is in charge of the office machines (desktops and servers.) As such, I'm reasonably familiar with Windows, the various Linux desktop environments and OS X. I think its important to note that this is not an OS X vs. Windows argument. I really like OS X, but the fact that I can end up with my main Photoshop window on monitor B but I have to go back to monitor A to use its menus just isn't right. It seems like bad design no matter how you slice it.

I will agree, however, that it would be a really cool thing if Apple would let the user set a preference to their liking. That would be just brilliant.

I agree. An option to have menus in windows vs. docked to the top of the main monitor would be great.

Permalink Reply by Blaine Fergerstrom on July 1, 2008 at 10:24am

Your reply made me realize that I didn't read your original post carefully enough.

But the main point I was trying to make was my second sentence. It really would be just jaw-dropping if Apple let you have it however you wanted it.

With my usage, the menus at the top of the screen, always in the same place, plays right into my workflow. Being able to count on a menu being in exactly the same spot every time makes me more efficient.

However, I can totally see, in your example, where it would definitely be counter to your workflow or working style. I almost never use two monitors, though I work on a wide 23" Cinema display.

I often use QuicKeys or macros that hit menus based on their X-Y coordinates on screen. If they were to move, my macros would break and it would slow my work exponentially.

Aloha,

Blaine

Permalink Reply by Daniel Leuck on July 1, 2008 at 10:36am

I almost never use two monitors, though I work on a wide 23" Cinema display.

I'm jealous! I love those giant cinema displays. I assume you are on a desktop machine rather than a laptop? In a single monitor config its definitely less of an issue.

When I am doing desktop development I always have my IDE on one monitor and my API docs on the other. I also typically put Photoshop and Illustrator on my second monitor so I can quickly go back and forth between coding and working on graphics.

Permalink Reply by Lee Altenberg on August 21, 2008 at 1:14pm

I am a NeXT guy, since 1990. There are a lot of things in OS X that infuriate me, not when compared to Windows, but to NeXTSTEP. The solution to your issue already exists but is locked up in OS X --- tear-off menus. The NeXT GUI allowed one to move the main menu of an app and to tear off, move, and keep persistent any sub-menu. One could then keep the frequently used menus in their handiest place without having to burrow through the menu tree every time you use it. In the move from OS 9 to OS X, Apple "dumbed down" the NeXT GUI to please the OS 9 users. Infuriating. However, as far as I know, tear-off menus are still possible in OS X, requiring a simple "unlocking" of the behavior. There is an app that partially does this, OCSmart Hacks (http://www.ocs.cz/OCSmartHacks/) . It may be what you need.

As to the path issue. I gather that you want to get the path as a text string in the pasteboard. An easy way to do this is just drag the directory's Finder icon into almost any text field. I've done it right here: /Applications/Aperture.app . Hitting cmd-c on a folder selected in Finder gives the folder name, but not the path.

Hope this helps.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Leuck on August 21, 2008 at 2:45pm

Hey Lee - Its funny you mention NeXT. I used to sell NeXT cubes when I was in school. The UI was ten years ahead of its time. Some of the guys that worked on the NeXT UI were hired by Netscape to work in IFC, the predecessor to Swing. When Swing first came out I implemented NeXT style tear off menus. Swing guru David Qiao took it to a whole new level with his JIDE swing components.

I digress. Getting back to OSX menus and path issues. Thank you for the tips. My business partner Pat is an OSX fanatic. He has made the transition easier.

Even with tear off menus (which I love), having to take any action to get a menu to appear on the same monitor as the application window seems crazy. Putting menus in the application window is a simple and elegant solution. I think Apple is just wrong on this one. They need to get over themselves, concede this point and fix the problem.

Lee Altenberg said:

I am a NeXT guy, since 1990. There are a lot of things in OS X that infuriate me, not when compared to Windows, but to NeXTSTEP. The solution to your issue already exists but is locked up in OS X --- tear-off menus. The NeXT GUI allowed one to move the main menu of an app and to tear off, move, and keep persistent any sub-menu. One could then keep the frequently used menus in their handiest place without having to burrow through the menu tree every time you use it. In the move from OS 9 to OS X, Apple "dumbed down" the NeXT GUI to please the OS 9 users. Infuriating. However, as far as I know, tear-off menus are still possible in OS X, requiring a simple "unlocking" of the behavior. There is an app that partially does this, OCSmart Hacks (http://www.ocs.cz/OCSmartHacks/) . It may be what you need.

As to the path issue. I gather that you want to get the path as a text string in the pasteboard. An easy way to do this is just drag the directory's Finder icon into almost any text field. I've done it right here: /Applications/Aperture.app . Hitting cmd-c on a folder selected in Finder gives the folder name, but not the path.

Hope this helps.

Permalink Reply by Lee Altenberg on August 21, 2008 at 5:30pm

"the application window" --- that's the issue. The GUIs descend from the time when there was one application window. But what do you do when there are multiple windows per application? Duplicate the top menu in each of them? Or put all an application's windows inside an enclosing window that has the top menu? Both of these have been tried, but they are clunky. The Mac solution is to put the menu of the application whose window is the key window (the one receiving keystrokes) in a default place on the screen. This becomes a problem with multiple monitors, so the obvious solution is to put the menu strip in the screen with the key window in it, or in every screen. That Apple didn't figure this out is just another ragged edge among many in the OS X GUI.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Leuck on August 21, 2008 at 5:52pm

Lee Altenberg said: "the application window" --- that's the issue. The GUIs descend from the time when there was one application window. But what do you do when there are multiple windows per application? Duplicate the top menu in each of them? Or put all an application's windows inside an enclosing window that has the top menu? Both of these have been tried, but they are clunky.

Most desktop applications (Word, Excel, Photoshop, IDEs, etc.) have a primary application window. I really think this is where the menu belongs. For applications with multiple top level windows such as web browsers, you just repeat the menu. This works very well for MS Windows and most Linux/Unix desktop UIs. It follows the usability rule of keeping related functions close together and decreases the amount of mousing required to operate the application. I've never observed a novice Windows user get confused about where an application's menu is located. This happens to novice Mac users all the time. They also get confused about which application "owns" the currently displayed menu.

The MDI issue of managing multiple document windows is an interesting discussion. Personally I prefer tabs for documents. I usually design my Swing apps to give users the choice of how to handle document windows (tabs, doc selector menu or distinct windows.)