Saturday, October 23, 2010
Monday, October 04, 2010
The Mac Menu Bar: why is it way up there?
Before we can talk about the Macintosh menu bar, we need to look back at what came before the Macintosh in user interface design. Before the Macintosh, there really was no standards in user interfaces. For example, the user interface for dBase was a blinking period. The user interface for the popular word processing application of the day - WordPerfect - was pretty much a blank screen.
The idea was - users were trained to use these systems. The systems were not approachable by users who had no training. This was great for systems trainers, but users didn't get very far.
The Macintosh u.i. came along and suddenly we had a user interface that gave the user some clues on what he could do with the system and where to begin.
Here's a writeup from wikipedia that explains Fitt's Law.
Fitt's law had a big part to play in the design of the Macintosh menu bar. There were two choices in where to put the Mac menu bar.
1. Each application gets a menu bar - a la MS Windows
2. Use one menu bar for the entire system - at the top of the screen.
Let's have a look at option one.
When the user gets ready to use a MS Windows menu bar, let's go through the steps the user needs to go thru in order to find the menu bar.
1. User needs to think "which application am I using?"
2. User needs to look up at the screen and figure out where to aim for that menu bar.
3. Let's say the application has five windows open. Which menu should the user click on? The answer is clear to an experienced user. The answer might not be so clear to a new user.
4. The user moves the mouse up and - woops! User overshoots the menu bar on the window they were aiming at. Try again.
Now let's look at the Macintosh model.
1. There is no guessing about where the menu bar is, because it's always at the top of the screen. The menu bar switches based on which app the user has active.
2. The user doesn't need to aim for the top of the screen. One swoop and the mouse is at the top of the screen. The user cannot overshoot the top of the screen because top of screen is a ceiling in the design.
3. The user needn't worry about which window their work is in, because the menu is always at the top of the screen.
If you'd like to learn more about the Macintosh interface, there are many ways.
Mr. Donald Norman has written many books on design in general that have tie ins to the Mac interface.
Mr. Bruce Tognazzini wrote one of the bibles on interface design titled "Tog on Interface".
Apple wrote a small book many years ago named "Human Interface Guidelines" that they now maintain in PDF format. The book is available for free from the Apple developer website.
HFM
Before we can talk about the Macintosh menu bar, we need to look back at what came before the Macintosh in user interface design. Before the Macintosh, there really was no standards in user interfaces. For example, the user interface for dBase was a blinking period. The user interface for the popular word processing application of the day - WordPerfect - was pretty much a blank screen.
The idea was - users were trained to use these systems. The systems were not approachable by users who had no training. This was great for systems trainers, but users didn't get very far.
The Macintosh u.i. came along and suddenly we had a user interface that gave the user some clues on what he could do with the system and where to begin.
Here's a writeup from wikipedia that explains Fitt's Law.
Fitt's law had a big part to play in the design of the Macintosh menu bar. There were two choices in where to put the Mac menu bar.
1. Each application gets a menu bar - a la MS Windows
2. Use one menu bar for the entire system - at the top of the screen.
Let's have a look at option one.
When the user gets ready to use a MS Windows menu bar, let's go through the steps the user needs to go thru in order to find the menu bar.
1. User needs to think "which application am I using?"
2. User needs to look up at the screen and figure out where to aim for that menu bar.
3. Let's say the application has five windows open. Which menu should the user click on? The answer is clear to an experienced user. The answer might not be so clear to a new user.
4. The user moves the mouse up and - woops! User overshoots the menu bar on the window they were aiming at. Try again.
Now let's look at the Macintosh model.
1. There is no guessing about where the menu bar is, because it's always at the top of the screen. The menu bar switches based on which app the user has active.
2. The user doesn't need to aim for the top of the screen. One swoop and the mouse is at the top of the screen. The user cannot overshoot the top of the screen because top of screen is a ceiling in the design.
3. The user needn't worry about which window their work is in, because the menu is always at the top of the screen.
If you'd like to learn more about the Macintosh interface, there are many ways.
Mr. Donald Norman has written many books on design in general that have tie ins to the Mac interface.
Mr. Bruce Tognazzini wrote one of the bibles on interface design titled "Tog on Interface".
Apple wrote a small book many years ago named "Human Interface Guidelines" that they now maintain in PDF format. The book is available for free from the Apple developer website.
HFM
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