On 24 May 2004 at 16:22, Darcy James Argue wrote: > On 24 May 2004, at 03:09 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > On 24 May 2004 at 14:46, Christopher BJ Smith wrote: > > >> Oo, I'll take this one! If I can SEE a tool, and be able to click > >> on it easily, while seeing the score underneath it, this saves > >> mondo clicking to un-shade and re-shade the tool palette. If it > >> takes one click to roll down the window shade, then I have to move > >> the mouse to the tool, then move the mouse to re-shade again, > >> that's three clicks and some index movement that I would be able to > >> replace with one click and little or no mouse movement. > > > > OK, I can see that, but what about getting to the background window? > > Isn't that less of an issue in a window-shaded pallette than in a > > transparent one? > > No, because it's no harder to windowshade a transparent palette than > it is to windowshade an opaque one.
See, my problem is that I just don't use floating pallettes. I find they are always in the wrong place and even if they were transparent, I'd still need to move them (or windowshade them) all the time to get to the content behind them. I suspect this is a difference between Mac and Windows users, and, therefore, the transparency support is not going to be as useful on Windows as it is on the Mac. > >> Not system wide. Just in Finale. The pallettes CAN get kind of big, > >> and eat up a lot of real estate. It could be turned off, too, if it > >> bugs people. > > > > Well, that's fine, but I don't really have a problem giving up two > > rows of toolbars for the pallettes at the top of the screen. > > That's not how Mac Finale works. All the Mac Finale palettes are > floating -- there is no toolbar. That looks like a design error to me. But it suggests a point: the transparent floating pallettes aren't needed in WinFin, so there's no benefit (to Finale) in having transparency supported by the OS. > > It's how > > every application I use implementes toolbars and because of the > > aspect ratio of scroll view (which is where I do most of my work), > > it's not really a problem to lose the space. Of course, I use the > > small icons, since the large ones are too big and distracting (and > > butt ugly, to boot). > > Most of them are gawdaful, I agree, but I think the OS X-style "globe" > palette icons are actually quite nicely done. Are those available in > the Windows version? Dunno. When Coda introduced the new "gummi-bear" icons, I assumed it was to be consistent with the look of the Aqua interface. When Microsoft badly copied it in the WinXP Luna interface, the new icons were now more-or-less consistent with both platforms. But I don't know anyone who actually *uses* the Luna interface, as it's so butt-ugly, and has major performance problems. Everyone I know who is unfortunate enough to have to use WinXP reverts to the Windows Classic appearance, and in that, the new Finale icons look wrong. And they are bigger and distracting to me. > > But it's not a reason to implement transparency as the default > > dialog behavior OS-wide, which is how this subject came up. > > Actually, most dialogs in OS X are not transparent. The menus are > transparent, yes, . . . This is one that makes absolutely no sense to me -- what benefit is there to a transparent menu? > . . . and the roll-down dialogs (like, for instance, "Mail > Not Sent - Save as Draft?" are transparent, but most everything else > isn't. Also, the effect has been toned down since OS X 10.0. . . . Not surprising! > . . . Anyway, > I don't want to quibble about whether cosmetic transparency in > interface elements is ever OK -- the point is that, because OS X has > transparency available at the OS level, developers can use it for > free, and this enables genuinely useful UI features like Office 2004's > fading Formatting Palette. If I were using Office XP, I'd want that > implemented in my version, too. Well, floating pallettes are anethema, as far as I'm concerned. I don't have any applications that don't allow them to be treated as dockable toolbars, and that's the only way I like to use them. So, it's a difference between the two platforms. I don't see how Windows benefits from copying OS X's transparency support. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
