On 24 May 2004 at 17:08, Darcy James Argue wrote: > On 24 May 2004, at 04:34 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > 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 really. There are plenty of Windows apps with floating palettes > -- pretty much every graphics app, for instance. Photoshop would be > great with transparent palettes.
I use Paintshop Pro, which has dockable pallettes. I dock them and never let them float, because they always end up in the way of what I want to work on. That's the key for me -- it's not that I can't see what's behind, it's that I can't *edit* what's behind, and so I don't like floating pallettes. If Photoshop's pallettes are not dockable, then I'd find it a user- hostile environment to work in. > >> 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. > > I agree that there should be the option to make the palette a toolbar > in MacFin, but I don't know if I'd actually use it -- I've removed the > useless tools (hand, magnifying glass, ossia, hyperscribe) from my > Finale palette and have it arranged in two horizontal rows in the > bottom-left corner of the screen, just above and to the left of the > scroll bars. . . You've converted it into a toolbar, then, just not docked. > . . . I like it there -- the icons are compact, and it's easy > for me to see what tool I have selected if I've somehow lost track. I > don't think it would be as convenient to have them arranged in a > single horizontal row at the top of the screen. . . . I have two rows. > . . . But it could be that > I'm just not used to looking there. I dunno -- since we've never had > the option, I don't know whether I'd like the toolbar or not. Finale has implemented the dockable toolbars using Microsoft tools, I believe, and, therefore, they are dockable at any of the four sides of the parent Finale window. This means I could dock them at the bottom of the window like you have yours. However, once they dock, they become single-row/column, which would mean you couldn't get what you want. Actually, back in the days before Finale had dockable toolbars, the real annoyance was that the pallettes stayed in the same place in scroll and page view. If Finale had been smartly designed, it would have had independent positioning for the two views, since the aspect ratio of the two data display areas is completely different. If that had been implemented, so I could have had my pallettes at the bottom in scroll view, and automatically go to the right side of the page in page view, I wouldn't have found them annoying. It was the pallettes' ignorance of the view I was in that made them annoying. > > 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. > > Isn't it possible to make the tools menu a floating palette in FinWin? Not sure what you mean -- the actual tools menu turned into a floating pallette? What good is that, as it replicates all the existing toolbars? > If so, surely those who prefer it that way could benefit from > transparency, just as Mac users could. And, as I already mentioned, > there are the big plugin windows like Staff List Manager. Sorry, I don't get what you're interested in here, as I always thought the Tools menu was there for use by macro recorders. > > Dunno. When Coda introduced the new "gummi-bear" icons, I assumed it > > was to be consistent with the look of the Aqua interface. > > Those aren't Aqua icons. God no. Not even close. They look like bad > XP icons. I didn't mean they were Aqua icons, just that it was an attempt to go with the rounded 3D look that was first widely popularized with the introduction of Aqua. Looking at them again, I do see that they don't really have much to do with the actual Aqua look, nor with the WinXP icons, which are much closer to Aqua-style icons than Finale's (which does not mean they are all that close, just closer). > The Aqua-style Globe icons were not in the original set of Tool > palette icons introduced in Fin2003. On the Mac side, at least, they > were introduced in Fin2004, where they are the default. They are > large, yes, and they have a slight reflective gloss on them, but > they're much better-looking than either the horrible Fin2003 icons or > the "classic" Finale icons (which are terrible in entirely different > ways). I do wish Coda would get consistent about the use of color in > the toolbar icons -- in other words, GET RID OF IT and make all the > globe-style icons black, or at least black and gray (as most of them > are), but the 3D highlight effect is subtle and nicely done. You'd > almost certainly still hate it, but I think it's the nicest palette > set Finale has ever had -- which admittedly, isn't saying much. > (Again, I dunno if this style made it to the Windows version, since > it's so obviously Aquafied.) I think flat grayscale icons are fine, the smaller the better. I don't see the point in color in the icons unless it serves a purpose, as it does in WinFin, where the color of the icon matches the color you've chosen for the display of the object type it represents. For instance, I display text in orange, and the A in the text tool icon is orange. That's a good use of color, even if it's not attractive at all -- it is very functional, though. > While we're on it, I also wish Finale would revise its default display > colors, which, if left alone, make your Finale windows look like > they're celebrating Christmas in Reno. To paraphrase Spinal Tap, it's > like, how much more ugly could it be? And the answer is none. None > more ugly. I don't know what the default colors are, as I long ago changed mine to be what I prefer. > > This is one that makes absolutely no sense to me -- what benefit is > > there to a transparent menu? > > None, really. It's just a nice effect. In Panther, the transparency > is very subtle, just barely noticeable... I like it. Well, I don't mean to minimize the importance of appearance, but I do remember that one of the criticisms of the early versions of OS X was that in many contexts, the transparency caused major readability problems. That suggests to me that there was something fundamentally mistaken about the idea as a whole, if it took them two or three additional releases before those kinds of problems were gone. > > 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. > > But there are lots of standard Windows apps (like, say, Photoshop) > that require floating palettes. "Require?" > > So, it's a difference between the two platforms. > > I don't think so. If you any graphics work on Windows at all, you use > floating palettes all the time. I do graphics work, and have dockable pallettes, which are all docked. > > I don't see how Windows benefits from copying OS X's transparency > > support. > > Because -- as I said -- then it's in there, for developers to take or > leave as they see fit. Just because it doesn't benefit you > particularly doesn't mean it's an inherently bad idea. But it's definitely an idea that is not fundamental. It is at a level that is surface only, and this fits with my thesis that the only things MS is really copying from OS X are entirely at the surface level (and those only incompletely realized), not in anything truly significant from the point of view of OS functionality or UI. -- 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
