On 7 Apr 2005 at 16:21, A-NO-NE Music wrote: > David W. Fenton / 05.4.7 / 03:54 PM wrote: > > >Well, while I criticize MS for never really getting the Mac UI when > >they copy surface features of it, the dogma of the mouse on the Mac > >is even more ridiculous. I know that the studies show that mousing > >in > > a UI designed for mousing is faster than using the keyboard. I > > don't understand how that translates into eliminating menu > > keyboard > >shortcuts as a standard, so that the choice is left up to the user. > > Up until web browsing got this popular, Microsoft GUI guideline > insisted on non-mouse operation, the left over from Win3.1. In > another word, it was mandatory to design GUI assuming the end user > doesn't have mouse. The last time I was in the field, 1999, > Microsoft was still doing that. I am sure it is different now.
You're sure it's different now? I'm not. Every MS OS I've ever used (through WinXP and Windows Server 2003, the most recent OS released by MS) is completely usable mouseless. While it's obviously not a nice environment to operate in, when hardware fails or locks up, it's nice to be able to shut down your apps and your OS in an orderly fashion. > On the other hand, Apple wanted to go against Windows' > non-mouse-ness back then, '80s. I don't think Xerox was that > excited as Apple did :-) Apple still does not want to sell two > button mouse from Apple, while Mac OS has been supporting two button > mouse natively for almost a decay now. I don't think Apple's design was "against Microsoft." I think it was based on the logic of their own UI testing. But faced with an alternative UI *after* Windows came into existing, it was dogma that has kept Apple from stealing the idea from Microsoft. Of course, Apple has stolen plenty of things from MS (though they never steal in a simple way -- they always rethink things; that doesn't mean they don't make many of the same mistakes MS has made; see AskTog.com for early reviews of OS X and the Dock, for instance). -- 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
