 | ||||
|
|
|
||
|
• Image Gallery |
|
||
|
||||
For Mac OS X, it's the classic English butler. This OS is designed to make the times you have to interact with it as quick and efficient as possible. It expects that things will work correctly and therefore sees no reason to bother you with correct operation confirmations. If you plug in a mouse, there aren't going to be any messages to tell you "that mouse you plugged in is now working." It's assumed you'll know that because you'll be able to instantly use the mouse. Plug in a USB or FireWire hard drive and the disk showing up on your desktop is all the information you need to see that the drive has correctly mounted. It is normally only when things are not working right that you see messages from Mac OS X.
Windows is ... well, Windows is very eager to tell you what's going on. Constantly. Plug something in and you get a message. Unplug something and you get a message. If you're on a network that's having problems staying up, you'll get tons of messages telling you this. It's rather like dealing with an overexcited Boy Scout ... who has a lifetime supply of chocolate-covered espresso beans. This gets particularly bad when you factor in things like the user-level implementation of Microsoft's new security features.
To put it simply, you can work on a Mac for hours, days even, and only minimally need to directly use the OS. With Vista? The OS demands your attention, constantly.
Active Windows
The user interface (UI) of an operating system is the set of rules and procedures that define how you use an OS. Much has been made about the changes in Vista, with the new transparencies and effects, but is it better or just different? I'd have to say a little of both. Vista is definitely continuing the gradual convergence of the OS UI and the Internet Explorer UI.
You can see in the screenshot of the System Properties window an IE 7 window and a Computer window that, if you were to remove the tabs and the toolbar from the IE window, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. This is not a bad thing. From an education perspective, the more consistent your UI is for things like window controls, the easier it is to learn how to use that UI. That's not to say that consistency should be a straightjacket, but that wherever possible, things should work the same.
 |
Vista Windows Explorer, IE 7, and the System Control Panel windows seen by Vista users. view image gallery |
|
 (click image for larger view) |
|
With that in mind, note that, even though the IE window is not front-most, the "back" button looks as though it's active. The non-IE windows are more consistent in appearance, but if you didn't know that the red "x" or close widget in the front-most window shows that it is the active window, it would be somewhat easy for a new user to get confused about which window is the one he or she is really working in.
Those with some experience in Vista will note correctly that I'm not running the full Aero interface with all the transparency effects. Two points on that: First, there are a lot of home computers out there that don't fully support Aero yet are able to run Vista. Second, in my usage, the window transparency, while nice, is not what I'd call an "instantly obvious" indication of window status.
You'll see in the screenshot of the same kind of window layering in Mac OS X that, even with the similarity of the brushed metal windows in both the Finder and Safari, it's more obvious which window is active. None of the Safari widgets show as active, while the Finder window, being active, has the "live" controls, and the window controls all have a unique color. It is far easier to tell at a glance which window is the "active" or front-most window, even if the positioning is not obvious.
|
 (click image for larger view) |
|
OS X Finder, Safari, and System Preferences windows seen by Mac users. view image gallery |
|
This consistency that has been a centerpiece of the Mac OS is something that, even with Vista, Microsoft still can't manage to pull off. Although there are many different UI styles available in Mac OS X, even within those different styles, there is a consistency that Windows just can't seem to hit.
Even with Microsoft applications, there's a feeling that, by and large, the only UI guidelines that Windows applications adhere to is "what we feel like." (I know Microsoft has a lot of UI guideline information, but since no one seems to follow any of it, I'm not sure what the point of it is.)
For example, in the screenshot showing a generic OS window, IE 7, Word 2007, and Outlook 2007, note that the Vista and IE 7 windows are fairly consistent, although with both having the "back" button enabled, the only obvious clue as to which one is currently active is the color of the window-close widget in the Vista window. However, the Word 2007 window has only a vague connection with the OS UI styles, and Outlook is an amalgamation of both Word's and Vista's UI styling. UI consistency is still a weakness in the Windows UI. Obviously, people can deal with it, but it's one of those "why make your customers work harder than they have to" kinds of things.
|
Vista Windows Explorer, IE 7, Word 2007, and Outlook 2007 windows. view image gallery |
|
 (click image for larger view) |
|
