Aero User Experience Guidelines

Interesting tidbits Apple might want to read:

Picking the Right Degree of Control for User Interfaces

Sidebar

Wow, it's going to get fairly ugly and VERY bloated. Featuritis up the wazoo. Granted there might be a few hits with the misses but on the whole, GO APPLE.

You ARE less is more by not going down the Longhorn path, from all I've seen.

[This message was edited by the mighty johnq on Mon October 27 2003 at 09:48 PM.]

User Control vs. Leading the User

Giving the user control is like putting someone in the driver's seat of a car. You might think that the person always likes to drive. While there are times when driving is fine (if, for example, they know the route well, they like to drive, or they feel rested), there are other times when having someone else drive is better (if, for example, they're in an unfamiliar area, they don't like to drive, or the route is boring). Regardless of whether the person is a driver or a passenger, they can still reach their destination; but the situation determines which role is ideal.

Yeah, John, it scares that these guys can't even do a decent car analogy.

I've seen some leaked screenshots of Longhorn and they not only don't impress me but sometimes I just don't understand them.

I haven't read through the whole spiel, but it looks like the Sidebar is meant to be similar to a heads-up display in a jet fighter. It will show you all kinds of stuff that you presumably will want to see – need to see- without opening an application. The Mail icon does this in the Dock. Handled smartly, this could be useful, but from what I can see it looks too big and it looks like too much bloat. I mean, who wants to steal 150 pixels from the edge of their screen? Sometimes I wonder what is so friggin' wrong with a menu. It's there when you need it and out of the way when you don't.