The way we use computers has changed over the years. Today we use a lot more removable media - MP3 players, cameras, portable firewire drives, USB key drives, disk images, iDisk, network drives. Yet, after all this time, the desktop has hardly changed in the way it works.

On the Mac, much of the desktop functions today as it did back in the 1980s. As new removable media appear, the icon for that media is added to the desktop, by default vertically down the desktop - right to left.

We also download a lot more these days, and with ease. With web browsers, downloaded files are also added to the desktop in a similar way to removable media.

Unfortunately the Desktop is beginning to look a little like a junkyard. After an hour of browsing on the web, or working on your machine, you can end up with a pile of files sitting on your desk.

The bigger mess is with removable devices. Icons are rarely in a fixed place. I attach my iPod, it appears where ever it can find a space. And if I look for it on the desktop, I have to search around to find it.

Now, by default, downloads appear on the desktop - and this can be changed to a folder (for example). However, I, and others, find it convenient to use the desktop as the download area. That doesn’t mean though that the desktop should just be a temporary storage location. It should provide the user with more power than just a temporary folder.

The Desktop is also at odds with the new Finder. With Finder windows, removable media appear on the left. On the desktop, they appear (somewhere) on the right (depending on how many files you have on the Desktop).

Flow based on type
People really don’t like change. I never expected the reaction I’d get from the following suggestion. But I’ll make the suggestion anyway - there should be an option to follow the sidebar trend in the new Finder (and this should be the default).

With this option, the top part of the sidebar would be duplicated on the desktop to the left. As removable media are added to or removed from the computer, they would appear/disappear vertically, flowing left to right. Other files added to the desktop (downloads for example) would continue to appear flowing right to left. This separates the removable media from the downloads - unless your downloads fill your desktop in which case you need to clean up your desk!

An alternative would be to have removable media on the right (people seem really keen to have their hard drive appear where it always has) and flow downloads left to right. Fine - the only issue I have is that Finder windows have it the other way. I’d prefer consistency - so make it an option.

I’m a firm believer that the desktop can be used for more than just temporary files. We should be able to store things we are working on on that desktop, rather than hiding them in our home folders, and accessing everything via the Hard drive icon. I believe the suggestion above would result in a more usable, and more consistent desktop.

Having removable media appear in a consistent location will also encourage users to use their desktop in a more ordered fashion.

A functional clean desktop, with removable media flowed from the left, temporary files flowed from the right, active folders in use on the desktop

Apple applied for a trademark on the name “Junkyard” in 2002. Let’s hope that isn’t the new name for the Finder in Leopard. :-)

Joan Rivers said it best. “Who are you people? … What the fuck am I doing here?”.

And that is it exactly. After 50 years of Australian Television, TV Week and the powers-that-be still feel the need to bring American TV “stars” and musical acts to Australia each year to attend the TV Week Logie Awards.

So last night we were greeted with at least 3 American celebrities, and a few overseas acts. Sure, they had a passing relevance to Australian TV, given we have so much American TV on our networks. But you have to wonder, at what point in Australian television will we be able to actually stand on our own two feet and celebrate Australian TV with only our own Australian celebrities and musical acts.

Here’s a quick run down on the what we saw last night.
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It is always easy to point out faults, but much harder to suggest improvements. In a series of articles I will outline ways to improve Mac OS X. Some suggestions may be considered trivial. Some may be considered heresy. Some may be considered complete and utter rubbish. Many (perhaps all) will be ignored. :-)

These are not troll pieces. I think my web site, and the applications you’ll find here, would suggest a deep respect for Apple and OS X - and I am no Windows fan boy. OS X may be bloody great, but that doesn’t mean it is without fault. As a developer though, I know how frustrating it can be to be told by a user that your product sucks without any feedback on how it can be improved. So rather than just fault the OS I’ve tried to suggest improvements when I do find fault.

Not sure if Apple would ever read this. Not sure they’d listen either. But I might as well put the ideas out there and see if it triggers improvements - either in Apple’s products, or in someone else’s who likes the ideas. And hopefully my blog is a bit more interesting to tech geeks now.

The Finder and Icon Selection

The Finder is arguably what makes a Mac a Mac. It was there from day one, and is pretty much the first thing you see and interact with on any Mac. It is also, probably, the most notorious application on OS X - known for a continually changing look and feel (god damn it, is it Metal, is it Aqua, why is it ok to have some Finder windows metal and some Aqua?) with each OS release, mixed/confusing browsing modes (hello John Siracusa), and poor multi-threading (is that a spinning pizza I see before me?). With OS X, many users also felt the OS X Finder lacked many features from pre-OS X days.

With Panther (and subsequently Tiger), Apple brought back a much loved classic Mac OS feature - file and folder labels. This feature allows the user to “label” an icon with a certain colour (from a list of colours) - visually indicating status. For example, “green” may indicate an active project, “red” a draft, and so on. And I’ve got a whole other article to write about internationalisation and these colours.

When viewed as icons, Apple chose to show the label colour by placing a solid coloured oval background behind the icon text. The result is quite an effective way to visually show that an icon has a label, as can be seen in the screen shot to the right.

Unfortunately, Apple chose to also display an icon that is “selected” in the Finder with a coloured oval background on the text (a darker shade of the chosen highlight colour - blue by default). The result is an icon that looks to the casual observer to be labelled in blue (see screen shot to the left).

Thankfully the icon itself is shown to be selected by a relatively effective translucent square around the icon - so all is not lost. Not a great solution so far, but workable.

Things become a little messier when you combine a labelled icon with selection. The result is a blue text selection, with a hint of the colour label at the edges. This is not particularly effective - the result looks strange, the colours don’t necessarily blend well, and edges of the text are almost cut off by the inner selection highlight (see image to the right).

This just doesn’t look right. It doesn’t feel right. I had hoped it would be fixed in Tiger, but alas it wasn’t (we got lots of other weird things added to the Finder though - hooray for feature creep). I do realise Apple have limited time and budget for any major overhaul, but many parts of the Finder seem to suffer from neglect with each new release.

An alternative solution for selection

Ok, so here’s the idea. Why not show selection using the same selection method used by the finder for highlighting the icon itself - extending it to the text area.

Not only is this effective, it is visually more impressive - another example of the underlying power of the OS X platform to perform on-the-fly alpha blending (see left image).

The all-in-one selection that results is actually reminiscent of OpenStep - the operating system created by NeXT. NeXT was later bought by Apple and many parts of OS X today are based on OpenStep technologies and ideas (see image on right - good old OmniWeb - hey, I came up with their way of displaying tabs but received no credit. That’s another blog entry if I can find my old screen mockups).

The advantage of such a solution is that coloured labels are no longer compromised during selection. They are just another aspect of the whole icon that is visually shown to be selected (see image to the left).

The result is a more effective and cleaner indication of icon selection. With or without labels. The concept is similarly extended to icons with labels to the right, for example.

I haven’t touched on list view and column view in Finder Windows. Selection of icons with coloured labels have similar issues that need more thought - and I haven’t gone any further (I wasted enough time on these mockups).

Overall though, the Finder really does need a good overhaul. And possibly Apple are working on this, given this job advertisement. Maybe OS X Leopard will have the Finder we are all looking for?