"The IndieHIG Wiki is a place where developers and UI designers can come together to create a new set of Human Interface Guidelines to supplement Apple's guidelines. Apple has neglected to update their HIG with modern UI designs and controls, so developers have been forced to replicate these UI elements on their own to keep their applications from looking dated. Since each developer has slightly different implementations of these elements, it has resulted in a fairly inconsistent look and feel for Mac OS users." Meanwhile, for the first time in over three months, Apple is asking its developer community to begin testing and providing feedback on a forthcoming update to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.
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Member since:2005-11-10
I'm sorry but that is just innaccurate. I just downloaded Firefox 1.0 for Mac and Preferences is in the Application menu where it should be. When you create a program in XCode, a default menu layout is provided for you (no such thing in VS) with the Application, Edit, Window and Help menu. In general, and overal, Mac applications have far less menu inconsistancies than Windows counterparts - fact.
Member since:2006-03-14
I did point out that Firefox has updated the menus, I guess I was thinking of a really old pre-1.0 version. My bad. There was a time when I did notice that cross-platform applications tried to keep their menus consistent across both OSes. Oh well, no big deal now.
P.S.
VS does give you a default pre-made menu if you created a new project using the project wizard. This isn't something new, I just fired up Visual C++ 6.0 (cerca 1998).
Member since:2005-07-22
Member since:
2006-03-14
You can press Cmd+Q on any app to quit it, Cmd+H to hide, Cmd+, to view preferences (my favourite), the Edit and Window menus are consistent. When you go back to Windows, one thing that really bugs you is that this behavioural consistency is lacking: Whilst you can use Alt+F4 (mostly) and Win+M, is preferences under Tools > Options, View > Preferences, or worse File > Preferences?
I don't think you made a good example here. The quit and hide commands in OS X are handled by the OS, a software developer didn't have to code it to behave that way. Similarly, ALT+F4 in Windows behaves that way naturally.
MacOS X software can have the same pitfalls of menu inconsistencies the same way Windows programs are flawed as you described. For instance, most OS X programs have the "preferences" menu item in the menu that has the program name. Firefox for OS X use to put the options menu item under Tools, I think they finally moved it to the proper place. Mozilla has the preferences menu item in Edit.
Closing and hiding app windows is a universal action, that's why both OSes have keyboard shortcuts that are universal to all programs. However not all programs handle user options/preferences the same way, or any action beyond the basics. That's where menu inconsistencies occur, and you haven't really proved that menus are better organized in OS X versus Windows. The OS has no control over how developers arrange their menus or keyboard shortcuts. In some cases those natural functions can be overridden by the software developer.