Steve Capps, co-designer of the Finder and much of the Mac’s graphical user interface (as well as one of the folks behind the Newton OS), doesn’t find much to excite him about either the Mac or Windows user interfaces these days.
Finder co-Designer Not Keen on Current User Interface
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Read properly. He joined Microsoft in 1996, long after the Start button and the Taskbar were invented.
“the Start Menu, the Taskbar, integration with the browser, intelligent assistance, the right-button context menu — all of these are great things for the user”
I’ll give them the Start Menu, the Taskbar, and right clicking (which I really like). But intelligent assistance sucks. (Am I thinking about the right thing, here?) And I have yet to see any plus from the integration with the browser.
“Their biggest problem is their tendency to lard on too many features instead of paying attention to details with fewer features, so the gems get lost.”
I remember having intense arguments on another thread with some KDE advocates, Rayiner Hashem inclusive, regarding KDE’s array of useless and useful features as well as its UI. One of my suggestion for improving KDE’s UI was/is no different than Mr Steve Capps’ statement above.
I’m pleased to see an UI expert and veteran corroborate my stance on the issue.
I’m a big fan of kde, it’s fast, has a good look and lots of things I like. My only objection to it is their throw all install. If they had a really minimum install that could be followed by a ‘pick what you want’ graphical one, it would be almost perfect.
UI opinions are like <insert term for anus here>’s: Everyone’s got one, and they all stink.
I do love reading UI expert opinons. Just gives me piles and piles of stuff to dis-agree with.
I remember having intense arguments on another thread with some KDE advocates, Rayiner Hashem inclusive, regarding KDE’s array of useless and useful features as well as its UI.
Unlike GNOME, which will remove perfectly usefull options for the sake of HIG-ification (Extract Here…). Personally, I think there is a happy medium to be found between GNOME’s “the only good options are no options” line of thought, and KDE’s “option-fest”.
The truth can always be found somewhere in the middle.
“But intelligent assistance sucks. (Am I thinking about the right thing, here?)”
Probably not. I think he’s referring to a range of features such as wizards, context sensitive help and expandable menus, rather than that damn paperclip.
I think that innovation is stalled because low-level programming is buried below several layers of toolkits. Every feature that doesn’t need low-level access is already invented (recent values combos, autocompletion…)
Try to program a good looking, not flicking, animated chess board with any language/toolkit you know. After the experience, ask yourself if the programming interfaces are better described as “reasonable” or “anti-intuitive, tricky, bad designed…”
My favorite bit is how he complains that all current UI’s are bad right before explaining that his new company will make good UI’s and license them to people.
Thats a pretty blatant attempt to create a need for something that is already reasonably met. Oh well.. maybe he will come up with something more interesting. Course, the idea of licensing UI’s is repulsive. But hey, to each their own.
from what I heard that ‘damn paperclip’ was actually quite sophisticated and believe it or not useful.
that was until the marketing guys got it. which tellsyou everything about the paperclip.
Seems like he has as much contempt for both Apple and Microsoft today. Well he did have a hand in KDE and GNOME as well.
My apologies. I had read the article earlier in the day before posting here.
What I should have said was: the guy who thinks that the Start button and Taskbar are great inventions is seriously lacking in the GUI design skills category.
He works at/for Microsoft for several years, goes into the “UI design” biz, and complains about OS X’s interface…and he doesn’t even use a Mac (at least one running OS X)??? Say what? Use the system EXCLUSIVELY for at least a year before telling me it’s mediocre. Until then, you know nothing.
Jared
Is the fact that people jump right onto these former-Apple UI guys and think they “know” UI design. Some do. Some don’t. Many were in the right place at the right time. Often little credit is given to Steve Jobs himself who, often by shear force of will, made some things the way they are on the (original) Mac UI. Some things were dumb or bad…but some things were very good and insightful.
How can one judge user interfaces?
One person likes this, another likes that.
It’s all subjective.
One CAN’T create the perfect user interface.
If you leave out some features, there are to few.
If you add them back, there are too many.
I personally like the start button for example.
I haven’t seen an alternative that is as easy as that.
If I do, I might change my mind.
I like to have a “unzip to here…” option in a popup menu when I right click a zip file.
What’s the alternative? Open an unzip program, open the zipfile and extract? That’s a lot more user unfriendly than that extra feature in the popup menu.
If you disagree with this, it proves what I said in the beginning of this text: You can’t judge user interfaces.
Ideally, a user should be able to construct the user interface in such a way he or she likes it.
This is not just skinning techniques, but more fundamental changes in how information is displayed and used.
And this is, in my opinion, very hard to do.
You can’t expect everyone to write his or her own window manager.
He complains a lot, but has no new ideas or any examples of what he’s been working on. Anybody can say something is broken, it takes talent to fix it. I suspect this guy (no matter what his background) just doesn’t have it anymore.
Just because something is common place or it is old does not mean that it is bad or obsolete. The desktop metaphor worked 20 years ago because it was based on objects that people understood, desktops, file cabinets, trash cans etc.. People still understand these things and they still work in the context of a personal computer with a local hard drive and simple shared file systems. While refinement around the edges may occur, any attempt to kill off this metaphor in this area would probably fail because it wouldn’t match user expectations.
However the metaphor does break down when you start working with larger and more dispersed data and application systems typical of an enterprise data system. The web is probably the best place to look for solutions to these larger systems. And while both Apple and Microsoft (and many others) sell tools for building a web presence, no one I am aware of is really selling prefab enterprise operatng systems (maybe IBM with Lotus Notes).
To get an idea of what enterprise operating systems are like today, think of what it would be like if Apple and Microsoft sold personal computer operating systems with no user interface. Instead they sell you a basic OS system and lots of APIs and development tools to build your own desktop metaphor. That is the current state of enterprise operating systems.
Steve Capps complaint should be, that he and others got the local desktop OS nailed down 20 years ago, and it still works. But why hasn’t anybody done the same with the enterprise OS?
“What I should have said was: the guy who thinks that the Start button and Taskbar are great inventions is seriously lacking in the GUI design skills category.”
Can I ask what you don’t like about it. It has always seamed to be a very logical idea, and has been used by BeOS and KDE and probably more. The only real alternitive is having everything via a right click, but by the time you give such an option a logical layout one can follow you will end up having something that works the same as everything coming of the start button but is now found via a right click. The MacOS method works, Though the differances are vague to me. The both seam to work about the same, but macos has the horrible design of having all apps use the one common bar at the top, if only they would leave that, yet have apps use their own bar like windows they would really have something nice.
Not trying to start a war or anything, I’m just curious, if you don’t like the start button I’m guessing you have some better way in mind. I think it works well, if you want to do something, you know where to start, you go to start to start something. So logical it’s crazy.
First, I really like the context sensitive menus. I am not sure that’s a Microsoft invention since I seem to remember using them in 93-94 on Sun boxes but I could be remembering wrong.
I don’t like the Start menu because, by putting everything in one place, it simply takes longer to find the one thing you are looking for. Having a few places to look – that are sensible based on what you are looking for – is a better solution to me. And it’s just harder to configure a nice, usable system if all features are centered in one place. For instance, I really like the Dock (or any of its good replacements) for applications.
Which brings me to….the Taskbar. I hate the darn thing. Why can’t I move an open application on the taskbar? If it crashes and I have to re-open it the icon will be in a different position now. I like my applications always to be in the same order so they are easy to find.
“How can one judge user interfaces?
One person likes this, another likes that.
It’s all subjective.”
Not everything is subjective. Actual human
capabilities, like motor skills, sight, color
recognition, etc play their part too. There are
several metrics. Some rules.
That’s why there are HCI (Human Computer Interaction)
courses and degrees in Universities.
It’s not all like “I like bananas, you like apples”.
It’s not all like “I like bananas, you like apples”.
Actually, it is. Both bananas and apples have something in common; no-one likes to eat human faeces or vomit or lava (well… some people might, but generally there’s something wrong with them, because human faeces and vomit are likely to cause, at least, illness, and apart from being really hot rock, lava doesn’t actually give us stuff we need to live).
whats wrong with kde having all these options? This is a good thing, if they started making it less bloated then they would take something out that someone used and then they would complain, the thing about kde is u can change it mostly to how u like, and u can pritty much remove anything u dont like
i think its the best desktop environment at the moment.
Personally, I like the taskbar. It is very ergonomic.
Technically the taskbar isn’t ergonomic. You can say you prefer it, but it is not highly ergonomic. The fact that you have to move the mouse to a different place for an application each time you use it means it could be improved ergonomically. Your muscle memory can’t be used efficiently if the locations of things change.
i think its the best desktop environment at the moment.
I too think once set up KDE is better than GNOME. But getting it how you want is frustrating as you search for options you want to change. KDE also has better dialogs (save, print, open…) and is intergrated better. But I still think GNOME is better for new and non power users. Users what somethign to work, not tons of options.
If you could drive your car sideways, foward, or backwards would you ever drive sideways? No, because all the roads are made for going forward. That is how it is for KDE. GNOME would be a car that only goes forward, sure it gets you where your going but some times you want the reverse so you can parallel park. Still that sideways gear get’s in the way when you try to switch between drive and reverse, so I perfer the forward car.
When GNOME 2.6 and gtk 2.4 come out some of GNOME’s problems will be solved, but their HIG needs some tweaking (but it works for the most part). GConf is in place for power users, and works decently, but…
After I getting KDE 3.2 and had to customizing it to my fancy I am giving GNOME another chance. Guess you could say im tired of options…
Just my buck fifty…
What I want to know is: Who invented the System Tray? And why does every bleep-in Windows programmer think their program is important enough to merit a presence there?
When I was working my way through school as a tech at a local office store, I was constantly amazed at the number of apps people had running in the System Tray. One woman must have installed every shareware program she could get her hands on. She must of had 25 icons in the Tray. And she had no idea what any of them where! (Yet another argument against Next->Next->Next installers.)
To me, the System Tray is usability hazard numero uno on the Windows system (number two goest to the Start Button. Whoever thought of Start->Shutdown should be smacked.)
But, this is all just my 2c US. As I said earlier: Everyones got an opinion, and they all stink!
The system tray is a remarkably good idea. The implementation is pretty reasonable, too. What sucks is that ‘every bleep-in Windows programmer’ thinks their program is important enough to merit presence there. (Using only Linux or highly restricted Windows computers (Uni, work), you come to forget just how bad Windows’ one gets.)
Gnome and ROX and KDE (though I’m not very familiar with the latter) each have a system tray (with equivalent use to Windows’ when you include applets), and you more-or-less have a situation where what you want runs there, and little besides (if you so decide that’s what you want to do). I rather enjoy having a nice small but noticible thing always on my screen telling me how much battery power I have left on my laptop. Shouldn’t need to have yet another window open for such a small thing.
Bumbling idiot, he does complain a lot, but if you want
the alternative ideas, you have to pay him, get it??
Money for ideas? You think everything should be free?!?
WRT to the article; I agree with what Capps is saying, you really have to think outside of the box. What he’s talking
about is the art of design and what many designers out
there are doing today, looking to stylize your life so
that the everyday common things you use from toothbrushes
to computers make sense; not only make sense but are
useful, environmentally friendly, and fun to use. This
guy doesn’t have the same mentality as ‘us’ techies, he’s
an artist, an innovator looking to put his mark on the
world. He’s not some fat dude with thick glasses
coding with python/c/java and bitching about the world
or regurgitating some stupid interface that nobody
likes to use (i.e. gnome, kde based on windows and xerox).
I think I’ve learned an important lesson today, that I
don’t want to belong to this environment of tech geeks
with this black and white colorization of the world.
Rid me of geekdom! I want freedom!! I hate geeks!
“I don’t like the Start menu because, by putting everything in one place, it simply takes longer to find the one thing you are looking for. Having a few places to look – that are sensible based on what you are looking for – is a better solution to me. And it’s just harder to configure a nice, usable system if all features are centered in one place. For instance, I really like the Dock (or any of its good replacements) for applications.
Which brings me to….the Taskbar. I hate the darn thing. Why can’t I move an open application on the taskbar? If it crashes and I have to re-open it the icon will be in a different position now. I like my applications always to be in the same order so they are easy to find.”
I think that everything there is the big boon for it. It gives you a place to start and offers a few options at each for in the road that are pretty clear in which way you want to go. It breaks down after a while, but for most things it works. I’m not a fan of having a bunch of options from the start because then you need to know which one you need to start with. Depending on what you want to do you can orginize most things in the programs menu to get it closer to what you want. I think in the end the start button is just adding one more layer on top of what you want (if the design was tweaked) but it makes it cleaner looks wise.
For the task bar, well I like it well enough. The groupings addition was great. I hated having a bizzilion little tabs across there. I agree though, it would be nice to teach apps an order to be in, I don’t think this would work well though, you could have an order for them, like a ranking, but it would still shift some depending on how many apps you have open, you close one and now everything shifts some. To have them truely fixed would mean you would waste tons of space leaving a spot for every app installed on the system. I like the dock, though parts of it bug me at times, I simple don’t use macs enough to develope a true opinion on it yet. I’m sure some things that make it better over time will be added as options. MS added a bunch of little options in XP that made things nice, but most people never mess with the settings at all. I know I hate the massive start menu you get out of the box. By the time I’m done you see about 6 things in it when you pop it up and it’s tiny. Takes all of a minute to clean up, but most seam to never bother. Hell, I think my start menu is smaller in XP then it ever was in 98.
MacOS and Windows both have room for improvement. Any GUI has room to go still. But I have yet to see anyone propose something good. Most things may sound sorta cool, but when it comes to something one would use they got nothing. What we have is what we still have because it works so well. Some people seam to hate file layouts with files in folders in folders and so forth. I think this drive is more to be differant then practical, the current method is very straightforward and thats why it’s not going anywheres for a while. Computers are just a pile of intergration between your bookshelf, file cabinet, writing pad and so forth. So it working like the works very well. To come up with something differant that works will probably be very hard, humans fine tunes those things for 100’s of years, the way of doing things didn’t stick because they went with the first idea, they went with what worked best for use by humans. I liken other ideas on how to change things like file layout to that of a person who has the mental disorter and collects everything and has a house full of stuff, instead of just orginizing it in logical ways (file cabinats, dewey decimal system) that anyone could come in and figure out they have things stacked and all crazy were only they can find stuff. Like they will say it’s “in that pile in the middle 3 feet up 2 feet back underneath the 3rd cat” doesn’t make much sense and it’s hard for someone to get, but it works perfect for them, and others with the disorder. I think GUIs have shaken themselves out well and ended up mainly the same because people just found what we have working the best. There could be some massive shift someday, but it probably means computers unlike anything we have now.
“”Whoever thought of Start->Shutdown should be smacked. “”
I’ve never really understood this complaint, no matter how many times it gets repeated.
Shutting down the computer isn’t instantaneous, so it makes perfect sense that you commence (_start_) the shutdown process using the start button. It’s the same as any other action you perform with a computer, there’s a start point, and an end point (In this case the computer actually turning itself off). Personally I think they could have avoided the whole issue if they’d just popped up a msg saying “Starting shutdown sequence” or similar (I get one for saving my personal settings, why not one for that?). After one run through the association would have been set in people’s minds.
Of course there’s been a few apps over the years that have made me think the text should read “Make coffee” (OO springs to mind as an example, although there are plenty of others) :>.
The System Tray isn’t needed if you have larger icons in the task bar that can be modified by the running program (*cough*Dock*cough*).
A sizable chunk of my problem with the taskbar could be fixed if you could just drag a program to another spot. Almost everything else in windows is draggable (why would I want to drag the menu to below the buttons????) yet this isn’t yet. Why not?? And then whenever Explorer crashes (often for me in XP) all the icons get reordered (they reverse). What’s up with that?
The big problem with the Start menu is that each program thinks it belongs there and installs tons of links to useless crap there. So even if you try to keep it trimmed down and have only common links there it will always get out of hand. Plus, it not only has programs but every other concievable thing you would want to do in Windows. Ugh. Enough already.
First, he doesn’t suggest any HOW to improve the vague things he mentions that are poorly designed. And second, did anyone take a look at the design of his corporate website … come on now.
There is a very good reason that the mac os has a unified menu bar at the top of the screen: fitt’s law. Because it takes advantage of the user’s ability to quickly hit targets at the screen edge, it is roughly five times faster than menus such as those in windows.
Furthermore, the per-window menubars in windows do nothing but use up additional screen space since you can only use one of them at a time anyway.
More OSes would do menus the mac way if apple didn’t have the rights to it.
To answer those that feel there is no objectivity in UI design, I can only say to take a class in it. While there are subjective elements to it, there is also quite a bit of science. Simple concepts, such as direct manipulation, object permanence, and error prevention go a long way towards making an interface more usable. This isn’t opinion, but proven fact. Probabilistic studies do indeed produce meaningful results. The problem is that less of these studies are being done now than ten years ago (at least in the case of apple).
As for configuration, you can’t expect the user to make the best choices in regards to ui design (winamp or trillian skins, anyone?), thus leaving too many aspects of the ui behavior up to the user is a bad idea. The best approach is to do studies to find the best defaults, and to identify the what options need to exist, stripping out the others.
Oh, and one last thing. In regards to the paper clip, it did very well in the initial studies done on it, so Microsoft went with it. Unfortunately, instead of studying how users reacted to it over a long period of time, the stuck with the initial reactions and released it. Unsurprisingly, initial public reaction to clippy was quite positive, but went sharply downhill over time.
“And second, did anyone take a look at the design of his corporate website … come on now.”
His site is very well designed. Flashing sirens and things following your pointer around the screen is not design.
“More OSes would do menus the mac way if apple didn’t have the rights to it.”
Which patent is that again?
I merely cite info claimed from here:
http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html
See the answer to question 5.
I have some reservations about the opinions expressed in the article we are discussing, but tog is right on a good majority of the time, or at least the things he says correlate with all that my training and experience in ui design have taught me.
That they could claim copyright on anything but the apple logo itself is ludicrous.
And anyways.. KDE has a menu bar that acts just like the Apple one. It’s just off by default.
Perhaps this is the patent?
http://tinyurl.com/2yg78
This is terse stuff.
> His site is very well designed. Flashing sirens and things following your pointer around the screen is not design.
The simple fact that he uses a non-standard web font (Trebuchet MS) as well as using width=100% on his webpages (url http://www.onedoto.com/websitenotice.htm ) tells me that he too is not the divine king of GUI design as he aludes to.
It says that one was filed in 2000, but for apple ip to have effected microsoft’s decision, i’d think that the ip would have had to be in place quite some time ago.
“It says that one was filed in 2000, but for apple ip to have effected microsoft’s decision, i’d think that the ip would have had to be in place quite some time ago.”
One of the wonders of patents is that it does not matter when it is issued. It could have been pending for a decade. It just sort of pops out of nowhere and screws you.
“The simple fact that he uses a non-standard web font (Trebuchet MS) as well as using width=100% on his webpages (url http://www.onedoto.com/websitenotice.htm ) tells me that he too is not the divine king of GUI design as he aludes to.”
The font is perfectly readable and he only uses width=100% on the “terms a service” page which would have even longer if he had tweaked the margins.
> he only uses width=100% on the “terms a service” page which would have even longer if he had tweaked the margins.
What I am trying to get at is having variable margins is a GUI designers nightmere. GUI designers LOVE fixed width since it will only then be displayed the same on all client machines.
“Can I ask what you don’t like about it. It has always seamed to be a very logical idea, and has been used by BeOS and KDE and probably more.”(in reference to the start menu)
The placement of the start menu in the lower left hand corner of the screen is a usability nightmare. The minimize, maximize and close buttons on the window frames are all located on the opposing side of the screen from the start menu, in the upper right hand corer. This means, all day long you waste time moving the cursor from the upper right hand side of the screen to do windows operations, to the lower left hand corner of the screen to access the menu.
Now, yes, the same setup does exist in the KDE default. But, there is a setting where the menu can be placed on one of the mouse clicks. On my setup, the KDE “start” menu is on the middle click, or middle mouse button, so the menu is whereever my cursor is and I do not have to jockey the mouse from opposite sides of the screen all day long. Similar setups can be found in Enlightenment, Blackbox, Fluxbox, Kahakai, Waimea & WindowMaker. It just makes more sense.
“I’m a big fan of kde, it’s fast, has a good look and lots of things I like. My only objection to it is their throw all install. If they had a really minimum install that could be followed by a ‘pick what you want’ graphical one, it would be almost perfect. ”
Sorry, but KDE doesn’t do packaging outside of tarballs. That is the job of your distribution. If your distribution only offers KDE packages in groups like ‘kdenetwork,” or ‘kdemultimedia,” and then proceeds to install these entire suites, then you need another distribution. Debian allows you to install each kde app individually, which sounds like what you want.
Say what? Use the system EXCLUSIVELY for at least a year before telling me it’s mediocre. Until then, you know nothing.
There is no need whatsoever to use it for such a length period of time before criticising. The only thing required to make objective criticism is to learn how it works and use it that way (and not try and bend it into behaving like some other UI, like so many people try to do).
If nothing else, using one UI “EXCLUSIVELY” for so long makes it nearly impossible to compare with perspective.
How can one judge user interfaces?
Study thousands and thousands of people using one. Observe things they find easy, and why. Observe things they find hard, and why. Observe how object placement affects performance. Observe how feedback affects performance.
Etc, etc.
One person likes this, another likes that.
It’s all subjective.
*Some of it is subjective*. *Most* things can be measured and shown to be objectively better or worse.
Ideally, a user should be able to construct the user interface in such a way he or she likes it.
How do they know where to start ?
In all likelihood, while the average used might produce something they find aesthetically pleasing, it’s highly unlikely they’re produce something that’s the fastest for them to use.
You can’t expect everyone to write his or her own window manager.
So why suggest it as an ideal situation ?
What I want to know is: Who invented the System Tray? And why does every bleep-in Windows programmer think their program is important enough to merit a presence there?
As you allude with your misdirected anger towards the System Tray, the problem isn’t the System Tray itself, but the people who abuse it.
To me, the System Tray is usability hazard numero uno on the Windows system (number two goest to the Start Button. Whoever thought of Start->Shutdown should be smacked.)
Where else would you put it ? Why *wouldn’t* you put it in the central system access point, where everyone goes to do, well, pretty much every system-wide action ?
I don’t like the Start menu because, by putting everything in one place, it simply takes longer to find the one thing you are looking for.
The idea is that the most commonly accessed things, or the sections for minor system-wide actions are supposed to go in the top level, and everything else is shoved in the slow-access cascading menus. In Mac-speak, the top level of the Start menu is like the Dock, and “All Programs” is like the Applications folder.
Having a few places to look – that are sensible based on what you are looking for – is a better solution to me. And it’s just harder to configure a nice, usable system if all features are centered in one place. For instance, I really like the Dock (or any of its good replacements) for applications.
Uh, most people find stuff *easier* to find if it’s all centralised in one place.
The System Tray isn’t needed if you have larger icons in the task bar that can be modified by the running program (*cough*Dock*cough*).
Yes, it is, because putting the things that are meant for the System Tray (status icons, clocks, etc) is a waste of space if they get put into something like the Dock. There’s a reason the Mac’s menu bar still has the clock, logged-in user, battery status, etc and doesn’t put them into the Dock.
A sizable chunk of my problem with the taskbar could be fixed if you could just drag a program to another spot. Almost everything else in windows is draggable (why would I want to drag the menu to below the buttons????) yet this isn’t yet. Why not??
I have to agree here. Not making the Taskbar buttons draggable is silly. I was disappointed it wasn’t possible in Windows 95 and remain amazed that the functionality hasn’t been added since.
And then whenever Explorer crashes (often for me in XP) all the icons get reordered (they reverse). What’s up with that?
The Taskbar (and the Desktop) are part of Explorer (like the Mac Desktop is part of the Finder). If Explorer karks it, the Taskbar will go too. The buttons probably change order (do they ? It’s been so long since it’s happened I can’t remember) because when it starts back up it simply scans the running programs to see which one should have a Taskbar button.
The big problem with the Start menu is that each program thinks it belongs there and installs tons of links to useless crap there. So even if you try to keep it trimmed down and have only common links there it will always get out of hand. Plus, it not only has programs but every other concievable thing you would want to do in Windows. Ugh. Enough already.
As I said, the idea is to keep all the common stuff at the top level and mostly ignore the rest of it – like the Dock and Applications Folder.
There is a very good reason that the mac os has a unified menu bar at the top of the screen: fitt’s law. Because it takes advantage of the user’s ability to quickly hit targets at the screen edge, it is roughly five times faster than menus such as those in windows
The problem with the Mac’s single menu bar (and it is an implementation problem, not a design problem) is that – ironically – it sucks for multiple monitors. Ideally, there would be a menubar for each screen for whichever application’s window is in the foreground on that screen.
You are right with regards to Fitt’s law and access times, however.
“In all likelihood, while the average used might produce something they find aesthetically pleasing, it’s highly unlikely they’re produce something that’s the fastest for them to use.”
I do it every day…. by experimenting w/ everything I can about my desktop.
But some people don’t want to do that so that why we have choice. Some choose to have “experts” say what works for them, some don’t.
What I am trying to get at is having variable margins is a GUI designers nightmere. GUI designers LOVE fixed width since it will only then be displayed the same on all client machines.
Fixing element sizes in a GUI is nearly always a bad idea, because it means your UI only really runs well at the screen resolution it was designed in.
If a GUI designer can’t make an interface that can scale between reasonable resolutions (640×480 to about 2048×1600 or so) to look identical, then they’re a very poor GUI designer.
For example, the vast majority of websites out there – particularly the ones using flash – are poorly designed because they are “optimised” for a specific resolution and display poorly at other resolutions. The fact that this breaks one of the core principles behind the WWW seems to be lost on most of the people that made them.
The placement of the start menu in the lower left hand corner of the screen is a usability nightmare.
On the contrary, by placing it in a corner it is following one of the most well understood and basic principles of GUI design. The corners are the second-fastest places on the screen that can be accessed.
The minimize, maximize and close buttons on the window frames are all located on the opposing side of the screen from the start menu, in the upper right hand corer.
If anything, this means those controls are in the wrong place, not the Start button.
This means, all day long you waste time moving the cursor from the upper right hand side of the screen to do windows operations, to the lower left hand corner of the screen to access the menu.
Most people don’t spend their day starting and quitting applications. They start them up, use them for a while, then maybe quit them before starting another (or walking away).
Most people spend the vast majority of their time using only one to three applications, and usually without any multitasking.
Now, yes, the same setup does exist in the KDE default. But, there is a setting where the menu can be placed on one of the mouse clicks. On my setup, the KDE “start” menu is on the middle click, or middle mouse button, so the menu is whereever my cursor is and I do not have to jockey the mouse from opposite sides of the screen all day long. Similar setups can be found in Enlightenment, Blackbox, Fluxbox, Kahakai, Waimea & WindowMaker. It just makes more sense.
It’s faster to access, but more prone to mistakes and – if that is the only method of accessing the “Start” menu – poor for newbies because it is difficult to discover.
For advanced users, however, it’s probably superior (although personally I nearly always use the Windows key to open the Start menu, I don’t click on the button – I suspect that would be nearly as quick).
Good point on the multiple monitors issue. I wonder if any enterprising shareware authors have jumped on this.
Taking this into account, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that a common use for multiple heads is to have one big main screen, where you can use your menus unfettered, and a smaller screen used to store tool palletes and the like.
I do it every day…. by experimenting w/ everything I can about my desktop.
Do you have someone time you with a stopwatch ? Because that’s the only way to be sure. It’s well documented that a lot of stuff that “feels” faster to the user often isn’t by the stopwatch (most keyboard vs mouse usage falls into this category).
But some people don’t want to do that so that why we have choice. Some choose to have “experts” say what works for them, some don’t.
Usually, the experts are right.
“I do it every day…. by experimenting w/ everything I can about my desktop.”
In addition to the more than likely non-scientific nature of these studies of yours, the obvious observation can be made that you are spending time changing how you get work done instead of getting work done the best way from the start.
The idea is that the most commonly accessed things, or the sections for minor system-wide actions are supposed to go in the top level, and everything else is shoved in the slow-access cascading menus. In Mac-speak, the top level of the Start menu is like the Dock, and “All Programs” is like the Applications folder.
No. I said “Start Menu” not “Programs”. The Start Menu is like the Dock, System Preferences, Applications folder (and subfolders), Apple Menu, several Finder features, and a History feature all rolled into one ever cascading mess.
Yes, it is, because putting the things that are meant for the System Tray (status icons, clocks, etc) is a waste of space if they get put into something like the Dock. There’s a reason the Mac’s menu bar still has the clock, logged-in user, battery status, etc and doesn’t put them into the Dock.
But it’s actually possible to put those things in the Dock if you want. Seriously though, I do not have a problem with putting the clock or battery status in the task bar because it doesn’t relate to a program. But putting a mail icon in the system tray when I get a new email instead of having a large modifiable icon display for the mail program in the task bar is poor design. I suppose it’s simply what they had to work with in ’95 but it needs to be better now that it’s ’04.
The Taskbar (and the Desktop) are part of Explorer (like the Mac Desktop is part of the Finder). If Explorer karks it, the Taskbar will go too. The buttons probably change order (do they ? It’s been so long since it’s happened I can’t remember) because when it starts back up it simply scans the running programs to see which one should have a Taskbar button.
On my computers the icons always[i] reorder in exactly the reverse of their previous order when Explorer crashes and restarts.
[i]As I said, the idea is to keep all the common stuff at the top level and mostly ignore the rest of it – like the Dock and Applications Folder.
I don’t have my Applications Folder in my Dock – just a folder with aliases to my most used programs. But the Start Menu is the default central repository for every link that gets installed with an application. And I don’t want 30 unused sub-menus popping up on the screen every time I open up the Programs menu. Can I move those things? Sur, but it’s a pain.
Seriously though, I do not have a problem with putting the clock or battery status in the task bar because it doesn’t relate to a program. But putting a mail icon in the system tray when I get a new email instead of having a large modifiable icon display for the mail program in the task bar is poor design. I suppose it’s simply what they had to work with in ’95 but it needs to be better now that it’s ’04.
I’ll ignore, for the moment, that the behavior of putting an icon in the status area is configurable and can be disabled in Outlook, but let’s look at the taskbar for what it is: a list of currently running tasks. I would argue that the status of those tasks is not necessarily an important function of the task bar, it’s simply a list of the tasks. Additionally, the idea of a “large modifiable icon display” in the taskbar is rediculous, as large icons representing tasks reduce the number of concurrent tasks that can be displayed. An icon-only display has additional problems, but you didn’t specify that much (some people recognize icons more easily, others need the text, and in most cases new users only learn the icons through the text, even if they seem obvious to most users).
The use of the system tray is a problem primarily because it was not always well-defined, and secondarily because developers have taken this lack of definition as an excuse to use it for every crap program in existence. The current development documentation is as follows:
“The Windows Forms NotifyIcon component displays icons in the status notification area of the taskbar for processes that run in the background and would not otherwise have user interfaces. An example would be a virus protection program that can be accessed by clicking an icon in the status notification area of the taskbar.”
Notice that even though I found this documentation listed under the term “system tray icons”, it refers to the system tray as the “status notification area of the taskbar”, and that it should be used for “processes that run in the background and would not otherwise have user interfaces”. In reality, this means that Outlook should not be putting an icon there at all (and this can be disabled in Outlook’s options page). If I could close Outlook and allow it to check my email even though I had closed it, then it would make sense for it to display an icon there, but as long as the listing is on my taskbar, there shouldn’t be an icon in the status area, regardless of the status of the application. Additionally, as some 3rd party applications have shown, it should be possible for Outlook to change it’s taskbar icon and text to reflect that mail has been received, though whether or not it should actually do this could be questionable (changing UI elements are generally considered a bad thing, and the taskbar buttons are a UI element). Currently, 2 of the 3 icons in my status area are simply shortcuts to system interfaces (the mouse and sound), and really are just making up for the fact that these items are sometimes oft-used and are poorly placed from an interface perspective without those icons. The third icon is used to disable a USB drive before removing it, which is something I really shouldn’t even have to do. All 3 of these icons were placed in the status area by MS themselves, not by 3rd parties, and, in combination with MS’ email apps and instant messaging app manage to add to the confusion of developers rather than clarify the purpose of the area.
Examples of things that have improved the taskbar since Win95:
– the QuickLaunch bar (which is basically a work-around for the mess the Start Menu can be at times)
– the WindowsXP/Media Player 9 taskbar integration (ie all major WMP functions like play, stop, next track, etc are available from the taskbar)
– the ability to add additional items to the taskbar fairly easily
(and better drag & drop support for the taskbar and start menu).
On my computers the icons always reorder in exactly the reverse of their previous order when Explorer crashes and restarts.
I just tried this (by killing Explorer and restarting it) and can confirm that exact behavior.
I don’t have my Applications Folder in my Dock – just a folder with aliases to my most used programs. But the Start Menu is the default central repository for every link that gets installed with an application. And I don’t want 30 unused sub-menus popping up on the screen every time I open up the Programs menu. Can I move those things? Sur, but it’s a pain.
Two things have been implemented in the last 4-6 years to solve this problem: the Quick Launch bar and personalized menus (hides unused items in the Start Menu). Every time I log in to one of my computers I usually hit 3 icons on my Quick Launch bar and rarely find a need to navigate the Start Menu. The new Start menu in XP extends this by listing the most-used programs in the root menu.
@Anonymous
“In addition to the more than likely non-scientific nature of these studies of yours, the obvious observation can be made that you are spending time changing how you get work done instead of getting work done the best way from the start.”
Studies? who said anything about studies? Please pull your snobbery out of high chant for a minute and reread what I said.
@drsmithy
I don’t exactly see where you are going w/ this line of thinking. Do you suggest that everything should be approved by self-proclaimed GUI experts? or just that people should not be able to experiment w/ the GUIs of their computers?
One of the wonderful things about the near-ubiquity of Windows in the computing world is that if some Windows “feature” drives enough people crazy, chances are someone will create a fix or workaround for the problem. With regard to the problem of re-ordering Taskbar items, a guy named Paul Vickery has created a Taskbar Sorter Utility which does exactly that. It’s not perfect from a convenience point of view, but it does work, and I find it incredibly helpful. You can find an article explaining Taskbar Sorter Utility, along with the .exe as well as the source code, at The Code Project. The link is http://www.codeproject.com/tools/tbarsort.asp?target=Taskbar%7C… . Perhaps some enterprising soul could review the source code, polish some of the rough edges in the implementation, and create a truly slick version for the greater good of all humanity?
“the Start Menu, the Taskbar, integration with the browser, intelligent assistance, the right-button context menu — all of these are great things for the user”
right button context menu? these existed before Windows even appeared.
“Perhaps some enterprising soul could review the source code, polish some of the rough edges in the implementation, and create a truly slick version for the greater good of all humanity?”
I don’t see a license there. One of the wonderful things about Free Software is the knowledge of what you can do w/ the source code is stamped right on the front. If I were an enterprising soul who would do such a thing, I would pass on that source.
“I don’t see a license there. One of the wonderful things about Free Software is the knowledge of what you can do w/ the source code is stamped right on the front. If I were an enterprising soul who would do such a thing, I would pass on that source.”
I’m not sure exactly what you’re saying, but as far as modifying and using the Taskbar Sort Utility source code in your own application goes, here’s the policy of The Code Project, from http://www.codeproject.com/info/guide.asp :
“Every article on the Code Project has been contributed for free, and all source code, components and code snippets can in turn be used for free. All we ask is that if you find the Code Project useful then we enourage you to share what source code or knowledge you can to give back to the community.”
As I read this, it says you can do anything you darn well please with the source code. What many people do is submit their new version to the original author, who frequently updates his article if he feels the change is an improvement. But this is entirely voluntary.
No. I said “Start Menu” not “Programs”. The Start Menu is like the Dock, System Preferences, Applications folder (and subfolders), Apple Menu, several Finder features, and a History feature all rolled into one ever cascading mess.
Nearly all (if not all) of those functions are directly accessible from the top level of the Start Menu. In typical usage, you need never enter any “ever cascading mess” – just like in typical usage on a Mac I rarely venture into the Applications folder (and even more rarely into any of its subfolders).
But it’s actually possible to put those things in the Dock if you want.
But, by and large, it’s a bad idea.
Seriously though, I do not have a problem with putting the clock or battery status in the task bar because it doesn’t relate to a program. But putting a mail icon in the system tray when I get a new email instead of having a large modifiable icon display for the mail program in the task bar is poor design. I suppose it’s simply what they had to work with in ’95 but it needs to be better now that it’s ’04.
Applications can “flash” their Taskbar buttons and modify their window titles (which, subsequently, modify their Taskbar labels). While not quite as pretty as the Dock’s bouncing icons, it’s functionally identical. Making them larger would simply waste screen space for little – if any – benefit.
On my computers the icons always reorder in exactly the reverse of their previous order when Explorer crashes and restarts.
I’m not privy to how Explorer builds its list of Taskbar buttons, I’m just explaining why an Explorer crash affects the Taskbar.
Incidentally, if the Dock crashes (or you kill it), when it restarts it also has the icons in a different order then they were beforehand.
I don’t have my Applications Folder in my Dock – just a folder with aliases to my most used programs.
This is your rough equivalent of the “All Programs” submenu the Start Menu has by default (ie: the first layer of submenus). If you were to make the same customisation effort in Windows, it would be a folder at the top level of the Start Menu.
If you have icons you keep permanently in the Dock to launch programs from, as I do, then that is the Mac’s rough equivalent of the top level of the start menu (ie: the program list on the left of it when you click on Start).
But the Start Menu is the default central repository for every link that gets installed with an application.
The rough equivalent of the Applications folder.
And I don’t want 30 unused sub-menus popping up on the screen every time I open up the Programs menu. Can I move those things? Sur, but it’s a pain.
You shouldn’t need to. You should make a single folder at the top level of your Start Menu containing your most-used apps, just like you have in OS X. Or, alternatively, add them straight to the top level of the Start Menu (depending on how many there are).
Newer versions of Windows keep your most-run applications at the top level of the Start Menu automatically to make accessing them quicker. This is an *excellent* UI feature and has basically resulted in me not having to make any customisations of the Start Menu at all (other than increasing the number of programs remembered to ten or so) to make starting programs quick & easy.
If you take the time to customise your Start Menu like you have your Dock – or even just rely on its default configuration – then you should rarely experience more than one sub-menu popping up on your screen, let alone 30. I’d estimate I access past the top level of the Start Menu (ie: into all the cascading menus) about once every two weeks – and that’s with basically no customisations whatsoever and simply letting the automated features of the Start Menu (the frequently-accessed list) do its thing. Take the time to do some customisation and accessing past a single submenu of the Start menu should be an extremely rare event.
Spend five minutes doing up a few appropriate Quick Launch bar icons and accessing the Start Menu _at all_ should be fairly rare.
Basically, you’re saying behaviour that is, for all intents and purposes, functionally identical on both platforms is inherently better on one based on the fact that on that platform you’ve taken the time to customise and learn how to use it. This is hardly a fair comparison.
I regularly use – amongst others – OS X and Windows, and have none of the problems you seem to be complaining about regarding a plethora of cascading menues of difficulties finding things in the Start Menu – and thats with dozens upon dozens of submenus under “All Programs”.
I don’t exactly see where you are going w/ this line of thinking. Do you suggest that everything should be approved by self-proclaimed GUI experts? or just that people should not be able to experiment w/ the GUIs of their computers?
No, I’m just saying that a GUI expert is far more likely to be able to design a good GUI than the average (or even above average) end user. The biggest proportion of the “it’s personal taste” aspect of GUI design has to do with how it *looks*, not how it *works*.
I have a great deal of interest in the field of User Interfaces, and I can use that knowledge I’ve gained to look at and use an interface and see where and why it works – or will work – well (or doesn’t). However, I doubt I could use that knowledge to build an interface that would be as efficient for me – or anyone – to use as pre-packaged UIs like OS X or Windows. In my experience, it’s far easier to just learn how the UI works and then use it as it has been designed to be used.
I’m also saying that unless you’re getting someone else to time you before and after you change stuff, then you really have no idea whether or not your changes have had a tangible benefit. Often things that “feel” faster *aren’t*, when actually timed. I can’t remember the exact details off the top of my head, but there are some good examples of this from early research into the Macintosh UI, when they found that mouse access was, on average, much faster, despite nearly every user being observed saying/thinking that using the keyboard was was faster (to do the same tasks – I seem to recall it was something to do with using MacWrite vs something like Wordstar).
Basically, you’re saying behaviour that is, for all intents and purposes, functionally identical on both platforms is inherently better on one based on the fact that on that platform you’ve taken the time to customise and learn how to use it. This is hardly a fair comparison.
Not really. One of the reasons I bought a Mac 18 months ago was because Windows XP couldn’t be configured to my liking. It’s the first Mac I have ever owned.
The Windows XP interfaces for finding things are IMO really wasteful of space and don’t exactly make it much easier to find things. I realize that others might have a different opinion. But it was still humorous to me to see the Start Menu and Taskbar highlighted as great designs because they are really behind the curve.
One of the reasons I bought a Mac 18 months ago was because Windows XP couldn’t be configured to my liking.
That may well be so, but certainly the particular complaints you’ve made here are largely groundless with regards to XP. There’s no need to be regularly accessing the depths of the Start Menu on even a nearly stock standard XP box.
I quite like the OS X GUI. IMHO, 10.3 and Expose have finally, clearly swung the pendulum of UI superiority back to the Mac side. I’ve just spent a month test driving 10.3 on a borrowed PB 667 and while some aspects of it remain a bit chunky and unresponsive, on the whole it’s very good. I plan to buy a 12″ iBook or PB right after the next model update (mainly as a stopgap until the G5 PB appear – although I wouldn’t be particularly surprised to see G5 PBs actually released in the next few months).
The Windows XP interfaces for finding things are IMO really wasteful of space and don’t exactly make it much easier to find things.
I’ve found I need to do a bit of mixing & matching between the “Classic” Windows interface and the XP UI. For example, I ditch the XP skin but keep the new XP Start Menu. I also revert the Control Panel back to the “classic” view (although I can see how the new version would be better for some people).
I’m not sure how anyone championing the Dock could argue about “wasting space”, however
.
I realize that others might have a different opinion. But it was still humorous to me to see the Start Menu and Taskbar highlighted as great designs because they are really behind the curve.
Not really. The only thing that’s appeared which could be convincingly and objectively argued to be better than the Taskbar for switching between tasks is Expose – and that’s a very recent development (the Dock is very poor at matching the Taskbar’s task switching functionality). Added to that, Expose doesn’t make the Taskbar “bad” per se, it’s just that it’s so much *better*.
Similarly, there’s nothing really “wrong” with the Start Menu. Even in its original incarnation in Windows 95, a small amount of customisation could avoid regular forays into the forest of cascading menus – and even they are better than having to go digging through an entire hard disk looking for apps, as you did on Classic MacOS. Refinements like the recently-used list, proper drag & drop manipulation and cascading folders for things like “My Documents” (although why that isn’t generic for any folder dragged to the Start Menu is beyond me) have kept it up to date. Today, by any objective measure, it remains at least as good as all the alternatives. Heck, when I get my next Mac I’ll almost certainly purchase something like Fruitmenu, largely to emulate the one-stop-shopping of the Start Menu.
One should also not forget they were originally developed ca. 1994 – so calling them “behind the curve” today as if they were only released yesterday is a bit unfair. The Taskbar, in particular, was a reasonably new idea/improvement of existng ideas at the time. The Start menu less so – it’s obviously inspired by Classic MacOS’s Apple menu (amongst others) – but IMHO made an improvement on the Mac UI by moving things that had no place being on application menus (like shutdown and reboot) to a single, central location and “centralising” things like “Find”.
As a devil’s advocate, I’ll say that it took Apple ca. 4-5 years to match the Taskbar+Start Menu UI improvements and another 2-3 to make something better (and even then, only arguably better than the Taskbar half of the equation). If it takes Microsoft 4 – 5 years to come up with something substantially better than Expose (ie: Longhorn), there’s no shame in that. Remember, the MacOS UI remained basically unchanged until OS X (and really hasn’t changed enormously there, either), so expecting the Windows UI to suddenly undergo revolutionary change isn’t very realistic, IMHO. It doesn’t need it and doing so would cause more harm than good.
That may well be so, but certainly the particular complaints you’ve made here are largely groundless with regards to XP. There’s no need to be regularly accessing the depths of the Start Menu on even a nearly stock standard XP box.
How hard is it for you to understand that I don’t want to have to move the mouse past options I never use (like Settings, Printers, Run, Search, etc…) to get to the ones I do. This has to do with everything being in one place regardless of how often it is used. Nothing more.
I’m not sure how anyone championing the Dock could argue about “wasting space”, however
.
I am one of those *crazy* few people who love the dock. I have it small, always visible, with magnification. It takes up as much space as a typical windows task bar but does so much more
One should also not forget they were originally developed ca. 1994 – so calling them “behind the curve” today as if they were only released yesterday is a bit unfair.
You’re right. They were released in 1994. And they were quite original at the time. But it’s 10 years later now. And the only real improvement we have is the quicklinks (meaning there are now TWO icons for every running program that you use frequently – one in the quicklinks and one in the task bar) and disappearing menu items. Ten years should have provided more inspiration. But until the Dock I imagine MS didn’t know what to copy
How hard is it for you to understand that I don’t want to have to move the mouse past options I never use (like Settings, Printers, Run, Search, etc…) to get to the ones I do. This has to do with everything being in one place regardless of how often it is used. Nothing more.
It’s not hard at all. The trouble is your argument applies equally to OS X’s Apple Menu, or the items in your customised folder-full-of-shortcuts that you use.
When I hit Start (usually via the Windows key on the keyboard), pretty much every application I’d want to start is sitting right there in a list on the left. It doesn’t gt much easier than that.
I am one of those *crazy* few people who love the dock. I have it small, always visible, with magnification. It takes up as much space as a typical windows task bar but does so much more
I can’t think of anything (functionally – eye candy is a different matter) the Dock does that the Taskbar doesn’t. Except for allowing manual reordering of the items – which *would* be nice to have.
IMHO, that’s not even close to enough to make up for its other failings.
You’re right. They were released in 1994. And they were quite original at the time. But it’s 10 years later now. And the only real improvement we have is the quicklinks (meaning there are now TWO icons for every running program that you use frequently – one in the quicklinks and one in the task bar) […]
Not sure here if you mean the quicklaunch icons that sit directly on the Tasbar, or the list that gets built up automatically in the Start Menu (both are good ideas).
Regardless, you’ll have exactly the same situation under OS X – or any other GUI for that matter – as soon as you start making shortcuts/aliases/links to one item from another place. Again, I think attacking Windows for this “flaw” that’s also going to exist everywhere else is unfair.
[…] and disappearing menu items.
There’s a few more. Drag & drop, cascading menus for the Control Panel and friends, custom toolbars in the Taskbar like the URL and media player, ability to “lock” and “unlock” its position, grouping of application windows/collapsing all window buttons into a single button (like the Dock does – personally I hate this and turn it off ASAP), scrolling
Ten years should have provided more inspiration.
Why ? There’s not a great deal that *needs* changing. Change for the sake of change is not a good thing. The Start Menu does its job quite well – it doesn’t require any radical overhauls, just more incremental refinements.
But until the Dock I imagine MS didn’t know what to copy
The only worthwhile feature that *could* be copied is allowing buttons to be reordered – and given it’s such an obvious thing that they’ve had so long to add already and haven’t (why, I don’t understand) it’s probably not ever going to be.
Regardless, you’ll have exactly the same situation under OS X – or any other GUI for that matter – as soon as you start making shortcuts/aliases/links to one item from another place. Again, I think attacking Windows for this “flaw” that’s also going to exist everywhere else is unfair.
Actually you don’t have this problem in OS X since the same icon is used for the running program as for starting the program. That’s the beauty of the Dock.
I can’t think of anything (functionally – eye candy is a different matter) the Dock does that the Taskbar doesn’t. Except for allowing manual reordering of the items – which *would* be nice to have.
How about modifying the icon (which can be any size you want so they are actually understandable – icons in Windows are too small to be meaningful) to provide additional info? The number of messages in my email shows on my email icon. The date shows on my calendar icon. The number of new messages in my IM program shows in the icon. If an application needs my attention the icon bounces (pretty but no more effective than flashing I suppose). This is important and useful functionality that the task bar does not have.
Actually you don’t have this problem in OS X since the same icon is used for the running program as for starting the program. That’s the beauty of the Dock.
But your example isn’t talking about icons in the Dock (and neither am I):
“I don’t have my Applications Folder in my Dock – just a folder with aliases to my most used programs.”
The icons in your aliases folder are not the same icons that are in the Dock representing running programs – just like the icons in the quicklaunch bar or Start Menu are not the same.
Personally, I’m still of two minds as to whether or not the Dock behaviour in this instance is a good thing. IMHO, the indicator as to whether or not an icon represents a running program (the little black triangle) is too subtle. I think the entire icon should at least be grayed if the program isn’t running.
The other difference between the two situations is that the difference between the UI elements used to start programs and switch to running applications is large, whereas on OS X (ie: icons in the Dock), it is not.
How about modifying the icon (which can be any size you want so they are actually understandable – icons in Windows are too small to be meaningful) to provide additional info? The number of messages in my email shows on my email icon. The date shows on my calendar icon. The number of new messages in my IM program shows in the icon. If an application needs my attention the icon bounces (pretty but no more effective than flashing I suppose). This is important and useful functionality that the task bar does not have.
Applications can modify their titles in the taskbar button, which effectively gives the same functionality. Not to mention straight text is vastly better at communicating anything except basic status changes (eg: “look at me” bounces or progress bars) than (possibly) cryptic icons and sub-icons.
A Taskbar button whose title says something like “Mail [15 New]” gets the point across just as quickly and easily.
I think you’ll also find applications can modify the icons they display in their Taskbar button as well, although, as you say, they’re really too small for that to be useful for more than basic status info.