Same thing goes for the “collapsable palette” mode. The close should be on the left (on the outside). Think about drawers on your real-life desk; where’s the drawer knob, on the inside or the outside of the drawer?

[Andrew says] Now that’s what I call innovation. Consider it done.

Then I guess they must hate Apple for doing Boot Camp, not to mention Parallels….

Still, while the planet melts down, it’s very gratifying to hear that Mac users can at least find something to do to fill their lives

The crucial point here is that *even if Win or Mac OS UIs were perfectly consistent and/or superior* I think Adobe would still create and promote its own separate UI conventions in order to abstract the underlying OS: after all, this is the principal value proposition.

Although you may not represent the CS3 team, I therefore find your argument either historically misinformed or disingenuous.

[Andrew says] I agree that Adobe has a long history of not being completely consistent with the Apple guidelines, though I’m arguing here is that such a thing is impossible for any real application. I wasn’t working at Adobe when the decisions were made on earlier products so I can’t say what the actual motivations were. You apparently have no such compunction, and then go on to accuse me of being disingenuous because I don’t agree *in advance* with your intepretation of the motivations behind those facts? Sorry, don’t buy it.

I do agree, of course, that Adobe wants Apollo to be successful, though I wouldn’t agree it is trying to be “the third platform”. We’re really trying to extend the existing third platform, the web browser, onto the desktop. As evidence, I’ll point out that all of the Flash/AJAX/Flex UIs you point to exist today on the web without Apollo – no new UI conventions required.

Andrew’s right that UI consistency has long been dead. Microsoft never followed even within their own Office products, and they still don’t within Office 2007. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try. Perhaps the complaint of users is mnenomic; that is, how many different ways do I need to remember to do similar tasks inside of Adobe (or whomever’s) products, while understanding that Microsoft will do it one way, Apple another within their OS, and Adobe their way.

What you don’t want is to see a variety of UI elements within the same company’s products.

[Andrew says] I completely agree, very well put.

[Andrew says] Apparently a chiropractic degree also comes with a psychic ability to read my innermost thoughts and motivations. Who knew?

We seem to live in a world of rapid change, and the stay in front is to do something different with the user interface.

Ill use one of those examples, imagine video games as today you see so many different UI’s. Regardless of the genera you will see differences within the series as each new installation usually offers something new.

At this point of my life I realize that someone told the compaines to keep the UI’s Fresh, but stay within a certain moral code if you will.

An example of this moral code, have you every pulled up a OS and saw all text and menus were upside down by forced default? Have you ever seen perhaps a adobe app with the file menu at the bottom that opens up going up in a reverse order?

Or maybe some text going 90* arcs?

Probably not cause somewhere theres a moral code of do not’s its written in stone somewhere and it only appears when someone thinks to do the opposite.

With that said seems sometimes in the middle of the night someone comes down and etches out one of those codes in its secure location.

Who is doing this you might ask?

I think its society as a whole changing what is considered acceptable and what is not. Perhaps I am wrong but I hope not, a inflexible society only heads to the ages of darkness.

[Andrew says] Nicely put.

Funny that Maczealots whine about UI inconsistency. Meanwhile they are happy with the mess in OS X (metal window, unified window, pinstripe window whatever). It’s okay because it’s blessed by Holy Steve…

Yes, because no “Maczealot” has ever complained about UI problems in Apple applications before. Ever.

http://daringfireball.net/2003/02/inconsistencies
http://daringfireball.net/2003/05/interface_details_itunes_vs_safari
http://daringfireball.net/2007/03/deal_with_it

Whoa, how did those three links to DF get in my post? I wonder if they’re relevant!

Actually, the first link has a great paragraph that ties this whole thing together:

It’s not pedantry that inspires Mac afficionados to gripe about Apple’s violations of the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. It’s not that the HIG is simply a list of rules to which a bunch of us nerdy Mac experts demand blind adherence only for the sake of following rules. It’s that the guidelines outlined in the HIG form a cohesive whole describing a philosophy of design.

[Andrew says] I appreciate the intelligence and passion with which you argue the case. I agree that many Mac aficianados have called Apple on their UI inconsistencies in the past, Gruber and John Siracusa being two of the more notable ones. That said, your quote really captures the whole issue for me: the consistency argument is about a philosophy of how things “should be”, and not about how things actually work in the real world. Can you show me any studies which show an actual end user benefit to this level of consistency or is the belief purely religious? Remember that it is never a good idea to discuss theory without also considering practice – if we lived in a world guided solely on philosophy then we’d all be living in a purely socialist state, right? (Does this count as an invocation of Godwin’s Law? If so I apologize in advance.)

How about “Extending the Interface”?
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGHIDesign/chapter_5_section_4.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000353-CJBBHGCD

“People rely on the standard Mac OS X user interface for a consistent, predictable user experience. Don’t copy other platforms’ user interface elements or behaviors in Mac OS X, because they may confuse users who aren’t familiar with them.”

“If you need to extend the interface of Mac OS X, the best place to begin is with the already defined visual and behavioral language. Think about what the appearance communicates to people (the look) and how they expect the element to behave (the feel).”

I hope you’re not trying to argue that close buttons are not already defined within OS X’s “visual and behavioral language”.

For me, the real point is that this idea of UI consistency was always a myth, and the myth is now dead, and we can instead talk about whether or not applications are actually usable instead of measuring their conformance to the myth.

I’m reading this as “We’re not adhering to this document that is generally treated as a consistent standard. We are not the first person to do this, so we shall call the whole point of the document ‘a myth’, rather than actually trying to conform to the document.”

I could design an application with the scroll bar on the left, the close button on the right, and purple text on a green background. Then, can I go and shout down the HIG because it’s just a myth?

It wasn’t the web that led to HIG violations; it’s developers who think it’s okay to violate it because someone else did it first.