Now that I’ve figured out how to get rid of the Spotlight window at the bottom and changed to the smaller floating window, I’m happier. Much less BLACK. I’m still on Tiger until the SuperDuper upgrade is ready.

It almost astounds me how they can get it so right with Quick Look and Cover Flow and so very wrong with the above.

Perceptually it’s necessary for a reader/user to ’switch-gears’ when moving their eyes from a light background with dark text to a dark background with light text.

Functionally this slows the decision-making process for the user/reader. This is also one of the reasons you will almost never see an ad or article that does this. Entire articles or websites may incorporate dark backgrounds with light text, but not simply part of an article or website.

Understandably you (and other developers) are trying to maintain a consistency of design with Apple, but… Apple sometimes likes to look ‘different’ rather than function well. And sometimes even their looking ‘different’ does not always end up looking better… just different. (I’m a long time Mac user and wouldn’t change… but this is a simple fact… as you know.)

You certainly won’t change your appearance because of this observation (I know) but I thought never-the-less that I would bring this to your attention.

Sometimes masks function very well… as in the case of the crop mask in Photoshop. But this is more the exception than the rule… since usually they become more of a distraction than a focusing agent (unless blanketing the entire background as Photoshop does).

Just keep making DFX… no matter what it looks like. <>

You were WAAAAAAY ahead of me!

I now see that you have given us the option in the preferences to only have the toolbar attached to the side as before.

Thanks again for the great app and forgive me for not going through all of the preferences before posting. It’s just that in the past we never had this option before so I wrongly assumed there would be no such choice now.

Design 101…

Form ALWAYS is suppose to follow function.

On occasion Apple gets it the other way around and tries to make something look ‘pretty’ without regard to the fact that the function has become subservient.

In the case of version 4 of DFX you have also gotten it backwards…

I have an MFA and really do understand design (re. click on my link if you need to for my bio).

Again… I find DFX absolutely essential and I am posting this ONLY as a necessary (IMHO) criticism.

The dark gray surround is so large that it makes DFX less functional. It now requires moving/resizing the DFX window to gain access to some of the windows that one would click on to save a file almost every time. (FWIW I use three monitors so it has nothing to do with limited desktop space… because often the windows I want to save to are in my center monitor and directly in back of the DFX save window.)

Personally since this is a GREAT utility and adds an enormous ability to make ones work much easier… for the life of me I cannot understand how you would be more concerned with a ‘balanced’ form-factor (i.e. huge surround-mask to make the ‘buttons’ on the right not feel like they’re tipping the design and weighting it too heavily to the right)… than a more functional application.

Trust me… most (all?) of us that use this for the purpose of making our day more productive and fluent… don’t care that much about what DFX looks like —if it means that we have to loose functionality as a result. (I would have added numerous exclamation marks if I thought you wouldn’t interpret that as screaming.)

Please remove the HUGE surround-mask.

Your post (above December 9th at 1:21 pm) would be much better.

Design 101… Form should ALWAYS follow function.

Land Rovers aren’t the prettiest SUVs around, but they’ll probably out maneuver anything else out there… except perhaps occasionally a Hummer (also not the prettiest SUV).

The ‘bezel’ option actually works much better on large screens (IMHO), while the smaller palette is good for small screens. Everyone will have to give it a try in actual practice - tightly cropped screenshots don’t really let you get a feel for how it works. When you’ve got a small-ish file dialog on a large screen, the bezel helps focus your attention immediately on the file dialog. Also, the fact that it surrounds the dialog looks much more balanced (again, try it on Wednesday and you’ll see what I mean). And if you don’t like it, well, I guess it’s good that I give you a choice, eh?

Apple’s “HUD” style is basically black and white icons. Personally, I think the simplicity and uncluttered look is a welcome relief. I’m not a fan of photorealistic icons. Icons are supposed to be easily parsed representations, not photos, as Daniel Drew Turner pointed out in Apple Gilds the Lily on Salon years ago.

Transparency: Yes, it’s a step backwards in human interface (so is Apple’s design of the Dock, but I digress). It actually makes things more difficult to read, so why is this a good idea? Because it looks cool. It sells software. All the hip kids are doing it. There, I said it - I feel better.

I actually spent a lot of time tweaking things to optimize usability with the translucent DFX 4 interface - the only thing I’m still not happy about are the menus when running under Tiger (Leopard actually blurs the background underneath menus, which is an amusing mea culpa from Apple - they’re pushing the GPU even more to minimize the reduction in usability caused by Leopard’s GPU-driven translucent UI).

Sheets: I’d love to disable them for you Eric, but I have a feeling the hacks necessary to preserve the modal event handling in window+sheet pairs would be a nightmare. Coming in the back door there seems like a Bad Idea. And believe me, most programmers would also love to ditch sheets - the API is a pain compared to the simple, single function call required to throw up a modal alert. But I have to say that UI-wise, sheets generally improve focus and understanding - the only problem is the one you cite - that you can’t see what’s under the sheet. Maybe we just need a little slider on the edge of the sheet that increases its transparency

Thanks for the food for thought, Eric. You’ve given me a few more things to consider for future work as I ready DFX 4 for release. Now it’s back to work with me!

I’m not sure that I mind “monochrome” icons, but note that the term implies a *range* of single colors, not “bi-colored.” The icons you’re using are essentially of TWO tones. Ya, there is the gradation in the monitor image, and a “mid” gray in the Mac Face, but perceptually they are BLACK and WHITE. You may have to design new icons that will work well with the “HUD” scheme, not just convert the existing ones.

Now, a comment about Transparency In Interface Elements.

I hate, hate HATE it!

While composing an email, if I pull down a menu, I gain nothing and loose quite a lot by having a dim shadow of my message leaking through into the menu I’m trying to read. Who thinks that spinning a mass of spider webs BETWEEN me and what I’m trying to attend to, is in any way useful?

When I activate a menu, I want to be able to clearly read… (surprise) THE MENU! I’m in Menu Reading mode now… I’m not *interested* in seeing the text that was on the page.

Similarly, in an Open or Save dialog, I do NOT want to have dim phantoms of the interface bleeding through into what I’m trying to do in the Save dialog. The idea is crazy!

Conversely, I also hate “sheets!” (I don’t suppose you have any control over this, but if you do, PLEASE allow me to set my open or save dialog free!)

“Sheets” may make it easier for beginners to understand which document the active dialog is associate with, but me? “Sheets” drive me crazy!

I often find myself saving some document or other and then thinking something to the effect of “what was I just writing?” Well, when the damn sheet is hanging resolutely over JUST the information I want a peek at, and it is really irritating!

Thank you.

I definitely like the image you just posted better than the image at the top of this page.

And again… you would have to deliberately make it bud-ugly for me to not like using it… though I still would of course.