UI designers a bit ticked at OG5

[Nicholas Bastin]

On 18 Apr , 2008, at 14:11 , William Van Hecke wrote:

> Hi Nick,
>
>> I felt like saying something when I first upgraded to OG5.  I  
>> absolutely abhor the interface changes.  OG4 was perfectly usable,  
>> and now I feel like someone turned my world upside down, shook it a  
>> little bit, and then put it back together, but not quite the same  
>> way.  I'm still having trouble accomplishing basic things that I  
>> had down in OG4.
>
> Can you mention any specific tasks that have become more difficult  
> in version 5, even after the adjustment period that's to be expected  
> for a major upgrade? We are careful to change things only when we  
> think they'll be a worthwhile improvement, but the nature of  
> software is that an improvement can take a bit of relearning. If  
> we've actually made certain things worse, I'd love to hear about it  
> so we can try to fix the problem.

I'll try to think more consciously about this as I use it moving  
forward.

>
>
>> I also have a general "feeling" that the interface is much more  
>> dreary as well - the  inspector icons greying out when they're not  
>> applicable is actually really disturbing to me.  I know that isn't  
>> really much to work on, but the general interface just "feels"  
>> clumsy and unfamiliar, and that is not something I'm used to with  
>> an Omni product.
>
> We did consciously tone down the interface from the shiny, candy- 
> like Mac OS X 10.3-like buttons, to fit in better with the  
> admittedly dreary Mac OS X 10.5 environment. We used iWork as our  
> model for designing the new toolbar buttons, and I think they do a  
> good job of being findable without being distracting. As for the  
> inspector icons turning gray when they're inapplicable, that's a  
> pretty concrete usability benefit, and we've been doing it since  
> OmniGraffle 4.

I understand the usability benefit, although it is very dreary.  Also,  
I'm pretty sure that OG4 did not have them greyed out when no document  
was open.  My *initial* impression of OG5 was this grey dreary  
inspector and toolbars, which is, as far as I can recall, not what it  
felt like in OG4.

--
Nick