Ver 3 Weaker graphic design distracts

[ooutline-ml.5.haelo at spamgourmet.com]

> I find the checkboxes more appropriate for typographical documents (as
> they are neither forms on a web page nor system controls), 

I pretty much had the same comment. Yes, they are more typographic
than OS X's checkbox widget, but that still does not mean they are
good enough. There is something subtly "wrong" with the size and
boldness of the status icons in general. They should be diminished
just a tad, either pixel-wise or raising the value of the colour to a
charcoal grey, as opposed to jet black.

In short, it is a step in the right direction, but not good enough,
and overall I feel they are more distracting than OO2 and some other
outliners, even with the improvement to the checkbox factored in.

> and I find
> the selection ring (especially with the expand collapse animation) to
> be must easier to follow/read than the entire-row highlighting that
> used to occur in OO2.  (you yourself say that pure
> verticals/horizontals are harsher on the retina, well the rounded
> corners of the selection oval make selection all the less jarring)

This is true -- to a point. The problem I have is two-fold. I feel the
degree of curvature is too pronounced, and could be scaled back to a
4-6 pixel effect. This would give it a softer feel while not being too
distracting. Secondly, and more importantly, when /multiple/ items all
have this pronounced curve (or even a minor curve) applied to them, it
gets too "busy," for lack of a better term. Visually, each selected
item has the same amount of attention drawing power that a title
should have on the screen. If you follow what I mean, line items
should not have the same distinction as a header. It would be like
using the "chapter" style in Word for every single paragraph. Your
eyes get fatigued by the lack of focus. Line items should be subdued
unless the user specifically wishes to draw attention to them (with a
background colour, or whatever they wish.)

> Overall, OO3 just looks and feels more like a real, professional
> application rather than merely an NSTable on steroids. 

To me, it looks like something that has had a lot of money thrown at
the graphics department, and not nearly enough at the UI department.
It is possible, and preferable, to have a professional UI (and by that
I mean the intelligence of the overall design, including functional
access) which has a subdued graphical appearance. Excessively
graphical UI design, to me, tends to look a bit as if the developer is
trying to hard, especially when coupled with mediocre UI intelligence.

Good UI is an extremely delicate line between subtle and stated.
Non-active elements should be less stated than active elements if the
software design has such a model for data entry. However, they
shouldn't be so understated that their function becomes obscured.

The primary problem with OO3's UI, as I see it, is that everything in
the application is stated to the degree of an active element, and thus
the mind and the eye become confused and fatigued when working for
long durations in the environment.

An excellent example of all this is the drop shadows in OS X. Drop
shadows around windows is the kind of thing that could have been done
horribly if unintelligently approached. Apple put just the right
amount of statement on the active element (the foreground window) and
reduced the amount of statement to inactive elements (background
windows), so that the user has a subtle, yet guided "sense" of which
window is currently active. Just a slight more subtle, and it would be
easy to lose the active window; just a slight more statement on
everything, and it would again become difficult to use the interface
since everything "feels" active at once.

A lot of this stuff is difficult to quantify, which makes critique
difficult as well. It is hard to say precisely what would push OO3
toward a better visual presentation. Suffice it to say, I feel that
nearly every visible element in OO3 needs to be looked at, and
slightly worked on to reach the ideal balance.

Finally, there is nothing wrong with simplicity. It is a tendency for
developers and users of the Mac to make complex displays because the
OS allows /so/ much. I hate to sound like an ideologue which is always
bringing up MORE, but that was a good example of smart UI. The status
cues were just enough to let you know what was going on without being
too overstated. Everything was very simply stated, graphically
speaking, and as a result you could work in the application for days
and not feel fatigued by the interface.

OO3, is to me, fatiguing. It looks really swank on first run, and for
the initial few hours of working in it, it is all right. Extended use,
however, becomes difficult. I never *once* got tired of looking at
OO2. Graphically, OO2 is uglier than OO3, but it does the job without
making me tired of it, and ultimately, that is all that really matters
for an application which is designed to capture your thoughts. On that
score, alas, OO3 fails for me.

-A.