Comments on: The Mac OS X Drawer: A Badly Designed User Interface Element

By: resuna

resuna — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 01:45:52 +0000

Thankfuly, Tiger Mail has dumped the drawer. Hopefully other applications will follow suit.

By: Linda

Linda — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:41:56 +0000

Regarding the drawer as a replacement for palettes? I don’t see it. I don’t get confused by "which palettes go with which app" — because only the palettes for the foremost app are visible on screen. When Photoshop is foremost, only its palettes display; when I switch to Illustrator, PShop goes away; when I switch to XPress, the Adobe apps hide their palettes and only the XPress palettes appear. Maybe I’m not using the right apps to have palette wars?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 06:30:12 +0000

How in the hell do you dismiss sheets as a bad UI feature then praise drawers
for the relationship they imply between the contents of the drawer and the
window they’re attached to? That’s precisely what sheets do!

As for sheets being so large that they obscure the window, how small do you
have your windows set? A typical "You haven’t saved this document, do you
want to save it?" dialog is pretty small, and unless you have purposefully
expanded the file browser in the "Save as" dialog, it’s no bigger. Sheets do an
excellent job of unmistakably linking a dialog to a particular window.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 11:54:41 +0000

I’m afraid the "cinema display" question is an easy way out. I don’t have one,
and I don’t know many people who do. So you’re saying that the software is
designed only for those who can afford the best hardware? That’s not how
you design software.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 01:47:53 +0000

How does a man who complains about wasted space end up writing on his
site that narrows replies. One vicious thread with replies to replies, and on
and on would make comments pretty narrow, but I am sure this will be
solvedif it ever becomes an issue. Oh wait! Maybe the software engineers at
Apple will make changes to their apps. Maybe the HIG will change.

What Kirk never did, which seems sloppier to me than a drawer drawn off the
right sideof the screen, is address the core issue raised by his thesis: Is it the
design or the implementation that is at issue? The iCal example suggests that
it i an implementation issue. If that is the case, the problem is not with
drawers but with designers.

By the way, have you noticed how much horizontal real estate most Mac users
have these days? Cinema displays and Powerbooks make the space used for
drawers all but irrelevant.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 04:33:11 +0000

How about sliding the sheet up instead of down on small windows?

I like sheets, I like that you can have several windows with their own dialog
tied to them…

And I like drawers too… they impress your windows/linux friends (and they
don’t need to know they’re not so well designed, do they?)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 02:41:50 +0000

The trouble with Drawers is not with the Drawer itself it’s with the API. The developers have a bit too much freedom to screw up the drawer implementation. At the same time, I am a developer and I love options and flexibility. It is a catch-23. It is the developers responsibility to implement the drawer properly.

The evidence is in the different applications and how their Drawers behave differently.

By: jhaffner

jhaffner — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 22:17:30 +0000

Just a short gripe. I don’t mind the drawers as much as I mind that they are generally not accesible via the keyboard.

This is especially annoying in Mail.app. I really miss the ability to navigate through the list of mailboxes via arrow, tab, or even first letter (ala Eudora’s mailbox window). It wouldn’t be so bad if mailboxes were a ‘nice-to-have’ feature of the application — but it really is essential to be able to move around your list of mailboxes!

Best Regards,

John Haffner

—
Don’t worry, it’s out of control.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 16:08:04 +0000

…And everyone else on his ‘side.’

It feels great to find what you’ve been feeling for long, *accurately reflected*
in an article and other people’s opinions.

I believe the Finder/iTunes/iPhoto solution is the best – yet imperfect…
Why they won’t get it right, is a mystery to me – Btw, it could easily be
implemented with all the pros of a drawer, but without its cons. So why mess
around?!

I wish Apple listened!

Alberto – A Spaniard in Glasgow, Scotland.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 02:59:35 +0000

The problem is that some developers (including those within Apple
sometimes) feel that they should use drawers and sheets or their program
won’t be OS X’y enough if they don’t make use of them.

Oh god. The real problem are the irritating Mac fanboys who will
denigrate an otherwise excellent Mac app only because it doesn’t use sheets
or drawers. Like it’s not enough of a “real Mac app.” It’s this kind of
puritannical, cultish prejudice that makes Mac users look bad, and they are
the people who will implement drawers and sheets without understanding
what they’re really for.

This thread, by the way, is a good discussion on what drawers and sheets
are really for. Thanks.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 00:35:45 +0000

It can be confusing to (mentally) associate palettes with particular applications if you have several applications open.

Most apps, at least the well-behaved ones, hide their palettes when the app is not in the foreground. So I don't see how this is an issue.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 21:35:22 +0000

One of the WORST interface elements I find is the "Sheets"
- OK sometimes it’s OK,

But when File => "Save As" – It hides what I am trying to save.

Often I want to use some content to decide the filename
to I have to cancel, decide the file name then choose Save As again,
then type the file name.

I find this awkward – I would prefer the Save As dialog not to obscure the
content so much. Yet the clear association of this dialogue with the file is an
asset.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 21:25:42 +0000

Whew, thank you! I’d forgotten how to do that.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 21:04:32 +0000

My feelings exactly. At first, I thought it was a good way to work with BBEdit,
since I often have multiple documents open. But the Windows palette also
shows FTP browsers and shell worksheets, making it much more practical.

This said, it’s possible that BBEdit updates the program to include these items
in the drawer.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 20:21:22 +0000

I agree with the articles critics on drawers. I’ve never liked them, they allways seem like a hack, an unfinished part of the application. When I uppgraded to BBEdit I’ve read about the drawer and I used it alot at first, thinking this was good. But then I realized that it wasn’t good at all (for example I couldn’t use "Exchange with Next" command). Going back to my previously way of working with windows in BBEdit, using the Windows palette, was much more effective.