Article:		Creating Easy-to-Deploy Unix Applications for OS X
Subject:		From deployment engineering to GUI design...
Date:		2003-10-25 16:17:26
From:		anonymous2
A nice article! If software (be it Unix or other) is easy to install (and easy to remove...) people will have less hesitation to try it out in the first place. However, being a Mac Application takes more than easy installation. Take a look at your user interface for instance. In a single window you manage to do _everyting_ wrong ;-), making it clear to most Mac users that 'something is different' with your software. I guess that's not what you want. Some suggested improvements: * the window title should be more discriptive. * the fontsize of the message is too small. * you probably should display a warning icon, or your apps icon. * the buttons are in the wrong order, and should be aligned to the _right_ edge. Apple provides Human Interface Guidelines that go into this kind of stuff. Otherwise your article makes perfect sense and I wish every developer coming from (presumably) Linux would take your words to heart. Patrick Machielse

Showing messages 1 through 4 of 4.

• From deployment engineering to GUI design...
  2003-10-26 04:39:24  roseman [View]
  
  
  Hi Patrick, thanks for your comments and appreciate the suggestions!
  
  Having been developing Mac software since 1989 I'm somewhat familiar with the HIG. ;-) Were this coming up as a dialog in the middle of using the program, I'd certainly agree with all your improvements, but instead its the sole window launched at start, and meant to hang around fairly low-key. That it's different from dialog windows is therefore good (I know everytime I see a dialog my first instinct is to do what I can to deal with it and move on, which is exactly what we don't want to see happen here).
  
  Our users have been actually quite happy with that interface and the way it works for them... never gotten comments about it being 'different'. I think that's the difference when you use it in context versus just see a screenshot in the middle of an article!
  
  Mark
• From deployment engineering to GUI design...
  2003-10-26 15:00:49  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Mark,
  
  I have a theory why you never get complaints; your customers are all Unix users too ;-) But seriously, if this panel is the only interface of your program (i.e. no menu bar) you could leave the icon out, and the title would even be o.k (but not great...). But the font size is really too small, and the alignment of the buttons is a clear give-away.
  
  What if you would combine the start and stop buttons into one button with alternating title, like in the 'sharing' panel of system preferences? It may seem like nitpicking, but in my view this is really what Macintosh is all about: usability and paying attention to details.
  
  Patrick
• From deployment engineering to GUI design...
  2003-10-29 05:18:00  shryn [View]
  
  
  Patrick,
  
  As a long time Mac user, who has just started to delve into the mysteries of UNIX , I chose to recommend to my school board ProjectForum over the free, but complex to install and run OpenSource solutions. As much as I enjoy learning PHP, mysql and other UNIX based software, I usually don't have the time to download, install and configure all the different packages.
  
  ProjectForum's server interface is, as stated, just something to fire up and have in the background, out of sight. Where PF shines, is in the front-end user interface, which as it is dependent on a browser, doesn't have to adhere to Apple's interface guidelines.
  
  So I must agree with Mark's article and hope that more developers port UNIX software solutions to the Mac with easy to install and configure packages.
  
  Stephen Hryncewicz
• From deployment engineering to GUI design...
  2003-10-27 03:15:03  roseman [View]
  
  
  Far more Mac (and Windows) customers than Linux or FreeBSD, as one would expect (it's not a port of a Unix app, but was built cross-platform from the ground up). Again, very much appreciate your suggestions for improving the UI.