dekeBytes: Palettes Aren't Panels (Vampires Aren't Zombies)

With the release of its CS3 products, Adobe has once again ever so slightly shifted its official marketing and documentation language. The newest casualty? Palettes. Palettes no longer exist. The word "palettes" has been struck from the Adobe lexicon. Those things that were palettes are now "panels."

I probably shouldn't care. But after 20 years of writing, I've come to believe that words have meanings that transcend software updates (if such a thing is possible!). The word "panels" is already otherwise occupied, and panels aren't palettes. Here's my take on it:

• When a dialog box contains too many options to fit on screen at once, the developer tends to break the options off into logical groups that are clustered in separate panels. The panels are fixed inside the dialog box and they remain on screen only so long as the dialog box is open.

• A palette is a subset of options that may remain on screen indefinitely. You can move a palette. And it floats above the document that you're working on.

In CS3, you can organize palettes into anchored docking panes, which locks them in place. But that doesn't make them panels. They remain on screen indefinitely, you can move them, and they float above the contents of your document. They are still palettes.

The only application that gives me pause is the Bridge. (I call it "the" Bridge because it spans the CS3 applications and joins them together, just like a bridge. Adobe prefers just plain "Bridge," but if you ask me, that's a nickname for Bridget. And Bridget is no name for a digital asset manager.) In the Bridge, a palette can never float above the contents of the document window and your options for movement are limited. So in this one case, I resign myself to "panels." But I could be wrong. There's a good chance I should be calling them "palettes" in the Bridge as well.

How does shifting the name "palettes" to "panels" help anyone? The argument goes, "panels" might make Dreamweaver and Flash users -- many of whom are understandably worried about their software's assimilation into the enemy's Borg -- feel less threatened and more at home. But I reckon, as long as you've been assimilated anyway, you might as well embrace the good things that assimilation has to offer. If you get bit by a vampire, for example, you get to wear cool capes and stay up late. If you get gobbled up by Adobe, you get better software design. So I'm all for sticking with Adobe's existing language where precedent and industry-acceptance are in its favor.

You get where I'm coming from? Just because a vampire switches to Abercrombie & Fitch and eats the occasional brain doesn't make it a zombie. A thing is a thing. And these particular things are palettes.