Hot answers tagged mac-os-x
10
What mouse acceleration essentially does is applies a sort of logarithmic scale to the distance moved per milisecond based on the speed you are moving at.
The general concept is that when you are moving the mouse faster, you are trying to move it to a point further away, so acceleration scaled the distance the pointer will move to be even more than you ...
7
With this issue I would suggest to always stick with the way that Safari natively renders the drop down menu. This is what Safari users are already use to, and therefore the behaviour they expect. If a user has a screen with high enough resolution to show the whole list in that manner then you are effectively saving them time from having to scroll through a ...
7
Even if a user is an expert, Fitts' law applies. Fitts' law doesn't refer to finding/identifying the target so much as how long it takes to hit it. Even after a user has developed muscle and spatial memory for where to move the cursor, a larger target that's closer to the cursor is still going to be quicker to hit than a smaller one further away (if only ...
6
I think the answer to whether the destructive "delete" should be the default action or not highly depends on the context in which the dialog occurs. If the dialog was the result of an action that expresses a clear destructive intent, like for example clicking "empty trash", the user probably knows what the consequences are, so it makes most sense to have the ...
5
Chrome does this pretty well; it quietly shows a little up arrow icon over the "menu" icon (oddly I couldn't find an image of this). When you click the "update" icon it lets you know you should restart Chrome to let it update. If you naturally close Chrome at any point it will (very quietly and quickly) update.
Since updates generally aren't so important ...
3
It looks like Arial has been shipping with Macs at least since OS 10.0 was released:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typefaces_included_with_Mac_OS_X
So it looks like all Mac users will see Arial.
for all iOS fonts, a site previously mentioned on SE: iosfonts.com
2
I may not be fully understanding the question; so, I will try to answer with my interpretations of it.
You can place a file in the Dock w/o opening (and minimizing) it - between the application portion of the Dock and the trash can. Just pull the file from Finder onto the Dock like you would anything else. (Did this with an image while writing this answer ...
2
Your idea immediately made me question, why keyboard shortcuts? If all windows are visible, why not the mouse? What you are doing is shifting focus, for input and maybe output (as the window is visible, I'm assuming you are getting partial to complete results of what you want to see).
The main reason for using the keyboard, I think, is that you are using ...
2
Because it allows users to seek targets quickly at the cost of accuracy, which is bearable in a desktop environment because large monitors can accommodate large buttons and icons, increasing target size.
This is a different interaction to that you experience playing an FPS (you mention this as a comparison in one of your comments), where targets are ...
2
Mac does support Copy as well as Cut as explained above. The only difference is how they are perceived.
On Windows and other environments, users need to decide before taking an action whether they want to copy content or move content. Paste is a simple activity that depends on the previous action taken. It has a usability flaw which is evident in an example ...
2
What Apple decided to do with the "Cut and Paste" procedure in Windows is simply to combine them into one action, Move.
Or:
drag = move
option+drag=copy
With OSX the user applies direct manipulation by dragging a file or a group of files between folders, rather than selecting and cutting them out into some virtual un-graspable medium.
Whether it ...
2
This really is a legal issue as much as it is a UX one.
Explicit consent / agreement is the only type that holds up in court. Putting the license in a text document and stating something like "by installing this software you are agreeing to the license" without the user having to explicitly accept it or check a box stating that they have accepted it, ...
1
You can activate Cancel by pressing ESC. All of the Mac OS X dialogs, which has a properly associated Cancel action could be closed with ESC key (with some exceptions).
So, you have ENTER for focused (default) action, ESCAPE for cancel and SPACE for alternative action (if any), which is enough in most of the cases. The only problem I see here is ...
1
Perhaps a better implementation might be to offer the user a timeout period? After all, users are already familiar with this type of feature; "Don't show me again" or "Remind me later", for instance.
Above is a quick mock up of how this problem might be tackled. It allows the users to quickly remove the notification so as not to interrupt their workflow, ...
1
iOS implemented notification pretty well I think by placing a badge on the app store icon. It is not intrusive but is also easily visible. Showing users an update notification when the user actually opens an app is another reasonable option as long as there is "Don't show it again" option. In this case user's activities are not as interrupted because ...
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