

The Anti-Mac Interface (1996) - gnosis
http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html

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paulgerhardt
The paper features Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini's 1993 Sun film as a model Anti-Mac
interface.

Tog, ironically, was one of Apple's first usability consultants from 1978 to
1992, designing many familiar elements including hierarchical menus, time-out
dialog boxes, and the "package" illusion for software application folders.

See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Tognazzini> and
<http://asktog.com/starfire/>

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some1else
A lot of what's mentioned is already brought to the Mac with Automator and
QuickSilver. Voice controlled QuickSilver would completely blow my mind.

Direct manipulation however, will remain deeply rooted in the way we interact
with computers, because we often deal with a single object. Is a greater
problem in the lack of flow between applications, which is IMO the most
evident distinction between web and desktop apps.

Standard input/output piping worked great, and we're seeing a lot of it
resurface in the way we're able to mine and mash data on the web these days,
but concepts that would mimic REST on the desktop just don't seem to have
taken off in time.

Interesting article in many other respects too.

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lotharbot
From the discussion of WYSIWYG interfaces:

> _"For example, a word may be printed in italic font for emphasis, as part of
> a book title, or as part of a quotation, but the specific meaning is lost if
> it is represented only by the fact that the characters are italicized....
> [Markup languages can] preserve the semantic meaning inherent in the text
> and have rules for converting the text and semantics into their appearance
> on the printed page."_

A lot of technologies (like CSS and XML) have taken exactly this approach.
Semantic meaning is stored with an object, and the particular appearance can
be converted across an entire document with a single change. I see
"readability" [0] linked from HN fairly often; it's a technology that
leverages this quite well.

[0] <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

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pavlov
Completely OT, but I love the icons in Figure 2. I'm getting a serious case of
early '90s nostalgia just looking at them.

~~~
tjr
"Say boy, check out that icon! Mwahhh, that sucker's huge!" (Tiny Elvis for
Windows 3.1/95/NT)

