[IxDA Discuss] PC to Mac port

[John Grøtting]

Hi Cynthia,

There are some points that I would mention that go to some of the  
conventions of the Mac OS that have sometimes been poorly translated  
in earlier applications.

Floating palettes
 From Windows95 there is a legacy of applications that have all  
palettes within the window of the main application. So that, for  
example, a tool palette when it touched the border of the application  
windows would be cropped. This is in contrast to a Macintosh  
application, where there isn't a container window for all windows in  
an application. This concept is taken further, when you notice that  
usually only a key window is visible from non-active applications.  
The key window is often the "workspace" window and not any of the  
tool palettes.

Tabs
Windows is known for windows with tabs (and tabs within rows of  
tabs). Macintosh users are used to applications that have no more  
than one level of navigation within their dialogs. There are  
exceptions, but they should be avoided.

Direct manipulation
The concept of direct manipulation is very Mac. Look for  
opportunities to further this notion. Make objects scalable, by  
direct selection and dragging of manipulators.

Simple language
Dialogs and alerts need to avoid any cryptic technical terms. Make  
sure that all text is easily understood by the typical user of your  
application. Avoid any reference to computer terms and secret codes.  
If there is an error, be polite, explain the errors in layman's terms  
and suggest alternatives. For example, if a document is too large for  
the printable area of the paper selected, don't talk about overrun  
errors, but do suggest that they either adjust the document size or  
select another paper size to print on.

Copy/past, drag & drop, etc.
Mac users expect that all applications will work seamlessly with each  
other without some odd data translations. If someone wants to paste  
text or images into your application from another one, then they  
should be able to copy in that other application and directly paste  
into yours. The same goes for drag & drop. If, for example, an image  
can be added by dragging the image into your application window from  
the desktop or from a web browser, then they will be quite happy.

John Grøtting

Grøtting + Sauter
Barnerstr. 14B
22765 Hamburg
Germany

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>
> If you're a Mac user, I'd appreciate hearing rants and raves about  
> software
>> you've used that was originally written for the PC. What worked  
>> well? What
>> drove you crazy?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Cynthia
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