I agree with you about this as well as the file navigation, but it's not clear to me if this was a design decision or they just punted to get the first version out the door.
Window-resizing is on by default in IB so they explicitly disabled it. I can't think of any justification for this for a window containing a list with a variable number of rows. Ditto for not being able to inspect folders, and the weird non-selection behavior - why?!
All of this sounds so similar to what was said about Mac OS X when it first came out. The behaviors of the views can be changed, but a lot of the criticism seems to center on the idea of Disco more than the implementation.
True and OS 10.0 was panned for good reason. Remember the Apple icon in the center of the menu that did nothing? And Apple still hasn't completely gotten rid of those pinstripes. We would have been more accepting of these things had the performance been up to scratch; but we didn't get to even OS9-comparable performance (and by that I mean speed) until 10.3. The same goes for Disco, which doesn't offer much other than eye-candy.
I guess that's a personal judgement.
I challenge you to use this app for a while without getting annoyed at the translucency! You subconsciously end up moving the window. I appreciate translucent panels for photo-apps, where you want to see the document underneath, but there's no reason for it in Disco. And to maintain 'consistency', even the About box is translucent.
How do you know that?
Heh, I don't. It was an analogy. But there are so many-disc burning, image-making apps out there that I doubt it's that difficult, especially given that it doesn't support ISO. Plus, the creators made a big deal out of the graphics design in the lead-up to the release (especially that icon). Just check out the website! This is a small app.
Sure, it could get better. But the finder does the same thing for free so what you're paying for is a compromised UI and smoke effects. There are a lot of Windows app like this; for example ZIP programs like WinZip and ZipGenius. They have pretty front-ends, but don't actually do much more than the OS itself (XP has built-in Zip tools).
If they'd used a basic aqua-UI, the reaction would have been more favorable. Again, if this were a widget, I'd have no trouble with it.
by Dan Price — Nov 18
Window-resizing is on by default in IB so they explicitly disabled it. I can't think of any justification for this for a window containing a list with a variable number of rows. Ditto for not being able to inspect folders, and the weird non-selection behavior - why?!
All of this sounds so similar to what was said about Mac OS X when it first came out. The behaviors of the views can be changed, but a lot of the criticism seems to center on the idea of Disco more than the implementation.
True and OS 10.0 was panned for good reason. Remember the Apple icon in the center of the menu that did nothing? And Apple still hasn't completely gotten rid of those pinstripes. We would have been more accepting of these things had the performance been up to scratch; but we didn't get to even OS9-comparable performance (and by that I mean speed) until 10.3. The same goes for Disco, which doesn't offer much other than eye-candy.
I guess that's a personal judgement.
I challenge you to use this app for a while without getting annoyed at the translucency! You subconsciously end up moving the window. I appreciate translucent panels for photo-apps, where you want to see the document underneath, but there's no reason for it in Disco. And to maintain 'consistency', even the About box is translucent.
How do you know that?
Heh, I don't. It was an analogy. But there are so many-disc burning, image-making apps out there that I doubt it's that difficult, especially given that it doesn't support ISO. Plus, the creators made a big deal out of the graphics design in the lead-up to the release (especially that icon). Just check out the website! This is a small app.
Sure, it could get better. But the finder does the same thing for free so what you're paying for is a compromised UI and smoke effects. There are a lot of Windows app like this; for example ZIP programs like WinZip and ZipGenius. They have pretty front-ends, but don't actually do much more than the OS itself (XP has built-in Zip tools).
If they'd used a basic aqua-UI, the reaction would have been more favorable. Again, if this were a widget, I'd have no trouble with it.