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Comment on "Satisfying UI Design is Often Illogical"
by theotherstevejobs — Oct 31
All of what you said - fine. I have no qualms with it.

Where Siracusa (and i) have the issues are with not violating what should be the first law of UI redesign... do no harm.

The gripes are with the patently wrong (not bad, not "not a good idea"... but *wrong*) changes made to the Dock - specifically, the way dock folders are displayed. That was harm. That was not just change for the sake of change - it was harmful to the UI.

I'm not going to quibble with the 3D dock. 3D or 2D, can i use the icons effectively - that's all that matters. But i'm going to quibble that its reflectivity causes harm because it makes things less clear. It makes it more difficult to see what is happening. I can't believe that they didn't take this opportunity to make Dock icons inticate operations in the same way they did for toolbars - a la, the dark lines and graphic-based indenting to indicate this is the selected icon.

Make changes for the sake of keeping things fresh. Fine.

Do no harm.

They have done great harm to the Dock. Its not acceptable when Microsoft does it (transparent window borders and menus) and its not acceptable when Apple does it.
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