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Comment on "Satisfying UI Design is Often Illogical"
by Blain — Nov 02
On menubars:

The more and more I think about this, the more and more it sounds like a tempest in a teapot. So we've gone from mostly black on mostly white to black on maybe a light red or barely striped faded green. The smearing affects the background image, not the text itself.

When was this the end of the world? We used to harp about the inability to customize the look and feel, and now we have an easy for-free means on the menubar. The text contrast is less than perfect black and white, but did we do this when we went from 7.6's black on white to 8.0's black on grey?

If anything, this presents a bunch of opportunities for cute little apps. How about a status graph underneath the menu bar, using the entire width of the screen for an activity monitor-like history? Choose the right colors, and they won't affect the black on background visibility.

On folders in the dock:

I've got a silly question, but I can't tell until I upgrade. Does the right-click contextual menu still hold? Does it still show the folder contents?

Why not a small utility that generates an alias with the name " Open as folder"? With the leading spaces, it shows up first on the stack, so its folder icon gives the appearance that the stack is inside the folder, and that icon could be anything you wanted. And with a bit of logic, it or another strategically-placed alias in the folder would appear at the bottom of the fan, reducing the complaints about how far away "Reveal in Finder" is.

Ah, such opportunities!
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