Drawing a blank
Earlier today I was dealing with the crucible that is my inbox, and Exposé and I came to ahead again, which we often do, especially when it involves terminal windows. The thing is, I like Exposé, but ergh...
While I think they could have done better than F9, F10 and F11, and I've actually seen users hit a corner and have no clue what just happened to their windows, I also think it's a worthy innovation -- especially for a single-document-interface paradigm like OS X uses. It often helps me get things done faster, but there is one horrifyingly critical usability flaw: It uses a scrubbing interface.
A scrubbing interface is one where you have to "scrub" the mouse back and forth over things to see what they are, which means the user either has to play a game of memorization or is constantly scrubbing the cursor over items because they either don't remember or aren't exactly sure which each is. Every once in awhile some web designer will get it into their head that this is a pretty trick, and at the moment I'm having aching memories of a magician's website that used face-down playing cards as navigation buttons, and when you put your cursor over one it flipped over via javascript, revealing where that button would take you.
Horrifying, and just about any design or usability class will bash it into your head exactly why it is horrifying, yet as you can see in the screenshot above, here we are with Exposé. If I move my cursor over a window I can see the file name, or if I move among them with the arrow keys, but after a second of hunting I just hit the escape key and found it immediately from the Window menu. The hunting-and-pecking makes Exposé all but worthless when trying to drag content to a window using it if you have a bunch of similar looking windows open, like emails or terminal shells.
I looked and looked, but there doesn't appear to even be a hotkey I can press to, you know, expose all the filenames within Exposé -- if your windows don't have content that is visually distinct, you're just sorta screwed. It all comes down to someone making the decision not to badge the window with its title in some form by default. I can't think of one good reason why that's good UI, but I can see why it might be prettier.
Posted by drunkenbatmanOctober 18, 2005, at 11:23 PM
Comments (32)
Posted by: Blake Seely at October 18, 2005 11:37 PM
Sounds like a good one for Apple Bug Fridays...
Posted by: Alex at October 19, 2005 12:03 AM
I'm not sure I'd call it severe enough to warrant inclusion in a Bug Friday post. It's behaving as advertised, and doesn't represent the sort of half-assed, broken thinking that's been displayed by other Bug Friday posts.
That said, there are times where I wish I had something that would do what drunkenbatman is suggesting.
Posted by: Gus Mueller at October 19, 2005 12:16 AM
I thought this was worthy enough for a friday bug report- http://www.gusmueller.com/blog/archives/2005/9/16.html#1328
Filed as bug #4261726
It's annoying as heck.
Posted by: Roland Dobbins at October 19, 2005 12:40 AM
Have you tried any of the virtual desktop managers, like CodeTek Virtual Desktop Pro? CodeTek gives you the names of windows when you hover over them in the pager.
Posted by: guerom00 at October 19, 2005 12:47 AM
"Witch" is very useful for this purpose.
I know I like it for that... And since it is a freeware, why hesitate !
Posted by: Romain at October 19, 2005 12:52 AM
Witch - http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?section=witch&layout=default - lets you see all your windows names at once. Very good program, you can check out File List and Textpander as well...
I'm a graphic designer and i use Exposé intensively. Most of my windows contain images and other visual things, that makes it easier for me to find a particular window than for you.
I use F1, F2 and F3 by the way.
Posted by: Nick128 at October 19, 2005 02:00 AM
Personally Witch needs a more Exposé-like feature, more like what DB is suggesting. Hit a button and get a list of windows sorted by application.
On the same token, Apple should fix Cmd-` to function more like Cmd-Tab.
Posted by: Carl at October 19, 2005 03:39 AM
Hmm, never noticed this one before, but I guess you're right. They should change it in 10.5. Of course, what I'd really like to see is the ability to right click on stuff to close windows and minimize things and whatnot, but whaddayagonnado?
Posted by: P at October 19, 2005 03:58 AM
This is exactly the same problem as the one I have with the Dock, and IMO the fix is the same: Show ALL the labels when the mouse pointer is over one of the icons (or windows, as the case would be in Expose. I think the reason this isn't so in the case of the Dock is that if the Dock is at the bottom of the screen the labels would overla, but you could show them in a smaller type or change the default Dock placement to the side to fix that and the end result woudl still eb better than the current one.
Posted by: aaron at October 19, 2005 06:45 AM
I've never seen DB's dock so empty. The Alder talk is messing with your mind DB!
Posted by: flyermoney at October 19, 2005 07:08 AM
As Romain, I usually deal with graphic design, so Exposé works better than with an all-text workflow.
My main gripe about Exposé is same-sized windows that align horizontally instead of tiling. The only workaround I have found is to slightly modify the size of one window for satisfactory tiling in Exposé
Additionally, I think that the Exposé preference pane should be a lot more fine-grained, i.e. show window titles or not, alphabetical ordering, application-specific Exposé columns and so forth...
Posted by: flyermoney at October 19, 2005 07:17 AM
As a side-note, I've noticed that Exposé's behaviour regarding drag'n'drop is based on Spring Loaded Folder preferences, notably the time delay and the "press-space-for-immediate-focus" feature:
Example: Show Desktop (or select text); Select and drag text clipping (or drag text selection); Show All Windows; Scrub to Exposé'd text/new mail window; Press spacebar; Drop.
Exposé is a perfectible, but very neat feature.
Posted by: Mike Zornek at October 19, 2005 08:25 AM
I myself have been using terminal more often over the last 6 weeks and back on Oct 1st I came upon a nice tip that showed me how to create bookmarks for my terminal windows. When I choose a bookmark it re-creates the window size, position, background color and even executes a command. The background color really helps me distinguish what each window is for (mysql, svn, webrick, and so on).
For more info and links see:
http://mikezornek.com/archives/2005/10/01/many_terminal_windows.php
Posted by: lookmark at October 19, 2005 08:30 AM
It's not a problem for me (I'm not a text wizard) but agreed, Exposé needs a hotkey to show all file names at once.
Posted by: A Developer at October 19, 2005 09:38 AM
Is this really a problem? If you use multiple Terminal windows, why not give each one a different color?
Honestly, I like the interface just the way it is. This works for 95% of the population. The filename showing up is just icing on the cake for just the situation you describe.
As far as I'm concerned, this is simply not an issue for most people. Changing this is like having the 45-button Windows media remote control versus the Mac's 6-button remote control. Simple is good.
Posted by: Jack Foster Mancilla at October 19, 2005 10:40 AM
Once you have "Exposé-d" your windows, just use your "Tab" key, instead of your mouse.
Posted by: Rory at October 19, 2005 11:22 AM
Changing this is like having the 45-button Windows media remote control versus the Mac's 6-button remote control. Simple is good.
That's a silly analogy, Exposé with file names added to windows would be no less simple, it would just be more useful. I think you're confusing design minimalism with simplicity, they are not the same thing, although Apple often doesn't seem to realise this themselves. For example a four key keyboard might look simpler than the hundred and something key ones we use today but if you had to enter binary codes on it to generate letters and numbers it would be far from simple to use!
Posted by: Peter da Silva at October 19, 2005 11:41 AM
1. I agree with P, the dock could do the same thing. If labels overlap, it can vertically offset them.
2. I agree with DB, the expose windows should all be labelled by default.
3. When all the windows in an app are already tiled, why does Expose move them?
Posted by: Anthony at October 19, 2005 11:53 AM
We are not the norm. I agree that placing filenames on the windows will help distinguish them, yet most users will have multiple web pages open and not Terminal windows. My Dad isn't going to have more than 3-5 windows open at a time because his computer skills never call for more.The novice usage shouldn't degrade the pro usage like that.
Posted by: Jacob at October 19, 2005 12:54 PM
I filed this (hold down a key to see all filenames) as a bug a few weeks ago. Radar 4262351. It was marked as a duplicate
Posted by: Krioni at October 19, 2005 12:54 PM
"My Dad isn't going to have more than 3-5 windows open at a time because his computer skills never call for more."
Fine. Then if there are more than X number of windows, show the names. Let the user specify X in the Expose preference pane, with an original default of 5. That wasn't hard.
Posted by: Jacob at October 19, 2005 12:59 PM
That's window names, not filenames, of course
Posted by: Peter da Silva at October 19, 2005 05:37 PM
Speaking of window names, it pisses me off that iTunes window name is "iTunes", not the name of the current song or "iTunes - Song" or "iTunes - Playlist - Song".
Posted by: Pres-Gas at October 20, 2005 12:24 AM
Actually, I use Desktop Manager. Hell, DB, you interviewed the man (Rich Wareham)!!! You are not using that app? I know it has not been touched much, but just use the deaktops to organize your windows into task areas. Hmmm...I wonder when that app is getting another update?
Posted by: Joshua Bryant at October 20, 2005 03:09 AM
Have you tried Witch? Search for it at Macupdate.com
Posted by: Matthew (Was 2.STL-DX.B11) at October 20, 2005 03:51 AM
Mike: That Telnet window tip is killer. Just sorted out one of my window type issues there and then. Thanks for that.
Posted by: barry at October 21, 2005 12:31 AM
Personally, terminal should be a tabbed environment as should finder... I use expose about once every 5 minutes when im in fornt of my machine....has anyone noticed that expose and flash 8 dont play well together? If you use expose to go thru multiple apps to nav to flash 8 with multiple tabs open you wont get focus, you have to re-expose to gain focus again.... drives me nuts.
Posted by: Peter da Silva at October 21, 2005 11:02 AM
I'd love to try out a tabbed terminal, if I could find one that didn't drive me nuts... because I can't stand looking at Aqua tabs or Metal windows. The old Aqua tabs were bad enough, but the post-Jaguar ones that look like drops of jelly on a clothesline raise my blood pressure, and that's not a good thing.
But if you want to try an alternative terminal, and you don't mind Aqua tabs, iTerm has 'em: http://iterm.sourceforge.net/ .
Posted by: Ben at October 21, 2005 12:05 PM
Ah, but would that make expose look cooler in a demo? No, no it would not.
Asked and answered. Gyar.
Posted by: imad at October 23, 2005 12:55 PM
GNU screen ( /usr/bin/screen ) eliminates the need for tabs and cuts down substantially on the number of open terminal windows.
Not that GNU screen entirely solves this problem (it doesn't help with Mail windows, obviously), but it helps.
Posted by: Peter da Silva at October 24, 2005 04:59 PM
screen also has the advantage that you can detach and reconnect from another session, elsewhere. It's not quite a replacement for tabs, though... I'd like to have multiple tabs each with its own screen session.
We are not the norm. I agree that placing filenames on the windows will help distinguish them, yet most users will have multiple web pages open and not Terminal windows. My Dad isn't going to have more than 3-5 windows open at a time because his computer skills never call for more.