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[Bill_DeVille]

That screenshot of Ulysses makes me shudder. Horrible way to display information!

[argoulyle]

@korm

@argoulyle

Some more examples of well-designed OS X apps (according to the Yosemite UX principles) that don’t compromise on features:

This thread has been clogged up, from a small screen perspective, with massive screenshots are impossible to read on a small iPad and iPhone. Makes this thread unusable for those of us trying to read along. So – what is the post, above, intending to communicate? Could the poster just include links to the images?

Apologies. I’ll manually resize the images the next time I upload.

@Bill_DeVille

That screenshot of Ulysses makes me shudder. Horrible way to display information!

Curious as to why you feel this.

[korm]

@Bill_DeVille

Horrible way to display information!

“Dark mode” is what they call it. I agree – very unreadable, IMO, but also very trendy.

[argoulyle]

@korm

@Bill_DeVille

Horrible way to display information!

“Dark mode” is what they call it. I agree – very unreadable, IMO, but also very trendy.

Too bright of an interface hurts my eyes.

Flux helps (turning the screen from blue to dark orange) but having the ‘night mode’ (You can turn it off, or use your own colour scheme such as Solarised) allows me to work at night.

[Bill_DeVille]

Fortunately, trendy styles usually don’t last long.

Presenting information in “dark mode” is poor UI, because most people find it less readable.

Dark mode reminds me of the early days of computing, especially those incredibly ugly DOS displays of green text on a dark background. It took a while before the technology for presenting well-formed black text against a white, non-glare background became available. Please, please, let’s not screw that up. I’m not going to buy a book that has white text on a black background. Or an application that does that.

I don’t like HUDs with light text on a dark background, either.

[argoulyle]

@Bill_DeVille

Fortunately, trendy styles usually don’t last long.

Presenting information in “dark mode” is poor UI, because most people find it less readable.

Dark mode reminds me of the early days of computing, especially those incredibly ugly DOS displays of green text on a dark background. It took a while before the technology for presenting well-formed black text against a white, non-glare background became available. Please, please, let’s not screw that up. I’m not going to buy a book that has white text on a black background. Or an application that does that.

I don’t like HUDs with light text on a dark background, either.

Here’s the light version of the editor in Ulysses 3 in what I call ‘blinding light’ mode:

Resized as per the request by Korm.

It’s more about giving users option.

I understand that most of the audience of DEVONtechnologies’ products are significantly older than the typical OS X/iOS user (I suspect 27+), and as such, more resistant to paradigmatic changes in terms of interface (I get that from the tone regarding the UX changes, ‘dismissing it as a mere ‘trend’’.).

But the failure to engage the new audience/changing demographics/evolving tastes is toxic.

[Greg_Jones]

@Bill_DeVille

I don’t like HUDs with light text on a dark background, either.

Have another talk with the boss about that, please!

[Bill_DeVille]

@argoulyle

I understand that most of the audience of DEVONtechnologies’ products are significantly older than the typical OS X/iOS user (I suspect 27+), and as such, more resistant to paradigmatic changes in terms of interface (I get that from the tone regarding the UX changes, ‘dismissing it as a mere ‘trend’’.).

But the failure to engage the new audience/changing demographics/evolving tastes is toxic.

Let’s see. In age I’m 27 + 56. Have been working with computers since the 1960s and have gone through a lot of paradigm changes; ticked off 12 and stopped counting. First one was the old mainframe interface, involving punch cards to enter a query and riffling though a stack of paper printout for the result. I’ve adopted most subsequent paradigms with enthusiasm.

Some changes qualify as true paradigm changes. Others, such as jelly beans (remember when that was a hot topic in OS X?), widgets &c, not so much.

When I got an Apple II+ back around 1980, dark mode was the default display setup. Switching to a white background was possible, but those old cathode ray tube monitors tended to glare a lot. In the PC world, dark mode was common for about 15 years. When color hit the PC world, colors were often garish and made text unpleasant to read. I remember someone who had puce text on a brown background.

The Lisa and the Mac (1984) introduced WYSIWYG. Then things began to improve. Dark mode began to seem old-fashioned. The most popular word processors are now WYSIWYG black text on white background. Those are optional; I have a friend who is still writing books on an old PC using WordPerfect, white text on a blue screen. His books sell. He’s satisfied.

Would DEVONthink let you write with blue text on an orange background, or black text on a mercury background? Yes, create such a rich text document and save it as a template.

There will be changes in DEVONthink. I think they will be significant, adding both power and simplicity.

[korm]

@argoulyle

I understand that most of the audience of DEVONtechnologies’ products are significantly older than the typical OS X/iOS user (I suspect 27+), and as such, more resistant to paradigmatic changes in terms of interface (I get that from the tone regarding the UX changes, ‘dismissing it as a mere ‘trend’’.). But the failure to engage the new audience/changing demographics/evolving tastes is toxic.

Whoa. Comments like that are what’s toxic. Users have different needs and preferences. So what? Some of us didn’t like the Ulysses example. So what? Why does that merit a direct personal attack on us? Chill out. Show proper decorum.

[Allsop]

@korm

Whoa. Comments like that are what’s toxic. Users have different needs and preferences. So what? Some of us didn’t like the Ulysses example. So what? Why does that merit a direct personal attack on us? Chill out. Show proper decorum.

(After quoting argoulyle). Here, Here.

[gg378]

I understand that most of the audience of DEVONtechnologies’ products are significantly older than the typical OS X/iOS user (I suspect 27+)

Any hard evidence for that? And if so, maybe there is some deeper explanation, e.g. along the lines of different needs for information management at different career stages? Seriously, if youngsters turn down some software because of some hipness factor, that would be sad.

I am surprised that there are such strong emotions here concerning the rather superficial appearance. Sure, Wunderlist might be sucking in people by having something that looks really slick. But aren’t we talking power tools here?

One very good example is Mathematica. In my view, it has an incredibly outdated interface straight out of the late 1980s, but below that surface is the most amazing, powerful math software. If there was a program that had the same under-the-hood power (and not one bit less), but looked fully “Yosemite-compliant”, sure, I might switch. But just for some eye candy, I’m not giving up the tiniest bit of actual capabilities.

The screenshots above show programs that in my view are significantly simpler than DT. They are not good guidance on how to modernize, so to speak, DT. I have been very disappointed with the OmniFocus 2 upgrade. It looks more modern, but for me, it is a lot less user-friendly (might just be my personal way of using it). Examples: My 17" MBP screen can now show in a full size window only about 15 to-do task at maximum. That’s less than what a 11" MBA could do with OF1. What in the world are they thinking? The quick-entry window has lost its pop-up calendar for entering the due date. There are several other UI updates that, I would say, rather objectively decrease usability, but make it look cooler. Frankly, I don’t need that in a productivity tool.

If we are only talking about modernizing the looks of some of the graphic elements and icons, that would be OK. But my experience with many applications and OS X and iOS has been that this modernization goes invariably hand in hand with some dumbing down. And that’s the last thing we need in power applications such as DT. So let’s tread lightly here.

Here is the kicker: After all this talk of “modernizing”, I now go back to DT and look at it, and honestly, I really can’t see anything that would justify such harsh complaints about its looks. I don’t get it. I certainly have some ideas about how, for example, the search panel could be made more user-friendly, but definitely no need for making it prettier!

[pvonk]

@gg,

Well said, I raise my glass to you!

[cgrunenberg]

@gg378

If we are only talking about modernizing the looks of some of the graphic elements and icons, that would be OK. But my experience with many applications and OS X and iOS has been that this modernization goes invariably hand in hand with some dumbing down. And that’s the last thing we need in power applications such as DT. So let’s tread lightly here.

There’s no need to worry. Future versions will be both easier to use and more powerful. Much more powerful

@argoulyle

I understand that most of the audience of DEVONtechnologies’ products are significantly older than the typical OS X/iOS user (I suspect 27+), and as such, more resistant to paradigmatic changes in terms of interface (I get that from the tone regarding the UX changes, ‘dismissing it as a mere ‘trend’’.).

Most of our users are professionals and therefore probably older. And they don’t need a trendy user interface revision every then and now, they need to get their job done. Forcing users to adapt their workflows requires some really compelling new features & benefits, only eye candy doesn’t suffice.

[korm]

I worked in the transportation business for a long time (I’m closer to 28 than 27 ). In most airlines, which were heavily automated before most people knew what that meant, the interfaces that reservations agents and front line employees used on their workstations were extremely terse, in text mode, no graphics at all, and very fast. With not much training, agents learned to speed through transactions. When we introduced GUI interfaces to these populations, productivity and job satisfaction plummeted. There’s nothing magic about slick interfaces. I think I can guess at the “power” that Criss just mentioned above, and I’m glad DEVONtech understands it’s audience well enough to invest in what matters – substance over form.

[T_Smith]

I’m 27+47 and still kickin’. I’ve been interfacing with software for some time (40+ years).

Some publishers appear to make GUI changes that are less intended to enhance usability than to keep a user base stimulated. Fortunately, the present company prefers to make frequent, incremental changes to function so as to enhance user satisfaction. While I don’t understand the utility of most of them (I’m still trying to figure out how to describe what DtPO does), I know they arise from a total focus on utility for a diverse base of users with an unlimited variety of uses.

Devon’s Forum is concrete evidence that the brains behind this suite of products stays in touch with its user base. I don’t see much emphasis on marketing, but I do see a great deal of emphasis on meeting customers’ needs. Tarting up the appearance of the GUI doesn’t seem to be one of them.

[Allsop]

All I can say is that I agree wholeheartedly with the two immediately previous posters; I am coming up to 69 and value functionality, (that means for me the ability to do the job well, consistently and reliably) over looks anytime.

[Bill_DeVille]

Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini is a guru of human/computer interaction design. His advice to developers can be summarized thusly:

Focus on functionality and reliability. If appearance can be improved without affecting those features, fine.

Starting with a focus on appearance will likely result in a dead-end application that will never achieve functionality and reliability. There are too many such examples.

[sander]

New user here (close to 69-24). Close to 30 years of experience in software/online development.

My $0.02: The screenshots examples presented above are nice, but ultimately not as useful (for my purpose). While I love flat design, whitespace and big fonts on web sites, my preference for this type of software is high information density, many keyboard shortcuts, limited scrolling and info presented where you need/expect it.

With regards to the latter my biggest qualm is with the position of the tags bar. I use these extensively. On a large monitor and three-pane view, tags at the bottom of the screen are near-invisible. I’d propose a position above the URL (three-pane) or at the top of the screen.

I would also like to see more options to customize interface colors because it serves a very useful purpose in parsing a screen (e.g. alternating line colors, setting colors for individual tags, folders, items). In an ideal world, I’d be able to switch between different “style templates” (skins) setting colors, fonts, visible column, column widths, etc. for the specific task at hand or the time of day.

Finally, group/subgroup behavior seems ‘illogical’. If I click on a group with several subgroups, in three pane view, I’d expect all of the documents in the subgroup to be listed. I see a total tally, but the only way to see all docs is to open individual subgroups. Related: if I select a (sub)group, the ‘create table of contents’ option should work, assume all documents in that (sub)group are selected and create a (tree) TOC. The web export feature is a little too bare-bones for me (e.g. control over record display missing, aka %content%)

Final note: I’d forego everything on my wish-list if it might affect stability. I’ve used this app for a few weeks and it has yet to crash on me, while importing large sets of documents and not even while converting 700 PDFs to PDF+Text. (I wasn’t that lucky with DEVONAgent Pro)

[Bill_DeVille]

In principle, a group that holds subgroups should not hold documents, but only subgroups. Selecting the top-level group should display no document content. This principle of hierarchical organization can be violated, of course, as documents can be located in the top-level group if the user wishes – but that will somewhat affect the efficiency of the Classify assistant.

There are times when I do want to see a list of all documents that are in the hierarchy. To do that, hold down the command-key and select the top-level group and all of the subgroups within the hierarchy. The documents within the selected groups will be listed. This can also be achieved by scripting.

[terrydev]

With regards to the latter my biggest qualm is with the position of the tags bar. I use these extensively. On a large monitor and three-pane view, tags at the bottom of the screen are near-invisible. I’d propose a position above the URL (three-pane) or at the top of the screen.

+1 oh yes, so much a big +1. Get a crick in my neck looking at those tags.

I would also like to see more options to customize interface colors because it serves a very useful purpose in parsing a screen (e.g. alternating line colors, setting colors for individual tags, folders, items). In an ideal world, I’d be able to switch between different “style templates” (skins) setting colors, fonts, visible column, column widths, etc. for the specific task at hand or the time of day.

+1 here too…