Membranophonist’s Ramblings

Mac OS X’s DVD Player allows users to set the title and a jacket picture for each disc. Some DVDs specify the jacket picture already, as in the case of Samurai Rebellion. These two pieces could be used to better present the DVD on the desktop.

1. Disc Info
   
2. Jacket Picture
   

Put them together…

In the Now Playing table view, I’d like the total length of the album displayed in a hidden row that only appears when scrolling beyond the track rows:

After releasing the screen, the total row is hidden again.

Unlike addresses displayed in contacts’ details, locations added to calendar events cannot be tapped to display a map of the location.

The current event details screen:

Slightly tweaked to indicate the location is actionable:

Location field input is not structured, so Calendar would simply pass whatever text it contains to Maps as the search string. Some heuristics around the text would be nice; if I typed “Joe’s house” in the Location field and one of the attendees is a contact named Joe Smith, the input string could be replaced by Joe’s home address.

Being a musician and big proponent of metadata, I frequently add musician credits in the Comments field of music tracks. Like lyrics, comments could be displayed atop the album cover image in the Now Playing view.

I want to be able to add contacts, events, and tasks to Contactizer Pro without having to move to its space (virtual desktop), open a New Thing window, then move the New Thing window to the space displaying the information I want to save. That is a lot of overhead just to arrange your windows to begin inputting information. Simple task additions are already possible using the Quick Task Entry window, which provides a subset of the full editing window functionality. My proposed solution: New Thing commands in the Dock menu that open a Thing editing window in the current space.

These commands will be less useful if Data Detectors become globally available in a forthcoming release of OS X, though detectors cannot determine what textual information prompts users to create tasks or projects given the lack of a common semantic structure.

1. I want to add a friend’s upcoming gig to my calendar, so I right-click on the Contactizer Dock icon and select the New Event command.
   
2. The New Event window opens in the current space.
   
   Event or Appointment? One term, please.

Dot dot dot

The File > Backup Databases and File > Restore Databases commands should have ellipses as they require further user input to execute. The file picker that appears after selecting Restore should open to the last backup save location.

I find the dots below days with scheduled events useful in the mobile Calendar application. They should appear in iCal’s mini-calendar as well.

Using a few different size dots based on the number of events scheduled would allow users to see which days are particularly busy without having to switch the main view mode to Month or view the particular day — without adding much visual clutter. Granted, I don’t have the busiest schedule.

Mike Davidson posted a critique of the number of steps required to change battery life-extending settings on the iPhone. Off the top of my head, I proposed what I mocked up and posted below; an always available means of switching among configurations.

1. Tap the battery icon at the top right of the screen. This target is potentially problematic given the relatively small size and its proximity to other controls.
   
   
2. Tap the name of a configuration to activate it or the disclosure button to the right of the label to view/edit its details. The Add button opens an Untitled configuration with the default iPhone settings.
   
   
3. Edit the settings by sliding one or more sliders or tap the oval to edit the configuration name.
   
   
4. Edit the name and tap Done. The sliders remain manipulable.
   
   
5. The configuration has been renamed. Tap the OK button to return to the configurations list.
   
   

November 12 Update: Minor changes to better follow iPhone conventions, larger thumbnails with alpha channels.

Finder

Largely to make it easier for those who don’t know about the Info window or how to control file sharing, a button in the banner at the top of shared nodes:

The button would open the Sharing pane in System Preferences with the particular folder selected.

Mail

The dialog asking for confirmation before permanently deleting messages marked for deletion or as spam is really irritating. As with the Restart/Shutdown/Log Out commands in the Apple menu and the Private Browsing command in Safari, holding Option should suppress the confirmation and execute the command immediately.

Going by the HIG for the use of ellipses in command labels, the Erase Deleted and Junk commands in the Mailbox menu should have them.

Based on Pages ’08 (3.0.2). Some of these apply to Numbers and/or Keynote as well.

Template Selection

1. The template category and template selector panes should allow type-ahead selection when either pane has keyboard focus. The category selector only jumps to categories based on the last input single character matching the first letter of a category label rather than performing string matching; if I type Le, Envelopes is selected rather than Letters. The template selection pane does not provide type-ahead selection at all.
2. Using Sim Daltonism, the yellow inner border used to indicate the selected template is hard to see for those with certain color perception impairments.
   
   This could be addressed by giving the selected template a distinct background shape.
   

Document Metadata

1. I’d like to see an Insert menu command to insert the document’s Title metadata, a variable that would automatically update when the Title is edited in the Inspector. Same with Author metadata.
2. If input before saving, the Title metadata string should be suggested in place of “untitled” as the filename when saving, with the complete text selected if the user wants to enter their own. Characters allowed in the metadata but not in filenames would be automatically replaced.

Miscellaneous

1. An Export All command in the File menu or some Automator actions to export documents in bulk would make it a lot easier to use Pages as the authoring application for documents to be viewed and edited by those using Word. The current process requires selecting the Export… command from the File menu, confirming the export format, confirming the file name, potentially accepting the replacement of an existing file, then potentially reviewing compatibility issues if special Pages dynamic information like date strings were used. For each document. All these options would have to be provided in an Automator export action, but the decisions would have to be made only once.
2. The chart data editor should display the series symbols next to their labels rather than a square color swatch.
   
3. Stealing a feature from MS Office (which is not generally recommended!), comment bubbles should display users’ IM presence status, providing a direct way to contact a person about their contribution to a document.

A bit of visual pleasantry for chat clients.

If you have Firefox 3 or Opera 9.5, check out the 4 frames in an animated PNG:

For browsers that do not yet support aPNG, here is the frame-by-frame:

1. Double-click on a contact in your buddy list
   
2. 1. The window zooms out from the location of the contact, starting with just the contact name and input field being displayed:
      
      If multiple contacts are selected, the names zoom out individually to a single window.
   2. The conversation display area expands between the titlebar and input area midway through the animation:
      
   3. The window appears at full size in final position:
      
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