Neven Mrgan's tumbl: Labeling the Back button
Most “deep” apps require some amount of navigation, moving the user deeper into child views and then back out to the parent view. That navigational backtracking is typically done with a “Back” button, positioned in the top-left corner, and denoted by a pointed left side. You’ve all seen it:
…
Comprehensive post on how to improve the “back” buttons that exist in almost every iOS application. Worth a read.
Episodes - for the TV nut you are
I’m a sucker for good UI design and I’ve become a TV series addict despite trying not to.
When I turned on Reeder this morning I found this gem of an iPhone app on Beautiful Pixels. This application allows me to easily track the show I like, it reminds me of schedule changes and provides information on the shows.
Don’t get me wrong, I can do the same with the excellent IMDb application, but this is much more comfortable and even more polished.
Dribbble Blog: Dribbble is ... Fan-tastic
Dribbble, a site I’ve been keeping an eye on for quite some time now, has introduced spectator accounts, which allow people who don’t want to post art, but admire it and give feedback.
Anybody who’s interested in interface design and digital art, should take a look.
A suggestion for Mac OS X Lion: since the team is trying to integrate the menubar into the desktop a bit more, to make it less prominent - the translucent menubar was an attempt at just this - why not go all the way and make it black? This way, it’ll blend into the bezel of (most) new Macs. Black menus are already all over iLife ’11, and it would be another step toward unifying the look of iOS and Mac OS.
Yes, this change would break many Mac apps if they didn’t update to support it. Apple’s no stranger to that, though.
I’d love to use this.
iTunes user interface changes
As every year Apple changed the UI of iTunes upon release of the new major version.
While I wasn’t very fond of last years revision, I really like what they have done this time, even if some of it still needs some work:
Immediately after the first screenshot of iTunes 10’s window was shown during the demo, there was an outcry among users, that Apple arranged the ‘traffic lights’ (buttons for close, maximise, minimise) vertically.
Yes it’s unusual, and Apple ignores their own interface guidelines here, but I like it, because it saves some space; and should I ever get tired of it; there’s already a “fix” that brings back the old look.
The redesign of the capacity gauge for iDevices looks absolutely gorgeous in my opinion.
Apple’s choice to bring back the blue-ish graphite look for the application has me wondering, but it does make for a clean look.
The interface does still need some polish, though. The sync button is but one example of impurities in the UI.
What’s more important — and far more annoying — is the new way album art is being displayed. Having been touted as revolutionary and useful by Steve Jobs during the keynote, I will admit that I like the idea, but the execution is far from perfect:
No matter how big or small you set the cover image to be, if the album title is slightly too long, it’ll be cut off. The only way to remedy this, is to widen the column, sacrificing a lot a screen real estate for grey-ish space.
Placing the album title atop the album art would allow for a much more efficient use of space.
All things considered this update brings a few welcome features to iTunes, gives it a great new UI and some welcome performance improvements.
I don’t like the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach Apple has been taking with iTunes for years now, but this update makes the feature overload bearable and more usable for me.
