A few comments I’ve received from curious readers (plus the occasional enraged wingnut ;-)) indicate a small point of confusion: some Mac users believe that document windows in CS4 on OS X use non-standard red/yellow/green “gumdrop” widgets for closing, minimizing, and maximizing documents. They do not. I just used Snapz Pro to compare the widgets in Photoshop to those in iTunes, NetNewsWire, and other apps; they are identical. Just thought we should clear that up.
Tangentially related:
- Deke McClelland has posted an overview of the tabbed document UI at Lynda.com.
- The Adobe XD (Experience Design) team plans to launch a new blog next week, and they tell me they’ll be offering more details about how the CS4 UI came to be.
thanks for widget clarification. now what about even more burning question on unfair european prices?
please John- you’re the only one that seems really responsive from adobe – could you explain the motives what’s so different to let us, EU customers, BUY AND DOWNLOAD THE SAME VERSION you’re selling at online adobe store and PAY THE SAME PRICE? (ok, add EU taxes to it..)
i really just need regular-english version- no localization, no phone support, etc.
Just because they look identical does not mean they are standard widgets.
[I’m bemused by this comment. I just said “They are,” and you–anonymously–said, “Nuh-uh.” Why? Am I lying to you, as you’re implying? If so, why? What could possibly qualify you to come in here, spread FUD, and question my integrity? The Internet is so wonderful sometimes. –J.]
I layout books, and the new long document features are impressive, particularly GREP styles. Where did you get the idea for that?
[I imagine all this applies to InDesign, so I’d have to defer to those guys to answer any questions on it. –J.]
It’s something I’d have never thought up in a million years, although I can now think of a hundred uses for it. Now I can type “ibm” and have it automatically become “IBM” in the proper smallcaps. Nice! I’ve wasted a lot of time doing that sort of thing.
One suggestion. Assuming GREP styles allows us to save search patterns, ship CS4 with a dozen or more handy examples, much like you did with GREP in CS3. Searches for phone numbers and hypertext links would be especially handy.
Last but not least, please put this on the list for the next release. Allow us to specify, in the character and paragraph style panels, text to be added before or after that style in a selected character style. Combined with nested styes it’d work wonders. Users could take catalog data, format it with nested styles, and add lead-in text like “Price” and “Catalog Number.”
I’m a Mac user, currently using CS3. I like to set it up so that all my palettes float on my second monitor. Will I still be able to do that with CS4?
[Absolutely. –J.]
John,
If the OS Appearance is Graphite rather than Blue, do the Adobe window controls follow suit?
[Yep, I’ve confirmed that they do. –J.]
I love the Mac, but I find the nitpicking about the button widgets amusing. That is the one Mac UI component for which there is no consistency for them within Apple itself.
The red button sometimes closes a window (usually), and sometimes quits the entire app (System Preferences).
The green button sometimes fits the window to the content (Safari), sometimes maximizes the window to the entire screen (TextEdit, Mail, Console…) and sometimes does neither (iTunes) !
Nothing wrong with criticizing a UI, but come on, you gotta have some solid ground to stand on first.
Re: anon
The anonymous poster could be correct – the widgets may look exactly the same as native widgets even though they are just imitations (images copied from the current native widgets). If Apple were to update the style of the close/minimise/expand widgets in the next version of OS X, the Adobe widgets wouldn’t look the same anymore as they’d still be using images of the old style widgets. If they were truly native widgets then they would display in the new style.
I’m inclined to agree with the anonymous poster because as far as I know there’s no publicly exposed API’s to draw the 3 window widgets on custom window styles. I had a quick poke around some of the CS4 frameworks to see if I could find any images, but didn’t turn up anything though.