CompuServe Messages

Howard, "Surely, if the user is working in another app, he *does not want* your window to be on top of all others. Otherwise, he will be interacting with a window which is not the top window, which is hardly good interface design, is it?" There are programs, like First Things First by Andrew Welch, which go through lots of loops to implement what would be so very simple under Windows. The Macintosh has strengths and weakenesses, as does Windows. This is a case where Windows wins. "Simply being able to do something is not the point of the Mac OS – which tends to support things which are in the HIG, rather than 'anything which you could ever want to do with windows'. You may criticise Apple for working this way, but it is precisely this that has made the Mac interface so successful. Supporting total customisation is a great way to reduce the legendary consistency of the Mac interface to the near-anarchy of the past (and, from my experience, its current competitors)." I'll bet when Windows starts running native on the PowerPC you'll see how critical Apple's HIG are. Apple has made it because they've had total control over the hardware and the system software. They're about to lose control of the hardware (PowerPC will be in _other_ machines _not_ from Apple) and the system software (Windows is coming). David