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The Macintosh interface, with its collection of icons and menus accessible at the click of a button, is unique. There are several limitations, but nothing works quite as well as the Macintosh view of computing. Learning the Macintosh so well as to be able to invent software for its environment is a different experience from other kinds of programming. Apple Computer understands the importance of information about its interface, and from the beginning has made details about the interface available to developers. Compact discs became a vital way for Apple to distribute technicalities to its programming community. Apple's compact disc series, entitled the Apple Developer CD Series, was a convenient way to distribute a great deal of information on a single wafer of plastic and metal. Two of these CD-ROM products are discussed in detail: 1. The Electronic Guide to Macintosh Human Interface Design, and 2. Inside Macintosh CD-ROM.
What makes the Macintosh Macintosh? The Macintosh interface, with its collection of icons and menus accessible at the click of a button, is unique. There are several imitations, but nothing works quite as well as the Macintosh view of computing. Understanding this interface is deceptively easy, but creating in this interface can be difficult. Rules govern the way in which this interface works, rules that make thousands of applications work in similar fashion. That means that any Macintosh user can go from one application to another and know that certain menus and icons will appear in the proper places in the Macintosh window
Learning the Macintosh so well as to be able to invent software for its environment is a different experience from other kinds of programming. Objects and their mapping require an imagination that sees code not solely as a means to finish certain tasks but as a way to order a universe of digital representations. To think in that way means spending a great deal of time in advance looking at the computer screen, much as an artist studies a blank canvas. It's the preparation that counts, more than the actual code. Are there tools that help you understand this canvas?
DISTRIBUTING PACTS ON CDS
Apple Computer understands the importance of information about its interface, and from the beginning has made details about the interface available to developers. This information originally appeared in thick binders, and soon transformed to bound volumes and supplemental reports. Changes in the interface were discussed in reports that were made available by subscription in several forms.
Compact discs became a vital way for Apple to distribute technicalities to its programming community. Apple's compact disc series, entitled the Apple Developer CD Series, was a convenient way to distribute a great deal of information on a single wafer of plastic and metal. Apple of course could not resist giving each compact disc in the series whimsical titles, so there were CDs named "Lord of the Files" and "Butch ASCII and the Runtime Kid." The success of this series led Apple to release beta versions of software, for example QuickTime and System 7, to developers on compact disc. Proceedings of Apple's annual programming confab, the Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference, also appeared on compact disc.
Clearly, compact disc became an accepted medium for distributing data to those who needed it. CD-ROM drives were sufficiently common in the Macintosh community to make this option realistic, thanks in part to Apple's corporate decision to embrace CD technology and make drives available, either as separate drives or as part of a hardware platform, at a reasonable cost. Drivers for these drives were incorporated right into system software, and the drives themselves took advantage of the Macintosh's SCSI port on every machine. Third-party drives appeared in both abundance and low cost, making CD technology a part of the Macintosh culture quite rapidly.
An education in the details of the Macintosh interface is now only a compact disc away. Several CD products, created as joint projects between Apple Computer and the publisher Addison-Wesley, make information about the Macintosh inner workings accessible and understandable to a much broader audience than mere programmers. These compact discs contain well-designed files, befitting Apple and Addison-Wesley, and interfaces that make data finding an enjoyable task. Let's examine two of these compact discs, Apple's Electronic Guide to Macintosh Human Interface Design and Inside Macintosh CD-ROM.
ALL THE INTERFACE ON A CD
The Electronic Guide to Macintosh Human Interface Design is not a collection of code on how to best move a menu five pixels to the right on the opening screen. It is instead a compendium of wisdom on how to plan your coding, a philosophical approach to assist you in organizing your menus, icons, and other elements in such a fashion that your window to the computer is transparent to its users. This Guide urges you to resist the temptation to fill your computer window with just one more object, just as you might try to fit one more plate in the dishwasher. Logic and order are the hallmarks of a well-planned view on a Macintosh. A minimalist approach, worthy of the high priests of modern architecture, is also the credo of this compact disc.
The CD contains the entire text of Apple's popular book Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, plus over a hundred animations to explain menus, icons, and other trademarks of the Macintosh. To operate the compact disc, you'll obviously need a CD-ROM drive, a color monitor, System 7.0 or later, QuickTime, and at least 8MB of memory. QuickTime is included with the disc if you do not already have it loaded on your system. The blue-colored CD contains seven files, filling nearly 60MB of space. The centerpiece of the CD is the purple smiling Mac icon, "Making It Macintosh," the window to animation and other details on the Mac interface. But you'll also find all 11 chapters and three appendices of the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, which can be read with Apple's DocViewer. A folder labeled "Other HI [Human Interface] Information Sources' contains samples of information gleaned from develop, Apple's journal for developers, the Apple Developer CD Series, and Apple Directions. A "Utilities" folder contains DocViewer, QuickTime, TeachText, HyperCard Player, and an extension to allow applications to work over a network.
STARTING UP THE PURPLE ICON
Double-clicking on the "Making It Macintosh' icon takes you to the first screen, a collage of Mac icons that move in an animated sequence with the click of a button (a cartoon thought cloud encourages you to click on the window!). To move in this interface you use a forward key at the top right side of the screen; three other buttons take you back a card in the sequence or move you to a table of contents or an index. The review of the Mac interface is in eight parts, covering menus, windows, dialog boxes, controls, icons, behaviors, language, and QuickTime. An introduction and index round out the options.
The opening lesson on menus, like much of this interface lesson, incorporates animation (Figure 1). Clicking on the window activates a large pointer that scrolls through an enlarged view of a dropped menu, with differently colored icons for folders labeled purple, yellow, green, and blue. On the next card, you learn more about menus by clicking on text discussing a certain design feature. Clicking on the text that reads "Pulldown menus are selected from the menu bar" activates a sequence illustrating the operation of the File menu, with the sound of the clicking mouse included in it (Figure 2). A "See also" reference button (where were those in card catalogs?) takes you to a list of related information, to be found in this stack and in the DocViewer-based Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. This formula (presenting information that with a click takes you to an animated example) is used throughout "Making It Macintosh." Each card also includes a reference card taking you to further details in this collection and in the Guidelines.
I found the "Behaviors" section to be particularly enlightening. Little did I know that successful Mac programmers needed a good sense of editorial control and humor, like a witty cartoonist working with pen, ink, and a few open bubbles above his characters. Like any good teacher, the stack describes a number of deliciously dumb menu titles, help balloons, and feedback sequences from some sort of mouse or keyboard action. The animation in the stack allows the program to rewrite its own dumb examples and create messages to end-users that make sense, using active verbs and simple sentences. If only someone could come up with an automatic editor like that for my prose!
Overall, the Electronic Guide to Macintosh Human Interface is a grand tour of the philosophy of the Macintosh interface. But it is purposefully not a Platonic dialogue on the advantages of one line of code over another. Instead, it incorporates all of the elements of a well-taught session by your favorite teacher, with an essential kernel of information that sticks, thanks to humor and animation. Having read, scanned, and otherwise used the paper-based facts in Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, I thought that there would have been little comfort in the compact disc version. Instead, I was delighted with this visual database called "Making It Macintosh" that crystallized all of the verbiage and illustrations into a coherent whole. The 15 members of the "Making It team should be justifiably proud of their efforts. The combination of both the original book in DocViewer and its graphic reinterpretation on the CD make this a bargain at any price.
INSIDE THE FACTS
Apple's Inside Macintosh has grown into a 24-volume library on the Macintosh innards, a compendium worth the shelf space of any programmer. These well-worn volumes have been used and tattered in many offices and cubicles for years. It makes sense finally to bring them together on a compact disc for access with Apple's DocViewer. It would be hard to imagine a better way to make these details available.
There are seven files and folders on the disc, filling about 320MB of space. Along with Apple's DocViewer and SimpleText, there's the massive Inside Macintosh index called "X-Ref," all of the volumes of Inside Macintosh and the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, and documentation on the operation of DocViewer. DocViewer needs to be moved off the compact disc to your hard drive; devoting at least 2MB of memory to it will ease its operation. In addition, you can move a folder of aliases to your hard disk from the CD, setting up pointers to Inside Macintosh folders and files.
Once you start using DocViewer and the CD files, you'll find it difficult to ever return to the paperbound Inside Macintosh volumes on your shelf. For example, in "X-Ref," suppose I found a reference to balloon help on page F 3-19. I could scroll back and search for that page in a document, or I could use DocViewer's own search mechanisms under its "Search" menu to track down balloon help. Under this menu, I can invoke a "Find" or construct a more complicated "Query." A query allows me to search for text in selected or all documents on the compact disc, and to search for balloon help within x number of words of another phrase or term (Figure 3).
With DocViewer, its find and query features, all of the text and illustrations of In side Macintosh and other handbooks, and aliases, I can finally locate information without an undue burden of my ever-growing feeble memory. Where was that description of a data and resource fork? With the query function of DocViewer, I can go right to the illustration and the text (chapter 1, pp. 1-5 of Inside Macintosh: Files). With the aliases, I don't have to overburden my already taxed hard disk for space. The aliases point right back to the necessary information on the CD for me.
Inside Macintosh CD-ROM is a triumph of electronic publishing. It makes information once buried under its own weight accessible and ready. Curiosity and serendipity are served best by this sort of publishing that frees the mind from memory exercises and core dumps and opens up the possibilities of the imagination. I think that's what Apple and Addison-Wesley had planned all along with this conversion of paper to CD-ROM. And, like Apple and Addison-Wesley, I can only imagine a lot of creative programming and understanding of the Mac interface as a result, applications that truly will be for all of us.
Communications to the author should be addressed to Edward J. Valauskas, 5050 South Lake Shore Drive, Apt. 3214, Chicago, IL 60615; 312-363-9085; Internet--G009 (at) applelink.apple.com.
Copyright Online, Incorporated Apr 1995