Description Bob Kerns 2004-03-30 23:04:40 EST

M8 feels like a step backwards in usability in several ways, I'm afraid. This 
isn't intended to be a flame -- I've waited until I could put my finger on a 
few specific fixable reasons why.

(Despite this strongly-negative perception -- I would not to back if it meant 
going back to the old editor tabs that become unreadable! Thanks for that fix; 
the new editor tabs are great, and more than offset the rest of the problems.)

(I wish I could identify a higher goal you're driving toward, but I can't see 
any motivation at all. (I do trust there is one!) So I'm afraid I can't put my 
observations in any sort of context at all; sorry.)

1) Screen locations: The most used top-level items are moved far apart. The 
focus is usually the editors -- the perspectives are now in the upper right 
corner, the "fast" views are moved way down in the bottom right by default. In 
the meantime, many of the icons on the toolbar are rarely used. I fixed this 
up for myself by moving the fastviews back to the left, and expanding the 
perspective tab area as far as it would go to the left.

I would actually prefer it to the left of the toolbar, but that would violate 
conventional placement of toolbars. But it would be nice if I could 
reconfigure it that way; instead the toolbars insist on staying to the left

Suggestion: Default the fastViews to the left and the perspective tabs 
immediately to the right of the toolbar.

2) Graphics. The new look is extremely flat and low contrast. This makes it 
hard to quickly find what you're looking for. The boundaries of the 
perspective tab region is nearly invisible. Some of the icons, especially the 
disabled ones, are hard to see. The File Save one is much too low contrast in 
both states.

If one of the views is selected, it takes me about 10-15 seconds of careful 
inspection to identify which is the current editor that the view is referring 
to!

Suggestion: Make sure all the UI elements stand out clearly.

3) The fastview/maximize/tile icons in the corner of views are confusing. They 
are visually grouped with the view's toolbar buttons; they should be 
separated. They're ugly, but at least they're high contrast (I presume better 
ones are on the way). But most seriously, they have no tooltip help, and I had 
to play around with them. And getting out of what they do is tough when you 
have no idea what they did!

Suggestion: New icons and add tooltips.

And finally, I find the aesthetics much less appealing -- but I'll wait and 
see if some better icons and better contrast in key points fix that up.