RaspoMar 3
Nick Heer
I spent a very long time getting high-res screenshots of Pages on Lion and Catalina with a non-Retina laptop, and also pulling quotes out of videos. Please do not make me regret it. https://pxlnv.com/blog/window-chrome-of-our-discontent/
The Window Chrome of Our Discontent

In a WWDC 2011 session, Dan Schimpf explained some of the goals of the refreshed design for Aqua in Mac OS X Lion were “meant to focus the user attention on the active window content”. This sentiment was echoed by John Siracusa in his review of Lion for Ars Technica: Apple says that its goal […]

Mar 3 at 5:07amWeb
Show threaddmdMar 3

@nickheer Thank you for this. I miss this version of Pages SO MUCH. It had everything I needed.

With later versions, I'm constantly switching between sidebar tabs, because there's too many controls and they're all too big. Infrequently used stuff should be in the menubar instead. Remember the menubar? Not everything needs to be on screen!

You have valid points about later versions being improved in some ways, but personally, I would be happy sticking with the Lion version of Pages forever.

Show threadWill RichardsonMar 3
@nickheer I clicked to expand ;)
Show threadNick HeerMar 3
@willhbr I love pranks. (I should change the caption to reflect reality. Thanks.)
Show threadJonas WisserMar 3

@nickheer God, this made me mad.

I *do* think the prescription is rolling back to a decade-old design language. I recognize that it was imperfect—you make a good point about the smaller mouse targets of the elements that wind up in the formatting sidebar in later versions—but for me personally, I'm very willing to make that tradeoff.

Show threadamonduinMar 3

@jwisser @nickheer I was just going to say this. The fact that older versions aren't as "slick" or as pretty in screenshots doesn't mean they are worse UI (though I think even that is debatable as I personally think they look better in screenshots)

People have a hard time with going back because they think it will make software look old. But unless you can actually articulate what better might look like I don't think there is any real choice but to go back to designs that clearly worked.

Show threadNick HeerMar 3
@amonduin I didn’t call anything “slick” and I argued some of the functional trade-offs.
Show threadamonduinMar 3
@nickheer sorry for being unclear, I wasn’t trying to accuse you of calling it slick, just that generally people seem to feel that going back would be to something less slick or modern
Show threadNathan SnelgroveMar 3

@nickheer lovely piece, thank you. I was surprised to read that you liked the formatting sidebar. I find it takes much longer to find what I’m looking for now, since controls for manipulating text and the document itself could be anywhere along the top or side of the window. I also don’t love the way half the controls are hidden in another tab.

I understand how they got there; it just doesn’t work for me at all. (And ironically “gets in the way of my content” more.)

Show threadГригорий КлюшниковMar 4
For completeness sake, here's the Big Sur style with button borders enabled. It's slightly better than without them. I enabled that setting the day I got my current Mac (it came with Monterey) and forgot that they're not there by default.