John Nack on Adobe

Addendum: Specific concerns I've heard about the new UI:

• The design is too gray!  Where's the color?  Well, do you want to look at Adobe's design or at yours?  Seriously.  There's a saying attributed to Alan Cooper: "No matter how cool your interface, it would be better if there were less of it."  Not polluting users' color perception is a serious issue, and if I'm not mistaken, the "Graphite" (monochrome) option for OS X came about in large part due to pressure from Adobe UI designers concerned about gratuitous and persistent use of color in the UI.  The close/minimize/zoom buttons turn color on rollover.


• The application bar consumes too much space.  On Windows this seems to be less of an issue, as on wider monitors the application menus & the app bar content reflow to occupy one line if possible.  On the Mac, where menus are always at the top of the screen (as opposed to inside the document window), you can turn off the application bar if you'd like. You can also make it float, in which case it takes up less space horizontally.


• The application frame is hard to resize.  This area has been buggy during development, so I wouldn't be surprised to hear that what's in the Fireworks beta isn't functioning as designed.

• Panel (palette) management is improved in a number of ways.  Panels can float in minimized, iconic form (individually or in groups), offering much more flexibility than you'd get with the old Photoshop palette well.  More than one docked iconic panel can be open at once, and auto-reveal of panels is optional.


• The number of screen modes in Photoshop has been set back to three (instead of four, as in CS3).  The application frame takes the place of the "maximized" mode introduced last time.


• Setting the background color in screen modes will be much more discoverable.

I'm on Windows, so the Mac concerns do not concern me (though I always thought the absence of an app frame on the Mac to be very much in the platform's disfavor). But I've now briefly tested the CS4 versions of DW and FW and I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THAT ALL-CAPS PANEL NAMES WAS A GOOD UI DESIGN IDEA? Actually, I don't want to know what weird mind committed that design crime at all -- I JUST DON'T WANT ANYTHING IN ANY UI TO SHOUT AT ME. Please, please, PLEASE drop those horrid all-caps in the release versions of the CS4 apps! They're an abomination -- a LOUD abomination.

[As long as I'm being candid today, I'll admit I had a similar reaction, though I quickly got used to them. I did insist that the user research team look into whether the all caps treatment compromises readability. In user testing they found that it didn't. --J.]

Will documents inside the frame be considered stand-alone windows for window-management features like Expose?

[No, although we'd like to make that work. Last I heard we'd inquired with Apple & that's not something Exposé supports. (You can't use it to display/shuffle the contents of tabs in Safari, either.) If the capability becomes available, we'll work on supporting it. --J.]

Thanks for the heads up and rational.

I think someone out to create a pool, which would be wordcount of Gruber's reply to this piece. I've got $5 on 6 words, and $5 on 8,412 words.

[Heh; I think he's pretty busy with WWDC coming up, but I suppose we'll see. --J.]

John, I think I get the subliminal message behind the animal and beetle sketches. ;)

[Oh yeah? You're way ahead of me, then. ;-) I just got sick of using the standard demo assets and stumbled across some of my old sketches from college. --J.]

biggest thanks for adobe and photoshop team for making all these ui changes as _options_. and please don't block or remove old-way photoshop ui functions in future versions.

i really try to be open minded and promise to stay in new paradigm at least for a first day, but somehow i'm almost sure that separate windows is much more intuitive workflow for me (i really think that macosx is far more windows OS that ms windows :) and the application bar is very alien-looking (thanks so much it's possible to hide it too).

also - i really hope it's some kind of hacked skin you're using for macosx widgets since flat-big circles for window close-minimize-maximize are horrible. please- at least make some option to be able to have default standard macosx controls. what's the point except for visual effect to change these? (ok, i admit - reinventing conventions to add features should be considered, but what's with these buttons?).

thanks!

Thanks for your candor, John. You wrote: "In user testing they found that it didn't." I don't buy that at all. Aside from the ghastly SHOUTING effect, it's been universally know for hundreds of years among typographers that capitals reduces legibility and slows down the reading pace. I'd like to know what "reasons" the UI folks have given you, in order to FOIST THIS SENSELESS SHOUTING UPON US? I find it so bad -- so offensive, so inconsiderate -- that this UI issue alone will rather make me think twice about upgrading to CS4. And I'm usually a upgrade-fiend. It's simply unbelievable that such an UI design howler can be committed by Adobe.

It is comforting to know that there's someone that's thinking about all these details. Ps has always been a great application, just saying I didn't know about this blog until recently (thanks to Mr. Gruber).

Why don't you just admit you've run out of feature ideas and call PS finished?

I know this post is about Phtoshop but while were on sweating the little details and Mac UI conventions at Adobe: how about implementing the standard command-period key command to dismiss dialog boxes in Fireworks. Fireworks CS 3 has the excuse of being a prettied up Macromedia product. But FW CS4 has the same UI defect in the "Image Size" and "Canvas Size" dialog boxes. I use these about every 90 seconds so a key command (a la PS) for those dialog boxes would also be welcome.

Great. You (and the video) actually made me change my mind on The Frame.

If I could only ask one thing of the visual appearance, it would be that in areas where it'd be appropiate, you add some partial (and optional) translucency, so the desktop picture can be seen. But even without that, I'm liking the new UI very much.

Here's a wacky idea -- Command-, for preferences.

While I think it's great that the suite's UI is finally being so thoughtfully revised, your claim that the application frame will be optional worries me a bit. The LAST thing most of these apps need are more options -- the most Mac-like move of all would be to fine-tune ONE interface to relative perfection and make it the standard.

Oh, and P.S. -- you will make the day of thousands of designers if you get your engineers to enable copying and pasting in Photoshop's hexadecimal color text field like all the other suite apps. SO basic, and it's been broken for SO long.

I want my apps to 'fit in' to my platform of choice, not subvert it. Making your apps platform neutral doesn't enhance my user experience.

I think a big part of the concern is the idea that Adobe is trying to foist their platform on top of our platform of choice, neutralizing rather than enhancing what we feel are the advantages of our platform.

On the Mac, the fact that I can't toggle the front window in PS using cmd-` drives me nuts. The fact that I can't hide PS altogether using cmd-H drives me nuts. And so on. I feel like I am constantly fighting a company that wants to pretend they own the space their apps play in. You don't. I use several apps, not just Adobe apps, and I hate that I have to remember 'oh, I'm using and Adobe app now'. It's just a bad experience.

As a well respected UI guy once advised me, "standard is better than better".

Ok, a couple of things. 1) Your YouTube video shows … I guess the next version of Photoshop? So when’s the public beta? 2) All UI changes are fine as long as they are options.

As mature as Photoshop is, if it were up to me I’d make any UI changes optional for the user. I’d make any upgrades to tools optional. I would not replace a tool with a new one, I’d just add the new one.

Photoshop is like a Swiss Army knife. It amazes me how many approaches people can come up with to solve a problem with Photoshop. Changes that don’t grasp that users may be solving a problem every day based on the way the UI appears in say CS2 or how a tool functions in CS3 will aggravate many. Overall I believe Adobe has played fair with most of this (although I remember the changes to the layer palette a couple of versions ago frustrated me for weeks). So just be careful what you do with that magic wand too, there’s some guy out there using it to make Leonard De Vinci master pieces.

Here's my problem with all this apparent consistency, including the element table style icons: Not all of us use every piece of software in your suits. I know it all makes sense to you guys when you look at your big array of apps, but many of use only use one or two of your apps most of the time, so all this is lost on us and just comes across as a bit arrogant. It's like you're creating your own mini universe. As for Apple breaking there own interface guidelines -- why is that a good excuse for you guys to do the same? I don't mean to say that your new UI ideas are bad, but I think you need to keep some of these points in mind and stop letting your marketing department have such a big say in things.

Personally...I really like the new interface in DW and FW CS4. And I can see the new Photoshop working for me just fine!

The one thing that really stood out for me on the DW BETA is you truly do see the document more than an interface and that's really the way anyone should be thinking in any application (just don't do anything as dire as the Vista blur it because we can transpareny window chrome crap).

I am actually looking forward to the new CS4 suite based on what I've seen and read, and to be up front I was way under impressed with CS3 so you must be doing something right as far as I'm concerned.

Regards,
Peter Witham

I have been hoping Adobe would make this change. It definitely feels more mac-like to me.

It would be great if you could have several groups of guides and name them.

Particularly useful for webdesign where you have more than one template per website.

For an EXCELLENT example of application frame with complete customization...one of the best UIs I've ever used...go download a demo and check it out...

Modo.

http://www.luxology.com

[Heh--you know, I've liked modo when I've used it, but it's a great example of how it's impossible to make everyone happy: in this same thread someone else refers to their UI as "just a freak-show mess." So it goes. --J.]

My one request, is please, PLEASE, don't change the keyboard shortcuts.

A recently saw a post somewhere that had a really good suggestion... When faced with old shortcuts that don't follow the platform standards, the first time the user uses a shortcut, put up a dialog and ask them if they were expecting the old shortcut, or the standard platform one.

Existing users used to old shortcuts are happy. New users who expect the software to do the right thing are happy.

Let me just say that as a GUI purist — that is, someone who prefers apps to follow OS guidelines as much as possible — I actually prefer the new CS4 look to the utter weirdness that is Lightroom. Still, I'd prefer it if Adobe would focus more on improving core functionality than relatively superficial GUI changes. For instance, Photoshop should always operate in 32-bits per channel mode and auto-downsample when saving to JPEG (e.g. don't throw up an alert). I'd rather have full "high color" (or whatever you want to call it) support than a non-standard GUI. It's starting to look like Adobe is, by attempting to unify the CS4 GUIs, actually making the whole situation far more complex than it needs to be. Luxology's modo springs to mind. Rather than solving the problem of a complex GUI, Luxology increased modo's complexity ten fold by making the whole thing customizable and schizo. Now it's just a freak-show mess. So please be careful. The simplest solution tends to be the right one. In other words, the simplest, most logical thing to do would be to conform the CS4 apps to follow the GUI guidelines of each host OS. I get the feeling that this whole unified GUI approach is being done to make it so that only one GUI has to be designed and supported rather than two (or three if Linux ever figures into the game in a meaningful way). To me, that approach signals some disrespect for the OS. And maybe there's reason for that. We all know — Apple included — that the future of apps is the web, so maybe Adobe's taking the right approach by pretending the OS doesn't exist anymore, thus abstracting its GUIs from what lies beneath, in other words. I'm curious to know what the real thinking behind the new GUI is.

The application frame change is great. Using both platforms, I've always loathed the desktop showing through and resizing is limited to dragging the bottom right corner. Do what's right for Photoshop and its users - not what feels "Mac like". In any case, don't agonize too much - everyone knows Adobe favours the Mac and treats Windows as an afterthought.

Here's one request, though: Please respect the double-click preference for minimizing of apps. I used the Fireworks CS4 beta and was unhappy when the application minimized with an errant double-click.

On the subject of PS UI... the inability to page the selection of an Adobe palette list menu with the arrow keys is an annoying behavior of the app. For a while I thought this was a standard behavior on the Mac platform, but after some short research (check Safari) realized that its not. It's ONE MORE example (many others are listed above) of Adobe breaking OS standards seemingly just for the hell of it.

[That has nothing to do with it. Rather, it's a question of focus. The arrows apply to selected objects on your document. Would you want to try to move an object up a couple of pixels, only to end up changing layers or scrolling a list? I seriously doubt it. --J.]

A lot of the rational for these decisions seems to be "at first I thought it was weird too, but then I just got used to it". Is that seriously how your design process works? Human beings are capable of "just getting used to" all sort of horrible situations... that doesn't make it good.

I am of the philosophy that standards should be upheld. Where there's no clear standard, and you have a really clever solution to the problem, then by all means, have at it, but otherwise stop mucking things up.

As always, thanks for the info. I do like the concept app frame, but Adobe doesn't seem to be taking the best approach. First off, pointing to lousy design in Apple's pro apps isn't justification for Adobe's lousy design.

[Just for the record, I didn't say that anything about Apple's app designs is lousy--just different (and in some ways more capable) than what is supported elsewhere in the OS. --J.]

Additionally, I found several details that reveal how the new UI hasn't been thought through.

You mention that color in the UI is distracting. True, which is why I use graphite—don't replace standard graphics that already have solved the problem. I see that CS4's drop-down menus and scroll bars still use system graphics. Does Adobe feel color window controls are a problem, but color scroll bars are not? The amazing thing is that right next to the custom gray window controls, a bright blue app icon has been added.

[There's an option to display that icon in monochrome mode, as there always has been. --J.]

There's no need for ugly custom window controls, and no need for distracting icons in the app frame.

In a document frame that does not have focus, there is no indication of what the active tab is. See http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/images/PS_app_frame_floating.jpg — it is clear that Beetle.JPG in the front window is active. But in the app frame, is Untitled-2, hairy-coo.jpg, or Untitled-1 the active tab? There's no way to tell.

[We're still working on that area. --J.]

A tiny asterisk as the only indication of unsaved changes is incredibly poor design. You imply in a comment above that this is the only possibility for the app frame. But in your post, you cited the success of Coda's one-window workflow. How about you look at how Panic handled this issue in Coda?

[Will do. --J.]

I will not believe the argument that large UI changes like the app frame have been thoughtfully considered while smaller but important details go unaddressed.

[I know that makes intuitive sense, but it's not how the code is written. It's not a zero-sum game, where the same person who could make one change (e.g. enabling deletion of multiple selected channels--which we'll enable, btw) could make another. --J.]

I encourage Adobe to forge new UI ground, but to do so in a way that actually works. Coda is a fantastic study: it has many unique UI features, but is still well put-together and doesn't break conventions. Photoshop matches the first description, but not the second or third.

I'll hold judgement on the fine details of the UI shown here as, after all, it's a non-released interface and as you guys get time on it, you'll dial it in as needed. But, as I was going back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop earlier tonight, the visual shift between the single-window Lightroom and the multi-window with toolbars and other stuff interface of Photoshop was really smacking me in the face for some reason. I can't place my fingers on the fine details, but Lightroom felt modern, Photoshop felt, um, totally old school. Even though Lightroom breaks so many Apple UI conventions, it still feels a lot more modern, Mac-like, and up to date.

So, for whatever that's worth, I'm glad you guys are putting in time to modernize up. Kick the tires. Be brave.

A CS4 app frame is okay with me, being your mac and usability geek as they come… I used a 50% grey background forever on my macs for exactly this reason. I even stopped using dropshadows in PS because OSX every window had one. My only gripe with the CS3 interface were the closeness of the little double triangle in the palettes upper right corner to the options expansion below, I never click the right one ;))

I generally like that Adobe is actively trying to develop and enhance the interface of its CS applications. I think that there are still lots of issues with Photoshops interface, most of them coupled with functions (e.g. Layer Effects - extremely useful, but could be better still if could add the same layer effect several times to the same layer, multiple borders etc., workarounds exist, though).

As a User Interface Designer I don't think using an application frame is a bad thing. Lots of good things can come of it. I generally like what I see. I definitely have proposed similar concept in my designs, too.

One thing, though, I really would like: I always, always work in the "full screen mode with menu bar". The thing I really like about that mode is that you don't have any scrollbars (actually, they appear on the next screen, which is not nice, but not too bad either - cheaters! ;)) Who uses scrollbars to pan an image anyway? I always pan using SPACE... So it would be nice, if the scrollbars could be optional.

1) Please use the default standard Mac OS X window controls (Close/Minimize/Zoom). These large matte gray dots look utterly ugly. I can't understand how the company who makes apps for the designers can come up with something so ugly. Apple have put at least some gloss on theirs. But Apple's video Pro apps really are not the best example to follow. Better take a look at Aperture or Logic. But remember that these apps are primarily one-window (one-document) apps. Logic prefers to work with one project at a time (always asks to close previous project), Aperture is meant to use only one image library at a time. Photoshop isn't. So better use the default OS X controls. I can always enable Graphite theme if I want gray buttons. Please don't ruin UI.
2) It's good that application bar is an option. The first thing I'll do on CS4 will be to disable it and forget that it ever existed. Photoshop CS3 had quite good interface, and I really don't like the latest development trends in CS4. Photoshop CS3 interface could be polished in some parts, but it was close to perfect. I really don't like that I'm forced on Mac to click Close button on the right side of the palette tab to close it - it's Windows style. Why not on the left using the same tab close widget as in Safari? It's about consistent UI, not mixture of Mac and Windows.
3) Why do all Adobe apps use non-standard shortcut(s) for application preferences? Please, please, please - Command+, for Preferences.

To John North

Why do you have to be so aggressive and confrontational. Whether you agree with the guys reasoning or not you surely must respect that he is explaining and demoing things and justifying the reasons. When was the last time you saw Apple do that.

To add my votes:
- Expose
- Library vs. document centric (your comparisons look like false excuses, like comparing apples and oranges)

Tabbed windows are a great idea for a content-reading app like a web browser. For a content-creating app like InDesign or Photoshop? Not so much. How am I supposed to drag stuff from one document into the other in this mode?

Thank God this is only an option.

A lot of graphic designers like me are constantly moving between InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Mail, the Finder and others.

I certainly wouldn't enjoy a big grey wall between me and my others apps.

And will Photoshop be getting the new rows and rows of integrated interface toolbars like DW? Someone else recently said it reminded them of the screenshot that a journalist (David Pogue?) had posted of Word with ALL of the toolbars turned on. Are we really heading back down that route? Taking direction from 10 year old Microsoft UIs (that sucked 10 years ago)?

One of the strengths of the Mac's document-centric model is being able to stack and mix different applications' own windows, eg. Photoshop document, text-editor-window, browser window for previewing, another Photoshop document. And if I want to see them all at the same time I just hit Exposé (Interestingly Photoshop is the only application on my Mac that has some glitches under Exposé and Spaces, take that as you will). I'm not just working with one document, like say in iTunes or iPhoto, I need to be able to mix and switch between several, different sources. How on earth could I do such a thing in an application frame? So if you say this UI is optional, please make sure the other UI-mode does not get deprecated over time and stops getting new features...

And another argument of yours is "if we can get new, useful features on top of existing features, why not?". And I agree, entirely. But some paragraphs later you say that Mac OS X's unique "changed-document" controls (the pointy close box) aren't possible inside an application frame... and THAT is exactly the point. I have nothing against good custom UIs at all. They're great as long as they serve a purpose (for example the neutral/gray controls for designers). BUT they have to behave EXACTLY as expected, and that's where Photoshop CS3 falls short: Exposé glitches, Spaces in general, those irritating close boxes on the wrong side, etc.

So why should we trust Adobe to get a better platform citizen when they are trying to introduce even more custom UI controls without fixing the existing UI glitches for so long? And as long as you're bringing up Apple as an example: they're pro-interface works as expected, even when they introduce new features and sport a new look.

I don't have a problem with the UI changes that have been revealed given that they're optional apart from the custom window open/close/minimise widgets. What on earth is up with those? The Mac standard ones are either coloured - which I prefer - or grey if you chose the graphite theme. They're one of the most pervasive UI bits in the OS and it really, really bugs me when anyone, whether that's Apple or a third party, like with Disco, uses custom ones.

It's great to see Adobe are thinking hard about how to improve the interface of Photoshop whilst considering platform differences, but this particular change feels like change for change's sake with no real benefit.

Tabbed windows may be a great idea for a content-reading app like a web browser. For content-creating apps like InDesign or Photoshop? Not so much. How am I supposed to drag stuff from one document into the other in this mode? Via yet another keyboard shortcut that usurps the place of an OS-key-combo?

I ran a piece on Cult of Mac recently about the UI, which had some recoil in horror and others say Adobe hasn't gone far enough. The defence of the application frame by comparing to Apple breaking its own UI conventions isn't really good enough. As it currently stands, the Fireworks beta UI is dreadful on a number of counts. It's horrendously buggy (and, yes, I know it's beta, but I'd currently say it's borderline unusable, which is rare for even early betas), and some of the conventions are simply too broken.

Even when Apple's going off on one, it doesn't shove a load of tools into the toolbar. Adobe's new UI has custom close/minimise/zoom buttons—why? And if it's doing its own UI, why aren't these custom buttons used throughout? Inconsistency with the OS is one thing, but inconsistency within the application itself is bad. Regarding the resizing, I don't have a problem with that, but Adobe should leave the standard resize drag-handle in place, because otherwise users' cognitive resources are better spent understanding how an application can help them achieve their goals, not figuring out how to do basic tasks with user-interface components.

The funny thing about this is that it's almost certain to finally push many designers away from Adobe products. A lot of Mac users I know are already looking for ways to jump ship, and even some Windows users are looking at the UI and thinking "just no". While I appreciate the intent regarding innovation, it just strikes me that Adobe's not really got a handle anymore on what makes a thoroughly successful and polished UI. Perhaps the final releases will change that, but experience proves that most Adobe products don't change a great deal from public betas to shipping.

Well...

I will reserve my judgment until I have tried it. Looks interesting though.

I think I like that.

I'd be interested to see how this works across multiple monitors.

On Windows, I'm still using PS CS2, with my documents and main tool palette on one monitor, and all the other palettes arranged across the other.

I can't visualise how well this would work with the newer interface. It seems better suited to one large screen to me.

Regarding custom scrollbars you mention in http://www.jnack.com/adobe/photoshop/ui/FCP_scrollbars.gif - I think much better example is the latest version of Logic - they look more Aqua, and those ends are for one-minesion zoom purposes. I can zoom vertically OR horizontally (independently!) by dragging scroll bar slider longer or shorter. Not for Photoshop.

Photoshop is the new Blender. ;o)

Seriously, though. Photoshop is a very specialized application, it can go WAY off the usualy OS X/Vista app design as long as it makes it more productive. The professional users should be able to adapt. It would make little sense to make everyone suffer just because some people are stuck in 1997 still.

Here are some good observations: http://cultofmac.com/adobe-fireworks-mac-os-x-beta-ui-hell/2026
100% agree.

I haven't had time to play with the DW/FW betas. Does the new app frame still allow panels to be docked to screen edges (as opposed to only the frame window)?

Overall, I like new concept, especially since there is an option to disable the app frame whenever it makes sense, so there is really nothing to lose. I particularly like the new tabbed groupable document windows, that's something I always liked in Microsoft's Visual Studio. However, I find the design of the new frame disputable, especially the bright blue Photoshop icon and the non-standard maximize/minimize/close widgets.

I'd love to see a function to disable the app frame window on Windows from time to time and have Photoshop behave just like on a Mac. Now that you are adding the frame to the Mac version, why not give an option to switch it off on Windows?

Here are a few issues with the CS3 panel system which I'd love to see resolved in the final version of the new UI:

• It was impossible to dock panels to the edges of secondary monitors. They always remain floating.

Hope that was useful, sorry for the lengthy post.

Just admit it, Adobe wishes they had wrote their own Operating System don't they?

Screw this NIH mentality and conform to true and tested guidelines. I don't want to get jarred into a different alien environment from switching from one app to another. Play nice with your ecosystems and stop trying to reinvent the wheel.

I'm not a kid Adobe, I know how to switch on Graphite in the Apperance UI. I don't need you to reinvent my buttons simply because they weren't conservative enough for you.

I've used Photoshop since 1.0 and the Mac for even longer. This smacks of arrogance and disregards for your user base all the way!

Shame on you for buying into their arguments and finger-pointing at Apple!

consistency, so does that mean the various applications in the suite will behave more in the same way?
--{Yes, that's the goal. It's an evolutionary process. --J.}

An "evolutionary process"? What's to evolve? The most common problems are very simple —different widget behavious, confliction shortcuts, etc. They should have been fixed *years* ago.

Since you [Adobe] don't seem to mind alienating users with UI changes no one asked for anyway, there's no reason not to alienate a few of the people used to conflicting old conventions once, and be done with it. Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign should have been streamlined a *long* time ago. By now, even Macromedia apps should have been integrated —it seems FW4 and DW4 are more or less the same mess.

ie in photoshop you can click and hold the word "opacity" and adjust its value, whereas in Illustrator you have to use the the drop-down box and adjust the slider that way.
--{We intend to get onto a single, best-of-breed set of widgets that enable things like the "scrubby sliders" you mention. They're on the roadmap, but not for the upcoming release. (We're peeling the onion, though.)}

Not for the upcoming release? Well, keep peeling, then. Maybe sometime around 2040.

Seeing the lackluster set of new PS CS3 features for example, one wonders how the development team spends its time —they even claim they follow "extreme programming".

Will documents inside the frame be considered stand-alone windows for window-management features like Expose?
--{No, although we'd like to make that work. Last I heard we'd inquired with Apple & that's not something Exposé supports. (You can't use it to display/shuffle the contents of tabs in Safari, either.) If the capability becomes available, we'll work on supporting it. --J.}

Well, the Shiira browser does it for tabbed windows. Hell, even VMWare Fusion and Parallels do it for virtualized Windows windows. And you're developers can't come up with something to make it work for framed windows?

I call "lack of interest" and/or "minimal attention to detail". Whch is insulting, considering how much we have to spend for a copy of Adobe's CS packages.

I know that Adobe is the 1000-pound gorilla in its field today —I'm not crazy to thing there are real competitors currently—, but Quark used to be too. And there was a time when Novell Netware was king in it's field and Lotus had the spreadsheet marked by itself.

Now if only someone on the application packaging team would sweat the details this much. Photoshop's Mac UI is a sweet dream compared to the install process and OSX integration.

Does the Open With... menu for images still get plastered with a million different choices? Does the installer still splooge 15 other semi-required apps onto the system? Every time I install Photoshop I feel like I've given Adobe license to completely violate my computer.

I get the feeling that Adobe engineers don't have a clue about how OSX applications are supposed to work. Like Microsoft, they have a paradigm and a platform and who cares if the rest of the world thinks different(ly)? How many man hours were put into porting the Windows registry to OSX to that all of those components could be hooked together?

Sorry for the rant, but the price of your app and past missteps on OSX entitle us to some anger.

Apple unified with leopard their gui. The Pro Apps always had this Cool-Grey colour scheme with some obsolete GUI elements. Aperture introduced an all new Pro Apps GUI design. Which is in my opinion a more worked out, specialised GUI of the basic Leopard one. If you refer to Apples Pro Apps for any kind of GUI Look And Feel you can only take Aperture as a real reference.

It is great that Adobe takes the basic Leopard/Aperture Look And Feel to refine their own GUI design and bring all this then to Windows instead of doing the vice-versa to the Mac. But wouldn't it be possible for Adobe and Apple to work more tightly together to create one Pro App look that suits both parties?

I'm not worried about the application frame at all. I'm rather concerned about functionality, simplicity, accessibility and faster workflows. When adobe can promise that all those aspects will get better with the new gui then do it.

But for now I'm not that convinced, especially when I use Fireworks CS4 and Dreamweaver CS4. I don't know what is the policy of adobe when it comes to redo a complete app layout but both apps desperately need one. Some palettes are not logic, cluttered, not understandable or just useless. Also many Main Menu items should be cleaned up and regrouped. Some of the window dialogues need also a refresh.

I can see much more effort in this point when I look at Flash CS4. Its getting closer to After Effects that has a highly efficient, simple global layout compared to its high complexity. Also take aperture as an example of complex functionality packed into a simple GUI.

closing or resizing a palette in Photoshop isn't very Mac like. I don't see spheres to click on, but a cross and a line on the opposite side.

I worried about this, but once I fired up DreamWeaver CS4 I thought it was just fine. I really like that it's more Adobe-like. I'm almost ready to uninstall DreamWeaver CS3!

I've owned every version of Photoshop back to 2.5(PC, then Mac from version 5).

I never had any complaints about the UI change decisions Adobe made. But that's me. I'm a photographer/editor, not a font herder. :-D

Change just for the sake of change is bad. I'd rather see the CS team working on system integration rather than monkeying with the UI AGAIN (64-bit CS4, anyone?)

If you are going to do UI work, leave Photoshop alone and fix Bridge, which royally sucks and has a bunch of bugs, performance issues, misfeatures, and is overall not very Mac-like at all (and there shouldn't be an excuse for it, Bridge is fairly new.)

Fix integration with Spaces, add better AppleScript support, beef up the layer "Blend If" options (how about instead of the split sliders, have boxes where you can type in the blend values and then pick the threshold?) And remember that many of your customers use multiple monitors, where the app frame UI is worthless.

Oh yeah, two more wish list items:

- Search inside the Layers palette. There are times you're looking for a hidden layer that's nested several folders deep. Being able to search for it and see the result highlighted on-screen would be useful.

- The ability to define and apply character and paragraph styles like InDesign. This is a HUGE benefit for web mockup creation, where you can define H1, H2, body, etc. styles once and then apply it automatically. Plus, if you decide to modify a style, it will then change all instances where that style occurs automatically...as opposed to having to slog through layer after layer changing it manually.

I just fell in love with the new application frame-style. Working with the CS4 betas was a great joy because the programs look more professional. I find that the new UI is a major improvement to the Adobe products and I'm just wondering some things:
- does the "overall"-frame style affect the RAM/system power usage of CS4-applications (in comparison to CS3)?
- will the multiple document layouts also work in my favorite fullscreen-mode in Photoshop?

I can't hardly wait for the upcoming Creative Suite because everything I've seen is just great.

Been a heavy Mac user my whole life and I _loved_ the new app-frame in fireworks from day one. Keep up the great work!

I have to agree on the ALL CAPS thing. Comparing the screenshot in CS4 you posted with Photoshop CS3, the latter seems a lot cleaner.

I had to do a double-take to find what I was looking for and I've been using Photoshop for years. It's especially bad in the palettes. Even though I knew where everything "was", it seemed slower to comprehend. For example, take a stopwatch, tell someone to look for Channels in both and see which they find quicker. I would be bet CS3 wins, even though they're both the same location.

It really doesn't matter in iTunes because even if you took those headers away, you would still know what everything was because the important things you actually do click on ("Music", "Movies", "iTunes Store") aren't in capitals. I don't even notice those headers while using it. iTunes also isn't a professional application, whereas Photoshop is, and I would wager *any* potential slowdown in a professional application is bad, especially an arbitrary design decision that can easily be reversed.

Having the app frame enabled by default or not is definitely a pickle. Perhaps when launching Photoshop CS4 for the first time, the user should be presented a dialog asking which "mode" they'd like to use, and quick instructions on how to change it in the future.

[Unfortunately I don't think people would be in a position to make an informed decision until after they've tried the app frame, so asking up front is likely just to bewilder them. I hate it the feeling of software (or anything) putting a gun to my head and saying, "Blabbity blabbity foo; *yes* or *no*?" --J.]