[brianogilvie]

Originally Posted by RobTrew

In terms of information design the yellow is redundant. The vertical yellow to white edge is the strongest visual stimulus on the page, but it certainly does not convey the central message of the page. In fact it is practically meaningless.

But redundancy is not a bad thing per se. Furthermore, the association of a yellow sidebar with context mode may be arbitrary but that does not make it meaningless to those who have used OmniFocus for any length of time.

You can edit the color in com.omnigroup.OmniFocus.plist if you prefer a different color. Personally I find the yellow is not that intense on my LCD monitors.

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

the association of a yellow sidebar with context mode may be arbitrary but that does not make it meaningless to those who have used OmniFocus for any length of time.

Not quite my point. It is the dyspeptic yellow to white edge which is both visually central and virtually meaningless. The association of yellow with context is not particularly a problem.

If one wanted to keep the yellow theme but mute the over-strident yellow/white edge, it might be interesting to experiment with putting the whole window into the yellow sub-spectrum, with just a slight decrease in saturation between the sidebar and the rest - enough to hint at the separation of summary from details.

[ptone]

Originally Posted by RobTrew

Not quite my point. It is the dyspeptic yellow to white edge which is both visually central and virtually meaningless. The association of yellow with context is not particularly a problem.

The edge is hardly meaningless. The edge separates the sidebar from the content pane. The color of the sidebar helps denote its content. Seems extremely straightforward to me.

If the sidebar was white instead of blue in planning mode, then you may have some point - but in both cases the edge of color to white designates the sidebar area...

If the color purple of the next action clashes with yellow for you, open GoLive CS3, pick some matching colors from their palettes and set your styles that way.

(I personally find the purple reminds me too much of followed links in circa '96 Netscape).

-P

[zxspectrum]

Originally Posted by Toadling

I'm curious where you're taking this.

Personally, I've been on a Mac, almost exclusively, for over 20 years.

Does that make one more likely to prefer "whizbangery" or less likely?

i was asking..not telling.

[Bill Van Hecke]

With the yellow sidebar in Context mode, we're trying to approximately match the contrast between the (standard) blue sidebar and white content area in nearly every source-list-based Mac app these days. Using yellow for the content area would be a bit drastic, but we could certainly try desaturating the yellow of the sidebar, if people find the contrast to be too strong.

By the way, there is a semi-secret (and currently semi-broken) feature for changing the sidebar color: Select an item in the sidebar, open the Font panel, and then click the background color well (with the dogeared page icon). You'll need to switch to the other mode and back to get the color to fill the whole sidebar — that's the semi-broken part. Knocking the saturation of the yellow down to about 12% makes for a pretty pleasant result.

I'm really interested in hearing more concrete design feedback like this. It's essential for us to hear specifically what's bothering the people who haven't been staring at this UI all day every day for the past year like we have. :D

Originally Posted by wvh

By the way, there is a semi-secret (and currently semi-broken) feature for changing the sidebar color:

Thank you ! I have taken it down to RGB 255 252 242, which looks marginally saner :-)

[zxspectrum]

Originally Posted by wvh

I'm really interested in hearing more concrete design feedback like this. It's essential for us to hear specifically what's bothering the people who haven't been staring at this UI all day every day for the past year like we have. :D

it's so easy:) just pay attention! and get some inspiration from you favorite apps or the 'Apple Design Awards'.

they are some young Mac designers there that are amazing, so just hire them!!! take for example Delicious-Library - it's a mediocre app that was riding Mike-Matas work. they got so much PR just from looks.


so imagine what a strong technical company like the omnigroup can do with some young designers.

zx

P.S: you are underestimation the power of good design! which is ironic since you are all Mac users. beside the fact that a good design can improve your app functionality/ user experience. today, more than ever, design is one of the biggest selling point!

[justG]

zxspectrum, you seem to be continually implying that pretty == good design. That's just not true. I'd argue that some of the apps on your "reference" list are quite poorly designed, because using them is a miserable experience. I'd argue that a well-designed, contemporary Mac app is necessarily pretty, but that the converse is not true. Pretty is subjective, and there's a difference between the criticism being dished out by the Tufters ("this is not working because it affects usability/productivity/whatever") and what you're saying ("more cowbell!"). As for your reference list, with a few (very few) exceptions, I'd keep those designers as far away from OmniFocus as possible.

Also, I'm no fuddy duddy. I've absolutely no objection to OmniFocus being made to look a bit more smart. I just don't think an app meant to increase our productivity would benefit from the liberal application of needless glitter.

[zedboy]

I find it funny that you are criticizing Omni Group using an example - Delicious Library, created by a company, Delicious Monster, started by a guy, Wil Shipley, who before that was the founder of Omni Group.

I tend to be on the side of those who are saying that most of the examples you gave are all style and no substance. Disco is perhaps the one of the most pointless pieces of software I can think of.

Make it work, then make it pretty.

[Toadling]

Originally Posted by zxspectrum

you are underestimation the power of good design! which is ironic since you are all Mac users. beside the fact that a good design can improve your app functionality/ user experience. today, more than ever, design is one of the biggest selling point!

I don't think you're talking about good design. You're looking for style, flare, or pizzaz. But those things don't necessarily equate to good design. In fact, I think too much glitz is bad design.