As a developer you want to make the user feel at home, get the user in a state of flow, in “the zone”, get the user productive and not interrupt her with a confusing UI or stupid error messages.

Whoever builds weird UI skins for the sake of different isn’t really doing the user any service. Honestly I don’t know if my post is confusing the matters more, as I see many comments nitpicking about consistency. Consistency for standard aqua controls is a moot point. Duh.

What I’m trying to show is that to give the user a better interaction, more flow, etc. user interfaces are forced to migrate from aqua controls to custom views. Look at the BART widget, the user interface there is no longer an aqua table of aqua cells, it’s a work of graphic design, and it’s not a mythical new interaction model. It undoubtedly creates a much better user experience. Would you argue it shouldn’t be done for the sake of consistency?

For users of graphics tablets and Inkwell (like me!), iTunes has a problem where the scroll bars don’t actually behave correctly when a pen is the mouse—if a user presses (clicks) on a scrollbar, Inkwell is supposed to be able to tell that the user wants to click immediately on the control rather than wait for electronic ink input; instead, Inkwell actually waits for electronic ink input over the scroll bar first, which causes headaches when you actually want to scroll a list of songs in iTunes!

Inkwell is supposed to be sensitive to where the pen is pointing in order to decide whether to enter electronic ink mode or mouse mode—the menu bar, the window title bar, the scroll bars and the grow (resize) box are examples of standard Aqua user interface elements where mouse mode automatically overrides electronic ink mode in Inkwell. However, in iTunes, the scroll bars are custom controls, and they don’t allow Inkwell to work the way the standard controls do, causing problems relating to how users can control iTunes with a pen as the mouse. Specifically, users are forced to wait for the double-click time (as set in Mouse Preferences) before Inkwell realises that you want to switch from electronic ink mode to mouse mode in order to move the scroll bar.

Another reason why iTunes shouldn’t get away with using its scroll bars!

—tonza

I’m still hoping what I wrote might instill doubt in developers coding a custom look for Aqua controls. Doing it without a reason is not only pointless, it also takes development time away from possible interaction improvements.

Apple, though, should know better.

I guess, perhaps, Mr Jobs didn’t think they were just right yet, or perhaps they make the whole look too dar, or there were problems with legacy apps. I think iTunes was the trial.

I’d prefer we moved on …

Cheers,
Ashley.

I agree that the HIG are still relevant. However, Leopard’s GUI disappointed me a little. Mostly due to the iTunes scrollbars, or lack thereof. It’s still inconsistent, which bugs me a little.