Adobe followup
Color me impressed. Following my lash-out at Adobe over the UI in some of its CS apps (Dreamweaver and Photoshop in particular), I was contacted on Twitter by Adobe’s Dreamweaver account and asked for my input.
@dannystewart What about DW and PS do you think looks outdated? Any specific suggestions to improve? (cc @jtranber)
Let me just state for the record that I didn’t mean to be so harsh in my initial comment. It’s so much easier to treat Adobe as a big faceless corporation than to recognize that people actually make these products, but that’s no excuse to actually do so.I would like to lay out my response here, for readability, and to justify myself a bit further.
Hi. First, thanks for reaching out, and apologies if I was unnecessarily harsh with my comment.Hard for me to cover in tweets. DW: Aqua in the UI, imitation buttons/controls (non-native), text alignment. Gives it a feel of a very ancient (OS 9 era) Carbon port instead of a slick modern app. Example in PS: In tool palette, look at selected tool. That outline & the gradient behind it. Looks outdated. It’s so hard for me to cite specific things when the entire UI feels old. Not trying to be harsh. CS needs facelift. You guys are supposed to be the kings of the industry. In power, you are. But in UI, everything feels so contrived. It feels like everything is being built on top of 15-year-old code. I know it is, but it shouldn’t look/feel that way. Things are still aliased in the UI. I know fonts and icons are small, but everything should be smooth/antialiased. RGB sliders, for example, feel like old UI. Certain buttons, folder icons, pulldown triangles misaligned. UI needs to be complex, but don’t reinvent the wheel. Look at modern Mac apps. Acorn, Pixelmator, Espresso, CSSEdit. They’re not as powerful as CS apps, but they feel ten times simpler. Fewer things on screen, subtle UI animations. I don’t expect all of this, just kind of flowing from one idea to another. Sorry for flooding. In closing, your apps are supremely powerful, but are islands in a sea of UI guidelines. I would be super excited to see CS6 focus more on a UI refinement (and not just change for the sake of change). You guys already have virtually every feature imaginable under the sun. Don’t just pile on; refine. My two cents. Hope a bit of that was of assistance to you. I’m an Apple fan, but I want Adobe to ship great pro software! Thanks!!!