Nick Heer:
I was going to write about how this stuff should have been tried
with people who actually use Adobe’s apps in a high-pressure
environment, but I am sure it was and, also, it does not matter.
Wichary has it right. These are fundamental principles of user
interface design that Adobe is ignoring because its internal
tooling has taken precedence.
I will quibble only with this line from Heer’s post:
Also, Adobe’s interface has always been unique and not quite at
home on either MacOS or Windows.
You have to go back to the 1990s and classic Mac OS, but Adobe’s best apps used to have exemplary native UIs. Apps like Photoshop helped push the state of the art in Mac UI forward. Tabbed palettes were a revelation. Fire up, say, Photoshop 3.0 on MacOS 7.6 and see what I mean.
How did they lose that good sense? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
