Reader iNuron adds several interesting observations about Leopard’s Dock relative to yesterday’s article, Apple’s Gravity Lessons - Learning from Warner Bros.?:

The reflections aren’t right. They’re simply upside down and transparent. If they were really reflected on the Dock’s surface, they would distort to conform to perspective.

The shadows aren’t right. The icon shadows are improperly cast, because they weren’t designed for the Leopard Dock’s new angled surface. Also, because the shadows are part of the Finder icons themselves, when the icon jumps, the shadow jumps too.

The perspective isn’t right. When you move the Dock to the side of the screen, the perspective is strange. Icons designed according to Apple’s human interface guidelines lie about 35 degrees below your line of sight. That’s why you can see the top of the icon. Placing the dock on either side of the screen makes it appear as though the Dock’s center is aligned with your line of sight, since the lines of perspective converge on a distant point level with the middle of the Dock.

So the Dock is telling you you’re looking straight ahead, while the icons are telling you you’re looking down. That is bound to confuse, and is probably why the WWDC keynote showed the Dock positioned on the side of the screen only briefly.

And one more point about perspective: when the Leopard Dock slides into and out of view beyond the edge of the screen, whether configured to do so in System Preferences or by typing Command-Option-D, do the lines of perspective change as they should, or do they stay artifically fixed? Almost certainly the latter.

Again, these are all nits, but they add up. If Apple was using real 3D such as OpenGL, these problems would not occur. Instead, they’re using tricks and images to improve the UI, which will likely have unforeseen consequences.

An odd dock indeed. Pretty, but odd.

Friday, June 22nd, 2007, 11:08 am    Trackback.