Membranophonist’s Ramblings

Mike Davidson posted a critique of the number of steps required to change battery life-extending settings on the iPhone. Off the top of my head, I proposed what I mocked up and posted below; an always available means of switching among configurations.

1. Tap the battery icon at the top right of the screen. This target is potentially problematic given the relatively small size and its proximity to other controls.
   
   
2. Tap the name of a configuration to activate it or the disclosure button to the right of the label to view/edit its details. The Add button opens an Untitled configuration with the default iPhone settings.
   
   
3. Edit the settings by sliding one or more sliders or tap the oval to edit the configuration name.
   
   
4. Edit the name and tap Done. The sliders remain manipulable.
   
   
5. The configuration has been renamed. Tap the OK button to return to the configurations list.
   
   

November 12 Update: Minor changes to better follow iPhone conventions, larger thumbnails with alpha channels.

During my holiday visit to Seattle, I helped two people address disk space shortages on their Macs. While purchasing additional storage was not the solution I recommended in either case, it got me thinking about the issue.

There are many places to buy storage online, and a few of them allow you to filter the options based on the Mac the drive will be in or attached to. This is helpful, but it would be better to filter the list automatically based on the known system configuration without requiring user input.

1. The Warning Dialog
   
   I didn’t have a screenshot of the actual current dialog, so I had to work off an old screenshot I found. Regardless, the only important difference is the addition of the Additional Storage button.

   

2. 1. Compatible Storage List with Item Details
      
      The list is generated based on your hardware. For example, if you have added an eSATA controller, eSATA drives would also be shown.

      Showing the formatted capacity makes it easier to determine exactly how much additional storage you will get. The filesystem type in parentheses could be a pop-up menu to select different formats.

      Additional item details could include cache size, noise levels, power consumption and conservation features, seek times, etc.

      

   2. Compatible Storage List with Item Reviews
      
      The value of reviews really depends on the number provided, but even one can contain useful information not provided elsewhere.

      

3. Reviewing Your Storage Order
   
   
4. Placing Your Storage Order
   
   All credit card type logos would be fully opaque until the first digit is input. Once input, the matching logo remains opaque while the others become semi-transparent.

   Checking “Ship to a different address…” would vertically expand the window to accommodate another set of fields for shipping information. Billing and shipping fields would be auto-completed based on your address book.
   

The Mac Pro, FireWire, Internal, USB, and generic External icons are property of Apple. The Cuica hard drive icon is Metal OS from Carlos Reyes' Carlito Drives set.

An Alternate Approach

System information could be sent to a web-based store as part of a generated URL (similar to Google Charts) after clicking Additional Storage on the warning dialog.

Prior to the unveiling of Books.app, a book reader for the iPhone, I’d begun working on my own design. I figured the iPhone would be fairly comfortable for extended reading due to the bright display and high pixel density (which allows it to render text closer to print quality). Thanks to Chris Messina for the Keynote template with basic iPhone images he posted.

Book List

The screen you initially see after pressing the Books app icon on the Home screen:

Pressing Title switches the sorting method:

Searching

Pressing Search on the bottom button row triggers a sliding transition; the navigation buttons are replaced by a search field and Search button. The keyboard appears below.

Pressing Books returns to the list with the last active sort in effect.

Table of Contents

Nothing too special…

Book Info

Additional book details such as the original publisher and publication date. I haven’t settled on exactly what metadata should be displayed here.

Pressing the cover overlays a large version. The two-fingered spread/pinch gesture could zoom in and out.

Index

Assuming an index is embedded in the book file (or automagically generated), this would be an alternative to Search.

Pressing on a index entry displays excerpts of sentences containing the phrase in order of appearance. Pressing one of these navigates to the page.

The Book

The page structure of the physical book should be retained, but a continuous scrolling interface sounds better to me than using paging. Pages are an implementation detail (unless you are reading scrolls). The pinch/spread gesture could be used here to decrease and increase the text size, automatically reflowing the text (minding widows and orphans!). Pressing on illustrations would either overlay them similar to the cover in the Info view or open them on their own screen. If the illustration has a title and caption, a separate screen with a Go Back-type button would probably be preferable.

The zipped Keynote ‘08 file has links set up to give some idea as to the flow. Keynote’s animation tools have improved, but they are not yet to the point where I can comfortably create the transition animations that I have in mind for a book reader.

Yes, there would be a Cover Flow view when in landscape orientation. You can mock that up with your imagination. No, I do not have an iPhone. I hate phones, but I do like books.

How about an SDK, Apple?

A recent chat with Robb Beal got me thinking about ways in which Spotlight could be both global and specific using a consistent interface.

Global searching

Nothing really different other than the Spotlight icon being in the opposite corner of the screen.

Browsers

OmniWeb is my default browser. The Firefox 1.5 preview is a big improvement, but it still doesn’t feel right to me.

• Bookmarks
• Headlines (assuming syndication feed integration; not pictured)
• History
• Downloaded files
• Local HTML files

Syndication Aggregators

Rory Prior’s NewsMac Pro is rapidly evolving. The extensive built-in library provides many feeds to explore.

• Headlines
• Downloaded files

Mail clients

• Messages
• Attached files

Music jukebox

• Artists
• Albums
• Songs

Calendar

I’m glad to see Uwe Tilemann is still working on even-t. There is information about the in-development version 2.0 on the event-t weblog.

• Events
• Tasks
• Attached files (not pictured)

Folder (or drive)

All individual files within the folder or volume.

Not Pictured

Chat clients

• Conversation logs
• Received files

Image viewers & editors

• Bitmap images
• PDF documents
• PostScript documents

General document-based applications

• Documents openable by the app
• Templates

Implementation Notes

1. Different keyboard shortcuts would be provided for global Spotlight searching (sticking to the existing default would be least disruptive) and “Search within this application’s domain”. Perhaps Shift-Command-Space for app-specific.
2. The Search field could also be accessed by selecting a Search command from the application’s Dock menu. The search field would replace the Dock menu using a visual crossfade effect.
3. Application Dock menus could include a “Search” command that would present an in-focus text input field immediately above them.
4. That the lens could be dragged would be indicated by displaying handles of some sort. The splitters used in my mockups should be considered placeholders. The handles (at 50% opacity in the mockups) would fully saturate when the cursor entered their boundaries.
5. In order to accommodate the lens handle(s), the space between icons would probably have to be increased a bit.
6. It should be possible to query and launch applications that were not running based on the UTIs the application is registered to handle and/or the data for which the developers provide a Spotlight importer.
7. Items would open in the focused application, regardless of the default handler.
8. The Spotlight icon in the lower left corner would be given infinite depth to leverage Fitts’ Law.
9. This design makes use of several of the particulars of my Dock configuration; pinned in the lower left corner with magnification turned off. I don’t think it would work nearly as well with the default Dock configuration.
10. The “Spotlight preferences�” at the top of the results menu would allow users to modify what kind of content would be displayed for that particular application. If the user preferred not to open a given type in an app, they could remove it to cut down on visual clutter.

Joe Henderson was a great saxophonist and composer. His advice for saxophonists: work on your long tones!

Click above.

How to select a bookmark icon and assigning ratings.

My brother rightly stated that my media center design needed more eye candy.

Media Center Revision 1 (4.5MB PDF)

I’m proud of my director’s chair, but feel free to make fun of any of the other icons.

June 9, 2005 Update: I’ve improved the PDF with page bookmarks and links that approximate use of the interface with a remote control. For example, from the Main Menu (page 3), click Television -> Shows -> Alias to drill down through the interface.

I’d love to be able to attach an arbitrary web link to a note added to a Flickr photo.

A second text field in the editing interface would be presented for the author to input the desired URL. Viewers would activate the link by clicking within the positioned frame, which would display a link tooltip along the lines of “Click to visit *url*” or “Link: http://www.flickr.com” in addition to the note text. Displaying lengthy URLs could be problematic given the space constraints of the image area. Given that they would be tooltips and not selectable text, breaking a long address into multiple lines would not be too bad.

This would be great for things which appear in your pictures:

• People - link to their photo collection, their weblog, whatever.
• Products - link to a product’s page (yes, we are consumer whores!)
• Places - link to a restaurant or club’s home page, information sites for landmarks, etc.

Flickr Note Web Links (644K PDF)