Comment by iamtedd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamtedd | Hacker News Reader

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As someone who has no experience with this version of iTunes:

- The lower row is definitely a row of buttons. Back, forward, categories in the library (?), I don't know what the last one is supposed to do.

- Are the things above that row buttons? Why don't they look like them then?

- If they are, what does fast forward and rewind do? Skip to the next track and to the beginning of the same track? Actually move quickly through the track (like fast forward and rewind used to do)? Does pressing rewind go to the beginning of the track or to the previous track? If it's to the same track, how quickly do I have to click again to go to the previous track?

- Is that slider a progress bar or volume slider?

- Where do I click and drag to move the window? If it's in that top row, why are there things cluttering up the title bar? How much space do I have left to move the window?

- I assume the coloured things are the window management controls. Does clicking the red one close the window and keep the music going, or does it stop?

> what the last one is supposed to do.

It's indicating an iOS device being locally, e.g. for administration, backup, file transfer and the like.

> Are the things above that row buttons? Why don't they look like them then?

Haha yeah. That's modern Apple for you!

> what does fast forward and rewind do?

They sort of behave the way ff and fr does on a remote. Click/press fast and you skip to the next/previous song/chapter or equivalent. Hold down and you scrub at something like 4x speed.

> Is that slider a progress bar or volume slider?

A volume slider.

> Where do I click and drag to move the window? If it's in that top row, why are there things cluttering up the title bar? How much space do I have left to move the window?

I ask myself the same thing every day and have the same problem with many many apps, also in Windows. For example Firefox has the same design problem where its buttons have nor border and therefore have no clear place where draggable top space is and button is.

> I assume the coloured things are the window management controls.

Yes, these have remained mostly unchanged for over 20 years, they have gotten a bit flatter and lost some subtle small iconography.

> Does clicking the red one close the window and keep the music going

At least this part works well and in a predictable fashion. It consistently follows Apple's Human Interface Guidelines since well over 30 years: Closing a window or document of a Mac OS application should not quit the application. (there are some exceptions, but that is the default behaviour).

> For example Firefox has the same design problem where its buttons have nor border and therefore have no clear place where draggable top space is and button is.

This can be changed by going to "about:settings" page and setting the option "browser.tabs.inTitlebar" to 0.

That about:config setting is a halfway okay solution for a single app, it loses vertical space however, which is my premium. Optimally I would like a way to (in all applications which has this problem) to _simply show me_ what is a UI widget/button and what part is "inert" draggable window chrome, like this older screen shot where the distinction is unambiguous and clear:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/Se6i0.png

It's actually trivial for a website to fill up that space with invisible tabs, too.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749835

> what does fast forward and rewind do?

symbols in "traditional" media playback, the icon shown would traditionally be for fast reverse/forward. skip back/forward to the previous/next would had a vertical bar to the point of the triangle. some also go so far to differentiate skip/scanning where scanning uses two triangles while skip uses one triangle with the bar. not really sure what Apple has done to them though. i would almost expect them to be skip instead of the scan with Apple expecting you to use the playhead (in whatever format it is made available) for scanning.

the play button in Apple's use is typically action instead of state. so in this state, clicking it would start play, and then the button changes to the "pause" symbol (an = rotated 90°).

so this is a really good example of mixing usage.

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