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linguaetoday at 12:35 AM3 repliesview on HN

I wonder if part of the problem is the lack of color in these examples? I remember Microsoft Office 97 and 2000, which had icons in their menus (albeit only for a few actions, not for every action). However, those icons were colored and appeared visually distinct from each other.

Yesterday I booted my 350MHz Power Mac G4 for the first time in 13 years. I booted into Mac OS 9.2.2. I remember the Apple menu having icons for every item. Once again, though, every icon was in color.


Replies

Pannoniaetoday at 1:00 AM

And the loss of skeuoumorphism. As much as designers chide it, skeuoumorphic interfaces are, when done well, a massive improvement in usability compared to flat/monochrome ones, both for new and experienced users.

It's not really visual "clutter", the shadows / pseudo-3d elements help the brain distinguish between different types of elements, providing contextual information.

Dwedittoday at 2:20 AM

Isn't the Apple Menu basically a start menu though?

adamhartenztoday at 1:03 AM

Written words don't have colour, and you can parse those with ease.