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Re: Quick Mac guide for switchers from Windows: Adding to Walter
Thanks for the extra info! Some thoughts:
1) I really want to second your suggestion to "trawl through the menus". I think it's a HUGELY important technique for users (especially newbies). After all, menus represent the primary genius of the graphic user interface: don't ask the user to memorize or look up commands; show all the commands up front, and let the user choose from among them!
Yet I find that many newcomers just never "take to" the menus, always looking first for a visible button or other control in a window, and if not finding it, asking "How do I do..." To which I so often sigh and say, like I do every time, "Anything you want to do is probably in a menu, so start by looking there..."
2) Good keyboard shortcut overview. I remain baffled as to why Apple uses the special key symbols in menus and in documentation, yet except for Command, doesn't show those symbols on the keys themselves! (More bizarre: There is a symbol on the Control key, but it's not the same one used in menus.) That almost seems an intentional effort to confuse people, and is so at odds with the good design seen elsewhere.
There are still many improvements that could be made to the Mac interface!
3) Exposé: Who uses it to reveal a single application's windows? I do, all the time! Very useful.
As for the Exposé techniques you describe, you're right on: hard stuff to write and read, easy to show in person. And while it remains in the field of "advanced" techniques for many users, it's extremely useful stuff that really boosts productivity, as you suggest.



Awesome, a very buitifil parody of the "Think Different" poem.