[OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO

[Richard Fairhurst]

Tom Hughes wrote:

> Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>> IMX it's a platform thing. Windows people genuinely do run their web
>> browser, and most things, full screen. Hence the aberration that is "MDI".
>> Us Mac people, by contrast, usually have about 57 different non-full screen
>> windows overlapping - that's why Apple came up with Expose to help us find
>> them all. I dunno what Linux people do - whatever RMS has decreed is in the
>> best interests of some weird notion of "freedom", I guess. <runs away very
>> very fast>
>
> That's a bit pot calling the kettle black though - back when I was
> using Macs, which admittedly was quite a long time ago

Goodness me, it must have been - Macs have been like this since at  
least System 7 in 1991ish...

Seriously, though, it does depend on the app. Right now I've got open  
TextEdit, Safari, TextMate, Cyberduck, Colloquy, Mail, Preview, and  
Terminal: the only ones I can imagine making any sense full-screen are  
possibly Mail and Terminal, and I don't think I've ever used either as  
such.

OS X, and System 7/8/9 before it, makes much heavier use of  
drag-and-drop between apps than Windows has ever done, and users are  
expected to think that way. (The classic Finder didn't have copy and  
paste for files, for example; it was assumed you'd drag from one  
window to another. It's only in OS X as a "borrowing" of the Windows  
paradigm.)

But Word and Excel borrow so much from Windows that they can make more  
sense full-screen, and the Adobe stuff is as ever a law unto itself -  
so many bloody floating palettes, one screen sometimes doesn't feel  
enough. (http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/ is brilliantly observed and  
puts all our parody blogs to shame.) And even Apple have been getting  
a bit too full-screen for my liking with some of the iLife apps.

Where was I?

cheers
Richard