Gallery of noodling
I noodle around a lot with user interface. I try things. I have pet theories. Some people know where to go in advance—me, I have general ideas, I iterate, change course, go nuts, keep at it, keep noodling, then fiddle a bit until I like what I see.
Once I start getting feedback, it all starts all over again.
Anyway, here are some screen shots from the builds right before NetNewsWire 3.0d8 got into the hands of the private testers last Fall.
And here’s 3.0d8, the build that testers first saw:
You can see that, among other things, I was trying to get rid of the toolbar-at-the-top entirely. Though lots of apps (iApps, especially) are going this way, it’s not that great for usability in apps like NetNewsWire and Mail where the items are listed near the top—your mouse ends up traveling too much to hit the buttons at the bottom.