Oracle - how to be More Believable on OS X

Recently, the baton on Java on OS X was passed from Apple to Oracle. From Java 7 onwards (i.e. now), updates come from Oracle. Also, integration with operating system has changed in various ways.

Most of this is good.

And then there's this.

Instead of nicely integrating the Java Control Panel into where the rest of the settings are (i.e. within the topmost window), Oracle chooses to launch the one below.

There's a plethora of user interface issues here.

1. "About" is topmost on the Control Panel window, on the first (default) pane. It's the *last* thing a user needs. Move it!

2. It simply looks Bad and Boring. This is not in line with the coolness that JavaFX tries to bring to Oracle. Put some meaningful graphics on the first pane?

3. *All* of the four buttons on the first pane have "..." in their captions, meaning you can do *nothing* in this pane alone. Too deep organization.

The reason for this, of course, is that they want to run the Control Panel in Java (it looks just the same in Windows). That's probably a valid excuse for the first OS X version. Not for the long run.

So let's fix this. :)

Don't launch anything new, make things fit in the OS X usual Control Panel (hire some consultant to do it in Objective-C, it's not contagious).

We can probably use the same tabs, but some would benefit from a renaming. Let's check them one by one (sorry that I haven't made any UI sketches on this - have other things to do):

General tab

Drop the "About" from here (moves i.e. to under "Update" where it's more relevant).

Drop "Network settings are used when making Internet connections." *Anyone* (anyone who found the Control Panel, anyways), does know that. Less is more and this simply makes Oracle (the boss within Oracle who demanded this text) look Stupid..

Since you're saying "only advanced users should modify..." why exactly is *this* on the front page, then?

Pressing 'Network Settings...' gives:

This should imho be a "Network" tab of its own, just prior to the "Advanced" tab. You said it yourself. For advanced users. = moved.

Temporary Internet Files has the same "only advanced users should".. mention. By having these right on entry page of the Control Panel you make the occasional Java users (who are millions) think Java is "only for advanced users". Unnecessarily. Move this, too.

There's enough in there to grant a separate, top-level tab (within the real OS X Control Panel area). Let's put "Temporary files" (or "Disk cache") before "Advanced".

Then there's the "View..." dialog of the initial page (yet one very advanced thingy).

Or actually, it turns out to be almost like a separate application within the Control Panel (which is within the OS X Control Panel). Way too deep - I bet most people never knew this even exists? I did not. :)

It's three things.

"Applications" shows which apps are taking disc space for their cache files. This is great, but... the icons on top allow one to i.e. launch these programs and look into their source code. Someone in charge of this wanted more than one icon, and got it. *Completely unnecessary* within a Control Panel.

Let's make this into a "Cache" tab (for brevity) and just keep the possibility to list the apps and remove their cached data.

"Resources" has things that come from the Internet. Maybe it can be selected like above (show) but maybe the two lists could be put in one, i.e. Apps on top, followed by Resources. 

"Deleted applications" is completely unnecessary. Someone in some meeting wanted to play safe and duplicate a trash bin. Don't Do That. Stick to simplicity. Though Java (well, JVM) is gorgeous, you don't want it to explode on people's faces. They already have enough stuff to take care of. One can always re-install an app from the original place. Trash.

That covers the first, "General" pane, and - nicely - nothing remains on it. I would claim that the proper title for the pane should have been "Miscellaneous" since these really were things that didn't fit anywhere else. Too bad they were placed on the *entry* place of the Java Control Panel.

Update

What a waste of empty space.

Merge this with the "about" popup that comes from the General tab. 

I would bet that the *most* frequently used feature of Java Control Panel is to check which version you are running and possibly upgrade. Make this the entry page (it already has the nice graphics). Don't hide it behind an "About.." button.

That covers the "Update" pane, which now functions as the nice entry page within the Control Panel.

Java

It's kind of awkward to have a "Java" pane within a "Java Control Panel", isn't it? If this pane is "Java", what are the others?

Again, you probably noticed the (lack of) use of empty space, and making people push yet another Button... (A copy of this pane alone would make for 15 minutes of teaching at a University Usability Course - if people would learn by bad examples, which they don't). :)

Ok, let's be humble and press the "View..."

There comes "Java Runtime Environment Settings".

Let's forget about the unnecessary interim "Java" tab and call the tab "Runtimes" at once.

However, knowing that in the Oracle way of distributing Java for OS X there is only one runtime at any one time, I wonder what's actually the point of all this. Apple had a similar list where one could manage multiple Java Runtimes. Oracle itself has said this was a very, very bad idea. So .... what is this for?

Security

"Use certificates to positively identify .. certifications." Yeah, right.

- empty space

- button...

Just call the whole page "Certificates", and have this (what pops up by pressing the button) right on the topmost level:

Certificates is probably an even more advanced issue than Network and Temporary Files and therefore deserves to be listed after them.

Advanced

This can probably remain pretty much as-is, since the name anyways implies you should know what you're doing. A tiny help pane on the right side for getting info on the settings might not hurt (especially since the OS X Control Panel would have more horizontal page available).

Maybe reduce the font size a bit. It's advanced. There are many options. Smaller font size means I can get a better overall view at once.

Altogether, now

So the current (Oracle Java 7 SE) Java Control Panel organization is like this:

General

   About...

   Network Settings...

   Settings...

   View...

Update

Java

   View...

Security

   Certificates...

Advanced

The proposed flatter organization is:

Update

Network

Temporary Files

Caches

Runtime   (if required)

Certificates

Other

Since essentially all the entries (except for 'Update') are advanced (already declared so in the current Control Panel implementation), it is probably in place to re-title the earlier "Advanced" as "Other".

The Theory

I've developed a theory (mainly by observing XBox/Zune and other Microsoft mess-ups) that the internal structure of an organization is traceable in the software it produces. That is, unless a special effort is taken to smoothen such borderlines from the eyes of the user. I bet that the issues mentioned above are not coming from developers. They reflect something within probably Sun and not Oracle that caused this kind of approaches to be taken. It is sad if such usability failures are allowed to live further over the years, since *this* is what most people will feel when they touch Java. Is it flat, easy and good-looking. Or is it unnecessarily structural, hard to handle, and aging.

Oracle, please decide.

Apple *always* lets you down!

I upgraded to Mountain Lion, and expected to get laptop/desktop/phone integration. That's what they had publicized. A more "iOS" experience, also on the desktop. Yeah. Right.

Got an alarm just a few minutes ago. Clicked it "shut" on my desktop. What the h*ll... It's still ringing on the phone in the entrance!

I genuinly thought they'd make the things *integrated*. You react to a message on one device, it gets handled on the others as well.

Nope.

Apple always leaves something for the next update. But this one they should have covered.

While whining, how about incoming SMS'es. If I'm working on a computer, let me see the SMS'es there, and react to them. INTEGRATE.

Currently, SMS'es are still confined only to the phone. No technical reason they would need to be so.

I'm beginning to think Apple is losing the magical "it just works" that they were known for, in the time when using PC's was hard. Losing their innovation mojo. Please - do better!!!

Making narrative videos based on Keynote could be easier

( This is a copy of a feedback I sent to Apple's Keynote team. )

<<
I love Keynote - you've gradually developed it into a very versatile and nice tool, for making in-person presentations.

However, where I feel it can be improved is making narrative "taped" presentations. I have done such recently using a combination of Keynote, Garageband and iMovie, and the experience left me feeling like swimming upstream. The workflow was clumsy and making changes to a certain slide's audio was elaborate. Doing the same completely within Keynote would be ideal.

Keynote has basic narration recording and slide synchronization already (see here). However, the approach seems to suffer from some UI confusion and lack of suitability to at least my usage case.

The UI terminology is not very clear. 

Here is the current menu structure:

This kludges together both the narrative part and rehearsal, which are actually two unrelated things. Top three entries are for making narrative presentations. The two lowermost are for exercising live presentations.

My suggestion for the same menu:

   Play

      > Play with narrative

      > Record narrative

      > Clear narrative

      ---

      > Rehearse slideshow

      > Customize presenter display...

This way, one would use the word "narrative" for a recorded slideshow, with audio, and the word "slideshow" for any kind of general reference (s.a. rehearsing your live presentation).

The use of "Play" as the main menu name can be argued, since it also covers recording and rehearsal. "Studio" might actually be equally good? :)

The workflow seems wrong.

"Record slideshow" has following options:

The "Record from beginning" moves to the first slide of narrative and begins a whole new sound track for all the slides. The "Record & Replace" (or "Record & Append" in some cases) stays on current slide and replaces the soundtrack for this (and subsequent) slides.

This works for ad-hoc narratives where the person casually goes through all the slides in order. It fails on narratives with planned text to read, where getting one slide right at a time is already a good bite.

My suggestion:

Get completely rid of the options dialog. Take people directly to recording stage, but in paused mode so they can start when ready. If they remain within the particular slide and end the recording by pressing ESC, replace only that slide's recording. If they proceed to following slide, replace the recording of that slide as well.

I believe this change is great since it cuts away a whole (unnecessary) dialog, and suits both the old and the new usage case. If one wants to narrate the whole slideshow at once, simply go to first page, start recording and proceed through all the pages. But it also allows to go back to certain page later, and re-record only that one. Without scrapping the audio of the slides behind it.

Going further

You could make a little (loudspeaker icon) icon by the slides in the Slides pane to show which ones have a narration attached to them and which not. Pressing that icon could play the narration without necessarily moving to that slide. Currently, such features are in the Document level in the Inspector - again highlighting the idea that narration would be an undivided, document centric thing. It actually is a the opposite - a page-specific thing that gets bound together just as slides get bound together when running them as a slideshow.

I believe this misconception is underlying all the problems I'm facing with the current narrative Keynote features. Fix that, and all will drop in place.

I believe these issues are easy to fix and look forward to that happening. 

Here is my current narrated presentation I did using the painful Keynote + Garageband -> iMovie workflow:

http://bmdesign.smugmug.com/Investors/Vision-public/18497382_sPHbtM#1529667808_sSFPcwz

<<

Going slightly more further (addendum)

Apple could actually scrap the narration features altogether from the Menu. "Play with narration" becomes unneeded if playing with narration would be available at the usual slideshow starting. "Record narration" may still be required - somewhere, to get things going. "Clear narration" can be done by usual slide handling, instead. Less UI is a good thing.

I would like to have external editing of the narrations (s.a. the effects you get in Garageband and clipping) but this is troublesome because of the need to synchronize a narrative with on-screen presentation effects (i.e. showing text or animations). Therefore, it's probably best to leave within Keynote.

Currently (iWork '09) exporting narrations to iCloud is not supported, but obviously it should be. However, these can be pushed as videos instead of interactive slideshows. I would like to have automatically generated markers for the beginning of each slide, though, so viewers would be easily able to skim back and forth to a particular slide.

Narrative slideshows are used extensively in i.e. pitching for projects or raising funds. I hope Apple makes producing them way easier than it now is. :)

p.s. I exported the slides to iCloud. Notice how much crisper the graphics look, because of no conversion to MPEG4 video. Also, the upload was 46MB compared to 230MB for video.
https://www.iwork.com/document/?d=Public_thing.key&a=p1303025490

One more thing...

The slide comments should be viewable (at least as an option) when recording the narration. Currently, they are not. I've placed the text to read in those comments and it makes sense to have it there, i.e. for making printouts.