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Thoughts on Application Design

April 4, 2004

Rarely do I find a decent application that is functional as well as pretty. And pretty extends farther than just looking good as the term is usually applied. I mean an application with a look that actually adds to the ease-of-use and, in turn, the popularity of the product. Obviously, neither of these exclusively make a good program (although it would probably be better to have something that 'works' rather than something that just looks pretty) but together they create an application that is hard to resist.
  Panic has their shit together. Amazingly functional programs with stunning interface designs - of course, they have the benefit of developing for OS X which gives you a bonus on the design aspect from the very start. Don't get me wrong though, I have seen some UGLY OS X apps. PC apps make it easier to create that application that just looks terrible although they might be functional.
  I've been thinking a lot about what makes a good looking PC application since I've been working on TypeWriter with Alex Hung. In fact, we overhauled the settings window over the past week while taking a break from functionality and focusing on making the application easy to use. I'm a little tweaked that I can't develop for the Mac at the moment because the only Mac I have is a 4 year old iBook which runs 10.2 pretty slowly. Hopefully I can land a web design job soon enough to get some money for a new Mac and get in to OS X development with Xcode. That's my goal right now. Become an Xcode developer.
  Development on TypeWriter is a little slow at the moment but we're working towards something that will turn heads, I hope. We should be releasing a beta within the next week if all goes well. New features you'll see in the next beta include but are not limited to an updated settings window, email notification, improved local post previewing and post prevention.

Comments

I downloaded a beta version late on Sunday, very impressed so far.

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