In ages past, I had a fairly popular thread (somewhere else) called
Oddities and aberrations of the NeXT user interface. Unfortunately it is now lost. This thread will be an expansion and rehash of that series, featuring better organization, although since I am writing it over from scratch there will be a fair bit of differences between the two in terms of actual content. Fortunately I've also learned a good deal about NeXT and its history since I started that old thread, so there will also be some corrections in this version!
Planned Topics:
- Imperfections in icons & other image assets
- How widgets and windows (are meant to) be drawn
- Derivatives and peers: Workbench 2, Windows 95, Motif, and OS/2 Warp
- History of UIs in Rhapsody
- NSInterfaceStyle: Rhapsody's secret weapon
- The zoom (resize) button
- Platinum: Rhapsody vs Mac OS 8
- The most beautiful gradient in the world and the NS 3.0 tertiary palette
- Timeline of trends in UI design
- OpenStep for Solaris; is OpenStep always better than the old NextStep APIs?
- OPENSTEP Enterprise & YellowBox on Windows
- OPENSTEP Enterprise for Solaris and HP-UX
- The Complete Guide to Misusing NXHost and NSHost
- Gallery of retired software (≤3.2)
- Evolution of ProjectBuilder
- Evolution of Edit and TextEdit
- The afterlife of OPENSTEP 4.2 at Apple; WebObjects
- Remnants of NeXT UX in early OS X
- One-off views and controls
- Metrics: 16px icons, 8px gaps, 3px right margin, Mecca's Intel roots, "standard" UI density
- When does Apple end and NeXT begin? Gil Amelio and Apple OpenStep
- Clones: grading WindowMaker, GNUstep, AfterStep, and more
- Noteworthy third-party interfaces
I'll update this post with links as these articles are written.