See the January 13th, 2007 edition of The Latest Word for the full background.
In Classic Helix, the collection designer was given a wide range of color options. Virtually every element in the User Mode toolkit could be colored as your saw fit.
Mac OS X does not offer as many built-in options for coloring interface elements. In order for us to get OS X Helix our quicker, we are planning on leaving some color attributes undone until a later time.
For example, consider the command rectangle (button). Classic Helix allows you to set the text, the background, and the frame of the button to any color you choose. OS X provides no such options.
This is not to say that color will be drained from Helix forever. But we are prepared to do without it for a while if it means getting OS X Helix to you faster.
So please take a few moments and let us know which color elements in Helix you consider essential, and which you never use.
This survey ran March 27 – April 30, 2007.
85 users responded to this survey.
The bars below show how the relative importance of each area of Helix, according to your votes. What this doesn’t tell you is the spread of the results. (Whether everybody rated an item at 50%, or half rated it at 0% and the other half rated them at 100%.) If you want to examine the dispersion of responses in greater detail, you can log in to our tech support database and look at the ‘Survey Stats’ list. Double click a line to drill into the specifics.
Consistent with the initial survey, where color was not ranked highly, the results here are fairly low, with the highest ranked feature (color text in data rectangles) rating a mere 67%. There is also a consistency seen in that for every interface element, having color for text was deemed most important, followed by the background, and then the frame.
However, most of you were ‘snookered’ into giving answers that are impossible: Border and Repeat rectangles do not have a background color option! And yet many of you rated these as features you would not want to give up. We even gave references to the pages in the Helix Reference where you could look up the feature being asked about. Only one person pointed out via the comments field that these features do not exist. The lesson here is twofold: (1) We have to take your answers with a grain of salt. (2) You need to slow down a bit and think about whether you really need these features or not before you answer the poll. Telling us you need something that does not exist (and never existed) means we would have to slow down and add new features. And we are sure nobody wants us to do that right now!
Even so, we now know what we must do to deliver an acceptable ‘semi-complete’ release. Thank you.
| Which Color Features Do You Use? | < I don't need that … I must have that > |
| The n.n.n below each function refers to the section number where it is described in The Helix Reference. | |
| Color Commands
| |
| Color Preferences Not Available in User Mode
4.5.9 — Define a custom color palette, activate colors, etc. |
|
| Color on User Menus Done
4.10.5 & 4.11.18 — Color menu (with 8 active colors) placed on User Mode menus |
|
| Color in Styled Text Fields Done
5.3 — Assigning color to Styled Text field data via the Color menu swatches |
|
| Data Rectangles
8.1.4.4 | |
| Text Essential & Done
Set color of text in a data rectangle |
|
| Background Essential & Done
Set color of the background of a data rectangle |
|
| Frame Not Done — Not Available in OS X
Set color of the frame of a data rectangle |
|
| Control Not Done — Not Available in OS X
Set color of controls (radio buttons & checkboxes) in a data rectangle |
|
| Data Rectangles: Conditional Style Colors
8.1.4.5 — Alter color of data rectangle based on flag abacus value |
|
| Text Essential & Done
Alter color of text in a data rectangle |
|
| Background Essential & Done
Alter color of the background of a data rectangle |
|
| Frame Not Done — Not Available in OS X
Alter color of the frame of a data rectangle |
|
| Border Rectangles
8.1.5.1 | |
| Frame Color Not Done — Not Available in OS X
Set color of the frame of a border rectangle |
|
| Frame Thickness Not Done — Not Available in OS X
Set thickness for frame in a border rectangle |
|
| Background Non-existent Feature!
Set color of the background of a border rectangle |
|
| Repeat Rectangles
8.1.6.1 | |
| Frame Color Not Done
Set color of the frame of a repeat rectangle |
|
| Frame Thickness Not Done
Set thickness for frame in a repeat rectangle |
|
| Background Non-existent Feature!
Set color of the background of a repeat rectangle |
|
| Label Rectangles
8.1.7.4 — Rectangles with static text or pictures | |
| Text Essential & Done
Set color of text of a label rectangle |
|
| Background Essential & Done
Set color of the background of a label rectangle |
|
| Frame Not Done — Not Available in OS X
Set color of the frame of a label rectangle |
|
| Command Rectangles
8.1.8.1 | |
| Text Not Done — Not Available in OS X
Set color of text in a command rectangle |
|
| Background Not Done — Not Available in OS X
Set color of the background of a command rectangle |
|
| Frame Not Done — Not Available in OS X
Set color of the frame of a command rectangle |
|
| Set Window Color
8.2.9.3 — Change various attributes of the View or Form Query window itself | |
| Background Done
Set color of the overall background of a view |
|
| Frame Not Done — Not Available in OS X
Set color of a view’s frame (Obsolete since System 7) |
|
| Title Bar Not Done — Not Available in OS X
Set color of a view’s title bar (Obsolete since System 7) |
|
This is another in an ongoing series of surveys designed to more deeply understand which functions in Helix are most often used.
It is our intention to deliver a preliminary Helix Engine (and Client) as soon as we have met the needs of a reasonable portion of our user base. The feature set included in that preliminary release will be determined in part by the results of this survey.