FreeHand has a new App Icon

Question

John Nack at Adobe has published a color wheel of ALL the
redesigned application icons and color schemes.
See
it here
If you look in the south west quadrant you will see the FH of
FreeHand Icon. Is this good news for the future?

Answer 1

> and last night while trying the PS CS3 beta I felt that
the interface is actually similar to FHMX.
I really don't don't see how you get that. Sounds like alot
of *really* wishful thinking to me.
It looks to me that all they've done is given PS (and
presumably the other CS3 apps) a new palette docking interface.
This is something Illustrator--in typical Illustrator fashion--has
been years behind. But PS and InD already have palette docking
ability; they just didn't match. So now Adobe is (again,
presumably) building the "next generation" of the "unified Adobe
interface", which if history tells, they will probably consider
"locked in" for at least several years thereafter. If this is all
the hullabaloo is about, we're in for another many years of
behind-the-times Adobe interface, because while this would be an
improvement for AI, it is little more than a facelift for PS and
InD.
To say this is "similar to FreeHand" or even similar to the
Macromedia structure is a far stretch. There is nothing original in
the idea of simply docking palettes to the right edge of the main
monitor. The main principle that separates the MM interface scheme
from Adobe's is the use of the "contextual inspector"
organizational model, which is followed in all the MM apps. I see
nothing to indicate that in the PS3 layout. It's just the same old
palettes now able to dock in a way different from the rather
half-baked palette docker in the previous version. What's the big
deal?
The original Adobe Creative Suite apps (AI, PS, InD) all
still cling to the long-outdated model wherein you have many
separate palettes for all the separate attributes of the selection.
That's much more tolerable in a raster imagng program, because
raster imaging is not nearly so "object oriented" as page layout
and vector illustration. That is, even with all the bells and
whistles that have been added to Photoshop over the ages, you are
still working with one raster image--or a subset selection of
pixels in that one image--at a time. Yes, PS nowadays stacks
several images with the same resolution on top of each other and
calls them "layers." And in recent years, it even allows you to
place vector clipping paths within those "layers" and calls them
"shape layers."
But that's all still a far cry from the object-oriented
nature of vector drawing programs.
Way, way back (when was it? FH3? FH5.5?), FH was rebuilt upon
the more modern (and profoundly more efficient) "contextual
inspector" model. From that day forward, you no longer had to go
scouring all over a kazillion separate palettes to set the selected
path's fill, stroke, overprint attributes, etc., etc. It is all
right there in the fully contextual Inspector Palette. (It was
actually called the "Inspector Palette" back then. It was changed
to Object Properties when a stylistic uniformity was applied across
the other and newer MM apps.)
The only CS app which comes close to a true inspector-baed
interface is the one Adobe didn't author: GoLive. (We won't even
get into Acrobat's completely arbitrary interface, which
matches--well--nothing.)
When MM stylistcally unified the interfaces, it also made
them dockable to the right edge of the main monitor. But that
docking aspect is a far less important difference from the old
fashioned interface scheme than the functional reorganization of
the contextual inspector model.
*That's* the crucial difference between MM's stylistically
unified interface and Adobe's. This is best seen by comparing not
the schemes of FH and PS3; but those of FH and AI:
Setting mere palette docking aside, In both programs you
still have a separate palette for mixing colors, for storing
swatches, for defining styles, etc. But the real difference is both
subtle and profound. In AI, those individual palettes don't only
create and store all those myriad settings, but they must be used
to *view and apply* them.
In FH, you work far more efficiently by using the various
palettes to create and store settings, but you *view and apply*
them in the context of the current selection in the all-inclusive
and much more informative Object Properties palette. Defined
(stored) swatches automatically appear as selections in the
Properties pallette's popup menu. Same for styles, brushes, stroke
weights, overprint attributes--you name it.
The Object Inspector becomes your one-stop-shop for
everything you need to know about the current selection. It tells
you the number of points in the path; the effects applied; its
position and dimensions; its overprint attributes, its applied
styles, and on and on. So it tells you everyting about the
selection that AI's Appearance Palette does, but much much more and
in a much more concise and organized way (and in less space).
It is fully cotextual. For example, subselect some points and
you can change them from corners, curves, or connectors; retract or
extend their handles, right there in the same place you looked for
whole-object attributes: the Properties Palette.
Understand this is quite different from a limited "control
bar" like AI CS2's much ballyhooed but anemic Control Palette. That
kind of thing merely shows you a grab-bag collection of someone's
idea of the "most commonly needed" settings. For example, you still
have to dig for the ill-conceived Attributes palette to see if one
of the object's fills or strokes is set to overprint; or to a
buried sub-menu selection of the Document Info palette to see its
number of points.
That last is a good example. I ask you: What would compel a
new AI user who wants to know the number of points in a path, or
whether it is open or closed, to go look for something called the
Document Info palette?
Do you see what I mean? AI's dated, scattered, and cluttered
interface is what makes it so difficult for new users. New users
then mistakenly perceive "difficult" as "sophisticated" or
"powerful" when in fact quite the opposite is true. Proficient FH
users know this. The better organizational scheme which makes
finding settings more understandable and less frustrating for
newcomers also makes every moment of every workaday situation more
efficient and less tedious for proficient users--even long after
they've learned where all that information resides in AI.
The closest thing AI has to the concept of an object
inspector is not its Control Palette, but its Appearance palette.
But this also falls very short. It now shows the weight of each
stroke, and whether it is set to overprint, but doesn't let you
*change* those attributes. It doesn't tell you what its color
values are, or what kind of endcaps and joins it has. It indents
the individual strokes, fills, and effects under its item type
(path, compound path), but clicking that item type listing doesn't
provide the object-level attributes ( number of points,
open/closed, winding rule).
So AI's Appearance Palette and Control Palette are both mere
*pretenders* (and strain) to a proper object inspector, but both
leave so much out that they end up *adding to* the overall
palette-glut rather than serving to alleviate it. Neither of them
can be trusted to provide information complete enough to let you
chose to leave other palettes closed.
The difference has little to do with style. It has everything
to do with organizational efficiency. That's why just giving AI
dockable palettes (although long overdue) will still fall very very
short if it is not accompanied by the other side of the coin: a
thorough and careful rework of its functional organization.
I take no encouragement at all in the PS3 preview to suggest
that Adobe now "gets it" about the true advantage of their acquired
MM apps' interfaces. In fact, quite the contrary.
JET