GUI Stuff

Now that I've talked about what NeXTSTEP/OpenStep is and what it brings to the new Mac OS, I thought it was a good idea to start showing you the interface that Apple will be adapting or modifying for use in Rhapsody. So, here are a series of screen shots, along with explanations of what they show.

Interface Basics
Remember that NeXTSTEP/OpenStep (and soon, Rhapsody) are based on the Mach operating system. But Mach is not like your average OS, much less average Unix system; it's so much better that words can't adequately describe it. By the way, for our purposes, NeXTSTEP and OpenStep are referring to the same thing.

In this first shot of the OpenStep desktop, you see several things: running down the right-hand side of the screen is the Dock, where you can store icons for files and applications, much like the current Mac OS, except that NeXT icons are larger and look so much nicer. At the top you see the NeXT logo (if you are running OpenStep for Sun, you would have the Sun up there); perhaps we'll see the Apple logo there in Rhapsody. Below that is the Preferences icon, which is always running unless you turn it off, since it keeps track of the date and time. And finally you have the Recycler icon, which is the equivalent of the Trash on the Mac. Put something in the Recycler and those arrows animate themselves and a dot is placed in the center to let you know you should empty the Recycler.

In the center of the screen is the File Viewer, which lets you navigate the file system in several ways, Browser, Listing and Icon views; here it's in Browser view. On the left-hand side is the Active menu; that is, the menu for the currently active program, and at the bottom of the screen are icons for other running applications. In NeXTSTEP, there can be only one active application at any time, meaning that it and any windows or menus belonging to it will have black title bars and menus; anything else is running in the background. So, click on another application and that one switches to become active.

The menus are one of the finest things about the interface, too. They're vertical instead of horizontal (to avoid legal battles with Apple at the time), so they take up less space, and they're not going to cover up the active window unless you move them in front of it. The little arrows indicate submenus, just like in the Mac OS; click just once on any menu item, and it is highlighted in white and any submenu associated with it will appear to the right. NeXTSTEP submenus can also be torn off and moved around anywhere on-screen, and they will stay there for you to use anytime, until you choose to close them. If you quit an application and want to work on it later, your menus remember where they were when you quit and reappear exactly as you left them. Menus can also be dragged off-screen, and like the Mac OS, many NeXT and third-party applications have command-key shortcuts, which are what those upper- and lower-case letters and numbers indicate in the menus.

NeXT windows operate similar to Mac OS windows. You can click and hold on the title bar of a window to drag it, only under NeXTSTEP, you see the whole window move, not just the outline; great for finding out what's underneath all your desktop clutter without switching applications. This is just one of many features that NeXT has had for the past 10 years.

In the upper right-hand corner of the window is the Close button. If there's an X in that box, you can click it and the window will close, but the application will still be running. If your document isn't saved, the box is will only have a partial X, so if you click to close it, a panel will appear asking if you want to save it.

The box in the upper left-hand corner is the Minimize button. When you click on this button, your window will shrink to the size of an application icon, except that it will have a narrow black title bar across the top of it. If you want to make an application and all it's windows disappear without quitting, you can Hide them, using the menu command or the key sequence. All that will be left is the application icon; double-click it and all your windows and menus for that application will reappear.

Details, Details
One of the nicest things about the NeXT interface is the scrollbar. They are proportional scrollbars and always have been. The vertical scrollbar is on the left, which makes logical sense because the main menu appears on there; this saves time moving between the two items. But the length of the scrollbar depends on the size of the document you're opening or creating. If most of it is already displayed in the windows, then the scrollbar is nearly the length of the entire window; on the other hand, if you have a ways to go before you get to the end of your document, then the scrollbar is proportionally smaller to indicate that.

You may have noticed that dimple in the center of the scrollbar. It's there to indicate where you are when you're scrolling. If you click in the scroll area itself (but not on the scrollbar) and hold the mouse button down, the scrollbar moves so that the dimple is just underneath your mouse. From this point you can continue to scroll in the window without clicking again, so long as you haven't released your mouse button. Very useful, especially for large documents.

The scroll arrows are another nice touch. Notice that the up and down arrows are next to each other, so if you go too far in either direction, you don't have to go up to the other end of your window to go back in the other direction. And the same is true with the left and right arrows: they're right next to each other so wasted time and mousing around is kept to a minimum.

Managing your Space As you read earlier in this column, the Workspace Manager is the NeXTSTEP equivalent of the Macintosh Finder. It provides you with your desktop, the Dock, File Viewer, windows, menus and other useful stuff. The File Viewer helps you navigate the file system, so you can find what you're looking for.

As in other windows, the title bar is black, but the File Viewer can't be closed (although it can be minimized or hidden). It's always available and if hidden, you can get it back by double-clicking on the NeXT icon in the Dock.

Below the title bar is the Shelf, where you can keep icons or bookmarks to things you frequently (or infrequently) use, or just don't have room for in the Dock. It can hold files, folders and applications. When you click on an item in the Shelf, the File Viewer automatically displays the location of that item in the file system. Double-click the item and it launches (if it's an application) or opens in the application appropriate for it.

The part below that is the file system itself. Most people choose the Browser view that you saw in the previous screen shot, but you can also choose Icon view, like that shown here, or even the Unix propeller-head Listing view. Of course, the Shelf can be expanded to your liking. All you have to do is click and drag on that dimple there. This shot here just happens to show some of the applications that are included with OpenStep, including Grab, which I used to take all these screen shots.

In this next shot of the NeXT interface, I've included some other things that NeXT provides for the user to manage their environment.

Here you'll see the Processes panel, which basically tells you what is running at any time and allows you to turn things off, whether or not they have crashed (usually). Just use the Kill button to stop that errant program! And the Inspector panel lets you find out useful things about an application or file, even computing file size for you, as well as letting you easily determine who has access to what on your system or network, and what kind of access they have. You can get to the Inspector panels easily through the menu or a key-sequence. If you're a user of Macromedia FreeHand,these panels may look familiar to you, and they should. Macromedia purchased a product called Altsys Virtuoso, so the interface for Freehand is essentially a direct port from this one-time NeXT program.

The Processes panel is another story; it can only be accessed by a menu, and there can be problems. If one of your programs causes a system panic, your mouse clicks may not be picked up, so there would be no way to Kill that program easily and leave the rest of your system running; you may have no choice but to reboot. This has happened before and it's a bizarre sight.

After looking at these shots, you may find things to nitpick about or ways you would improve on it, but since we can't count on this being what the Rhapsody interface will be like, there's no point in getting too concerned about it. Overall, whether you decide to use OpenStep alongside your Mac or wait for Rhapsody, the NeXT interface always was and continues to be impressive. The look and feel that it provides, along with its functionality, is sparse, but spartan.