Aqua (macOS)

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Aqua
Basic data

developer Apple
operating system macOS (OS X, Mac OS X)
programming language C ++
category Graphical user interface
License Proprietary
German speaking Yes
OS X Human Interface Guidelines
Aqua runs on the Quartz Compositor , the display server and window manager of macOS

Aqua is the graphical user interface of macOS , the current operating system from Apple for desktop and laptop computers. Aqua was first included in Mac OS X Developer Preview 3 , released in January 2000.

Aqua uses a classic two-dimensional user interface with buttons and windows; the menus do not hang in the window, but at the top of the screen. The name (Latin for "water") alludes to the transparent, reflective objects. For example, scroll bars and buttons are displayed as gel or water droplets, menus are transparent and movements are "fluid". The Aqua user interface was introduced in January 2000 at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. and first used in one product - iMovie 2 - in July 2000.

Aqua's design elements form the uniform appearance of most macOS applications. Aqua aims to "bring together color, depth, transparency and complex textures in a visually appealing surface" and to simplify the use of the applications through a coherent, self-explanatory and attractive appearance.

On the Macintosh , Aqua is the successor design to Platinum , which was introduced in the classic Mac OS from version 8 (1997–1999; followed by Mac OS 9 : 1999–2001) and originally came from the failed operating system project Copland (1994–1997). The direct predecessors of Mac OS X, Rhapsody (1997–1998) and Mac OS X Server 1.x (1999–2000), as well as the first two developer previews of Mac OS X (1999) used Platinum as the design of the user interface.

Principles

Aqua uses animations to make the interface more user-friendly. If, for example, windows disappear from the visible image area and are to be replaced by an icon in the dock, then they seem to be sucked into the dock as if by a funnel. So the user can see where the window has gone. If an action takes time, this is indicated by a rotating button, and if the remaining time can be estimated, a progress bar appears.

Although aqua surfaces can use pop-up menus, they tend to try to use drag-and-drop to interact with graphic objects. If, for example, the icon of a data carrier (such as CD) is selected, the trash can symbol turns into an "eject" button and the data carrier icon can be dragged onto this button to eject the data carrier.

In Aqua elements, text is lavishly rendered - edges like stairs are avoided by antialiasing , the strength of which can depend on the monitor resolution.

Text elements that allow input can be operated with the usual Emacs abbreviations so that the hands can remain in the text field of the keyboard when editing text. For example, moves Strg + bthe pointer one character to the left (b for "backwards").

Graphic representation

The 2D drawing is carried out by Display PDF from the Quartz graphics system , the logical structure of which is very similar to the structure of PDF documents. This means that Aqua elements can generally be converted very easily into PDF documents and PDF documents can be displayed very quickly.

Quartz Extreme is a 3D extension that speeds up certain application-independent drawings. The funnel effect when minimizing windows is achieved by viewing the content of the window as a 3D texture so that the actual animation can be calculated by the graphics card - 3D support of the transformed window is therefore unnecessary.

Window management and window construction

In Aqua, windows are shown balanced horizontally in the middle and sorted from top to bottom. "Balanced in the middle" means that the focus of the text should always be in the middle of the window. Therefore, a control that toggles between multiple views should always be placed above them. New windows appear in the vertical center of the screen, but do not use the entire screen, but only a size specified by the programmer. On a widescreen, like the one that Apple's own computers bring, Aqua always leaves some desk free so that things can be dragged onto the desk.

evolution

Much of the original Aqua design was designed to complement Apple's hardware. Most importantly, Apple tried to mirror the two-tone look of the original Bondi Blue iMac and Power Macintosh G3 in aqua. Since these two products were provided with pinstripes, they also appeared in aqua. In the years 2003 and 2004, Apple relied on the use of "brushed metal" ( English brushed metal ) as it was to be found even in its own hardware (eg. As the aluminum-made Apple Cinema Display ). By using the new design, Apple wanted to better integrate its software into its hardware lineup.

To the extent that Apple products were given white, smooth surfaces, the "brushed metal" was abandoned again. This led to a partially inconsistent mix of different designs in different programs. With Mac OS X Leopard (10.5, 2007) the design of the user interface was unified again.

Mac OS X 10.2 ("Jaguar," 2002)

Jaguar brought flatter interface elements, such as new buttons and drop-down menus. The transparency of windows and menus has also been further developed.

Mac OS X Panther (10.3, 2003)

Under Mac OS X Panther, the Finder was given the design "brushed metal".

The buttons were embedded in the metal look and thus gave a flatter impression. The traditional pinstripes were replaced by a much more subtle milk theme, especially in the menu bar, and transparency effects were less pronounced (e.g. on inactive windows). The “tabs” became flatter, and the tab surface appeared to be recessed rather than raised. The tab buttons have been moved to the top of the window. New icons were also introduced throughout the system, including a new Finder icon that looked flatter and shinier than its predecessor, and a new icon for the system settings.

Mac OS X Tiger (10.4, 2005)

In Mac OS X Tiger, Aqua received only minor changes, including the unification of the title bars. The pinstripes have now completely disappeared and have been replaced with a new shiny look. Tabs were now treated like normal buttons. The Apple symbol in the menu was given a colored shadow, and Spotlight was given its own icon in the menu.

Mac OS X Leopard (10.5, 2007)

Leopard introduced several major changes to the user interface. The dock became three-dimensional, i.e. H. to a kind of semi-transparent “floor” on which the icons are placed. Applications are no longer marked as active by a triangle, but by a bright blue point. The dividing line between applications and other items in the Dock now resembles a zebra stripe instead of a simple line. Program windows are reflected from the surface of the dock when they are close enough. Another innovation are stacks  - folders stored in the dock. When you click on a stack, the folder contents fan out on the desktop, depending on the setting, appear as a symbol view aligned with a grid or as a text menu. The dock is white-transparent, with a slight dark reflection. If you want the dock to the left or right, it only appears two-dimensional with rounded corners. You can also use the dock at the bottom of the screen in 2D, but for this effect a system setting must be changed via the command line.

The menu bar has also been edited. It is now semi-transparent and adapts to its background so that the fonts and icons on the menu are easier to read. The transparency can be switched off in the system settings. The corners of menus (including dock menus) are now rounded in Mac OS X Leopard; It is the other way around with the menu bar at the top, where the round corners have now disappeared. The Apple icon in the menu bar is now a glossy black.

For better clarity, Apple has increased the contrast between active and inactive windows: The shadow of an active program is now more emphasized. Inactive windows appear less prominent because they are brighter and therefore less noticeable in the background. The brushed metal is no longer there, it has been replaced by a simple matt gray. Many windows now have no or only minimal limits. Dialogs linked to the window are now semi-transparent, and their background is blurred for better readability.

Numerous icons have been changed, including a number of new folder icons, a new system settings icon and an updated terminal icon. All symbols are in a higher resolution 512 × 512 pixel format in order to achieve the representation in "Quick Look" and "Cover Flow".

The standard blue background has been replaced by an image.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6, 2009)

Aqua wasn't changed that much. The finder received a slider in the lower right corner to continuously enlarge the preview images. Within "stacks" you can go back using the arrow keys from a subordinate stack.

Mac OS X Lion (10.7, 2011)

Aqua has changed noticeably in Mac OS X Lion. The buttons (top left) have become a little smaller, there is a new login screen and there is no button (up to Mac OS X 10.6 top right) to hide the menu bar. In addition, many interface elements (buttons, sliders, tabs, etc.) have been changed, they now look more rectangular and appear flattened.

OS X Mountain Lion (8/10/2012)

The user interface remained largely unchanged, but the dock got a makeover. The background now has a frosted glass effect and the edges have been rounded. Furthermore, the indicator for open programs has been changed to a flat rectangle, the diagonal dividing line has been changed and all icons are available in twice the resolution so that they can be optimally displayed on retina displays .

OS X Mavericks (10.9, 2013)

With OS X Mavericks, Apple made adjustments to Aqua that slightly approximated the design of the iOS system but retained its familiar look. The calendar program lost its visual similarity to a real leather calendar, the contacts program no longer resembles a book, the notes program only consists of uniform colored areas in the background and all the remaining linen backgrounds (for example in the launchpad, in Mission Control or in the login screen) have been replaced by simplified textures, transparency or a gray colored area. The system settings also have a slightly different appearance. The headings for various categories have been removed and the icons are shown larger.

OS X Yosemite (10/10/2014)

In version 10.10 of OS X, the user interface was largely redesigned, giving the dock, for example, a two-dimensional appearance again. A new addition is an option in the system settings that enables a dark menu bar and a dark dock to be used.

Many elements such as the dock, the login screen and the notification center now use a soft focus effect as a background. As an indicator that programs are open, a black dot appears in the dock as a replacement for the bright white rectangle. Interface elements were given a somewhat simpler appearance. Many program symbols have been revised, they now appear simpler and less detailed. In addition, many program icons now use one of three common shapes: the circle, the slightly rounded square and the rotated rectangle. Another change is the change of the system font. Lucida Grande has been replaced by Helvetica Neue to unify the look and feel between OS X and iOS.

OS X El Capitan (11/10/2015)

After a largely new design had been introduced with the predecessor, version 10.11 offered more detailed improvements. So you can now use several programs in full screen side by side, similar to the new multitasking function in newer iPads under iOS . The menu bar at the top of the screen can be automatically hidden. Furthermore, the general user experience is to be improved through the optimization of the system, bug fixes and the introduction of the metal engine in other areas of OS X. The San Francisco font developed by Apple , which is also used in the watchOS and iOS operating systems , is now also used in OS X.

macOS Sierra (12/10/2016)

OS X has been renamed to macOS.

user interface

White and blue are two of the main colors that define the aqua style. Title bars, window backgrounds, buttons, menus and other interface elements are kept in white; some of them, like scroll bars and menu items, with a blue accent. Most of the interface elements have a glass or gel effect, for example the aqua scroll bars.

Interface elements

Aqua is made up of a large number of element classes, most of which are typical for window-based graphical user interfaces.

window

Both the pinstripe windows and the brushed metal windows gave the impression of title bar buttons sunk into the window. Mac OS X allows the user to use a graphite version instead of the blue interface. In the graphite variant, window controls appear silver-gray instead of red, yellow and green.

Toolbars come in two types: standard and uniform . Standard keeps the normal Aqua title bar and simply places a series of icons on it, while the uniform look extends the title bar down and places the icons there.

"Sheets" are modal dialogues that are firmly tied to a window. When they appear, they fly towards the user "like a sheet of paper" (hence the name). They are partially transparent and draw the user's attention to the content of the dialog window.

Menus

Menus have a slightly translucent gray background; selected menu items appear blue. The keyboard shortcut is displayed next to the menu entry.

There are several types of drop-down menus for use within windows. The standard is white with a blue end cap, which in turn has opposite arrows, while pull-down menus only have a downward arrow in the end cap. Pull-down menus are available in four types.

Buttons

In aqua, buttons have rounded corners and can be of two colors: white and blue. A blue, pulsating button indicates the standard action, which is always safe, i.e. H. never leads directly to a loss of data, and which can always be triggered with the return key. The security dialog when exiting an application, for example, has two buttons: Cancel and Exit . Here the exit button is blue because it represents the standard action.

Checkboxes and radio buttons

In Mac OS X, empty checkboxes are small white boxes with rounded corners. When a checkbox is checked, it turns blue and has a checkmark.

Radio buttons look similar, but are round and have a dot instead of a check mark when they are highlighted. Only one can be selected from a group of radio buttons.

Progress indicators

There are two main types of progress indicators available: a progress bar and a spinning wheel (not the beach ball cursor).

The progress bar itself comes in two types: the indeterminate and a definite one. The indefinite one simply shows blue and white diagonals that move from right to left in an animation, without giving any information about the progress. The particular progress indicator is shown as a blue, pulsating bar that moves against a white background. The bar gives the impression that there is blue gel in it, because as it progresses, the gel “moves” from left to right in an animation.

The spinning wheel progress bar, the same one that appears on the Mac OS X start screen, is simply a series of different shades of color that spin in a circle, similar to the side view of a spoked wheel spinning. No information about progress is given. The spinning wheel display is used by many other interfaces, including the Firefox web browser and many web sites.

Fonts

Up to OS X 10.9, Apple used the Lucida Grande in various sizes and styles as the system font. Since OS X 10.10, Helvetica Neue has been used instead, and from OS X 10.11 the San Francisco font, developed by Apple . Mac OS X uses system-wide character anti-aliasing to make the edges appear smoother.

Animations

Aqua uses a lot of animations that make the surface appear "fluid". Many can be adjusted in strength or switched off completely:

  • When a program starts, its dock icon jumps up and down.
  • If an application in the background wants to draw attention to itself, its dock icon jumps up and down in a different rhythm.
  • Dock icons get larger as the mouse cursor approaches them, making them easier to select.
  • When minimizing a window, it appears to be pulled into the dock "like a funnel". There is also a simpler alternative effect. Both are adjustable by the user. A click with the Shift key pressed shows the effects in slow motion, as well as the Dashboard and Mission Control effects . There is another undocumented effect called " Suck ", this can be activated manually by editing a configuration file.
  • When a folder is opened or closed on the desktop, the Finder window appears to come out of or back into the parent folder.
  • “ Sheets ” either hang down from the title bar of a window or float themselves on the desktop. If a window awaits a response from the user, the form comes out of a dark rectangular slot, in which it disappears again after it has been filled out.
  • When dashboard widgets are dropped onto the dashboard smoked glass panel, they appear to land on a pond. When you remove a widget, it appears to be suffocated in a vacuum.
  • The content of a stack pops out when you click on the icon.
  • In the public Mac OS X beta version (10.0 "Kodiak," 2000), items from the dock became a drop when they were dragged onto the desktop and then "liquefied". However, this behavior was changed in Mac OS X 10.0 ("Cheetah," 2001): Since then, objects deleted from Dock dissolved in a cartoon-like cloud of smoke. This effect is used in different places in the system (e.g. Safaris Bookmark Bar and iPhoto Tag Removal).

Many of these effects can be disabled by the user; some only work on supported hardware.

System integration and standardization

There are a number of Mac OS X features that have been standardized throughout the operating system so that they function and look the same in all applications:

  • "Services" in the menu - The "Services" entry is contained in the menu in many applications and gives access to functions of other applications.
  • Palettes - Selection palettes appear throughout the system, including these:
    • Color - The color picker includes several ways to choose colors, including a color wheel, slider, crayon view, and a “magnifying glass” or eyedropper to pick a color from anywhere on the screen.
    • Fonts - The font picker gives the user access to advanced typography functions such as ligatures and shadows in any program that allows the formatting of text.
    • Characters - The “Special Characters” entry in the “Edit” menu leads to the Characters palette. In many applications, this inserts characters into the text that cannot be accessed via the keyboard or whose key combination is unknown.
  • Open, save and print dialogs - standard in many applications and usually represented with the help of a "sheet".

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Siracusa: Mac OS X Update: Quartz & Aqua In: Ars Technica. January 14, 2000, accessed May 17, 2016.
  2. ↑ Apple PR: Apple Introduces iMovie 2. In: Apple.com. July 19, 2000, accessed January 5, 2008 .
  3. ↑ Mac OS X Technology Overview: Drawing Technologies ( Memento from January 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ MartianCraft.com: Inspecting Yosemite icons

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