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With all the wild discussion of broken APIs, broken AD, broken bugs with 10.5.2 it's good to know some people are brave enough to try to keep the discusion on track.

Am I the only one who thinks the 'Translucent Menu Bar' check box should be located in the 'Appearance' preference pane and not the 'Desktop & Screensaver'?

++ first place I searched for too

Definitely. It should also be a slider instead of a check box.

No, it shouldn't.

Why not? What do you have against offering someone a choice?

Why should Apple make it a slider? So that people can make their menu bars unreadable or ugly? This isn't Linux, where every option someone can dream up gets its own checkbox.

How about so that people can make their menu bars optimal to their own eyes. Your idea of ugly may not jive with everyone else's. You can have a default setting, but offering the choice doesn't hurt anyone who doesn't want it and helps those who do. There is no down side to making it available.

Why do you assume that a slider would somehow accomplish this better than the choice that Apple is offering? The down side is a cluttered interface full of useless features. Imagine if Apple made an option for every possible thing everyone could ever want? Good design is about making choices for the user, not making no choices at all. Just slapping in a slider instead of fixing the default translucency and adding an opaque option is a cheap and easy answer. A choice between translucent and opaque is the right compromise. People who want to make their menu bars look ugly can still do so via Terminal.

Because they know what their own eyes want and Apple doesn't. Why make a brightness slider? Why a double click speed slider? A feature useless to you isn't a useless feature. And one slider bar isn't cluttering up the interface. Besides, you could also do a simple/advanced set of prefrances ala Windows. How about if Apple didn't make an option for any possible thing that anyone would ever want? Oh that's right it's about BALANCE! Good design is about making SOME choices for the user and giving the user SOME choices. There is no evidence that adding the slider would hurt overall UI. There's possibly a demand for it. I see no reason not to at least research the possiblity of adding it. Delivering what customers want is not cheap or easy.

Well, not always, but in this case it is.

While I'm generally in favor of user choice, I think it can be overdone. Go poke around the options of VLC and see is they ultimately don't confuse the user experience. (Granted, VLC is pretty much the opposite of an iLife-style app, but even for those who know what they're doing the interface is too cluttered.) And let's put this this one in perspective - how many people even wanted a translucent menu bar before Leopard came out? Had it never made it past the brainstorming phase at Apple you wouldn't miss the checkbox OR the slider at all.

Did someone just say 'One slider isn't going to clutter up the interface?' lol. That of course, is the point. Everyone has their 'just one slider/button/switch/choice won't clutter up the interface' plea. Thats how you end up with a crap interface

Secondary panes for advanced options do not a cluttered primary interface make.

I don't have to assume it. I know it for a fact based on people asking for it to be implemented. Or do you not see how wanting something equates with wanting something? It's called a tautology. What I want to know is how you can possibly assume that what Apple has selected magically looks best to everyone. Slippery slope fallacy. False dichotomy. You can have a default option AND a slider. I'm beginning to think that you're just a troll.

I agree that a slider is un-Apple-like: they don't give you zillions of choices, for a good reason.

My menu bar's definitely translucent, but there's no checkbox in the 'Desktop & Screen Saver' preference pane. I think maybe they forgot.

See Also
Hotspots: 10.5.2
Hotspots: Rock Solid Foundation

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