Monthly Archives: January 2009

Adobe’s New Interface

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In Ontario, we are extremely fortunate to have a process where the Ministry of Education licenses software for use in all publically funded secondary schools.  The software that is licensed comes after recommendation from the Ontario Software Acquisition Program Advisory Committee.  I’m one of the representatives from Southwestern Ontario, for full disclosure.

One of the software titles that is licensed for Ontario Schools is the Adobe Creative Suite.  In the past week, the software was upgraded to CS4 from the previously licensed CS3.

Previously licensed titles looked live every other.  Under Windows, for example, there was a title bar with room for the pull-down menus.  It was a standard look and every product looked like every other Windows product.

Here, for example, is a snap of the menus from Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Recently, though, Adobe has been changing their interface.

Here’s the menu bar from Dreamweaver CS4.

Here’s the menu bar from Adobe’s Media Player.
There are a number of things to notice.  First, the title bar that appears in every other Windows program is missing.  Instead, there’s the application icon in the top corner and then the menus.  The menus themselves sit on a softly coloured interface.

While it undoubtedly is, you really don’t feel like you’re working with a top end application.  It just looks and feels friendlier.  It just comes across more inviting to the end user.

Kudos to Adobe and their Graphic User Interface designers.  They’ve made a great suite of products even better.

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Reality

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Now that the US election is over, President Obama is in office, life goes on.  The whole process was a lesson in media at so many levels.

Through the online media, it has been a really educational process in US politics and the impact that such media has.  Over the course, the two presidential candidates were presented in both positive and negative lights depending upon the source.  They were demons and they were the ultimate answer to all of the world’s problems.

One of the things that may be lost is that they are people.  Yes, they have agreed to putting themselve online and become very public.  But, there is also another side.

In the case of the outgoing president, the news clip below should serve as a reminder that there is another side.  There is also a human element that is often overlooked or misrepresented in times like this.

Vodpod videos no longer available.