User Interfaces

John Gruber beschreibt in seinem Blog ein neues UI-Element des iPads, das sogenannte “popover”.

Across the iPad system, Apple has introduced a new UI element, which they’re calling popovers. It’s a perfect name. Popovers are like a cross between dialog boxes, drop-down menus, and inspector palettes. [...]
They’re in a fixed position, always with an arrow pointing to the button or other control [...] that the user tapped to open the popover. To close a popover, you just tap away from it — tapping anywhere other than within the popover closes it. [...]

According to the iPad Human Interface Guidelines (which, alas, are only available to registered iPhone SDK developers), there is a modal variant: [...]

• Modal, in which case the popover dims the screen area around it and requires an explicit dismissal. This behavior is very similar to that of a modal view, but a popover’s appearance tends to give the experience a lighter weight.
• Non-modal, in which case the popover does not dim the screen area around it and people can tap outside its bounds to dismiss it. This behavior makes a non-modal popover seem like another view in the application, not a separate state.

The overall effect of popovers is that you do far less view switching in an iPad app than you do an iPhone app.

Bin gespannt, wann die ersten popovers auf dem PC auftauchen.

(Foto via engadget.com)

→ John Gruber: Various and Assorted Thoughts and Observations Regarding the Just-Announced iPad