Linked List: July 20, 2021

Tuesday, 20 July 2021

Apple’s 1998 Developer Documentation on Window Proxy Icons ★

Re: yesterday’s piece about window proxy icons, Zack Katz found this archived version of Apple’s developer docs on the feature for Mac OS 8.5:

An application typically tracks the modification state of a document. A common reason to do so is to inform the user that they have made changes to the document which they might wish to save before closing the window.

When your application uses proxy icons, it should inform the Window Manager when a document has unsaved changes. When you do so, the Window Manager displays the document’s proxy icon in a disabled state and prevents the user from dragging the proxy icon. Disabled proxy icons cannot be dragged because unsaved documents cannot be moved or copied in a manner predictable to the user. Figure 1-3 shows a proxy icon in a document window with unsaved changes.

Katz tweeted::

@gruber I found this Mac OS 8.5 proxy icon documentation a great read. It made me nostalgic — imagine being able to see saved state quickly just by seeing the icon and title color!

Things have gotten so low-contrast…

Low contrast indeed. What a joyful little feature this was (and could be again). Clarity is the ideal that the Mac user interface used to celebrate but now largely ignores. I crave its return.

Someone Get This Clip on Fox News So You-Know-Who Sees It and Chokes ★

Tom Brady today at the White House, where President Biden honored the Buccaneers’ Super Bowl victory:

“Not a lot of people think that we could have won and in fact, I think 40% of the people still don’t think we won.”

I might be turning into a Brady fan.

Chair of Trump’s 2017 Inaugural Committee Arrested on Charges of Being a Foreign Agent ★

The AP:

The chair of former President Donald Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee was arrested Tuesday on charges alleging he conspired to influence Trump’s foreign policy positions to benefit the United Arab Emirates and commit crimes striking “at the very heart of our democracy.”

Tom Barrack, 74, of Santa Monica, California, was among three men charged in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, with conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent as they tried to influence foreign policy while Trump was running in 2016 and later while he was president. […]

Prosecutors said Barrack not only agreed to promote UAE foreign policy interests through his unique access and influence, but also provided UAE government officials with sensitive information about developments within the Trump administration — including how senior U.S. officials felt about the Qatari blockade conducted by the UAE and other Middle Eastern countries.

I’m starting to think Donald Trump didn’t surround himself with the best people.