I have been at NUD 4 and very happy. Today upgraded to NUD 5 with the Nighthawk promise.

I converted a NUD 4 calendar and was pretty sick at the "new" interface for the DAY view. Each event, which use to be clean, now has the whole event shaded in the color of the Category AND there is a thick 10 pixel (or so) bar in the same color across the top of each event with the start time and the end time listed.

It is visually a mess. It's hard just to pick out the text of the event I typed in. Please, can I get rid of that start time-end time color bar? Does the whole event have to have the shade of the category? Can I get back the NUD 4 clean look? I don't think I can stand to look at this.

Geez, what were they thinking?

Always looked like the influence of iCal to me. One man's utilitarian interface is another man's bleak interface I guess. I kind of like some of the new style of version 5, version 4 was a little too OS9 for me (and the icons were downright cartoonish).

So, am I right. there's no way to clean up the Day look? There are so many options to change the look of the Day calendar, but I don't see any way to get rid of all the clutter. The Month view still looks clean.

There's no preference to turn that off in NUD5.

John,

So here's what I am talking about. I am going to try to attach an image showing a comparison of the DAY view of NUD 4 and 5.



At first NUD4 may look less exciting. From a distance, NUD5 looks snappier and more colorful, and perhaps makes better advertising screen shots, but in practice it is much more difficult to extract essential information from the screen in NUD5. I want to know "who am I meeting with and what block of time does the appointment occupy?" I want that data quickly; I'm real busy. NUD4 by contrast, is clean. The text is there to be read, nothing competes or interferes. That appointment text is what my eyes are looking for, and they find it right away. NUD5 has all this window dressing going on. In NUD5 there is this huge emphasis on the category. The color is repeated everywhere. Since all my categories in NUD4 and NUD5 are already color coded in the text of the event, its seems doubly redundant to have both a color bar in the same color plus a full gradient sweep of the same color over the entire event area. Not only that, but the text in NUD5 loses much of the contrast. I prefer to read red text against a white background, not red text against light red background. I realize the lighter part of the gradient is where the text is, but look at the example images and see how much easier it is to see the colored text against a fully white background. (I realize *all* the text in these shrunken images is too small to read, but you get the point). The start times and end times in the color bar are also redundant since I have, down the left side, the time of day markings.

Doesn't anyone else feel the same way? I feel like I am having to hack my way through the interface just to get to the information. This is an "improvement" I didn't need.

In any event, I thank John for responding. Just to let you know my heart is in the right place, I just bought 3 licenses from you this week for the journey to Nighthawk. I do want to keep you guys going. NUD has always ruled and been a part of my professional life since....forever. I know you have plenty on your plate right now.

John, you say perhaps cryptically, "There's no way to turn that [heavy color look] off in NUD5."
Does that intimate there might be a way to get back to the clean, useful old NUD4 Day interface in, say, oh, ...Nighthawk? Or do you mean, sorry, that's the new NUD look, can't please everybody, and I don't mean to hint it might change in Nighthawk.

-Eric

Although as designers/developers we need to make aesthetic choices, I don't believe there is one right look. The example you provide is great because it highlights the differences in priorities between the v4 look and the v5 look. The time bars are there, for example, because one of the frequent complaints we got was that people couldn't tell what time an event started and stopped. Why couldn't we provide a way for them to see the range of times just by looking at the event? Why force them to try to scan across to the left to pick up the time? On the other hand, you see that time bar as redundant and an obstacle to using the product. What's so useful with this forum is how aptly it reminds me that one man's meat is another man's poison. What one person sees as "stark" another sees as "clean". What one sees as "dated" another sees as "timeless". Depending on what you measure them against, each opinion is reasonable.

I'll need to think about how to best solve the look and feel issues over the long haul. Ideally we'd be able to provide a way that (a) doesn't junk up the preferences UI with loads of switches, (b) allows users who want to customize the look to have a great deal of control, (c) allows users to share a customized look with other users, (d) doesn't block us as developers from introducing new features.

In the meantime, I'll be looking for everyone's feedback on the preferences we provide for the initial release of NightHawk to make sure you can get enough of the look & feel you need. For example, being able to turn off that time bar if that's what you want to do.


Thank you! People's financial support for NightHawk helps a lot. As does their faith and trust in us and what we're doing. When we get thousands of people each helping a little, it all adds up.

Thanks again!