ATPM reviews MarsEdit

ATPM reviews MarsEdit. Wes Meltzer reviewed MarsEdit 1.0
for About This Particular Macintosh. It got a “Very Nice” rating—which
is nothing to sneeze at for a 1.0. And there’s some great feedback in
there we can use for future development.

(Oh, heck, of course we wanted an “Excellent” rating—but, hey, even Delicious Library got a Very Nice rating. Good company to be in.)

One of the things I love about the review is that it talks about Bryan Bell’s work:

In fact, this is one of the application’s greatest
strengths. I’m no expert on iconography, though I play one on TV, but
all the icons seem immediately recognizable for what they are. That’s a
formidable challenge with a weblog editor, since it doesn’t have any
real-life analogues, and piggy-backing off of Mail could be confusing.
I am especially fond of the way the “… Weblog” command icons look: an
action symbol superimposed on a Safari-esque window. And the “… Post”
command icons use a sheet of paper with action symbols. It’s a very
clean way of saying a lot with a little, and they make an abstract
concept much more approachable.

I like this because it recognizes Bryan’s excellent work and also
because it’s a mini-tutorial on developing toolbar icons. It’s not
enough to make them attractive and clean—the use of metaphors that make
sense and are consistent is a huge part of the icon designer’s art.

Though not an icon designer myself, I know just enough to have some small idea how wickedly difficult it can be.

And so not only Bryan but all the great OS X icon designers—Jon Hicks, definitely, and others whose names I don’t know—deserve our fondest thanks for helping make OS X apps usable and fun. [inessential.com]

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