A Glimpse of Another Lion Interface Detail
When Apple introduced this Wednesday, they showed parts of the revamped GUI including iOS-like scrollbars (regarding the linked article at AppleInsider: it isn’t leaking when you show it publicly during your own event).
iPhoto of iLife ’11 already has scrollbars like this in the current Mac OS X. Although they don’t disappear like the ones in iOS or Lion — which I personally think is a better choice as it indicates that the content is longer than the current window is high.
One thing I noticed in iPhoto ’11 which I hope is coming as an OS wide change to Lion are the new tooltips; those little (often yellow) popups that appear when the mouse cursor rests over a button or other GUI element. The yellow never felt right on Mac OS X because it’s the only place I can recall where it is used. It’s inconsistent with the rest of the interface.
Tooltip in Snow Leopard's Mail.app
iPhoto ’11 (but not iMovie ’11) now uses black, translucent tooltips which match the overall appearance of iPhoto much better.
Tooltip in iPhoto '11
Even the file dialogs iPhoto uses received a small change:
Import file dialog tooltip in iPhoto '11
I certainly hope these changes are permanent and another sign of a much larger GUI overhaul in Lion than what we’ve seen in Wednesday’s demo (I haven’t checked the keynote video for this change) and the screenshots on .