The problem with hiding the sidebar is that I’d really like the search window to still be visible. But it’s all or nothing: lose the search window, lose the sidebar.

My impression from playing with the Windows version is that many of the UI faults of the Mac version are also in there (though there are some platform-specific bugs too). I think most of the big problems are inherited from Keyhole.

Maybe I ought to start posting on that board…

- best quality preferences are slow even on a PowerMac G5 Quad + 7800 GT.

- poor zooming experience due to the crappy Apple Mighty Mouse scroll button and non intuitive zooming feedback.

- only the centered rectangle is properly anti-aliased.

- the UI is OK for a windows port but the it doesn’t feel native at all.

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/postlist.php/Cat/0/Board/SupportGEMac

The actual developers read and respond in that forum. They also will want to hear about your problems with responsiveness (and may be able to help you figure it out).

Myself, I hide every single one of those fugly Google Earth panes–it’s all about the Earth, baby. As long as you have a 3-button mouse it’s gravy. Scroll (or right-click-drag–garn blasted redundancy!) to zoom (though, again, upside-down…), left-click-drag to move, middle-click-drag to tilt and rotate–much better than the UI controls. The preferences UI is still a shambles, though, and for a company that values such great, minimalistic interfaces on the Web, the sidebars are uuuugly and crowded and useless. I suspect much of the problem is that they inherited the UI from that horrible old Keyhole program. It’ll get better–I hope. (Hey, wonder if I can score a Summer of Code internship writing a decent Mac UI…)

Now what someone really needs to do is write a zero lines-of-code WorldWind/Google Earth clone in Quartz Composer. Would that be hot, or would that be hot? I don’t imagine it would be too difficult, except for the terrain bumpmapping. Downloading and displaying textures from the internet based on mousewheel and dragging input sounds right up QC’s alley, though. Anyone want to take it on?

Unfortunately, the current beta of the Mac doesn’t support the Full-screen mode which quickly removes the UI elements and lets you just browse the world. They will release that in an update soon I’m sure, along with support for OS X 10.3.9 and hopefully the Universal Binary to run on the new Intel Macs.

They were demoing Earth at MWSF yesterday, and a friend said that he could understand why Google would look to leverage a cross-platform UI toolkit. I said to him, “Do you really thinkg Google doesn’t have the resources to hire talented engineers to develop a great looking UI for each and every platform?”

-jcr