Monkeyson

I think it's called "Copying".

So, a company called Intersoft Solutions has created an innovative new web interface using Silverlight. They call it WebAqua, and it looks kinda familiar.

I'll ignore the inevitable - that Apple's lawyers will sue their asses once this gets noticed (seriously, they admit they modelled it on Leopard, and even use the Apple logo on some examples) - and instead have some fun nit-picking a few of the many usability issues which may, ironically, be Intersoft's saviour - they might have tried to copy the look of Leopard, but they've rather failed to capture the feel.

WebFishEye

First impressions aren't good: check out the grammatical mistakes and misplaced line breaks in the marketing liesblurb. Intersoft also shows a lack of attention to detail with its choice of icons - not only do they fail to represent their function (would you guess that the icon second from the right opens a stack of wallpaper settings?) but they don't even have a consistent angle or perspective. They're also a bit, well, Vista.

It's not much fun using the thing either. The zoom effect on the Mac OS X Dock is really hard to replicate - get it wrong and it feels like the icon you're point at is trying to run away. (I speak from experience: a while ago I prototyped a zooming effect for a photo gallery and hit the same issues; unhappy with the movement, and realising it was completely unnecessary, I went back to a more static design.)

Other odd issues abound: when you open a stack, a radio button appears under the icon. Visually it's similar to the glowing light that Leopard uses to indicate that an application is running, but I'm not sure why Intersoft felt the need to mark the last selected stack in this way. In another example they use the Mac's eject icon as an application launcher. Tip: if you're going to duplicate an interface, it's a good idea to make sure it works identically - misusing a visual indicator like this is downright confusing.

There are problems once the stack is open too - the dock's tooltip remains visible, obscuring the lowest item in the stack, and if the stack is too tall the top items disappear off the top of the screen. The animation looks tacky, and doesn't work at all when closing a stack.

Good artists innovate, great artists steal? (Hint: no.)

What worries me more than the bugs in the implementation (bugs can be fixed) is the lack of understanding behind the concepts of the UI and the reasons for using each element. Intersoft uses dock icons and stack items to open new browser popups (ugh!), show lists of links, change view settings, and traverse the site structure. Sure, it's just a tech demo, but if you can't do things right in the sales pitch (where you can engineer the situation and requirements to show the product at its best) what hope is there for a real deployment?

Apple understands how predictable, understandable, practical concepts can make an interface easier to use, whilst subtle behaviours and polished details can make a dynamic widget feel more natural and intuitive. Intersoft, like the other no-good bums who think that designing a UI is as simple as copying a shiny-looking screenshot, don't. Shame on them.