So I have finally found about 30 minutes of free time to just have fun with XCode 3, Objective-C 2, Interface Builder 3 and the like all bundled in Leopard. I’m extremely impressed with all the improvements made to the development suite, minus one major shortcoming: HUD Controls.

HUD (Heads Up Display) are those gorgeous black windows that have started popping up all over Mac applications. Especially in iPhoto and Aperture, as well as Pages and more, these beautiful windows serve a specific purpose. Apple went so far as to finally include a HUD window in Interface Builder, so that developers don’t have to use a hacked together version (Interface Designers like uniformity, so it is better when everyone is using the same thing vs 15 different versions of the same window, which is the case now). So, I naturally assumed that Apple also provided HUD versions of buttons, lists, and more, to match this window.

I was wrong.

I can create this nice window with no effort now, but as soon as I place something on it, it looks stupid. The simple screenshots above illustrates the effect. (Also notice the differences in the window itself. See how big of a difference there is just on the lines at the bottom right of the window where you resize? Now imagine that every time I had to write an application, I had to make this from scratch. With all the Mac developers out there, you can imagine that there are lots of variations). I sure hope that Apple fixes this soon and doesn’t wait until 10.6 and a new window style to add this for developers.