AppleFax 2.0
Apple Computer, Inc. -- 1989

AppleFax 2.0 was Apple's second-generation faxmodem product. Bill contributed to the structure and logic of the user interface, and the definition of its features. He also researched international telephone dialing rules and developed a system for making phonebooks portable across international boundaries. Two examples of Bill's user interface design are shown below.

AppleFax Desk Accessory

The AppleFax desk accessory was a small program that could be accessed from within other programs to let you monitor and control background processing of faxes.

Note the innovative "selector bar" at the top of the window that gives quick access to different categories of information. This was a precursor to the now-common Windows "tab bar". MacOS X initially also adopted a tab-bar visual design, but in approximately 2004 (in approximately MacOS X 10.3) changed to a selector bar more akin to what you see here.

Note the innovation of having a menu appear when you click on a line item. This gives you immediate access to the commands that apply to the selected object. This was a somewhat radical departure from accepted practice at the time, but users found it to be intuitive.

 

FaxWriter

The FaxWriter was a print driver that "printed" documents by converting them to faxes and sending them to the faxmodem. Bill designed the user interface to be a natural and intuitive extension of the standard Macintosh print dialog. Years later (approx 2004, approx MacOS X 10.3), this print-to-fax feature was built into MacOS X.

Note also the innovative use of a pull-down menu within the dialog box. This innovation was non-standard at the time, but was intuitive to users. Years later, using pull-down menus like this became a staple of web page design.