3 ms·

Reading the title I interpreted this as "utility which figures out which icons you hardly use and puts them away". That's not what this does, but it is an inter

by stinos 7y ago

Reading the title I interpreted this as "utility which figures out which icons you hardly use and puts them away". That's not what this does, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless. I wonder if this has been implemented somewhere (don't care which OS). I.e. I see a lot of desktop software which defaults to discoverability (well, I think that is the choice made): show the user a wealth of menus and buttons and status bars. Then in reality the user uses 1% of these buttons, and the rest is just there eating screen space. For writing, programming and graphic design this can be quite a lot of space. Automatically shrinking that space by removing buttons the user never used after months could help some users a bit I think. It's not the first time I encounter people complaining about screen estate while sitting in front of an unconfigured Visual Studio instance with menu bar, 2 rows of buttons and status bar all on. That's like 5 lines of code, depending on font. (and if you point to random icons and ask 'what does this button do?' they don't know, so it really is a waste)

gmueckl 7y ago
This is exactly what MS tried with Windows and Office in the late 90s. People hated it and MS has since removed this automatic adaption completely. Office menus in particular took on a shortened form with only the most used items. You had to explicitly expand them to see the remaining items that Office considered irrelevant to you. This has two major problems: the UI became incomsistemt between users, too dynamic and therefore comfusing. Amd even though users used a particular 1% subset of an Office program today, it would be a different subset the next day or the next week. This sent them constantly hunting for menu items that "should be there". All of this was replaced with the ribbons makeover. Now, the interface is not adapting to the user, but to the current context. Although I don't like that interface very much, it is at least less surprising.
_jal 7y ago
Personally, I hate it when applications seemingly randomly alter the interface. It breaks my memory of where things are; I have to stop and stare at things to figure out what happened and where that icon went. It is like having a "helper" who hides your tools.
- kzrdude 7y ago
  Most annoying is when it happens immediately. The natural example in this context is of course the moving status items, in Windows 10, which might move just after you use them once or even on hover. But even any list which is sorted by a volatile criteria works like this. Like the most recently used bookmarks. Maybe you want to open item 1 & 2, so you click item 2 first and then go for clicking item 1, only they have now already traded places because of the first click...
- stinos 7y ago
  Yeah on second thought, I think I might be looking at this too much from my own perspective. I almost solely use the keyboard to command applications so whatever solution I come up with for others who click icons might not be ideal. Still, I wonder: do you really know the meaning and place of all icons in applications you use frequently?

by stinos 7y ago

gmueckl 7y ago

This is exactly what MS tried with Windows and Office in the late 90s. People hated it and MS has since removed this automatic adaption completely. Office menus in particular took on a shortened form with only the most used items. You had to explicitly expand them to see the remaining items that Office considered irrelevant to you. This has two major problems: the UI became incomsistemt between users, too dynamic and therefore comfusing. Amd even though users used a particular 1% subset of an Office program today, it would be a different subset the next day or the next week. This sent them constantly hunting for menu items that "should be there". All of this was replaced with the ribbons makeover. Now, the interface is not adapting to the user, but to the current context. Although I don't like that interface very much, it is at least less surprising.

_jal 7y ago

Personally, I hate it when applications seemingly randomly alter the interface. It breaks my memory of where things are; I have to stop and stare at things to figure out what happened and where that icon went. It is like having a "helper" who hides your tools.

kzrdude 7y ago
Most annoying is when it happens immediately. The natural example in this context is of course the moving status items, in Windows 10, which might move just after you use them once or even on hover. But even any list which is sorted by a volatile criteria works like this. Like the most recently used bookmarks. Maybe you want to open item 1 & 2, so you click item 2 first and then go for clicking item 1, only they have now already traded places because of the first click...
stinos 7y ago
Yeah on second thought, I think I might be looking at this too much from my own perspective. I almost solely use the keyboard to command applications so whatever solution I come up with for others who click icons might not be ideal. Still, I wonder: do you really know the meaning and place of all icons in applications you use frequently?