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I was puzzled throughout why "a uniform experience" is something desirable. Totally puzzled. It reminded me of what McDonalds "restaurants" try to offer. I put

I was puzzled throughout why "a uniform experience" is something desirable. Totally puzzled. It reminded me of what McDonalds "restaurants" try to offer. I put "restaurants" in quotes because noone thinks of them as proper restaurants. Something about the uniform experience maybe? I guess before that every site had its own unique menu and style, that took much longer to serve.. Does the author also prefer talking to people who wear face-masks? Do they shun syntax highlighting? Why take all the fun out of life? Why live like a Unix tool, taking in a plain text stream?

catalogia 6y ago
Perhaps the "non-uniformity" of the modern web is not the source of fun in the author's life. Isn't that more likely than the author wanting an unfun life?
totony 6y ago
Having an uniform experience that you can customize is very nice. It matches your expectations directly which is core for design. No weird scrolling behavior that you didn't expect, laggy ajax webpage loading, ctrl+f highjacking. I'd rather something be more usable than arbitrarily "fun." You don't go around making zigzag roads, circle sliding doors, etc., which are arguably more "fun."
ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
> I was puzzled throughout why "a uniform experience" is something desirable. Because using a very consistent UI (e.g. everything on terminals) takes less cognitive load. It is known that having to continuously switch your vision between different fonts, font size, colors and other visual patters across different applications is more tiring. It's one of the reasons for having an extremely consistent style on aircraft dashboards and similar. I've noticed the difference myself many times when spending a long day on a bunch of uncluttered terminals VS a heterogeneous mix. Furthermore, using a mouse requires a continuous feedback loop between hand and eye to aim at buttons. You don't need that on a terminal. When doing "change management" ops in Amazon the first step was always to unclutter the desktop.
MayeulC 6y ago
I don't go to most websites to be amazed by their looks and usability. If one is better in these regards, then I'd prefer every website to enjoy these improvements. A proper restaurant analogy would be if each and every restaurant reinvented the way to put food into your mouth. Sure, it might be funny once in a while, but currently, when pushing the front door, you have no idea where they'll put your fork, if you will have a fork, if you'll be fed modern times-style, https://xkcd.com/1293/ https://xkcd.com/1293/ style, if you'll have to inhale your soup trough the nose or hunt for your food. You might see it as "the fun of life" if that was common practice. But a standard interface (UX) allows one to focus on the important stuff (namely, enjoying the food: most Asian restaurants I know offer forks as well as chopsticks). Important stuff here would be the piece of info you came for. Be it an article, a picture, some data, etc. For instance, do you enjoy the "creativity" with which websites design cookie banners instead of having a standard form, or better, obeying the DNT bit?
Shared404 6y ago
Not the author, but... > Does the author also prefer talking to people who wear face-masks? Right now, yes, yes I do. > Do they shun syntax highlighting? Syntax highlighting performs an actual service, as opposed to being cruft. > Why take all the fun out of life? This isn't taking the fun out of life, it's making a tool more useful. > Why live like a Unix tool, taking in a plain text stream? See above.
- yesenadam 6y ago
  >> Does the author also prefer talking to people who wear face-masks? > Right now, yes, yes I do. Sorry, it seems I didn't make my point clear enough. Also not sure you're not joking. I just meant that if "a uniform experience" is good, having everyone wear a mask (at any moment in history, nothing to do with virus) will make talking to people more uniform and thus better.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    > Also not sure you're not joking. I will admit that line was a bit tongue in cheek. It's not that a "uniform experience" is better in every instance. It's more that a tool whose purpose is to convey information is more efficient when you don't have to deal with formatting that may or may not interfere with comprehension.
not_kurt_godel 6y ago
I agree in that I like how sites use different looks as part of their overall aesthetic. For people who don't like that, I'm not sure what's so compelling about using a perpetually probably-always-somewhat-broken tool that requires complex installation and maintenance rather than just use Firefox Reader Mode + maybe some extensions, but power to them if that's how they want to spend their time.
- minerjoe 6y ago
  HackerNews, where "configure+make" is "complex installation and maintenance mode"?
  - not_kurt_godel 6y ago
    ...yes? Since when is configure+make ever just configure+make? Even today I had to do a configure+make that involved another 20 min of debugging to figure out that I had to make a symlink to hack gcc's broken platform naming conventions. Like I get that some people enjoy that, but I personally don't. The reason I write software is to let myself and other people avoid having to jump through annoying, arcane hoops. Software should be accessible and user-friendly even to the most naive user. It is not a badge of honor to be comfortable with a highly finicky, complex system that requires extra time that could be spent doing other things that you'd prefer to do instead.
    - minerjoe 6y ago
      > when is configure+make ever just configure+make Most times, for me, it just is. Or maybe a little 'configure -help' to set some options. That said, I prefer to create Arch PKGBUILDs to encapsulate that work. Maybe that is more to your liking?
postalrat 6y ago
If the web did offer a uniform experience then the user would have more control how pages look. Text only, material design, native controls, your choice.
eXpl0it3r 6y ago
I'm also puzzled by this and I don't understand the argument of "cognitive load". Our brains are extremely adaptive and powerful, I don't understand how some different text formatting or background colors can be difficult to parse. If all you do on the web is read news articles, then having an uniform experience is kind of desirable, but other than that, you're doing more harm to the UX by ditching modern browser support. How is draw.io rendering for you? How does the Bitbucket/GitHub/GitLab diff look for you? How's the YouTube watching going? I guess those are different groups, but remember when everyone was complaining about all the sites using Bootstrap because they all looked too similar?

catalogia 6y ago

Perhaps the "non-uniformity" of the modern web is not the source of fun in the author's life. Isn't that more likely than the author wanting an unfun life?

totony 6y ago

Having an uniform experience that you can customize is very nice. It matches your expectations directly which is core for design. No weird scrolling behavior that you didn't expect, laggy ajax webpage loading, ctrl+f highjacking. I'd rather something be more usable than arbitrarily "fun." You don't go around making zigzag roads, circle sliding doors, etc., which are arguably more "fun."

ex_amazon_sde 6y ago

> I was puzzled throughout why "a uniform experience" is something desirable. Because using a very consistent UI (e.g. everything on terminals) takes less cognitive load. It is known that having to continuously switch your vision between different fonts, font size, colors and other visual patters across different applications is more tiring. It's one of the reasons for having an extremely consistent style on aircraft dashboards and similar. I've noticed the difference myself many times when spending a long day on a bunch of uncluttered terminals VS a heterogeneous mix. Furthermore, using a mouse requires a continuous feedback loop between hand and eye to aim at buttons. You don't need that on a terminal. When doing "change management" ops in Amazon the first step was always to unclutter the desktop.

MayeulC 6y ago

I don't go to most websites to be amazed by their looks and usability. If one is better in these regards, then I'd prefer every website to enjoy these improvements. A proper restaurant analogy would be if each and every restaurant reinvented the way to put food into your mouth. Sure, it might be funny once in a while, but currently, when pushing the front door, you have no idea where they'll put your fork, if you will have a fork, if you'll be fed modern times-style, https://xkcd.com/1293/ https://xkcd.com/1293/ style, if you'll have to inhale your soup trough the nose or hunt for your food. You might see it as "the fun of life" if that was common practice. But a standard interface (UX) allows one to focus on the important stuff (namely, enjoying the food: most Asian restaurants I know offer forks as well as chopsticks). Important stuff here would be the piece of info you came for. Be it an article, a picture, some data, etc. For instance, do you enjoy the "creativity" with which websites design cookie banners instead of having a standard form, or better, obeying the DNT bit?

Shared404 6y ago

Not the author, but... > Does the author also prefer talking to people who wear face-masks? Right now, yes, yes I do. > Do they shun syntax highlighting? Syntax highlighting performs an actual service, as opposed to being cruft. > Why take all the fun out of life? This isn't taking the fun out of life, it's making a tool more useful. > Why live like a Unix tool, taking in a plain text stream? See above.

yesenadam 6y ago
>> Does the author also prefer talking to people who wear face-masks? > Right now, yes, yes I do. Sorry, it seems I didn't make my point clear enough. Also not sure you're not joking. I just meant that if "a uniform experience" is good, having everyone wear a mask (at any moment in history, nothing to do with virus) will make talking to people more uniform and thus better.
- Shared404 6y ago
  > Also not sure you're not joking. I will admit that line was a bit tongue in cheek. It's not that a "uniform experience" is better in every instance. It's more that a tool whose purpose is to convey information is more efficient when you don't have to deal with formatting that may or may not interfere with comprehension.

not_kurt_godel 6y ago

I agree in that I like how sites use different looks as part of their overall aesthetic. For people who don't like that, I'm not sure what's so compelling about using a perpetually probably-always-somewhat-broken tool that requires complex installation and maintenance rather than just use Firefox Reader Mode + maybe some extensions, but power to them if that's how they want to spend their time.

minerjoe 6y ago
HackerNews, where "configure+make" is "complex installation and maintenance mode"?
- not_kurt_godel 6y ago
  ...yes? Since when is configure+make ever just configure+make? Even today I had to do a configure+make that involved another 20 min of debugging to figure out that I had to make a symlink to hack gcc's broken platform naming conventions. Like I get that some people enjoy that, but I personally don't. The reason I write software is to let myself and other people avoid having to jump through annoying, arcane hoops. Software should be accessible and user-friendly even to the most naive user. It is not a badge of honor to be comfortable with a highly finicky, complex system that requires extra time that could be spent doing other things that you'd prefer to do instead.
  - minerjoe 6y ago
    > when is configure+make ever just configure+make Most times, for me, it just is. Or maybe a little 'configure -help' to set some options. That said, I prefer to create Arch PKGBUILDs to encapsulate that work. Maybe that is more to your liking?

postalrat 6y ago

If the web did offer a uniform experience then the user would have more control how pages look. Text only, material design, native controls, your choice.

eXpl0it3r 6y ago

I'm also puzzled by this and I don't understand the argument of "cognitive load". Our brains are extremely adaptive and powerful, I don't understand how some different text formatting or background colors can be difficult to parse. If all you do on the web is read news articles, then having an uniform experience is kind of desirable, but other than that, you're doing more harm to the UX by ditching modern browser support. How is draw.io rendering for you? How does the Bitbucket/GitHub/GitLab diff look for you? How's the YouTube watching going? I guess those are different groups, but remember when everyone was complaining about all the sites using Bootstrap because they all looked too similar?