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What has happened to desktop UIs since the 90s has been tragic. We've made some minor specific advances in the last 20 years, but dropped the ball on some reall

What has happened to desktop UIs since the 90s has been tragic. We've made some minor specific advances in the last 20 years, but dropped the ball on some really fundamental concepts. It hurts whenever I have to slog through a shitload of monochromatic nondescript icons with no tooltips until I finally find what I need five minutes later. Mobile phones are slathered in useless animations that make using them feel like molasses, and this is starting to show up in desktop software too. Finding software that has an information density level appropriate for somebody over the age of 12 is becoming pretty hard. Most of this could be easily undone, but it won't be. Rest assured that whatever is going to cause you the most pain is what will happen.

dsfbjornjaja 6y ago
It’s not unlike Hollywood cinema: glitz and glam. Truth is, we had knobs and switches, then typewriters which naturally transition to command line, then we had window managers which are like a desk(top) covered in papers. Then we had... well that’s all we have. I guess the next thing is AR/VR and 3D UIs but until then... A mobile phone or tablet UI I would say is like a spiral bound pocket notebook, as compared to the proper desktop metaphor of full laptop/desktop computers. It’s like trying to reinvent the book. It _can_ be enhanced, but most of the time it doesn’t change the overall reading experience.
- gonzo41 6y ago
  Your talk about VR is akin to popup books. It won't be the panacea that people think. Mac Command+Space search (Spotlight?) is about as good as it gets for driving a ui these days.
sedatk 6y ago
Animations on mobile are not always useless. They act as a feedback mechanism on a medium like touch screen where there is none otherwise. They can also work to compensate for delays. The perception of delay can be reduced by showing an animation while doing another task in the background.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  And if there is no delay, the animation takes longer than the task!
  - seniorivn 6y ago
    the system should predict delays and adjust animation speed accordingly
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      How about just not doing any of that and making the task itself go faster? I have a problem with this "animations hiding delays" pattern, because it's straight-up dishonest and disrespectful. If the computer has to take time, let me know; if it doesn't, just give me the results immediately. Stop running what would be a piece of background feedback about the state of my machine through a low-pass filter! Adding animations to software tends to make it slower (a good potential for a self-fulfilling prophecy here). Often enough, the animations are of fixed "developer's best estimate" length, and can take longer than the task itself, slowing the user down. The whole idea behind "reducing perception of delay" seems to be borne out of paternalistic and exploitative thinking, "how to make the user feel better about our app, despite its shortcomings". Trying to make the user like you more than they should. Instead of that, why not focus on ensuring the user is maximally effective in getting maximum value out of the application - that they're not confused, and not waiting for the machine?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  There are better feedback mechanisms. Like, flash the button if it's being touched. At no point should an animation make the task take longer than it would otherwise. As for masking the delays, see below.
logbiscuitswave 6y ago
The lack of chrome is such a frustrating design trend. In Windows 10 in particular I find it so difficult to find the .. well, windows because everything just kind of blends together. There’s something to be said about the workaday utility of how things used to be. They weren’t necessarily beautiful in a conventional sense but they were so much more intuitive.
- userbinator 6y ago
  https://doctoratlantis.medium.com/how-to-restore-the-borders-around-your-windows-in-windows-10-d480905787f4 https://doctoratlantis.medium.com/how-to-restore-the-borders... https://www.robinhobo.com/how-to-fix-the-borderless-window-problem-in-windows-virtual-desktop/ https://www.robinhobo.com/how-to-fix-the-borderless-window-p... ...and then of course you have the dummies like this who probably caused these idiotic trends: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/is-it-possible-to-get-rid-of-window-borders/113863 https://forum.level1techs.com/t/is-it-possible-to-get-rid-of... The real problem is the lack of configurability. You could change the window border width to anywhere from invisible to some insanely huge number on the older versions of Windows, and everyone would be happy. Now you're forced to use whatever some stupid "designer"'s idea is.
  - logbiscuitswave 6y ago
    The funny thing is back in Windows 7 and earlier I would tweak my theme to have the thinnest borders possible yet I still didn’t have the whole “where is my window” issue. All those customization options went away starting with Windows 8 when some UI designers decided they knew better than me how my windows should look. Thanks for those links - I’ll play around with those options to see if I can restore some sanity to my desktop.
- qwertox 6y ago
  It turns the "just shoving windows around and resizing them" from something normal into an act which only a surgeon could feel comfortable with. The mouse is not a scalpel, it's a tool, and if I need to hit a 1px wide border edge (or even worse the corner) in order to resize a window, then it's a terribly bad UI. I loved SGI IRIX's brutally bold borders, but those of Windows 7 are still just as good.

dsfbjornjaja 6y ago

It’s not unlike Hollywood cinema: glitz and glam. Truth is, we had knobs and switches, then typewriters which naturally transition to command line, then we had window managers which are like a desk(top) covered in papers. Then we had... well that’s all we have. I guess the next thing is AR/VR and 3D UIs but until then... A mobile phone or tablet UI I would say is like a spiral bound pocket notebook, as compared to the proper desktop metaphor of full laptop/desktop computers. It’s like trying to reinvent the book. It _can_ be enhanced, but most of the time it doesn’t change the overall reading experience.

gonzo41 6y ago
Your talk about VR is akin to popup books. It won't be the panacea that people think. Mac Command+Space search (Spotlight?) is about as good as it gets for driving a ui these days.

sedatk 6y ago

Animations on mobile are not always useless. They act as a feedback mechanism on a medium like touch screen where there is none otherwise. They can also work to compensate for delays. The perception of delay can be reduced by showing an animation while doing another task in the background.

freeone3000 6y ago
And if there is no delay, the animation takes longer than the task!
- seniorivn 6y ago
  the system should predict delays and adjust animation speed accordingly
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    How about just not doing any of that and making the task itself go faster? I have a problem with this "animations hiding delays" pattern, because it's straight-up dishonest and disrespectful. If the computer has to take time, let me know; if it doesn't, just give me the results immediately. Stop running what would be a piece of background feedback about the state of my machine through a low-pass filter! Adding animations to software tends to make it slower (a good potential for a self-fulfilling prophecy here). Often enough, the animations are of fixed "developer's best estimate" length, and can take longer than the task itself, slowing the user down. The whole idea behind "reducing perception of delay" seems to be borne out of paternalistic and exploitative thinking, "how to make the user feel better about our app, despite its shortcomings". Trying to make the user like you more than they should. Instead of that, why not focus on ensuring the user is maximally effective in getting maximum value out of the application - that they're not confused, and not waiting for the machine?
TeMPOraL 6y ago
There are better feedback mechanisms. Like, flash the button if it's being touched. At no point should an animation make the task take longer than it would otherwise. As for masking the delays, see below.

logbiscuitswave 6y ago

The lack of chrome is such a frustrating design trend. In Windows 10 in particular I find it so difficult to find the .. well, windows because everything just kind of blends together. There’s something to be said about the workaday utility of how things used to be. They weren’t necessarily beautiful in a conventional sense but they were so much more intuitive.

userbinator 6y ago
https://doctoratlantis.medium.com/how-to-restore-the-borders-around-your-windows-in-windows-10-d480905787f4 https://doctoratlantis.medium.com/how-to-restore-the-borders... https://www.robinhobo.com/how-to-fix-the-borderless-window-problem-in-windows-virtual-desktop/ https://www.robinhobo.com/how-to-fix-the-borderless-window-p... ...and then of course you have the dummies like this who probably caused these idiotic trends: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/is-it-possible-to-get-rid-of-window-borders/113863 https://forum.level1techs.com/t/is-it-possible-to-get-rid-of... The real problem is the lack of configurability. You could change the window border width to anywhere from invisible to some insanely huge number on the older versions of Windows, and everyone would be happy. Now you're forced to use whatever some stupid "designer"'s idea is.
- logbiscuitswave 6y ago
  The funny thing is back in Windows 7 and earlier I would tweak my theme to have the thinnest borders possible yet I still didn’t have the whole “where is my window” issue. All those customization options went away starting with Windows 8 when some UI designers decided they knew better than me how my windows should look. Thanks for those links - I’ll play around with those options to see if I can restore some sanity to my desktop.
qwertox 6y ago
It turns the "just shoving windows around and resizing them" from something normal into an act which only a surgeon could feel comfortable with. The mouse is not a scalpel, it's a tool, and if I need to hit a 1px wide border edge (or even worse the corner) in order to resize a window, then it's a terribly bad UI. I loved SGI IRIX's brutally bold borders, but those of Windows 7 are still just as good.