3 ms·

>And they stick out like a sore thumb when you get a windows 7 style component in the middle of a modern looking app. Wouldn't that be a feature? "Modern look

>And they stick out like a sore thumb when you get a windows 7 style component in the middle of a modern looking app. Wouldn't that be a feature? "Modern looking" as far as I'm concerned means "Can't figure out WTF this bloody thing is." and that assumes I even know there is a thing in the first place.

andai 3y ago
I noticed this helping an elderly neighbor with her banking. "No, you don't click there, but there... you can tell because..." then realized there's literally no way to tell. It's all flat.
- Animats 3y ago
  then realized there's literally no way to tell. It's all flat. I hate that. I'm waiting for that fad to be over. I kind of liked material design, but it's too much of a pain to put into everything. Flat, borderless, and unidentified is so easy to do. The all flat approach encourages dark patterns. Lists of trackers you can opt out of, scrollable, with no scroll bar and no window border. There are important buttons hidden which, if pressed, do things favorable to the user but unfavorable to the site operator. Also, the pop-up box with no visible dismiss button, just an "x" which appears if you mouse over it. A non-web example - someone made the console window in Ubuntu borderless. If you have two console windows overlapping, you can't see the boundary.
  - zelphirkalt 3y ago
    There is something nice about plain old <button> default look and feel. It probably is the kind of feedback they give, that does not require me to always roll my eyeballs elsewhere for confirmation, that my click did actually cause some action to start.
    - Animats 3y ago
      Right. The flat look is borrowed from phones, from UIs where buttons were few and large, and the concept of "mouse-over" is not meaningful. Now it's everywhere, even for complex interfaces where it's not appropriate.
  - dleeftink 3y ago
    > There are important buttons hidden which, if pressed, do things favorable to the user but unfavorable to the site operator. Could you elaborate a bit? How is the flat look benefitting users over site owners? (Is this regarding lists of trackers?)
    - andai 3y ago
      I think the idea was that when dealing with UI elements where it can be unclear what even is a UI element, it's easier to shape user behavior. e.g. making it harder for the user to "opt out of all tracking". Those cookie consent boxes are definitely full of dark patterns. My "favorite" one was one that would take 45+ seconds to save your changes. I sent a complaint to the company that makes the consent box, and they responded "website owner configured it incorrectly, nothing we can do" LOL
  - trealira 3y ago
    The process pretty much started with Windows 8, which was released in 2012. I don't think the flat style will go away anytime soon. At most, skeuomorphic elements will be slowly phased in. Material design at least adds shadows, and "neumorphism" adds back some 3d popping out, although I haven't seen it much.
    - oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
      Windows 95 was probably the optimal UI—in the Windows world, at least. Meaningful buttons, a reasonably-contained set of components, proper scrollbars. I'm not sure what the next major revision was after that (98 didn't change that much, IIRC) but I bet it was probably a regression.

andai 3y ago

I noticed this helping an elderly neighbor with her banking. "No, you don't click there, but there... you can tell because..." then realized there's literally no way to tell. It's all flat.

Animats 3y ago
then realized there's literally no way to tell. It's all flat. I hate that. I'm waiting for that fad to be over. I kind of liked material design, but it's too much of a pain to put into everything. Flat, borderless, and unidentified is so easy to do. The all flat approach encourages dark patterns. Lists of trackers you can opt out of, scrollable, with no scroll bar and no window border. There are important buttons hidden which, if pressed, do things favorable to the user but unfavorable to the site operator. Also, the pop-up box with no visible dismiss button, just an "x" which appears if you mouse over it. A non-web example - someone made the console window in Ubuntu borderless. If you have two console windows overlapping, you can't see the boundary.
- zelphirkalt 3y ago
  There is something nice about plain old <button> default look and feel. It probably is the kind of feedback they give, that does not require me to always roll my eyeballs elsewhere for confirmation, that my click did actually cause some action to start.
  - Animats 3y ago
    Right. The flat look is borrowed from phones, from UIs where buttons were few and large, and the concept of "mouse-over" is not meaningful. Now it's everywhere, even for complex interfaces where it's not appropriate.
- dleeftink 3y ago
  > There are important buttons hidden which, if pressed, do things favorable to the user but unfavorable to the site operator. Could you elaborate a bit? How is the flat look benefitting users over site owners? (Is this regarding lists of trackers?)
  - andai 3y ago
    I think the idea was that when dealing with UI elements where it can be unclear what even is a UI element, it's easier to shape user behavior. e.g. making it harder for the user to "opt out of all tracking". Those cookie consent boxes are definitely full of dark patterns. My "favorite" one was one that would take 45+ seconds to save your changes. I sent a complaint to the company that makes the consent box, and they responded "website owner configured it incorrectly, nothing we can do" LOL
- trealira 3y ago
  The process pretty much started with Windows 8, which was released in 2012. I don't think the flat style will go away anytime soon. At most, skeuomorphic elements will be slowly phased in. Material design at least adds shadows, and "neumorphism" adds back some 3d popping out, although I haven't seen it much.
  - oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
    Windows 95 was probably the optimal UI—in the Windows world, at least. Meaningful buttons, a reasonably-contained set of components, proper scrollbars. I'm not sure what the next major revision was after that (98 didn't change that much, IIRC) but I bet it was probably a regression.