5 ms·

Great feature, regrettably obscured by a lack of discoverability. The norm used to be to show shortcut accelerators right next to their menu dropdowns. That w

Great feature, regrettably obscured by a lack of discoverability. The norm used to be to show shortcut accelerators right next to their menu dropdowns. That would naturally advertise those most useful to the user, without getting in the way. Tangentially, the correct way to present nifty tips like this is NOT in a "tour of new features" wizard spammed at the user when they're opening your app to try and get something important done.

albert_e 3y ago
Yep ... or just putting this info (keyboard shortcuts) in the "Help" menu which is the last item in a standard menu bar.
- jbverschoor 3y ago
  Or just make it an actual menu item / command, because that’s what it is..
  - naikrovek 3y ago
    this is the correct way to expose keyboard shortcuts to users. this is how it used to be done before UX people started getting involved and following trends instead of thinking about usability.
  - wongarsu 3y ago
    It is. On Windows 10 it's View -> Update Speed -> Paused. On Windows 11 it's more hidden because the redesign got rid of the menu bar, but you can still find it by clicking on the gear icon in the bottom, then changing the "real time update speed" dropdown. Maybe a big "pause" button next to the "end task" button would have been better, but it's not that undiscoverable. It's certainly easier to find than the option to show additional columns in the details view, like gpu memory used, the full command line, or total CPU time.
    - myself248 3y ago
      > the redesign got rid of the menu bar This drives me batty, and it just feels like an insult. For decades, the argument for sticking with Windows was that it was a single stable UI/UX with lots of established conventions. The same menus in the same places, the same hotkeys worked everywhere, etc. Linux couldn't claim that, was the pitch. Since human time is the expensive part, it didn't matter if the OS itself wasn't exactly performant, and we could afford to throw hardware at its ever-more-bloated footprint, because the investment in _human reflexes_ paid dividends whose value far exceeded some extra sticks of RAM or whatever. Now that hardware is virtually free and it _should_ cost nothing to continue that legacy of consistency, they've fucked it all up! Teams is completely unusable by keyboard, the new UI skin got rid of all the menu bars, lately I've found GUI elements that're _hidden until you mouse over them_, like are they kidding? I feel like I've been played for a fool. Every time I run into one of these insults, it pisses me off way more than the individual problem should, because it twists this 3-decade-old knife in my gut.
      - wokkel 3y ago
        Thats what you get when you let a an effective monopoly be run by baboons.
        vxNsr 3y ago
        I knew everything was going downhill when I saw the windows 8 back button. It looked like it’d been hastily drawn by me in MSPaint for a school assignment. Nothing was aligned, and the arrow was actually pixelated on my 720p laptop screen
      - david422 3y ago
        Get rid of the menu bar to free up more space. Get giant 4k monitors. Pad all the UI elements with extra space. It just gets dumb.
        baq 3y ago
        I’ve started to browse the web on 80% by default because it’s preposterous and ridiculous. I don’t want fancy designs. I want boring predictable accessible UIs with maximum amount of information on one screen.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    I wish more operating systems had adopted macOS's feature to search through menu bar items, which also automatically points to where it is in the menu.
    - jbverschoor 3y ago
      Raycast’s menu search works way better by the way
stetrain 3y ago
> Tangentially, the correct way to present nifty tips like this is NOT in a "tour of new features" wizard spammed at the user when they're opening your app to try and get something important done. My favorite is when this happens in a tool I’ve used for years just because I have a new account flag, like signing into Slack at a new job. Bonus points if it’s completely unskippable or keeps happening as you touch each part of the app during use.
- Arrath 3y ago
  Ah my arch-nemesis, the unskippable, rigidly timed "How to use the controls" tutorial that requires me to click ok to advance through every control, at the beginning of every single one of the several dozen mandatory, annual training modules that corporate requires I sit through.
david422 3y ago
Reminds me of macOS menus. Hold down the option key and some menu items change. Like, what?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- orbital-decay 3y ago
  Windows is also like that - Shift + right click presents a different context menu on Explorer icons, taskbar shortcuts, and probably in some other places.
  - jcparkyn 3y ago
    Windows is particularly odd, because the file explorer menus are so similar that you wouldn't see the difference if you weren't looking for it.
    - pests 3y ago
      It's different now with Windows 11. Regular right click brings up a new metro-style simplified menu. Shift+Righr click brings up the classic right menu with the full menu. The new menu has maybe 7 items while the old is at 20+. I believe the new system was an attempt to get rid of all the cruft that has accumulated into the right click menu over the years. Notably it does not show any actions added by third party programs or file extension handlers.
- paradox460 3y ago
  In small defense of macos, that's been the case since 1984. Not great for new users, but it's an old paradigm
HeckFeck 3y ago
> NOT in a "tour of new features" wizard spammed Oh man, if there's any way to guarantee I won't notice your features, that's it. Please also freeze half the app and jump your wizard modal around the screen so I've no easy way to dismiss it. And the only thing worse is games having cutscenes that explain 'feature X' in 'BOOMING EPIC VOICE' for everything I click in the menu. Looking at you, Back4Blood.
RajT88 3y ago
These kinds of features are what breaks in new Windows releases. For example: in windows explorer you can start typing the name of the file and it will character by character match it to a file. This got reduced to just the first character when Win11 shipped (now fixed).
- entropie 3y ago
  This is a very old feature. Iam pretty sure that was around since like win 98 or even 95.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- wolpoli 3y ago
  This feature will likely completely disappear once that part of Explorer is rewritten.
- baq 3y ago
  Did the same guy also made the start menu search ‘more maintainable’ in the same fashion? I’ve had to install power toys to get working app search.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
>"tour of new features" wizard spammed at the user when they're opening your app If you ever see these in an app it's a sign the team has a talent problem. People actually with talent to solve problems with the app would actually tweak the interfaces to make the tools discoverable or better. Teams with low talent (Modern Adobe etc) just work on spamming the front of house with messaging (Written in web tech that flashes up as a white rectangle first, obvs) in the hopes of changing user actions rather than actually working on the product itself. Once I realized this I see this everywhere and the products that do it just never evolve or get better.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Apple is a good example. The UI is mostly simple enough that no extra guidance is needed. But when signing up, they do show a few slides about how to use gestures and include a “tips” app if you want to know more. Most of these tips being stuff most people just work out themselves. No walk thrus with arrow pointers and text boxes.
layer8 3y ago
While a bit less convenient, Alt+V, U, P/N (and Alt+V, R) are discoverable. The bigger problem I see is that Microsoft programs don't come with adequate documentation any more like they used to (which was called "online help", though really offline in today's terminology).
- almostnormal 3y ago
  > The bigger problem I see is that Microsoft programs don't come with adequate documentation any more like they used to (which was called "online help", though really offline in today's terminology). It used to be delivered with printed documentation.
  - layer8 3y ago
    Yeah, I didn’t want go that far back, though I have fond memories of the multiple ring binders for the MS Word manuals. :)
gregschlom 3y ago
> The norm used to be to show shortcut accelerators right next to their menu dropdowns. That would naturally advertise those most useful to the user, without getting in the way. Yes to this. The Task Manager does have a menu entry for this (View -> Update Speed -> Paused). If they had written "Ctrl" to the right of "Paused" (as used to be the norm), it would be much more discoverable. (Incidentally, when I hold Ctrl and open that menu, the update speed still displays what was selected before, e.g. "Low". So the Ctrl thing was probably implemented as a hack that bypasses the menu.)
- nhinck2 3y ago
  The shortcut text labels are for toggling or effectively clicking that option. This is for press and hold which has never had shortcut text associated.
graypegg 3y ago
Oh god you’ve hit a nerve. I’ve never learned anything useful from a forced tour. I’ve been in meetings where we’re discussing adding these, and the intentions all seem to be “we want to help users find things” but they’re somehow totally ineffective at that job. ALL the information at once, presented in a way you can’t leave or return, is just the wrong solution. I honestly think it’s just assumed these help users because someone saw some other product use it once.
- sublinear 3y ago
  Forced tours strongly remind me of bad presentations given by people trying to wipe their hands clean of responsibility. They don't want to admit their monolithic UI is a mess. I miss the days when apps were much simpler and bundled together as a suite instead of one foolishly consistent... thing.
jiggawatts 3y ago
Keyboard shortcuts are soooo 1990s, don’t you know? Only the old ladies waiting for retirement in the typing pool use them. We’re web now! Two-point-oh. Electron. And anyway, the UX designers getting half a million total comp to throw things together in artistic ways assure me that their masterworks can’t be sullied by arbitrary lines randomly strewn over their elegant typography. The QA team didn’t complain either. How could they? We let them all go years ago! Bunch of complainers. You know who doesn’t complain? Our happy users, especially since we’ve redirected them to a feedback forum where they can keep each other entertained and not bother us with their issues. I mean sure, there have been a few calls by disabled users, but the UX team uses only Macs and couldn’t repro the issue.

albert_e 3y ago

Yep ... or just putting this info (keyboard shortcuts) in the "Help" menu which is the last item in a standard menu bar.

jbverschoor 3y ago
Or just make it an actual menu item / command, because that’s what it is..
- naikrovek 3y ago
  this is the correct way to expose keyboard shortcuts to users. this is how it used to be done before UX people started getting involved and following trends instead of thinking about usability.
- wongarsu 3y ago
  It is. On Windows 10 it's View -> Update Speed -> Paused. On Windows 11 it's more hidden because the redesign got rid of the menu bar, but you can still find it by clicking on the gear icon in the bottom, then changing the "real time update speed" dropdown. Maybe a big "pause" button next to the "end task" button would have been better, but it's not that undiscoverable. It's certainly easier to find than the option to show additional columns in the details view, like gpu memory used, the full command line, or total CPU time.
  - myself248 3y ago
    > the redesign got rid of the menu bar This drives me batty, and it just feels like an insult. For decades, the argument for sticking with Windows was that it was a single stable UI/UX with lots of established conventions. The same menus in the same places, the same hotkeys worked everywhere, etc. Linux couldn't claim that, was the pitch. Since human time is the expensive part, it didn't matter if the OS itself wasn't exactly performant, and we could afford to throw hardware at its ever-more-bloated footprint, because the investment in _human reflexes_ paid dividends whose value far exceeded some extra sticks of RAM or whatever. Now that hardware is virtually free and it _should_ cost nothing to continue that legacy of consistency, they've fucked it all up! Teams is completely unusable by keyboard, the new UI skin got rid of all the menu bars, lately I've found GUI elements that're _hidden until you mouse over them_, like are they kidding? I feel like I've been played for a fool. Every time I run into one of these insults, it pisses me off way more than the individual problem should, because it twists this 3-decade-old knife in my gut.
    - wokkel 3y ago
      Thats what you get when you let a an effective monopoly be run by baboons.
      - vxNsr 3y ago
        I knew everything was going downhill when I saw the windows 8 back button. It looked like it’d been hastily drawn by me in MSPaint for a school assignment. Nothing was aligned, and the arrow was actually pixelated on my 720p laptop screen
    - david422 3y ago
      Get rid of the menu bar to free up more space. Get giant 4k monitors. Pad all the UI elements with extra space. It just gets dumb.
      - baq 3y ago
        I’ve started to browse the web on 80% by default because it’s preposterous and ridiculous. I don’t want fancy designs. I want boring predictable accessible UIs with maximum amount of information on one screen.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  I wish more operating systems had adopted macOS's feature to search through menu bar items, which also automatically points to where it is in the menu.
  - jbverschoor 3y ago
    Raycast’s menu search works way better by the way

stetrain 3y ago

> Tangentially, the correct way to present nifty tips like this is NOT in a "tour of new features" wizard spammed at the user when they're opening your app to try and get something important done. My favorite is when this happens in a tool I’ve used for years just because I have a new account flag, like signing into Slack at a new job. Bonus points if it’s completely unskippable or keeps happening as you touch each part of the app during use.

Arrath 3y ago
Ah my arch-nemesis, the unskippable, rigidly timed "How to use the controls" tutorial that requires me to click ok to advance through every control, at the beginning of every single one of the several dozen mandatory, annual training modules that corporate requires I sit through.

david422 3y ago

Reminds me of macOS menus. Hold down the option key and some menu items change. Like, what?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
orbital-decay 3y ago
Windows is also like that - Shift + right click presents a different context menu on Explorer icons, taskbar shortcuts, and probably in some other places.
- jcparkyn 3y ago
  Windows is particularly odd, because the file explorer menus are so similar that you wouldn't see the difference if you weren't looking for it.
  - pests 3y ago
    It's different now with Windows 11. Regular right click brings up a new metro-style simplified menu. Shift+Righr click brings up the classic right menu with the full menu. The new menu has maybe 7 items while the old is at 20+. I believe the new system was an attempt to get rid of all the cruft that has accumulated into the right click menu over the years. Notably it does not show any actions added by third party programs or file extension handlers.
paradox460 3y ago
In small defense of macos, that's been the case since 1984. Not great for new users, but it's an old paradigm

HeckFeck 3y ago

> NOT in a "tour of new features" wizard spammed Oh man, if there's any way to guarantee I won't notice your features, that's it. Please also freeze half the app and jump your wizard modal around the screen so I've no easy way to dismiss it. And the only thing worse is games having cutscenes that explain 'feature X' in 'BOOMING EPIC VOICE' for everything I click in the menu. Looking at you, Back4Blood.

RajT88 3y ago

These kinds of features are what breaks in new Windows releases. For example: in windows explorer you can start typing the name of the file and it will character by character match it to a file. This got reduced to just the first character when Win11 shipped (now fixed).

entropie 3y ago
This is a very old feature. Iam pretty sure that was around since like win 98 or even 95.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
wolpoli 3y ago
This feature will likely completely disappear once that part of Explorer is rewritten.
baq 3y ago
Did the same guy also made the start menu search ‘more maintainable’ in the same fashion? I’ve had to install power toys to get working app search.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

>"tour of new features" wizard spammed at the user when they're opening your app If you ever see these in an app it's a sign the team has a talent problem. People actually with talent to solve problems with the app would actually tweak the interfaces to make the tools discoverable or better. Teams with low talent (Modern Adobe etc) just work on spamming the front of house with messaging (Written in web tech that flashes up as a white rectangle first, obvs) in the hopes of changing user actions rather than actually working on the product itself. Once I realized this I see this everywhere and the products that do it just never evolve or get better.

Gigachad 3y ago
Apple is a good example. The UI is mostly simple enough that no extra guidance is needed. But when signing up, they do show a few slides about how to use gestures and include a “tips” app if you want to know more. Most of these tips being stuff most people just work out themselves. No walk thrus with arrow pointers and text boxes.

layer8 3y ago

While a bit less convenient, Alt+V, U, P/N (and Alt+V, R) are discoverable. The bigger problem I see is that Microsoft programs don't come with adequate documentation any more like they used to (which was called "online help", though really offline in today's terminology).

almostnormal 3y ago
> The bigger problem I see is that Microsoft programs don't come with adequate documentation any more like they used to (which was called "online help", though really offline in today's terminology). It used to be delivered with printed documentation.
- layer8 3y ago
  Yeah, I didn’t want go that far back, though I have fond memories of the multiple ring binders for the MS Word manuals. :)

gregschlom 3y ago

> The norm used to be to show shortcut accelerators right next to their menu dropdowns. That would naturally advertise those most useful to the user, without getting in the way. Yes to this. The Task Manager does have a menu entry for this (View -> Update Speed -> Paused). If they had written "Ctrl" to the right of "Paused" (as used to be the norm), it would be much more discoverable. (Incidentally, when I hold Ctrl and open that menu, the update speed still displays what was selected before, e.g. "Low". So the Ctrl thing was probably implemented as a hack that bypasses the menu.)

nhinck2 3y ago
The shortcut text labels are for toggling or effectively clicking that option. This is for press and hold which has never had shortcut text associated.

graypegg 3y ago

Oh god you’ve hit a nerve. I’ve never learned anything useful from a forced tour. I’ve been in meetings where we’re discussing adding these, and the intentions all seem to be “we want to help users find things” but they’re somehow totally ineffective at that job. ALL the information at once, presented in a way you can’t leave or return, is just the wrong solution. I honestly think it’s just assumed these help users because someone saw some other product use it once.

sublinear 3y ago
Forced tours strongly remind me of bad presentations given by people trying to wipe their hands clean of responsibility. They don't want to admit their monolithic UI is a mess. I miss the days when apps were much simpler and bundled together as a suite instead of one foolishly consistent... thing.

jiggawatts 3y ago

Keyboard shortcuts are soooo 1990s, don’t you know? Only the old ladies waiting for retirement in the typing pool use them. We’re web now! Two-point-oh. Electron. And anyway, the UX designers getting half a million total comp to throw things together in artistic ways assure me that their masterworks can’t be sullied by arbitrary lines randomly strewn over their elegant typography. The QA team didn’t complain either. How could they? We let them all go years ago! Bunch of complainers. You know who doesn’t complain? Our happy users, especially since we’ve redirected them to a feedback forum where they can keep each other entertained and not bother us with their issues. I mean sure, there have been a few calls by disabled users, but the UX team uses only Macs and couldn’t repro the issue.