6 ms·

Despite the gutting of desktop usability for the sake of being mobile compatible, many environments still have zero presence on mobile. Can I PLEASE have my fuc

Despite the gutting of desktop usability for the sake of being mobile compatible, many environments still have zero presence on mobile. Can I PLEASE have my fucking scrollbar back now? I once spent a lot of my time and the time and the time of a developer trying to find a setting because there was no indication that a window had more content (a checkbox) to scroll down to. Something that would have been obvious before the onslaught of hidden scrollbars. The trouble is that having my pointer over the navigation pane--practically a guaranteed position--causes the scrollbar on the other pane to be hidden. Without the visual cue of a scrollbar there was no reason to move my pointer over to the other pane to discover there's more. Hell you might not even know it's a separate pane now that we've gotten rid of every defining border. I shared a screenshot with the developer, assured them that I was using the current version, only to have him say "scroll down." No doubt, I'm the fucking idiot (/s). Just like on mobile, you're supposed randomly interact with every UI element in hopes of discovering how it works only to have that learned skill be unique to one fucking app. Tap it, slow tap it, slow tap it for a different amount of time, tap it faster, spam it... "google it"... oh, this time you're supposed to drag it to something that doesn't even look like a UI element. Stupid grandpas! "Is the checkbox checked?" was never as ambiguous as "is the slider switch on?" Also, the checkbox uses less screen space! I'd argue that they optimized for neither screen space or user friendliness. It's optimized for a look and you can even make it worse by making it flatter. Go ahead make it look like two squares! Is the darker area the switch part? Who cares! It looks so clean and distraction free! I was so distracted by knowing what state the switch was in. Sorry, time for my meds. I usually make it half way through the day.

CoastalCoder 3y ago
This feels like a modern rewrite of "Falling Down" :) * That's not a criticism. I agree with your take on it.
grishka 3y ago
Microsoft in particular seems hellbent on putting touchscreens in everything. They REALLY want to make it happen but seemingly no one is having it. There's ONE person I know who owns a touchscreen laptop and genuinely touches its screen on purpose. On your scrolling complaint — well, there's this desktop-specific thing that OP doesn't mention but that becomes very apparent once you start looking for it in old-school desktop UIs. Controls never, ever scroll. Only content does. If controls don't fit into a window, you don't make it scrollable — you split it into tabs or you put the extra controls into a separate window that opens via a button. This appears to be universal at least for Windows and macOS.
- brazzy 3y ago
  But then you need fixed window sizes, which is pretty damn annoying as well.
  - grishka 3y ago
    That same Microsoft solved that nicely in win32 by using "DLUs", or "dialog units", for layouts. These scale with the font.
    - premysl 3y ago
      DLUs solve the wrong problem. You actually want autolayout, so that different languages only need translations and otherwise don't need almost any extra work. Linux has, I think, proved, that fixed window sizes are needless.
      - grishka 3y ago
        > You actually want autolayout, so that different languages only need translations and otherwise don't need almost any extra work. What kind of extra work DO they need? I can only think of RTL layouts but I don't remember whether win32 "dialogs" loaded from resources automatically mirror the layout for RTL languages. > Linux has, I think, proved, that fixed window sizes are needless. Desktop Linux is an unfixable dumpster fire UX-wise. Don't even get me started. A serious problem with many open-source GUIs, but especially those on Linux, is that they're built backwards: you first write the code, then build the UI. Your UI ends up being shaped by the underlying implementation of the thing it controls. When in reality you want to do it the other way around: you'd formulate user requirements ("they need to be able to do X and Y"), you'd think through all possible scenarios that the UI must accommodate, you'd make a rough outline of what a UI satisfying all these requirements would look like, and only THEN would you start actually writing any code.
        JohnFen 3y ago
        > Desktop Linux is an unfixable dumpster fire UX-wise. This is exactly how I feel about Windows. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
m3047 3y ago
I feel you. There is nothing today quite like _Inside Macintosh Volume I_ laying out out in drawings and prose (!) what the elements of a UI are, what they do, and how they work... almost like people had never seen a UI before. People must have had to think about it, they wrote a book for F sake. /s They devote ink and paper to declaring that modes are to be avoided, and why. The do's and don'ts of UI on page 70 are worth repeating: Do: * Let the user have as much control as possible over the appearance of objects. * Use verbs for menu commands that perform actions. * Make alerts self explanatory. * Use controls and other graphics instead of just menu commands. Don't: * Overuse modes (again!). * Require keyboard / mouse when the operation would be easier with the other. * Change the way the screen looks unexpectedly, especially scrolling. * Redraw objects unnecessarily. * Make up your own menus and give them the same name as standard ones (they define the standard ones in this book, you know: About, File, Edit as well as what goes in them. yes, yes, this is where it all started). We've meandered into a bullshit local minimum where there is the One True UI and it's different for every app, but the same for every user. Meanwhile in industrial control where a $50,000 piece of equipment has its own app, used by maybe one person or three if it's operated 24 hours a day, the responsive mobile interface is as easy to lay out as slides in a slide deck and takes about as long to do. Hell, a customizable dashboard is a widget. If the cloud made shoes there would be different shoes for grass and concrete, but they'd all be the same size and you'd have to cut off toes if your feet were too big or stuff them with prostheses if they were too small.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  Today is your lucky day. Have a new word; Procrustean. "forcing strict conformity through disregard of individual differences or special circumstances" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/procrustean https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/procrustean "In Greek mythology, Procrustes ... was a rogue smith and bandit from Attica who attacked [read: killed] people by stretching them or cutting off their legs, so as to force them to fit the size of an iron bed." "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes"
- airstrike 3y ago
  I'm a UI/UX layperson by any measure, but as an avid vim user, I actually wish modes were everywhere and I could use every app with the keyboard alone
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
> I once spent a lot of my time and the time and the time of a developer trying to find a setting because there was no indication that a window had more content (a checkbox) to scroll down to. I've done that, man. Quite embarrassing.
- winrid 3y ago
  Embarrassing for the app/os designers.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    I try to write mine, to avoid that kind of thing. It often involves a lot of arguing with the graphic designer.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
NikolaNovak 3y ago
I was with you, until you got to the slider switch part. Now I'm with you AND my blood is boiling. Nice to know it's not just me though - I find the ambiguous slider switches in way too many apps now!
SoftTalker 3y ago
Slide switches are just awful. A skeuomorphism that doesn't work. Checkboxes are far better, assuming there aren't double negatives in the label text (e.g. a check means something is disabled.... the developers who do this should be shot at dawn).
wredue 3y ago
And what the fuck is with the wording on check boxes these days? On top of not even knowing if the sliding circle is actually on or off, half the time I cannot figure out which of on or off I actually want. Double negatives all over the place. Weird wording. No indication of actual impact. It’s all crazy.
xnx 3y ago
We've got some innovation from having everyone invent their own user interfaces for every app, but it's been a very high cost to pay vs standard OS GUIs.

CoastalCoder 3y ago

This feels like a modern rewrite of "Falling Down" :) * That's not a criticism. I agree with your take on it.

grishka 3y ago

Microsoft in particular seems hellbent on putting touchscreens in everything. They REALLY want to make it happen but seemingly no one is having it. There's ONE person I know who owns a touchscreen laptop and genuinely touches its screen on purpose. On your scrolling complaint — well, there's this desktop-specific thing that OP doesn't mention but that becomes very apparent once you start looking for it in old-school desktop UIs. Controls never, ever scroll. Only content does. If controls don't fit into a window, you don't make it scrollable — you split it into tabs or you put the extra controls into a separate window that opens via a button. This appears to be universal at least for Windows and macOS.

brazzy 3y ago
But then you need fixed window sizes, which is pretty damn annoying as well.
- grishka 3y ago
  That same Microsoft solved that nicely in win32 by using "DLUs", or "dialog units", for layouts. These scale with the font.
  - premysl 3y ago
    DLUs solve the wrong problem. You actually want autolayout, so that different languages only need translations and otherwise don't need almost any extra work. Linux has, I think, proved, that fixed window sizes are needless.
    - grishka 3y ago
      > You actually want autolayout, so that different languages only need translations and otherwise don't need almost any extra work. What kind of extra work DO they need? I can only think of RTL layouts but I don't remember whether win32 "dialogs" loaded from resources automatically mirror the layout for RTL languages. > Linux has, I think, proved, that fixed window sizes are needless. Desktop Linux is an unfixable dumpster fire UX-wise. Don't even get me started. A serious problem with many open-source GUIs, but especially those on Linux, is that they're built backwards: you first write the code, then build the UI. Your UI ends up being shaped by the underlying implementation of the thing it controls. When in reality you want to do it the other way around: you'd formulate user requirements ("they need to be able to do X and Y"), you'd think through all possible scenarios that the UI must accommodate, you'd make a rough outline of what a UI satisfying all these requirements would look like, and only THEN would you start actually writing any code.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        > Desktop Linux is an unfixable dumpster fire UX-wise. This is exactly how I feel about Windows. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

m3047 3y ago

I feel you. There is nothing today quite like _Inside Macintosh Volume I_ laying out out in drawings and prose (!) what the elements of a UI are, what they do, and how they work... almost like people had never seen a UI before. People must have had to think about it, they wrote a book for F sake. /s They devote ink and paper to declaring that modes are to be avoided, and why. The do's and don'ts of UI on page 70 are worth repeating: Do: * Let the user have as much control as possible over the appearance of objects. * Use verbs for menu commands that perform actions. * Make alerts self explanatory. * Use controls and other graphics instead of just menu commands. Don't: * Overuse modes (again!). * Require keyboard / mouse when the operation would be easier with the other. * Change the way the screen looks unexpectedly, especially scrolling. * Redraw objects unnecessarily. * Make up your own menus and give them the same name as standard ones (they define the standard ones in this book, you know: About, File, Edit as well as what goes in them. yes, yes, this is where it all started). We've meandered into a bullshit local minimum where there is the One True UI and it's different for every app, but the same for every user. Meanwhile in industrial control where a $50,000 piece of equipment has its own app, used by maybe one person or three if it's operated 24 hours a day, the responsive mobile interface is as easy to lay out as slides in a slide deck and takes about as long to do. Hell, a customizable dashboard is a widget. If the cloud made shoes there would be different shoes for grass and concrete, but they'd all be the same size and you'd have to cut off toes if your feet were too big or stuff them with prostheses if they were too small.

_a_a_a_ 3y ago
Today is your lucky day. Have a new word; Procrustean. "forcing strict conformity through disregard of individual differences or special circumstances" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/procrustean https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/procrustean "In Greek mythology, Procrustes ... was a rogue smith and bandit from Attica who attacked [read: killed] people by stretching them or cutting off their legs, so as to force them to fit the size of an iron bed." "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes"
airstrike 3y ago
I'm a UI/UX layperson by any measure, but as an avid vim user, I actually wish modes were everywhere and I could use every app with the keyboard alone

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

> I once spent a lot of my time and the time and the time of a developer trying to find a setting because there was no indication that a window had more content (a checkbox) to scroll down to. I've done that, man. Quite embarrassing.

winrid 3y ago
Embarrassing for the app/os designers.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  I try to write mine, to avoid that kind of thing. It often involves a lot of arguing with the graphic designer.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

NikolaNovak 3y ago

I was with you, until you got to the slider switch part. Now I'm with you AND my blood is boiling. Nice to know it's not just me though - I find the ambiguous slider switches in way too many apps now!

SoftTalker 3y ago

Slide switches are just awful. A skeuomorphism that doesn't work. Checkboxes are far better, assuming there aren't double negatives in the label text (e.g. a check means something is disabled.... the developers who do this should be shot at dawn).

wredue 3y ago

And what the fuck is with the wording on check boxes these days? On top of not even knowing if the sliding circle is actually on or off, half the time I cannot figure out which of on or off I actually want. Double negatives all over the place. Weird wording. No indication of actual impact. It’s all crazy.

xnx 3y ago

We've got some innovation from having everyone invent their own user interfaces for every app, but it's been a very high cost to pay vs standard OS GUIs.