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> It's worth mentioning that I agree that the modern design paradigm probably is friendly to beginner users in many ways. But at some point, people stop being b

> It's worth mentioning that I agree that the modern design paradigm probably is friendly to beginner users in many ways. But at some point, people stop being beginners. People who use computers several hours per day, performing a wide variety of tasks in many different programs, should also be taken in to account when designing software. As such, my critique comes from the point of what's usually called a "power user". It's also worth considering that the more an interface hides, the less it offers by way of opportunities for a user to grow and learn. After that I find it a bit rich to complain that one has to use a keyboard shortcut (even as others have said that's even incorrect), especially for a function that requires using the keyboard anyway. I also find the arguments about no up button and the list view unconvincing. The list button was immediately obvious to me from the screenshot (and I don't use gnome or any filemanager) and I actually appreciate a window that does not put lost of buttons that present duplicate functionality everywhere (and it's harder to hit? What argument is that, by his own admission he's been using computers for 35 years, but can't use a mouse to hit a path?). This really just reads like one of the typical rants where someone become somewhat proficient with some system, now considers themselves a "power user" and expects everything else to work exactly the same. The same people often complain that terminals break with "standard shortcuts" because they can't copy with ctrl-C...

hedora 2y ago
I would have clicked the down arrow that’s attached to the list icon to get the list options. It wouldn’t even occur to me that the icon could be a toggle (both because it is not rendered as one, and because I’d expect more than two view options).
- kaba0 2y ago
  It does have a hover effect though. Design is always about discoverability. If you have seen something similar, you will try to apply that solution. If you haven’t, you try different stuff and see what happens.
baybal2 2y ago
[dead]
persnickety 2y ago
You don't need a keyboard to use a text field. You could be pasting a path. Or using some assistive technology like dictation. Or be using a phone where there's a way to type but no way to press ctrl (althouth the UI on a phone should be judged along other lines).
savolai 2y ago
The basics: you are not your users. Just because it’s easy for you, doesn’t mean it’s easy for others. That is the entire basis of usability work. I cannot believe how resistant the tech community, like above, is to the very basics of human cognition. It’s your comment that’s the rant. OP has actual data from decades of research they are applying. Quoting myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41303387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41303387
- josephg 2y ago
  Thankyou. I’ve been using computers for 35 years (I grew up using xtree to navigate folders on DOS). It would never have occurred to me that both sides of that view options dropdown do different things. Perhaps it’s intuitive for others, but I’ve never seen that before in my life. I’m increasingly of the opinion that I hate almost all novel interaction patterns in user interfaces. UI components and flows should stick as close to common patterns / system defaults as possible - and no, your app, whatever it is, is not an exception
  - lbschenkel 2y ago
    Exactly. The traditional design language is that an arrow besides a button indicates that the button will show a drop-down when pressed (traditionally without a line separating the two), or that clicking on the button will do the default action while clicking on the arrow will show all the actions (traditionally with a thin line separating the two). Reusing that design language but making the button and the arrow two completely different buttons with their own actions sets wrong expectations for no good reason.
- kaba0 2y ago
  What data does he have? OP wrote a basic opinion-piece on what they dislike. It’s just as valuable as the parent commenter’s opinion, so we can only say that one user found some feature hard to find. There is no ultimate design, and striving for 100% of users knowing everything immediately is just unrealistic. If we are at opinions, I really dislike this absolutely tone-deaf attacking of GNOME that is always happening under these threads. There is criticism, and there is blind hate. There is definitely places to improve, though, but the style of writing matters.
continuational 2y ago
> The same people often complain that terminals break with "standard shortcuts" because they can't copy with ctrl-C... It does break with standard shortcuts. And worse, there's absolutely no consistency between terminal applications on which shortcuts to use. It's a mess, and complaints are warrented.
- senko 2y ago
  Ctrl-C sending a SIGINT to the program running in the terminal is the standard shortcut. Woe to the terminal arrogant enough to assume their precious copy/paste is more important. Now, Super-C vs Ctrl-Shift-C (across the UI), we can argue about.
  - eviks 2y ago
    The more important thing isn't "their precious", but "user precious", where terminal is just from of a million apps that copy on Ctrl-C, so there is no woe, but praise, to any terminal app that reflects this basic fact and doesn't subvert user expectations
    - senko 2y ago
      I guess we have very different sets of users in mind, then. Ctrl-C (and Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-V and many other standard command-line shortcuts) have been around for longer than many of those users have been alive, and are part of POSIX standard. The proof is in the pudding, though. I haven't seen any terminal apps that actually do what you praise (by default, as you can always remap the shortcuts to your heart content - to each their poison).
      - eviks 2y ago
        Not really, all the same users, you just place way too much faith in the defaults. Case in point: your second point. Though your pudding is stale: bad defaults are a common scourge of software, so the fact that something is default means nothing positive on its own
      - 2y ago
edwintorok 2y ago
How do you find out what that keyboard shortcut is? I only found out when reading a similar article as the OP many years ago that complained about the removal of the textbox. Otherwise I never would've known it is possible to activate the path textbox with a keyboard shortcut. A UI needs to be both easy to use and discoverable. If "power users" have trouble discovering where the features they need are, why do we think the rest of the UI is easy to use/discoverable for everyone else? (Although TBH I rarely use UI, and normally just use the terminal, except when upgrading the firmware of my keyboard, in which case I use Jade's file manager).
- stuaxo 2y ago
  I only know that shortcut because I use in the browser already.
gavinsyancey 2y ago
> The list button was immediately obvious to me from the screenshot It was immediately obvious to the author as well -- it was the first thing they clicked on! Or rather, they clicked in the little arrow next to it, that looked like it was part of the same button. When it brought up something entirely unrelated, they very reasonably assumed that it wasn't what they were looking for.

hedora 2y ago

I would have clicked the down arrow that’s attached to the list icon to get the list options. It wouldn’t even occur to me that the icon could be a toggle (both because it is not rendered as one, and because I’d expect more than two view options).

kaba0 2y ago
It does have a hover effect though. Design is always about discoverability. If you have seen something similar, you will try to apply that solution. If you haven’t, you try different stuff and see what happens.

baybal2 2y ago

[dead]

persnickety 2y ago

You don't need a keyboard to use a text field. You could be pasting a path. Or using some assistive technology like dictation. Or be using a phone where there's a way to type but no way to press ctrl (althouth the UI on a phone should be judged along other lines).

savolai 2y ago

The basics: you are not your users. Just because it’s easy for you, doesn’t mean it’s easy for others. That is the entire basis of usability work. I cannot believe how resistant the tech community, like above, is to the very basics of human cognition. It’s your comment that’s the rant. OP has actual data from decades of research they are applying. Quoting myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41303387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41303387

josephg 2y ago
Thankyou. I’ve been using computers for 35 years (I grew up using xtree to navigate folders on DOS). It would never have occurred to me that both sides of that view options dropdown do different things. Perhaps it’s intuitive for others, but I’ve never seen that before in my life. I’m increasingly of the opinion that I hate almost all novel interaction patterns in user interfaces. UI components and flows should stick as close to common patterns / system defaults as possible - and no, your app, whatever it is, is not an exception
- lbschenkel 2y ago
  Exactly. The traditional design language is that an arrow besides a button indicates that the button will show a drop-down when pressed (traditionally without a line separating the two), or that clicking on the button will do the default action while clicking on the arrow will show all the actions (traditionally with a thin line separating the two). Reusing that design language but making the button and the arrow two completely different buttons with their own actions sets wrong expectations for no good reason.
kaba0 2y ago
What data does he have? OP wrote a basic opinion-piece on what they dislike. It’s just as valuable as the parent commenter’s opinion, so we can only say that one user found some feature hard to find. There is no ultimate design, and striving for 100% of users knowing everything immediately is just unrealistic. If we are at opinions, I really dislike this absolutely tone-deaf attacking of GNOME that is always happening under these threads. There is criticism, and there is blind hate. There is definitely places to improve, though, but the style of writing matters.

continuational 2y ago

> The same people often complain that terminals break with "standard shortcuts" because they can't copy with ctrl-C... It does break with standard shortcuts. And worse, there's absolutely no consistency between terminal applications on which shortcuts to use. It's a mess, and complaints are warrented.

senko 2y ago
Ctrl-C sending a SIGINT to the program running in the terminal is the standard shortcut. Woe to the terminal arrogant enough to assume their precious copy/paste is more important. Now, Super-C vs Ctrl-Shift-C (across the UI), we can argue about.
- eviks 2y ago
  The more important thing isn't "their precious", but "user precious", where terminal is just from of a million apps that copy on Ctrl-C, so there is no woe, but praise, to any terminal app that reflects this basic fact and doesn't subvert user expectations
  - senko 2y ago
    I guess we have very different sets of users in mind, then. Ctrl-C (and Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-V and many other standard command-line shortcuts) have been around for longer than many of those users have been alive, and are part of POSIX standard. The proof is in the pudding, though. I haven't seen any terminal apps that actually do what you praise (by default, as you can always remap the shortcuts to your heart content - to each their poison).
    - eviks 2y ago
      Not really, all the same users, you just place way too much faith in the defaults. Case in point: your second point. Though your pudding is stale: bad defaults are a common scourge of software, so the fact that something is default means nothing positive on its own
    - 2y ago

edwintorok 2y ago

How do you find out what that keyboard shortcut is? I only found out when reading a similar article as the OP many years ago that complained about the removal of the textbox. Otherwise I never would've known it is possible to activate the path textbox with a keyboard shortcut. A UI needs to be both easy to use and discoverable. If "power users" have trouble discovering where the features they need are, why do we think the rest of the UI is easy to use/discoverable for everyone else? (Although TBH I rarely use UI, and normally just use the terminal, except when upgrading the firmware of my keyboard, in which case I use Jade's file manager).

stuaxo 2y ago
I only know that shortcut because I use in the browser already.

gavinsyancey 2y ago

> The list button was immediately obvious to me from the screenshot It was immediately obvious to the author as well -- it was the first thing they clicked on! Or rather, they clicked in the little arrow next to it, that looked like it was part of the same button. When it brought up something entirely unrelated, they very reasonably assumed that it wasn't what they were looking for.