5 ms·

One other gripe that I have with modern UIs, which I didn't see mentioned (but which I might just have read past) is the scattering of controls in different pla

One other gripe that I have with modern UIs, which I didn't see mentioned (but which I might just have read past) is the scattering of controls in different places. Many are, of course, across the top in either a real menu or (yuck) a "ribbon", but others are down at the bottom, or along one side or the other of an app's window. My recollection is that MsWord is particularly bad at this, but since I no longer have it installed (one reason is exactly this!), I can't show it. But I do have Ms's Visual Studio Code on-screen. There is (thankfully) a real menu, with File, Edit, View and Help (the latter no longer exists on most Microsoft products). I happen to have a terminal open; it has six mostly indecipherable icons across the top of its pane. All the panes--the terminal, the file edit panes, and the "bar" at the right-hand side, have a '...', which seems to be the equivalent of a hamburger menu for that pane. Finally, the status bar down at the bottom of the window has still more indecipherable icons near the left end, and a few info things near the right end, some of which are controls ("Select Interpreter", inexplicably highlighted in brown with yet another icon), and some of which appear to be just info (line and column)--except these at the bottom of the window turn out to pull down a special menu item at the top of the window. For example, the control labeled "Ln and Col" (the latter means the character within the line, not the column in a tab-delimited file) pulls down a menu item that allows you to go to a particular line (but not a particular "column").

mvdtnz 1y ago
Firefox is a big offender here. Every single interactable UI element is at the top of the window, until you press Ctrl+F and for whatever reason some asshole at Mozilla decided that the Find on Page UI should go to the bottom of the window. Absolutely cooked.
- mrob 1y ago
  I don't see a problem with that. If you are using the find in page feature then you are very likely going to type something. Your hands are already on the keyboard. The fact that you said "press Ctrl+F" instead of clicking the menus is evidence for this. All the options are best accessed with keyboard shortcuts, so Fitt's law is not relevant. However, I just noticed one big UI flaw in this interface. The keyboard shortcuts for finding the next and previous occurrences of the search phrase (enter and shift-enter respectively) are not easily discoverable. They ought to be mentioned in the tooltips for those buttons. EDIT: And another problem: the next and previous buttons aren't even correctly marked as buttons. It's worse than the "flat" buttons used elsewhere, it's "stealth flat" buttons that only appear when you mouse over them.
- 1oooqooq 1y ago
  they just copy chrome for the past decade tho.
crooked-v 1y ago
The whole point of the Office ribbon was to consolidate controls, because they were at the point where most of their feature requests were for things that already existed but people were completely unaware of on account of every menu and toolbar having 80 million items.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  So instead they moved every feature into 80 million ribbon items, most which are not visible.
  - paulryanrogers 1y ago
    At least the ribbon makes the most common features one or two clicks. I have nostalgia for the old menus, and wish they were at least an option. But they often required a lot of dexterity and persistence to discover and use when options expanded beyond a depth of two
  - 1oooqooq 1y ago
    it was already hidden. the ribbon didn't fix it. the ribbon just replaced an invisible right mouse button click on the general toolbar region with an unavoidable huge eyesore.
- einpoklum 1y ago
  Part of the problem they had just before the switch to ribbons (i.e. with Office 2003) is how they were semi-hiding not-commonly-used menu items by default, so that you had to click an arrow-button on the bottom of the menu to get the full set if items. I have to say that from my experience, ribbons make it harder for people to remember where buttons/functionality is located, and harder to remember that it even exists, relative to full menus + toolbars. And yet - newbies used to MS Office keep clamoring for ribbons, ribbons, ribbons (e.g. in LibreOffice).
  - senkora 1y ago
    There is now a toggle to switch LibreOffice to a ribbon UI: https://itsfoss.com/libreoffice-ribbon-interface/ https://itsfoss.com/libreoffice-ribbon-interface/

mvdtnz 1y ago

Firefox is a big offender here. Every single interactable UI element is at the top of the window, until you press Ctrl+F and for whatever reason some asshole at Mozilla decided that the Find on Page UI should go to the bottom of the window. Absolutely cooked.

mrob 1y ago
I don't see a problem with that. If you are using the find in page feature then you are very likely going to type something. Your hands are already on the keyboard. The fact that you said "press Ctrl+F" instead of clicking the menus is evidence for this. All the options are best accessed with keyboard shortcuts, so Fitt's law is not relevant. However, I just noticed one big UI flaw in this interface. The keyboard shortcuts for finding the next and previous occurrences of the search phrase (enter and shift-enter respectively) are not easily discoverable. They ought to be mentioned in the tooltips for those buttons. EDIT: And another problem: the next and previous buttons aren't even correctly marked as buttons. It's worse than the "flat" buttons used elsewhere, it's "stealth flat" buttons that only appear when you mouse over them.
1oooqooq 1y ago
they just copy chrome for the past decade tho.

crooked-v 1y ago

The whole point of the Office ribbon was to consolidate controls, because they were at the point where most of their feature requests were for things that already existed but people were completely unaware of on account of every menu and toolbar having 80 million items.

SoftTalker 1y ago
So instead they moved every feature into 80 million ribbon items, most which are not visible.
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  At least the ribbon makes the most common features one or two clicks. I have nostalgia for the old menus, and wish they were at least an option. But they often required a lot of dexterity and persistence to discover and use when options expanded beyond a depth of two
- 1oooqooq 1y ago
  it was already hidden. the ribbon didn't fix it. the ribbon just replaced an invisible right mouse button click on the general toolbar region with an unavoidable huge eyesore.
einpoklum 1y ago
Part of the problem they had just before the switch to ribbons (i.e. with Office 2003) is how they were semi-hiding not-commonly-used menu items by default, so that you had to click an arrow-button on the bottom of the menu to get the full set if items. I have to say that from my experience, ribbons make it harder for people to remember where buttons/functionality is located, and harder to remember that it even exists, relative to full menus + toolbars. And yet - newbies used to MS Office keep clamoring for ribbons, ribbons, ribbons (e.g. in LibreOffice).
- senkora 1y ago
  There is now a toggle to switch LibreOffice to a ribbon UI: https://itsfoss.com/libreoffice-ribbon-interface/ https://itsfoss.com/libreoffice-ribbon-interface/