4 ms·

How can you tell that any Windows or Mac clone UI is a re-implementation? Easy: try to move your mouse diagonally into the Send To menu after letting it pop up.

How can you tell that any Windows or Mac clone UI is a re-implementation? Easy: try to move your mouse diagonally into the Send To menu after letting it pop up. If the send-to menu closes as you mouse over the item into the submenu, it's a clone. If the menu stays up even if you brush over another menu item, it's either real or a Good Clone. :) For the fun history, @DonHopkins had a thread a few years back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17404345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17404345

wahnfrieden 1y ago
Google has not learned this lesson
maplant 1y ago
I could tell instantly in the loading screen because the three blocks in the progress bar move smoothly across it.
- jkingsman 1y ago
  Yup, and on just about every system I used there was a stutter in it about 75% of the way through.
  - projektfu 1y ago
    Windows installers and upgrades seem to like to reach 100% and then continue working for a few more minutes.
- wibbily 1y ago
  Man nothing drives me further up the wall than when a nice progress indicator with discrete segments gets animated with a lazy `to { rotate(360deg); }` etc[1]. It is my molehill to die on [1] https://cdn.dribbble.com/userupload/41647820/file/original-8dfda86dd346ccde4fc8b5fc0173c4dd.gif https://cdn.dribbble.com/userupload/41647820/file/original-8...
  - metalliqaz 1y ago
    you just don't like how it looks, or is there something else wrong with it?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - AlecSchueler 1y ago
      It's just moving, it gives no actual indication of progress.
      - metalliqaz 1y ago
        this reminds me of a tool at work that uses a progress bar but the software doesn't calculate the job size so it just fills up quickly and then goes back down again, and repeats endlessly.
        EvanAnderson 1y ago
        I don't have the time to research where I heard this, but I recall a UI focus group study that found pretty much equal user satisfaction between accurate linear progress bars and random progress bars, but universal dissatisfaction with progress bars that "reset". My own feelings mirror this finding.
        dotancohen 1y ago
        I called those Congress bars, con being the antonym of pro.
      - saltcured 1y ago
        Back in the dark ages, "idiot dots" or "idiot marks" was a phrase I heard for the various text terminal equivalents. It would cycle through a small number of text values with some kind of backspace/overwrite to keep things localized to where the cursor ought to be. One version was a variable length ellipses: . .. ... that would grow and reset in place. Another was an expanding "dot": . o O that would cycle in place as one character. And the early "spinner" was: - \ | / that would cycle in place as one character. Hmm, not sure this will render properly on HN but it is hyphen, backslash, pipe, forward slash.
- nickt 1y ago
  Old, but good mandatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/612/ https://xkcd.com/612/
  - karmakaze 1y ago
    I've had times where I aborted an operation that was obviously not working. Eventually out of ideas, I waited out the 1,163 seconds and it completed normally.
DustinBrett 1y ago
On my website daedalOS it does indeed have a delay when your mouse leaves a sub menu. I didn't know people looked for that though.
- mmastrac 1y ago
  I believe that anyone who isn't explicitly looking for it is subconsciously frustrated by the lack of it and they just don't know why the UI is "annoying".
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
stronglikedan 1y ago
If you have another option with a submenu on either side of Send To, the Send To menu will close. It closes as soon as you move over any item with a submenu. But it just so happens that Send To is typically by itself, so it's a good test regardless.
jaffa2 1y ago
I must be a freak then because one of the first tweaks I do to any Windows install since possibly Win98 days is to set menu delay to 0ms. I like the snappy precise feel and have no problems not taking shortcuts across menu items.
rayiner 1y ago
Crazy how much UI still fails this test.
alnwlsn 1y ago
There's something like this in every desktop Linux I've tried, which made it feel like using the mouse was in some way weird and broken. But I've been using it for long enough now that it either got fixed, or more likely, I got used to it. I don't even remember what it was, something about clicking drop down menus a certain way? Reminds me of the first time I ever used classic Macintosh System OS, and how you have to hold the mouse button down to keep menus open. It doesn't take much to throw everything off.
- Hobadee 1y ago
  ...the number of times I accidentally selected the wrong menu item because my finger slipped off the mouse button... I'm getting bad flashbacks!
randunel 1y ago
Ugh, all the links in that comment are dead, imgur and microsoft alike :(
tczMUFlmoNk 1y ago
A classic article about a no-delay solution to this problem, not mentioned in the linked thread: https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega...
- rao-v 1y ago
  Lovely and simple … you’d think it would have become the best practice in most libraries by now
webstrand 1y ago
It also fails the "hold right click" test, Windows didn't popover context menus until right click was released. Instead, for file, it did a kind of "contextual drag and drop".
self_awareness 1y ago
Padding of buttons and around text usually immediately tells that it's a reimplementation.
OptionOfT 1y ago
I love reading about old UI interface guidelines, and how much research was done to make it useful to the user. Now it's all about how to make it useful to the company. <YOUR FILES ARE NOT BACKED UP, WOULD YOU LIKE TO TURN ON ONEDRIVE?> <Yes> <Maybe later> Anyway, the links in that post have deteriorated. Here's the link to Raymond Chen's blog: https://web.archive.org/web/20190218080905/https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080619-00/?p=21903 https://web.archive.org/web/20190218080905/https://blogs.msd... (shame on MS for redirecting you to another page when showing you a 404, which make it harder to find the original URL). Updated link to Raymond Chen's blog, where the comments have been 'retired': https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080619-00/?p=21903 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080619-00/?p=21... And the 2 imgur links (same issue with the redirecting...): https://web.archive.org/web/20230509182201/https://i.imgur.com/RrEDo3m.png https://web.archive.org/web/20230509182201/https://i.imgur.c... and https://web.archive.org/web/20230507201645/https://i.imgur.com/a0gNWHh.png https://web.archive.org/web/20230507201645/https://i.imgur.c...
- jackero 1y ago
  There was an economies of scale back then with OS-level UI components. If Microsoft spent money on UX research that improved its UI controls, it would benefit a lot of people. Essentially the cost of that research was bore by all application developers. The problem now? Every company is designing their own UI components. Every company has to bear the cost of UX research individually. It’s a lot of wheel re-inventing. UX easily takes a backseat.
  - eru 1y ago
    Are UI libraries no longer a thing?
    - guappa 1y ago
      They are, essentially the current mess is just a privately funded welfare program for UX designers. I wish we could pay them to do something useful instead.
SkidanovAlex 1y ago
MS Paint though is "either real or a Good Clone :)", because you can zoom to 12x by clicking one-pixel-wide line below 8x.
rahimnathwani 1y ago
You can also right-click the desktop and choose 'Properties'. If the resulting window has a tab called 'Screesaver', it's a clone.
- Kwpolska 1y ago
  Or you can look at the start button. If it has an uppercase S, and the rest of the system is in English, it’s a clone.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
greenavocado 1y ago
The "Welcome" text on boot should be "welcome"
nick238 1y ago
In the web sphere, I recall Amazon having done something like this in the very early days when there was a sidebar with categories that you could kinda drill into. Mouseover one, and there was an invisible triangle off to the right that if you kept inside of, it wouldn't switch the current category. https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega...
userbinator 1y ago
I don't have an appropriate machine (virtual or otherwise) at the moment to check, but I believe this is another one of those things they screwed up around Windows 10 or so --- right-clicking on the Start menu and trying to get to the submenu that has the shut down / logout options was made significantly more frustrating because of it.
- ed_elliott_asc 1y ago
  Have you considered that you can actually right click the start button, open a window, throw machine out of window? (I’ll get my coat!)(it’s cold out here collecting discarded pc’s)
GTP 1y ago
In this case it's easier: the command prompt doesn't start for some reason.
pjmlp 1y ago
Another example, half of the stuff I tried had a different outcome from a actual Windows XP, on the systray, explorer side bar, what About dialogs were supposed to show, and so on.
5pl1n73r 1y ago
How to tell you're running Windows 10: Right click an item in the taskbar. The menu will pop up one second later.

wahnfrieden 1y ago

Google has not learned this lesson

maplant 1y ago

I could tell instantly in the loading screen because the three blocks in the progress bar move smoothly across it.

jkingsman 1y ago
Yup, and on just about every system I used there was a stutter in it about 75% of the way through.
- projektfu 1y ago
  Windows installers and upgrades seem to like to reach 100% and then continue working for a few more minutes.
wibbily 1y ago
Man nothing drives me further up the wall than when a nice progress indicator with discrete segments gets animated with a lazy `to { rotate(360deg); }` etc[1]. It is my molehill to die on [1] https://cdn.dribbble.com/userupload/41647820/file/original-8dfda86dd346ccde4fc8b5fc0173c4dd.gif https://cdn.dribbble.com/userupload/41647820/file/original-8...
- metalliqaz 1y ago
  you just don't like how it looks, or is there something else wrong with it?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    It's just moving, it gives no actual indication of progress.
    - metalliqaz 1y ago
      this reminds me of a tool at work that uses a progress bar but the software doesn't calculate the job size so it just fills up quickly and then goes back down again, and repeats endlessly.
      - EvanAnderson 1y ago
        I don't have the time to research where I heard this, but I recall a UI focus group study that found pretty much equal user satisfaction between accurate linear progress bars and random progress bars, but universal dissatisfaction with progress bars that "reset". My own feelings mirror this finding.
      - dotancohen 1y ago
        I called those Congress bars, con being the antonym of pro.
    - saltcured 1y ago
      Back in the dark ages, "idiot dots" or "idiot marks" was a phrase I heard for the various text terminal equivalents. It would cycle through a small number of text values with some kind of backspace/overwrite to keep things localized to where the cursor ought to be. One version was a variable length ellipses: . .. ... that would grow and reset in place. Another was an expanding "dot": . o O that would cycle in place as one character. And the early "spinner" was: - \ | / that would cycle in place as one character. Hmm, not sure this will render properly on HN but it is hyphen, backslash, pipe, forward slash.
nickt 1y ago
Old, but good mandatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/612/ https://xkcd.com/612/
- karmakaze 1y ago
  I've had times where I aborted an operation that was obviously not working. Eventually out of ideas, I waited out the 1,163 seconds and it completed normally.

DustinBrett 1y ago

On my website daedalOS it does indeed have a delay when your mouse leaves a sub menu. I didn't know people looked for that though.

mmastrac 1y ago
I believe that anyone who isn't explicitly looking for it is subconsciously frustrated by the lack of it and they just don't know why the UI is "annoying".
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

stronglikedan 1y ago

If you have another option with a submenu on either side of Send To, the Send To menu will close. It closes as soon as you move over any item with a submenu. But it just so happens that Send To is typically by itself, so it's a good test regardless.

jaffa2 1y ago

I must be a freak then because one of the first tweaks I do to any Windows install since possibly Win98 days is to set menu delay to 0ms. I like the snappy precise feel and have no problems not taking shortcuts across menu items.

rayiner 1y ago

Crazy how much UI still fails this test.

alnwlsn 1y ago

There's something like this in every desktop Linux I've tried, which made it feel like using the mouse was in some way weird and broken. But I've been using it for long enough now that it either got fixed, or more likely, I got used to it. I don't even remember what it was, something about clicking drop down menus a certain way? Reminds me of the first time I ever used classic Macintosh System OS, and how you have to hold the mouse button down to keep menus open. It doesn't take much to throw everything off.

Hobadee 1y ago
...the number of times I accidentally selected the wrong menu item because my finger slipped off the mouse button... I'm getting bad flashbacks!

randunel 1y ago

Ugh, all the links in that comment are dead, imgur and microsoft alike :(

tczMUFlmoNk 1y ago

A classic article about a no-delay solution to this problem, not mentioned in the linked thread: https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega...

rao-v 1y ago
Lovely and simple … you’d think it would have become the best practice in most libraries by now

webstrand 1y ago

It also fails the "hold right click" test, Windows didn't popover context menus until right click was released. Instead, for file, it did a kind of "contextual drag and drop".

self_awareness 1y ago

Padding of buttons and around text usually immediately tells that it's a reimplementation.

OptionOfT 1y ago

I love reading about old UI interface guidelines, and how much research was done to make it useful to the user. Now it's all about how to make it useful to the company. <YOUR FILES ARE NOT BACKED UP, WOULD YOU LIKE TO TURN ON ONEDRIVE?> <Yes> <Maybe later> Anyway, the links in that post have deteriorated. Here's the link to Raymond Chen's blog: https://web.archive.org/web/20190218080905/https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080619-00/?p=21903 https://web.archive.org/web/20190218080905/https://blogs.msd... (shame on MS for redirecting you to another page when showing you a 404, which make it harder to find the original URL). Updated link to Raymond Chen's blog, where the comments have been 'retired': https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080619-00/?p=21903 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080619-00/?p=21... And the 2 imgur links (same issue with the redirecting...): https://web.archive.org/web/20230509182201/https://i.imgur.com/RrEDo3m.png https://web.archive.org/web/20230509182201/https://i.imgur.c... and https://web.archive.org/web/20230507201645/https://i.imgur.com/a0gNWHh.png https://web.archive.org/web/20230507201645/https://i.imgur.c...

jackero 1y ago
There was an economies of scale back then with OS-level UI components. If Microsoft spent money on UX research that improved its UI controls, it would benefit a lot of people. Essentially the cost of that research was bore by all application developers. The problem now? Every company is designing their own UI components. Every company has to bear the cost of UX research individually. It’s a lot of wheel re-inventing. UX easily takes a backseat.
- eru 1y ago
  Are UI libraries no longer a thing?
  - guappa 1y ago
    They are, essentially the current mess is just a privately funded welfare program for UX designers. I wish we could pay them to do something useful instead.

SkidanovAlex 1y ago

MS Paint though is "either real or a Good Clone :)", because you can zoom to 12x by clicking one-pixel-wide line below 8x.

rahimnathwani 1y ago

You can also right-click the desktop and choose 'Properties'. If the resulting window has a tab called 'Screesaver', it's a clone.

Kwpolska 1y ago
Or you can look at the start button. If it has an uppercase S, and the rest of the system is in English, it’s a clone.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

greenavocado 1y ago

The "Welcome" text on boot should be "welcome"

nick238 1y ago

In the web sphere, I recall Amazon having done something like this in the very early days when there was a sidebar with categories that you could kinda drill into. Mouseover one, and there was an invisible triangle off to the right that if you kept inside of, it wouldn't switch the current category. https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega...

userbinator 1y ago

I don't have an appropriate machine (virtual or otherwise) at the moment to check, but I believe this is another one of those things they screwed up around Windows 10 or so --- right-clicking on the Start menu and trying to get to the submenu that has the shut down / logout options was made significantly more frustrating because of it.

ed_elliott_asc 1y ago
Have you considered that you can actually right click the start button, open a window, throw machine out of window? (I’ll get my coat!)(it’s cold out here collecting discarded pc’s)

GTP 1y ago

In this case it's easier: the command prompt doesn't start for some reason.

pjmlp 1y ago

Another example, half of the stuff I tried had a different outcome from a actual Windows XP, on the systray, explorer side bar, what About dialogs were supposed to show, and so on.

5pl1n73r 1y ago

How to tell you're running Windows 10: Right click an item in the taskbar. The menu will pop up one second later.