6 ms·
A new UI annoyance
- ngokevin 14y agoThe proper way to do this is with hollow sliders... [off]on rather than an opaque one... [xxx]on
- MaxGabriel 14y agoPretty sure he's talking about (what iOS calls) segmented controls (Buttons that work like radio buttons), where you have a choice between options (e.g. Library/Store) rather than an on/off decision.
- eflowers 14y agoQuija sliders are perfect for this ;) http://shaunxcode.github.com/ouija/ http://shaunxcode.github.com/ouija/
- notatoad 14y agoAs are checkboxes.
- lostlogin 14y agoYou should see what GE do on their very latest, very greatest MRI scanners. To turn things on and off they have a box next to the feature. You type "1" for on, "0" for off. If you deviate (type 0.5) you get a message saying that only 1 or 0 are valid. As it now 2013 I wish they would remove their command line stuff from the UI.
- micheljansen 14y agoUnbelievable! Do you have a picture or something of this? I used to work on similar interfaces for a competing company and this stuff fascinates me :)
- lostlogin 14y agoMessage me your email and ill fire it through. A developer at work looked like he would cry when I showed him!
- heyitsnick 14y agoNo they're not. Checkboxes are fine for boolean on/offs. But from the OP: "often the choice is not between turning a specific feature on or off, but between two different view, modes or whatever." Here i think the Quija sliders really are a smart, intuitive solution
- JasonFruit 14y agoI'm struck by how much more gentlemanly Guido's tone was than some other prominent open-source project leaders when they criticize publicly. (Linus Torvalds comes to mind.) I think that level-headedness may underlie the essentially sane, middle-of-the-road nature of Python.
- rogerbinns 14y agoYou also see this nonsense in DVD menus where there are two choices and no way of telling.
- lostlogin 14y agoWhat about DVD menus that can't be operated without the remote. Most DVDs let you hit play on the player, and the movie starts. However there are way too many out there that don't do that - requiring a left arrow, then play, or some such rubbish. That way, a lost or non-operable remote leads to no DVD playing. This is part the reason all my DVDs went in the bin, now if only i could persuade my wife to play along.
- rogerbinns 14y agoDVD players can be had for less than $25 so throwing away the DVDs out of spite seems a bit silly. Many of the remote controls that come with TVs etc can also be configured to also control your DVD player, cable box etc. The actual IR codes are standardised but you do need to know the manufacturer. I use a Harmony remote which also retains state (eg it knows what is already on and on which inputs) and so sends the necessary codes to all devices such as if you want to stop playing a DVD and switch to a game console.
- lostlogin 14y agoI'll explain my spite. The following happened during this week. New DVD purchased by my wife, I knew the remote was going to have flat batteries (last used about 2 years ago) so I stuck the DVD in the Mac to use airplay to get it on TV. Grey checker board appears over the screen. I google it and find this is some kind of feature relating to DRM. So then spent time configuring a workaround via VLC and screen mirroring. An irritating use of 30 mins that reinforced my hatred to DVDs.
- davecap1 14y agoOne way of addressing this issue is putting the labels outside the switch itself... like: off[* ]on -> off[ *]on
- alexandros 14y agoThe problem is that the position of the moving part (the asterisk in your example) is unclear. So effectively the [* ] is not distinguishable from the [ *]. Putting the labels outside won't fix that.
- smegel 14y agoStrange that you need a G+ account to view this...not very open is it.
- gebe 14y agoWorked without an account for me.
- notatoad 14y agoevery single link to G+ this comes up, and every single time the response is the same: If you are signed in to google but not G+, you have to sign in. If you aren't signed in to google, you don't have to sign in.
- monochromatic 14y agoHoly shit, how broken is that? It should come up every time until it changes.
- smegel 14y agoI should have made this clear, but I was using my Android phone, and I don't really get much of a choice. Either way, still sucks. Why cant I read the web without a public profile that includes my real-world first and last names?
- icebraining 14y agoYou can. You just need to sign in to Google again, not G+. Or, you can log out completely.
- smegel 14y agoNot on my Android phone. When I click on the link, I get taken to a page where I am asked to create a Google+ Profile by entering my first and last name. There is no "skip" button or any other way to bypass this screen. If it wasn't clear, I dont want to create a Google Profile, let alone a G+ account. I could try and logout, but this has certain implication on my Android phone I don't want, like possibly disconnecting Sync and Gmail etc. Also, saying "you can, but..." is a weasely way to describe things. I think that having to do anything beyond clicking on a link in order to read a public webpage is an unacceptable barrier.
- nohorse 14y agoPosting your blog behind the g+ walls is an interesting choice. Anyone can read but only plussers can comment. I think I had something nice to say but after spending a few screens going down the plusland rabbit hole and trying to back out of creating an account. I forgot what I wanted to say.
- zaidf 14y agoCouple more super annoying mobile UI patterns that should die: 1. Banner ads in footer that blink every time you scroll the page. The blinking makes me go nuts when reading a longer article. It gets my attention alright but I sure don't associate that brand positively in my mind. 2. Not being able to select text on an iPhone in safari. I really dont get this. Websites shoot themselves in the foot because often I want to share the article and quote a sentence or two. I don't because I can't select the text!
- brianwillis 14y agoTo select text in Mobile Safari you have to tap and hold, not double tap. WebKit views are only place in iOS where this is inconsistent. I suspect it is this way because double tap was reserved for zoom-to-fit in iPhone OS 1.0, and now we're stuck with it being that way.
- minikomi 14y agoI think it has more to do with apps which have some touch-tracking in place, perhaps for creating a heat map. Try copying text from a twitter post on the mobile web app or Facebook mobile web app..
- zaidf 14y agoI was referring to sites that find a way to disable tap and hold text selection, intentionally or not.
- brianwillis 14y agoInteresting. I haven't encountered this problem.
- j79 14y agoI joined a team working on a single page app that disabled text selection (via CSS user-select:none) to give it more of an "app" feel. While I understood disabling text selection on certain things, the "disable everything" approach drove me nuts. When we had a redesign of our app, I decided that was one rule that could be left out (and only applied where needed).
- monochromatic 14y agoFuck links that make me log in to google to view. And fuck them even more when my true name gets flagged for violating some google policy, and I have to submit it for review.
- someone13 14y agoI clicked "Open link in Incognito Window" on Chrome, and it worked for me without signing in, FWIW.
- monochromatic 14y agoMy problem may be that I'm on an iPhone.
- DigitalJack 14y agoChrome on iPhone has an incognito mode, btw.
- lostlogin 14y agoYou can click through the damn message, but yes, its annoying. How many times can I say "I don't want Google+", and yet I still get "Your profile has been suspended. It appears that the name you entered does not comply with the Google+ Names Policy." Ironic that this crap occurs for this link.
- monochromatic 14y agoI actually could not click through.
- lostlogin 14y agoThat's even more annoying. What is Google+ for? I totally don't get it. My anti-social tendencies don't help (as in I'm not a sociable person, not that I burn down kindergartens), but I can understand the attraction of Facebook despite not using it. What is Google+ for?
- mdznr 14y agoSegmented control with only two segments?
- craz 14y agoI do this in my app: http://i.imgur.com/lR9eB.png http://i.imgur.com/lR9eB.png I think it's a fairly common UI pattern.
- Timothee 14y agoIt is. The annoyance comes from when the styling makes the message unclear as to which one is selected.
- bobsoap 14y agoIn the screenshot, the Close button provides context - it's a clue saying "this is what a normal button looks like". But it's still not straight-forward enough: you have to think in order to understand that. Without that context, how would a user know whether the light button indicates "click me to switch", or whether it means "I'm active right now"? A good UI doesn't make you think in order to to understand what an element does.
- micheljansen 14y agoWould be clearer if the active one looks "pressed", sort of like real radio buttons do.
- craz 14y agoThanks. I'll have another play around with it and see what I can come up with.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoI presume this is for people using keyboard navigation, or a trackball (or a non-touchscreen device?)? Or am I misunderstanding? Oh, I see, it could be a dipswitch style toggle where you can't tell which is toggled. Here's an easier solution: use the damn platform widgets. It probably looks better than your custom solution and integrates with the rest of the OS better anyway.
- rglover 14y agoThis is how I've been doing it as of late: http://dribbble.s3.amazonaws.com/users/14012/screenshots/867046/attachments/92623/toggles.mov http://dribbble.s3.amazonaws.com/users/14012/screenshots/867...
- dylanrw 14y agoVery nice take on the toggle.
- steveax 14y agoNice! Incredibly clear what the choice is.
- rizwan 14y agoShouldn't the positive choice (Yes) be on the right? Otherwise, great visuals!
- ryanpetrich 14y agoHow exactly does that work for people that are red/green colour-blind? Perhaps gray for off might work better?
- guptaneil 14y agoHow is that any different, or any more clear than existing toggles? At the end of the video, are they all off, or will clicking them turn them off? I can never tell with these toggle buttons if the text is describing a state or an action. The worst offender was the HDR button in the iOS 5 Camera app. It just had an "HDR On" label at the top, which left me absolutely no way of knowing if that meant HDR was on right now or if touching that would turn HDR on.
- Timothee 14y agoA few years ago, I worked on a video player and looked around a lot to figure out if designers tended to go for "show action that will happen when clicked" (e.g. video is playing, so display the "pause" icon) or "current state" (e.g. video is playing, so display the "play" icon). For a video player, you'll have things like the play/pause button, the video quality, etc. I think the conclusion is that in a lot of cases there are no conclusion. There are no definite best practice, both can be justified and both are used pretty widely. (PS: I just checked Vimeo, Youtube and Hulu. It seems that they tend to agree on showing pause when it's playing. However Hulu and Youtube both show the mute icon when it's muted, so they're not consistent regarding action vs. state. My point is that for video players, there seems to be a potential best practice here, but in general "action vs. state" is not clear-cut)
- dylanrw 14y agoIt seemed to me his biggest gripe was about lack contrast to show a state is selected. It's a novice mistake, contrast is one of the fundamentals and he's right. If you don't use it, things suck.
- maebert 14y agoQuick fix: http://jsfiddle.net/Q4HQg/ http://jsfiddle.net/Q4HQg/
- nshepperd 14y agohttp://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2012/11/invention-multiple-choice-windowed-slider-ui/ http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2012/11/invention-multiple-choi... posted on HN a while ago as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4742535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4742535 explained a solution to this (or a very similar problem). But a simpler solution is just to use proper shading to make the selected button look depressed, by analogy with physical buttons.
- hdra 14y agoI am having problem trying to figure out what is he referring to, anyone have a screenshot of an example?
- hfsktr 14y agoI don't have a screen of anything using it but I understand what he means. A simple example: http://s33.beta.photobucket.com/user/hfsktr/media/temp_zps28422b0b.png.html http://s33.beta.photobucket.com/user/hfsktr/media/temp_zps28... a media player that has the options in the image linked. Which is on and which is off? I usually guess that darker is selected but occasionally the lighter option is the one that is on. When it is a binary question the selection is clear (or when there are other options to compare to). The few times I've seen the options is for something like styling in a game (classic/new).
- statictype 14y agoSublime Text has this annoying habit as well. The command palette and switch-file list show gray/lightgray on the list. I can never remember which is selected and which is not. That's probably my single big annoyance in Sublime Text.