5 ms·

Yeah and too many times when you complain about this kind of thing you get accused of "hating change" or some such thing. No, I hate THIS change because THIS ch

by jbb555 12y ago

Yeah and too many times when you complain about this kind of thing you get accused of "hating change" or some such thing. No, I hate THIS change because THIS change is bad!

ceejayoz 12y ago
Depends on the changes. Facebook's UI revamps have usually been good ones (excluding their "hide the privacy settings" dark patterns), but a certain subset of users complain each time. I've got one friend who's been a member of each redesign's "bring back the old Facebook!" movement.
paganel 12y ago
More than one year after it happened the new GMaps interface still looks like crap, and on top of that it feels slow, on a Mac Mini with 4GB of memory. I still (don't know exactly how, could be a cookie thing, not sure) manage to have access to the old interface in one of my browsers, and the old interface works like a charm, both in terms of UI and speed. And about GMail, nothing more to say, only that once you've managed to break the "Open in new tab" button and the "Back" button then you have no business doing UI-stuff in a browser. Yes, I know both products are free as in I'm not paying anything for them, it's just that is really, really frustrating to compare them with how they used to behave.
- untog 12y ago
  For Google Maps you can click on the help button on the bottom right and choose "Return to Classic Google Maps". The new Maps has come a long way since launch but I agree that it's still very far from good.
- funkyy 12y ago
  As far as I remember click "?" mark on the bottom of map window - there is option to change it back to map classics. You can save this as well once changed (small pop up will come out) so it will become your default.
- Bill_Dimm 12y ago
  Yep, I still find myself switching to the old version so I can get terrain view. In the new version, once you type in an address the "terrain" link below the address box disappears. I can't imagine why that is supposed to be helpful. My typical use case is that I click a map link for a hike, enter my address to see how long the drive is, and then want to switch to terrain view to see terrain for the hike. Apparently, that is no longer possible.
- adevine 12y ago
  Agreed, I think GMaps is probably the best example of "we have too many people working on this and we need to give them something to do". Perhaps people could have accused me of just needing to "get used to it" a year ago, but after a year of usage I find the new GMaps less useful in almost every way.
untog 12y ago
I think it depends on what your complaint is. This article has a mix of solid complaints (they keyboard has been rearranged) and bad (transitions are gross!).
- paganel 12y ago
  > and bad (transitions are gross!). Serious question, why is this a "bad" complaint? Personally I hate transitions, I think they bring nothing of value and they're wasting my time, had the impression that there must be other people who thought exactly like me.
  - untog 12y ago
    (IMO, of course) because it's a very broad complaint. You dislike absolutely every transition? It's been proven that they are helpful for users, so what is the request that comes with your complaint? Because if it's "remove transitions", that's not realistic. The majority like them. You might be surprised at the hints they give you subconsciously about where UI elements are going and what they're doing. Google's Material Design actually does a good job showcasing this - I had no idea the lock screen had a 'double swipe' motion to bring down quick toggles, but the transition of my first swipe made it clear that the extra motion was available to me.
    - lukeschlather 12y ago
      > It's been proven that they are helpful for users Proven how? With first-time users? Phones are things where I want to pull it out of my pocket, do the thing I want to do, and have it take the absolute minimal amount of time. I don't think this is a techie thing. Even non-techies are willing to take a little more time to learn an interface if it means they can spend a few seconds less to send a message. That said, if I have a device that can send a message quickly, I don't want to pull it out of my pocket and find out I have to re-learn how to do it. I don't care if the interface is better - I want a 5-year interface, not a 5-month interface. When you make statements like "helpful for users" you can't stop at a simple focus group. You have to think about how added complexity hurts the reliability and speed of the device. It seems standard that phones older than 1 year are getting slower and slower. I've had the same Android phone for about 22 months, and it's been getting unusably slow (mostly, Google Apps (Gmail, Maps, Hangouts) take between 10-15 seconds to open on a white screen.) I'm willing to believe the hardware has degraded over the time I've had the phone. But primarily, I think software has been pushed out that was designed for flagship phones released in the past 8 months without looking at the performance impact. This is not the kind of innovation we need.

by jbb555 12y ago

Yeah and too many times when you complain about this kind of thing you get accused of "hating change" or some such thing. No, I hate THIS change because THIS change is bad!

ceejayoz 12y ago

Depends on the changes. Facebook's UI revamps have usually been good ones (excluding their "hide the privacy settings" dark patterns), but a certain subset of users complain each time. I've got one friend who's been a member of each redesign's "bring back the old Facebook!" movement.

paganel 12y ago

More than one year after it happened the new GMaps interface still looks like crap, and on top of that it feels slow, on a Mac Mini with 4GB of memory. I still (don't know exactly how, could be a cookie thing, not sure) manage to have access to the old interface in one of my browsers, and the old interface works like a charm, both in terms of UI and speed. And about GMail, nothing more to say, only that once you've managed to break the "Open in new tab" button and the "Back" button then you have no business doing UI-stuff in a browser. Yes, I know both products are free as in I'm not paying anything for them, it's just that is really, really frustrating to compare them with how they used to behave.

untog 12y ago
For Google Maps you can click on the help button on the bottom right and choose "Return to Classic Google Maps". The new Maps has come a long way since launch but I agree that it's still very far from good.
funkyy 12y ago
As far as I remember click "?" mark on the bottom of map window - there is option to change it back to map classics. You can save this as well once changed (small pop up will come out) so it will become your default.
Bill_Dimm 12y ago
Yep, I still find myself switching to the old version so I can get terrain view. In the new version, once you type in an address the "terrain" link below the address box disappears. I can't imagine why that is supposed to be helpful. My typical use case is that I click a map link for a hike, enter my address to see how long the drive is, and then want to switch to terrain view to see terrain for the hike. Apparently, that is no longer possible.
adevine 12y ago
Agreed, I think GMaps is probably the best example of "we have too many people working on this and we need to give them something to do". Perhaps people could have accused me of just needing to "get used to it" a year ago, but after a year of usage I find the new GMaps less useful in almost every way.

untog 12y ago

I think it depends on what your complaint is. This article has a mix of solid complaints (they keyboard has been rearranged) and bad (transitions are gross!).

paganel 12y ago
> and bad (transitions are gross!). Serious question, why is this a "bad" complaint? Personally I hate transitions, I think they bring nothing of value and they're wasting my time, had the impression that there must be other people who thought exactly like me.
- untog 12y ago
  (IMO, of course) because it's a very broad complaint. You dislike absolutely every transition? It's been proven that they are helpful for users, so what is the request that comes with your complaint? Because if it's "remove transitions", that's not realistic. The majority like them. You might be surprised at the hints they give you subconsciously about where UI elements are going and what they're doing. Google's Material Design actually does a good job showcasing this - I had no idea the lock screen had a 'double swipe' motion to bring down quick toggles, but the transition of my first swipe made it clear that the extra motion was available to me.
  - lukeschlather 12y ago
    > It's been proven that they are helpful for users Proven how? With first-time users? Phones are things where I want to pull it out of my pocket, do the thing I want to do, and have it take the absolute minimal amount of time. I don't think this is a techie thing. Even non-techies are willing to take a little more time to learn an interface if it means they can spend a few seconds less to send a message. That said, if I have a device that can send a message quickly, I don't want to pull it out of my pocket and find out I have to re-learn how to do it. I don't care if the interface is better - I want a 5-year interface, not a 5-month interface. When you make statements like "helpful for users" you can't stop at a simple focus group. You have to think about how added complexity hurts the reliability and speed of the device. It seems standard that phones older than 1 year are getting slower and slower. I've had the same Android phone for about 22 months, and it's been getting unusably slow (mostly, Google Apps (Gmail, Maps, Hangouts) take between 10-15 seconds to open on a white screen.) I'm willing to believe the hardware has degraded over the time I've had the phone. But primarily, I think software has been pushed out that was designed for flagship phones released in the past 8 months without looking at the performance impact. This is not the kind of innovation we need.