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Ask HN: What recent UX changes make no sense to you?

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Re: Ask HN: What recent UX changes make no sense to you?

#21
the scrollbar change happened in 10.7 Lion. it was released in 2011. on mobile it was there since iPhone OS 1. it is not a recent change, macOS/OS X/Mac OS X has had these scrollbars for longer than it did not have them.

you can disable them in the settings app, and have been able to since Lion...

Re: Ask HN: What recent UX changes make no sense to you?

#22
post #9

Those thin scrollbars are unusable, especially on touch screens. I'm still salty over flat design; I want buttons that look like buttons, dangit.

100% If you want them, make it so when I mouse near it extends out

Omg no. Don't move clickable things suddenly under my mouse that weren't there when I picked where to put my cursor.

I absolutely detest systems like this that break my current mode because they guess I might want shovelin something else as a new mode. Even if you get it right 9 times out of 10 I find it so disruptive. Somehow it makes me feel like the system is -untrustworthy-.

Grain of salt though - I tend to take a power use stance on things and want my tools to augment what I'm trying to do instead of do things on my behalf.

Re: Ask HN: What recent UX changes make no sense to you?

#23
The entire idea of a user experience makes no sense to me. A user interface is unnoticeable and forgettable, because it's a utilitarian functionality.

A user experience can only be an experience if it's notable and memorable, and the only way for that to happen is for it to get in the way. On top of that, everyone will eventually adjust to it, so to stay notable and memorable, it has to constantly change, so it can always get in the way.

Worse yet, if a project included research to optimize usability, that constant change will mean it is always departing further and further from peak usability.

Re: Ask HN: What recent UX changes make no sense to you?

#24
post #9

Those thin scrollbars are unusable, especially on touch screens. I'm still salty over flat design; I want buttons that look like buttons, dangit.

If it's any consolation, research shows that you're right about the poor usability of flat design: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-ui-less-attention-caus...

Re: Ask HN: What recent UX changes make no sense to you?

#25
post #8

Obsession with cli/TUI for LLMs interaction instead of proper IDEs

That's just the most basic interface, with GUIs being written on top of that rapid IDEs built onto GUIs.

In my experience, everything involving AI is half-baked, not just its output but its creation too. It's all a bunch of proof-of-concept research papers tied together into a house of cards that only works if multiple layers of virtual environments are all precisely the same version it was developed on, there's far more memory free than the models and their output occupy, and the lunar tide is within range.

A few more layers of GUI and IDE would probably make the whole thing collapse.

Re: Ask HN: What recent UX changes make no sense to you?

#27
post #15

Animations and transitions are out of control. I use 1password extensively on my phone and the process of loading and unlocking involves multiple superfluous animations for a task I'm trying to do quickly.

On Android, you can disable animations under the debug menu. It make the phone significantly faster.

Re: Ask HN: What recent UX changes make no sense to you?

#28

thnx for the report. Still don't understand why most web pages (including with forms!) are not static like here on HN. But instead, reload every time one tabs back to it. The energy and time wasted...

Hacker News uses very little memory. The other tabs are likely being closed at a higher priority, once your RAAM is used up.
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