Live data from Hacker News

Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

daringfireball.net

131–140 of 169 posts

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#131
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't Google's fault. In Firefox, if you type a non-address directly into the address bar, it automagically directs you to the top Google hit for that query. The real failure here is Mozilla, for releasing a "feature" that, as usual, appeals to computer power users, and royally fucks over computer novices.

It's much, much worse on the GTK version of Firefox -- inspired by the X default of mouse3==paste, on such platforms they make the middlemouse.contentLoadURL config default to true. This means that if you middle click anywhere in the window that isn't a link, it instantly redirects you to the "I'm feeling lucky" result for the contents of the last text selection you made. I cannot think of a single creepier usability…

You've no idea how much I hate that 'feature'

You should try scrolling through large source files with a mouse that has a sensitive click switch on the scroll wheel. The number of times I've found errors due to random stuff pasted into my code because I pressed too hard on the scroll wheel. grrr

Please, please if anyone knows how to disable this, let me know :/

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#132
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I can really say to this is to give a metaphor that anyone (most people) can understand: It's like accidentally walking into a Burger King but thinking that it's a McDonald's with a new logo, and then screaming and yelling at the employees and manager because they can't fill your order for a Big Mac. I've run into actual people like this in the real world. People that have their head so stuck that they…

People have called 911 because Burger King wasn't McDonald's. (Heard the 911 tape on a local radio show) Having worked at McDonald's before I've seen this several times. We got one of these people every other shift I worked (mostly drive-thru) and most of them got rather belligerent and insisted we weren't a McDonald's with the sign staring them in the face thirty feet in front of their car.

Obviously Burger King just hasn't done enough studies on their user interface. If their user interface were up to snuff, it would be impossible for someone to no know the difference

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#133
Out of curiosity, is it not possible that all these people are just making/perpetuating a joke? You know, improv' everywhere style, or just to have some fun? I know we all hold ourselves so smart and above the 'masses', but come on, no one wonders? And so many people leaving comments where 99% of a website visitors never leave a single comment?

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#134
post #72
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did just admit it. Many of the worst-behavers I've encountered act similarly or worse on the internet, and the reverse has been quite accurate for the few I've encountered in that manner. It's certainly prejudice, but that doesn't make it wholly (or even mostly) invalid. Prejudices have a prejudiced opinion applied to them. That snarling dog? It may not bite you, but it's rational to be prejudiced towards believing…

There is nothing good about this at all, this is class warfare and culture warfare all wrapped up together, both very bad and both ripping America, among other places, apart right about....now. You have absolutely no clue about this person and yet you are prejudiced against him, her, it. Is he/she/it 10 years old? You have no clue. You don't know background, you know nothing except that this person just feels that th…

I just wanted to post that I completely agree with you madair. Good for you for posting a comment even though you knew it was probably unpopular and would be mob-downvoted. I think it's a shame that HN makes it seem like your point of view is stupid and that it shouldn't be posted. That's just not true -- you have a very good point, even though it's an unpopular opinion.

HN really needs to cap the downvoting threshold to 0, not -4.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#135
Speaking of Facebook, I had a client call because he said he couldn't login... due to the fact he thought the "add friends using your existing email contacts" message he was seeing after a successful login was a failure screen. He continually reset his password for a week before calling, wondering why it didn't work.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#136

This is fascinating... apparently users are just typing "facebook login" into google, clicking on the first link, and getting very confused as to why they're not actually on facebook. How can you design a web application that is usable by people with this level of computer knowledge? Should one even try?

This is pretty much how I use google, and yet I'm a coder. We seem to be assuming that these are only non-technical users. I find the quickest way to get to what I want is usually through a google search rather than visiting a site and browsing around within it trying to find the feature or content I want. Basically I've adopted the search interface as highly more efficient than most user interfaces within most websites.

However I do actually read my search results and refine my criteria if necessary rather than just clicking on the first link.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#137
post #14

I have to admit that I used to do that in Firefox, back before I switched to Chrome. Firefox address bar used to make it really convenient. It did a kind of "feeling lucky" search, taking me directly to the first result if it was the "right" search result, or to google's search otherwise. I don't know how google determined if it should display a results page or not but it used to work very well. I stopped caring abou…

Exactly. And that's one of the things I love the most about chrome. The traditional address bar for me at least has almost become obsolete. And I love that chrome uses the address bar instead of a second search box. And it's also what I hate about jumping on a friend's PC who's using IE... Bing as the default is just plain terrible.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#138
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charles Miller today commented on this: http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2010/02/12/two_steps_forward_tw... And mentioned his own anecdote: http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/10/09/the_internet_and_und... Choice quote: URLs. Bookmarks. Changing your homepage. All of these things were voodoo. As he points out, claims that people are more "savvy" today than they were then probably don't hold up; if anything, users back then…

My comment wasn't the people should know about the bookmarking system, just that the concept of the bookmarking system is less complex to people than the concept of URLs and the location/address bar.

Isn't that something Chrome / Safari / Opera are doing well now?

Top Sites is going to show facebook as the first link - in a big box called facebook, as soon as they open their browser..

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#139
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much, much worse on the GTK version of Firefox -- inspired by the X default of mouse3==paste, on such platforms they make the middlemouse.contentLoadURL config default to true. This means that if you middle click anywhere in the window that isn't a link, it instantly redirects you to the "I'm feeling lucky" result for the contents of the last text selection you made. I cannot think of a single creepier usability…

You've no idea how much I hate that 'feature' You should try scrolling through large source files with a mouse that has a sensitive click switch on the scroll wheel. The number of times I've found errors due to random stuff pasted into my code because I pressed too hard on the scroll wheel. grrr Please, please if anyone knows how to disable this, let me know :/

Type about:config in the address bar and accept the consequences. Then find the general:autoscroll property and enable it. Doing this should disable that feature and enable autoscroll as a bonus.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've no idea how much I hate that 'feature' You should try scrolling through large source files with a mouse that has a sensitive click switch on the scroll wheel. The number of times I've found errors due to random stuff pasted into my code because I pressed too hard on the scroll wheel. grrr Please, please if anyone knows how to disable this, let me know :/

Type about:config in the address bar and accept the consequences. Then find the general:autoscroll property and enable it. Doing this should disable that feature and enable autoscroll as a bonus.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. This behaviour is OS wide, and the place where it bites me continuously is in NetBeans, not FF
Post reply on HN