221–230 of 312 posts
I forgot how nice it was to have underlined alt keyboard shortcuts. We got so much right so early in the age of personal computing. Goodbye to all that, hello Ribbon and flatness everywhere. It’s as if we’re in the Middle Ages now looking back at the great ruins of ancient Athens.
Windows 95 had an obvious UI, but was rather cluttered. The original Macintosh up through System 7 was perhaps peak of OS UI design, the simplicity and obviousness is a marvel. The modern Mac experience is no where near that simple, particularly since the Yosemite UI overhaul. The original iPad had pretty great UI design too, until the iOS 7 redesign. Now I think it's probably the most confusing UI that exists on a m…
> "The original Macintosh up through System 7 was perhaps peak of OS UI design, the simplicity and obviousness is a marvel." I first used System 7 after having used DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 and a bit of SunOS. With that background, I found System 7 and the silly hardware limitations to be anything but intuitive. To this day I find it annoying to have to go all the way to to top of the monitor to get to a menu…
1000x this. I remember using a Mac for the first time at school (1997-ish). I needed to put a file on a floppy, which was similar enough to Windows 95 up to ejecting the floppy. I ran my finger over the drive area and asked someone (a teacher, maybe), who said 'drag the floppy to the trash'. 'I want to eject it, not delete it!' I did it anyway (if it got deleted, just copy it again), and was surprised that it worked. I made another mental note that PCs were superior with their physical eject buttons, as I realized that a Mac could eat a floppy (like a stereo eating a cassette tape) if the drive (or OS or mouse) failed.
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Not sure about that. I personally found Windows 95 (or XP/Windows 7 in classic mode) looked great on flat screens - better than on CRTs actually.
This is actually true for Win 95 / classic Win UI. (However, you may want to reconsider the bevels, since the graphics tend to be a bit too heavy on a flat screen.) P.S.: Many (including them myself) consider Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.x) as the epitome of a UI, which matched usability, conceptual space and visual design next to perfection considering the visual and stylistic preferences of the time. That said, I can al…
A generation was raised on usable designs which clearly communicated interactability with a consistent visual language. It is only natural that they would come to think of computers as inherently ordered, understandable devices. Machines had always been this way. It was obvious to this new generation that the affordances of youth were purely redundant. Clutter. Overhead. Junk! Widget by widget, pixel by pixel, bevels…
> Now my screen is the very picture of elegance and sophistication. Is it? Windows 10 looks like installing a custom skin on Windows XP went wrong and now you're stuck with "Windows Classic (Flat)" set up for weird colors.
Then Windows 10 shipped and I thought I got some pre alpha developer build accidentally, and it just... Never updated.
I've heard iOS be criticized for being overly flat these days but I just got an iPad and found the clickable areas at least visually pleasant, if a bit hidden. Windows 10 is undiscoverable AND ugly.
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Force Touch is on its way out. Has been for about two generations of iPhone. There's now Haptic Touch which is nothing but a long-press with better feedback.
Worth noting they also disabled the feature on older hardware in iOS13 for feature parity. So even if your device can detect pressure it no longer bothers.
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This made me think, how long did it take for cars to acquire basically their modern standard interface, and have personal computers been around that long? Apparently, the Austin 7 popularized what are now standard controls for cars in 1922 (although it wasn't the very first example), and the IC auto was patented in 1886, which means it was about 36 years before people mostly settled on one interface. By comparison, m…
Me and the wife have a car each. The reverse gear is in a different position in each. On mine the headlights are controlled with a rotary switch at lower right of the steering wheel, in hers you twist part of the left stalk. If you accidentally press the centre of my headlight control you raise or lower the lights - hilarious. Some cars have the handbrake on a stick behind the steering wheel, some have it as a lever…
Right hand - throttle and front brake
Left hand - clutch
Right foot - rear brake
Left foot - gear shifter
You have to use the clutch and gear shifter together, and you have to have at least one foot down when you stop. This layout makes a lot of sense.
Back in the day you had things like suicide shifters: you shift gears with your left hand and the clutch is at the left foot meaning that you have to take your hand off the handlebars to shift gears (hence “suicide shifter”), and as you come to a stop you have no foot to put down since you should be using bother the clutch and the rear brake. And that’s just one of many examples of weird layouts. Basically imagine driving a manual car where the gears are shifter with your left foot, the brake is hand operated and the clutch is a part of the steering wheel.
A generation was raised on usable designs which clearly communicated interactability with a consistent visual language. It is only natural that they would come to think of computers as inherently ordered, understandable devices. Machines had always been this way. It was obvious to this new generation that the affordances of youth were purely redundant. Clutter. Overhead. Junk! Widget by widget, pixel by pixel, bevels…
> Now my screen is the very picture of elegance and sophistication. Is it? Windows 10 looks like installing a custom skin on Windows XP went wrong and now you're stuck with "Windows Classic (Flat)" set up for weird colors.
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Force touch is the best evidence we have that designers have lost their power at Apple. The best thing Steve Jobs did was hire serious designers and defend their ideas against the rest of the organization. That’s clearly not happening anymore. My guess is that “Designer at Apple” became such a desirable title that the design roles have been taken over by wannabees.
I'm pretty sure invisible UI started very much while Jobs was in power. Hiding the scrollbar, for example. I think it's quite a myth that Jobs knew good design. Jobs had a fetish for minimalism. For simple, single use, UIs that's often a good choice. I think that's what made iPods and the first generations of iPhones so well designed. But as smartphones have transitioned into being primary use devices with greater ab…
On mobile, and particularly on screens the size of the original iPhone, hiding the scrollbar is a necessary tradeoff for screen real-estate. It also doesn't necessarily hurt usability if you know the exact screen size you're designing for, and can ensure elements are never fully cut off on your initial view.
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Serious question: if it was so much better, why is it gone now?
I guess, these application were oriented at single developers and small teams, which is also, why these found favorable access and controls in them. But this meant also that businesses had to own the technology, the know how, and the technology stack that come with it. Now, it's all about teams, favorably with interchangeable staff, who is hired on the fly, without a need to own localized know how, as anything is inc…
I have the feeling this is the main reason, yes.