GNOME MPV (now Celluloid) seems like a bad example since it's not part of the GNOME project.
GNOME Videos gets away with the same UI choice as in that app, media is opened from the lists and not the menu.
The Decline of Usability
31–40 of 719 posts
Re: The Decline of Usability
#32It is quite sad how often I end up having to help older relatives with their computers on account of unintuitive UI. One memorable, recent example was my mother, who could not figure out how to get her GMail sidebar to un-collapse itself.
Here's a screenshot of a collapsed sidebar:
https://storage.googleapis.com/support-forums-api/attachment...
and a screenshot of an un-collapsed sidebar:
https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/RC-Convers...
It took me some time to realise out that it is the hamburger-menu-like icon in the upper-left corner. It has a tooltip that says "Main Menu", but it is not a menu. It controls collapsing of the sidebar. Confusingly, it is positioned in the top panel, separated by a line that would make one think it is not related to the sidebar, and closer in affinity to the logo, search box, etc.
Re: The Decline of Usability
#33It's not only that every app has a different style these days, but some of them change their style or add new features via auto-update every few weeks. Even office 365 (desktop version) does this. It's not just a usability nightmare, it's an accessibility one too (although the two go hand in hand most of the time). Imagine teaching some elderly neighbour how to write a word document, and after weeks of practice they…
If you think resume-driven development is bad for developers (and it is), consider the career incentives for UI and product people. If there's a "maintain" incentive, I'm not sure what it is. "Didn't change anything about functional and satisfactory interfaces" may be a real value-add in some cases, but it's not a sizzling narrative for selling yourself on the job market.
Re: The Decline of Usability
#34I'm typically a person who would agree with an article like this; I think we _lost_ something with the modern age, even if we gained a lot. (especially in terms of developer "velocity" (I hate that word)). However, I really feel like context is important. Computers today have a context given to them over time, users don't need so much hand-holding these days because the expected paradigms are ever so subtly changed.…
Agreed. Personally I’ve given up on mouse GUIs Why? Photoshop pros use macros Unix pros use text editing macros Why teach new users single point and click methods of computing when the pros think it’s a waste of time It’s from an era when computers couldn’t multi task and were largely business focused data entry terminals Photo manipulation can be automated from a terminal and results displayed in real-time now Why c…
The problem with this line of thinking is that not every program is going to be used enough to make learning the shortcuts or command-line switches worthwhile.
That said, each (gui) program should have relatively similar key-bindings.
Re: The Decline of Usability
#35Ubuntu got worse at 18.04. Logging in on desktop now requires "swiping up" with the mouse to get the password box. The "swiping" thing is to avoid problems with unwanted activation when the device is in your pocket. It's totally inappropriate to desktops. Then there's icon mania. I've recently converted from Blender 2.79 to Blender 2.82. Lots of new icons. They dim, they change color, they disappear as modes change,…
> Ubuntu got worse at 18.04. Logging in on desktop now requires "swiping up" with the mouse to get the password box.
Have you tried pressing a key?
Re: The Decline of Usability
#36> The Decline of Usability
Featuring a 600px wide container for text.
Re: The Decline of Usability
#37It's not only that every app has a different style these days, but some of them change their style or add new features via auto-update every few weeks. Even office 365 (desktop version) does this. It's not just a usability nightmare, it's an accessibility one too (although the two go hand in hand most of the time). Imagine teaching some elderly neighbour how to write a word document, and after weeks of practice they…
> This would be one place where free software could really shine - you could convert a lot of people with "every application works the same, and we promise we won't change the UI more than once every two years unless we really have to.
This is one reason I use Xfce. My brother once told me that my computer has looked basically the same since I used Gnome 2, and he's right.
I'm not entirely immune. After switching fully to GTK 3 it took me a while to find a decent style that had scroll bars or not terrible scrollbars. The one I'm using right now (ClassicLooks) has a few issues (e.g., I can't tab through GUIs because it won't highlight the active option), but overall is acceptable. I'll fix the highlighting issue eventually...
Re: The Decline of Usability
#38Ubuntu got worse at 18.04. Logging in on desktop now requires "swiping up" with the mouse to get the password box. The "swiping" thing is to avoid problems with unwanted activation when the device is in your pocket. It's totally inappropriate to desktops. Then there's icon mania. I've recently converted from Blender 2.79 to Blender 2.82. Lots of new icons. They dim, they change color, they disappear as modes change,…
> It’s totally inappropriate to desktops.
I don’t agree. It’s important for the user to know a login UI is the real thing. For example, Windows NT used to have you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to make the credential dialog appear so that any fake lookalike was impossible.
Re: The Decline of Usability
#39Ubuntu got worse at 18.04. Logging in on desktop now requires "swiping up" with the mouse to get the password box. The "swiping" thing is to avoid problems with unwanted activation when the device is in your pocket. It's totally inappropriate to desktops. Then there's icon mania. I've recently converted from Blender 2.79 to Blender 2.82. Lots of new icons. They dim, they change color, they disappear as modes change,…
Is there a sane mode or config for vanilla Ubuntu 18.04? I'm considering upgrading from my trusty old 16.04 LTS (both home and office laptops) and I dread the usual pointless UI changes that come with all the reasonable bugfixes/improvements.
I think Xubuntu is a good alternative. XFCE doesn't have as much eye candy, but it certainly surprises me far less and usually is very pleasant to work with.
Re: The Decline of Usability
#40I'm typically a person who would agree with an article like this; I think we _lost_ something with the modern age, even if we gained a lot. (especially in terms of developer "velocity" (I hate that word)). However, I really feel like context is important. Computers today have a context given to them over time, users don't need so much hand-holding these days because the expected paradigms are ever so subtly changed.…
Agreed. Personally I’ve given up on mouse GUIs Why? Photoshop pros use macros Unix pros use text editing macros Why teach new users single point and click methods of computing when the pros think it’s a waste of time It’s from an era when computers couldn’t multi task and were largely business focused data entry terminals Photo manipulation can be automated from a terminal and results displayed in real-time now Why c…
> Photoshop pros use macros
> Unix pros use text editing macros
pros are like, 0.01 %