I was so disappointed when Xfce, long my last bastion of consistent UI design, finally gave up the ghost and announced their move to client-side window decorations. It seems the days of the title bar + menubar + optional toolbar are numbered :(
The Decline of Usability
51–60 of 719 posts
Re: The Decline of Usability
#52Ubuntu 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,…
One nice thing about recent Ubuntu is that even though they hide the password box, you can start typing on the unlock screen and your text will be entered into the password box.
Unless slack steals the focus. Happened to me a few weeks back. Then slack gets your password and enter key, and the login screen doesn't.
Re: The Decline of Usability
#53Speaking of the Firefox version 75 bar: Why has there been a change in the way the selection works? Now it takes three well-timed clicks to select an entire url. Is this an improvement?
Re: The Decline of Usability
#54Ubuntu 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,…
Icon mania... and pretty much every single icon is only possible to understand after you have learned what it means.
Re: The Decline of Usability
#55Some of the worst offenders are 16x9 monitors. Great Apple did not follow that strange fad, and stuck with 16x10.
Re: The Decline of Usability
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a finger scrolling on a touchscreen -- forever.
How is that the future and not just a description of current social media apps on mobile/tablet devices?
Just in case someone doesn't get the parent post's quote, it's a riff off of a famous George Orwell quote, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face, forever.
Re: The Decline of Usability
#57Ubuntu 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,…
Gimp is a great example. If you look up screenshots from the late 90s of gimp 1.0 you think
"Hey wow, that looks pretty great! I know where the buttons are, I can quickly scan them and it's clear what they do! It isn't a grey on grey tiny soup, they are distinct and clear, this is great. When is this version shipping? It fixes everything!"
Apparently almost everyone agrees but somehow we're still going the wrong way, what's going on here? Why aren't we in control of this?
Re: The Decline of Usability
#58Aww, he had to go after the Gnome stuff :/ Many a time I have spent over a minute decoding a Gnome GUI for incredibly simple applications. Is that a clickable icon? Why is that icon/menu option greyed out? Toggles, icons, buttons, toolbars thrown together with a rare tooltip. I fully agree they border on parodical. And yet I still use the gnome tools frequently, because they are useful. So in a way I do feel bad for…
Problem is, would that even help? What I want is what Gnome 2 already was. Their changes indicate they themselves don't want that anymore. Any attempts at voicing my concerns are met with disdain. What more can I even do as a developer?
Re: The Decline of Usability
#59There was a time (roughly between 1982 and 1993) when very few could sit down in front of a GUI. I do feel like I am returning to that time. Here are some interfaces I could do without, except that I can't:
→ The command line. In 2020, I need to do a lot of things at a command line because there is no other way. For example, starting and stopping sshd needs to be a checkbox.
→ Tabs. Tabs. and more layers of Tabs: boot tabs, workspace tabs: work-spaces/virtual-machines/containers/emulators, Apps ⌘+Tab, Windows ⌘+~, the sad return of "Multiple Document Interface" in the form of tabs and hierarchies of tabs within those tabs, tabs within the page and hierarchies of tabs within those tabs, Views within the page with tabs within those views and hierarchies of tabs within those tabs, keep going recurring tabs possibly forever.
→ You deserve better than this: window snapping. And so-called "tiled" window managers which are little more than poor versions of 1980's window splitting.
→ Right clicking and yet another menu/sub-menus pops up of things I don't want.
→ JavaScript. Advertising. "Block pop up windows" has been enabled by default for a long time, but what about blocking pop ups within a page? An ad blocker for now, I guess.
→ The hamburger menu. Or for that matter, any menu with sub-menus and any menu with more than 8 to 9 menu items.
Here are some interfaces that have improved:
→ No modes.
→ The ability to go full screen when needed without compromise. And, being able to, fairly easily, get out of full screen.
→ UTF-8
→ more guides: the translucent lines or boxes that help align UI elements in flexible ways
What is missing:
→ pop ups/menus used extremely sparingly.
→ Tools that float, in the sidelines — not on top of content, only in the context of when you need them. For examples, see game interfaces, or excellent graphics applications.
→ What you deserve is "Zoom to fit" which when done well is great.
Re: The Decline of Usability
#60It'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…
> the thing they want a lot is the 5th button from the left
I agree it's normal and expected that people get used to buttons being in certain places, and moving them around too often is bad usability.
That said, the fact some of my elderly relatives use and understand technology this way, by memorizing how many centimeters from the edge of the screen they should look for a button, makes life needlessly tough for them.
They'd be better off understanding what a button is conceptually, what forms it comes in (e.g. standard button vs. underlined link with no outline, etc), and how buttons might be grouped.
I know it's a lot to ask of elderly users, but it pays dividends.
After many years of Q&A with me, my mom understands her iPad conceptually and as a result gets much more from it than my aunt does, who only understands procedurally that if she presses her finger on 'the button in the corner' then 'x' should happen.
If there is no button in the corner, my aunt is lost.