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The Decline of Usability

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Re: The Decline of Usability

#111

Post by CivBase »

Semaphor wrote: post #4

I had some reflexive reaction of wanting to disagree because there are also a lot of things that got better. But inconsistency? Hell yes. It feels like every company tries to run their own experiment, getting more and more erratic, and apparently all getting great feedback from their users (not sure if all the feedback systems are broken or something else is going on). Of course, Microsoft who in recent years started…

It seems to me like this article should be titled "Decline of UI Consitency".

I think UIs have gotten better in general... but now instead of learning one difficult interface, users have to figure out many different interfaces. For power users who already had the difficult interface figured out, it definitely seems like a downgrade.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#113

Post by buovjaga »

Stierlitz wrote: post #29
Animats wrote: post #10

Ubuntu 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 .. Give Lubuntu a try. https://lubuntu.net/

The official site is https://lubuntu.me/ btw.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#114

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

saagarjha wrote: post #19
askafriend wrote: post #6

Little of what he says is a problem on MacOS fwiw. I can resize my Slack by dragging anywhere on the toolbar, for example.

Slacks design does look quite goofy in Safari, though, since Slack's toolbar design matches the browsers so it looks doubled-up…

Full screen mode would alleviate that issue though, right?

Re: The Decline of Usability

#115

Post by JJMcJ »

Animats wrote: post #10

Ubuntu 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,…

Blender icons are also microscopic on a 1920 x 1080 monitor of usual size. We don't all have astronaut vision.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#116

Post by thanatropism »

imhoguy wrote: post #79
the_af wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 highly recommend trying out other flavours of Ubuntu: Xubuntu (XFCE), Lubuntu (LXDE), Kubuntu (KDE), Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Budgie. Next week all should get 20.04 LTS release.

I don’t understand why you need different distributions for different DEs.

The only distro I’ve used past teenage is Ubuntu. I alternate stints of maybe 2 years with Windows, 2 years with Ubuntu. First thing I do after installing the most recent LTS Ubuntu is “apt install spectrwm”.

Spectrwm is not even particularly good — everyone tells me to use xmonad instead — but I know how to get it in usable shape in about half an hour. This after many moons of exclusively using Windows.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#117

Post by akeck »

kristopolous wrote: post #57
Animats wrote: post #10

Ubuntu 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,…

I'm dating myself, but I really liked late 90s GIMP, where almost everything was available via right click menu. GIMP was simpler then, though.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#118

Post by 101404 »

freedomben wrote: post #84
twic wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That swiping up thing makes me so angry. What an absolute waste of effort. No way to disable it. If this is what they're doing in the most visible bits of the system, what on earth is happening in the rest?

Just hit the Escape key. You can also just start typing your password. I often type my password and press enter before the monitor is even awake.

...just to then realize that the computer was still logged in and the focus was on a chat window, and it was only the screen that had been in power saving mode. :-}

Re: The Decline of Usability

#119

Post by Wowfunhappy »

I agree with 90% of this article. However, I differ on one point: as far as I'm concerned, the "File, Edit, View" categories are anachronisms from another era. They make sense in Microsoft Office†, but fail to cover the breadth of software in use today.

I'm currently using Firefox (on OS X, where it still has a menu bar). The first three options under "File" are "New Tab", "New Window", and "New Private Window". Does it really make sense for any of those to be under "File"? I understand, historically, why they ended up there—each document used to correspond to a new file—but tabs fundamentally are not files.

I'll switch over to OS X's Messages app‡. The first two options under "File" are "New Message" and "Open". The former starts a new conversation, and the latter let's you attach a document to the current conversation. Those actions aren't related at all, except in that they kind of relate to the concept of the word "File", depending on which metaphor you're following.

So, I don't think there's anything wrong with mpv grouping its menus differently from evince. They're doing different things and shouldn't have to follow the same categories.

---

† Which is definitely (sarcasm) why Microsoft Office decided to replace the traditional menu with a ribbon. Again, I agree with most of this article.

‡ I'm running OS X 10.9; Apple may have made changes in newer OS's.

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