221–230 of 719 posts
Some of the worst offenders are 16x9 monitors. Great Apple did not follow that strange fad, and stuck with 16x10.
Sensors (about 70% of the population) use an application by mapping: a click here does this. Based on literature and my experience with my husband, maps are made separately for each application no matter what the similarities are.
Most computer programmers are intuitives: we want things to work the same way in one application as they work in another. That makes it easier for us to learn new things.
But we're only 30% of the population. Blame whatever trend you want: phones, touch screens, microcomputers, Eternal September . . . we've been increasingly outnumbered and out-spent by the 70% as time goes on.
I'm young (25) but my first (family) computer used to run Windows 98 (that's what we could afford). And I can recall well, UI had one "meta-language": menu bar (file, view ..., help), toolbar, and if you'd hover your mouse pointer over a widget, a tooltip would show up with explanation about what the widget does and the keyboard shortcut for that action. Once you learnt how to use one application, say Paint, you'd pr…
It's all still there in Win32 Apps microcosm, available for anyone to use. I'm currently working on a pure Win32 application and Microsoft's tips are delightfully helpful for establishing a consistent design language across the whole platform. They call it "powerful and simple" in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/how-t... Win32 Guidelines are also very illuminating: https://docs.microsoft.com/en…
...and more recently has been castrating that ability greatly, seemingly in favour of the horrible bland-and-flat trend, which is unfortunate because the ability to customise is highly desirable for usability/accessibility.
(Long-time Win32 programmer here, I agree that the built-in behaviour of the standard controls is highly consistent and also very usable.)
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It was a hard structured science, hicks law, conservation of complexity, goms analysis, fitts law ... we've tossed these decades of hard work in the garbage can because somebody in marketing didn't like the colors. It was like during the VCR wars of the 80s when consumers wanted the most features but yet the fewest buttons. Then they complained how you had to basically play rachmaninoff on their sleek minimal interfa…
Having rarely seen a VCR that wasn't flashing "12:00", I came to the conclusion that a clock was simply feature bloat.
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,…
(also lots of phone home crap you have to hunt to turn off)
By comparison arch linux + gnome is relatively unencumbered
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Wow, you are not kidding. I went to this site to see for myself, and the very first thing I see is re-Captcha. And it doesn't even work! I have to pick out photos of tractors before I even get to see what is on the site! Holy cow, why does anyone use this? It's a hot mess.
Didn't even get the chance for a re-Captcha with me. It outright blocks me because I'm using a proxy.
Part of this is because the sensors are winning. Sensors (about 70% of the population) use an application by mapping: a click here does this . Based on literature and my experience with my husband, maps are made separately for each application no matter what the similarities are. Most computer programmers are intuitives: we want things to work the same way in one application as they work in another. That makes it eas…
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It was a hard structured science, hicks law, conservation of complexity, goms analysis, fitts law ... we've tossed these decades of hard work in the garbage can because somebody in marketing didn't like the colors. It was like during the VCR wars of the 80s when consumers wanted the most features but yet the fewest buttons. Then they complained how you had to basically play rachmaninoff on their sleek minimal interfa…
Having rarely seen a VCR that wasn't flashing "12:00", I came to the conclusion that a clock was simply feature bloat.
It's too bad time sync over power lines didn't catch on widely (or broadcast over the radio). It would still be saving everyone from changing their digital clocks during DST.
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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.
I used Xubuntu for a number of years and it's a great lightweight environment overall. The main problems that I experienced with it are that it's handling of hot-plugging multiple displays (especially in between sleep states) has always been poor and crashy. And I like the cohesiveness and integration of GNOME, although I had to do a hell of a lot of customization to mold it into something I could tolerate.
Fortunately, Cinnamon is just an apt-get away, handles both monitor hotplugging and closing the laptop lid sanely, and works the way I expect a desktop to work. I've settled on Xubuntu+Cinnamon as my go-to when setting up a desktop or laptop.