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The Decline of Usability

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Re: The Decline of Usability

#481

Post by random32840 »

jiehong wrote: post #479

On desktops, I wish we could just stop wondering “where is that icon?” or “what does this icon do?” entirely. We should be able to search for any feature within an application in a standardised way instead. Maybe something like what Ctrl-P does in Sublime Text / Sublime Merge. If this shortcut would work for any application within the same OS, we could get rid of most icons by default, while adding more consistency a…

Google will more reliably return what you're looking for than any hand-built documentation system.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#482

Post by brabel »

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,…

Gimp is probably the only software I use somewhat regularly in which I can absolutely never figure out how to do something new, and if I don't do something for more than a month, I have to google again for how to do it. The level of stupidity in its design surely deserves a reward for unusability.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#483

Post by greggman3 »

noobermin wrote: post #386
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,…

Whenever these discussions come up, I don't know how much of this response is just confusing familiarity with usability. I kid you not, I knew people who bemoaned python because of tab spacing and this wasn't 2003, this was may be a few years ago (2016 or so), which I'd argue is just being unfamiliar with it. C isn't really that intuitive--I still remember learning it at 14 and finding the syntax confusing vs basic--…

tab spacing isn't just "used to it". It's the "hidden white space has meaning" problem. Copy and paste some code indented with spaces into some that's indented with tabs and if you're unlikely they'll look like the indentation matches but the won't actually match. If you're even more unlucky the code won't just crash it will appear to run but the result will not be what you expected.

You try to get around it by using an editor that shows tabs or an editor that re-indents the code but plenty of editors (notepad, nano, vi, emacs) don't show tabs as different from spaces by default.

https://wiki.c2.com/?SyntacticallySignificantWhitespaceConsi...

Re: The Decline of Usability

#484

Post by brabel »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #430
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'm on 19.10, and I'm quite disappointed. Exposing all windows as thumbnails is a big regression compared to Unity. It feels heavyweight, and just doesn't work anymore for window navigation. Pressing the app icon on the side bar brings up small, equal-sized window previews on top of each other without spatial information. Consequently I have now tens of open terminal session and browser windows. Global menu is gone,…

I was on the same boat and decided to install KDE Plasma. Very very happy with the result, the UI dark theme is very beautiful and all shortcuts and UI elements work the way "old" UIs did (unlike freaking Ubuntu 18 and 19 which changed everything for 0 reason).

https://kde.org/plasma-desktop

It was quite easy to install and everything worked out-of-the-box. I just customized some widgets, the dark theme, icon colors and now it looks amazing. Best Linux desktop I've used so far.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#485

Post by worldsayshi »

jiehong wrote: post #479

On desktops, I wish we could just stop wondering “where is that icon?” or “what does this icon do?” entirely. We should be able to search for any feature within an application in a standardised way instead. Maybe something like what Ctrl-P does in Sublime Text / Sublime Merge. If this shortcut would work for any application within the same OS, we could get rid of most icons by default, while adding more consistency a…

Yes! The Ctrl-P convention is the best usability convention to pop up in a decade. It can be so useful. Especially for any complex app like Photoshop, Blender, movie editors.

I was only aware that Atom and intellij had this. Atom has slightly better text matching. I think it keeps synonyms for searchable items. Intellij covers more of the interface. You can even jump deep into parts of the settings dialogue with it.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#486

Post by Tepix »

Another rather infuriating example:

On iOS Mail you now have to hit the "reply" icon to move a received email to another folder, mark it or print it.

Very poor discoverability. They should at least have changed the icon when they changed it into a multiple purpose thing.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#487

Post by lvillani »

jiehong wrote: post #479

On desktops, I wish we could just stop wondering “where is that icon?” or “what does this icon do?” entirely. We should be able to search for any feature within an application in a standardised way instead. Maybe something like what Ctrl-P does in Sublime Text / Sublime Merge. If this shortcut would work for any application within the same OS, we could get rid of most icons by default, while adding more consistency a…

On macOS you can search menu items via Shift–Command–QuestionMark (or by opening the Help menu). Most toolbar actions are also exposed as menu items, so this lets you essentially search for almost every function of every application that plugs into standard macOS frameworks.

Some applications have features that extend beyond what can be surfaced through the standard menu bar but the infrastructure is there for "normal" apps.

Ubuntu used to have something similar in earlier versions of Unity. It would surface Gtk and Qt menu trees in a searchable interface.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#488

Post by noisem4ker »

cirno wrote: post #51

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 :(

KDE still champions server-side decorations.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#489

Post by worldsayshi »

random32840 wrote: post #481
jiehong wrote: post #479

On desktops, I wish we could just stop wondering “where is that icon?” or “what does this icon do?” entirely. We should be able to search for any feature within an application in a standardised way instead. Maybe something like what Ctrl-P does in Sublime Text / Sublime Merge. If this shortcut would work for any application within the same OS, we could get rid of most icons by default, while adding more consistency a…

Google will more reliably return what you're looking for than any hand-built documentation system.

That is missing the point. The Ctrl-P shortcut is for all those actions that you are aware of but use seldom enough to not warrant learning the keyboard shortcut. Or features that you are vaguely aware of should exist. The fact that it can provide a bit of documentation is a bonus.

Google is a competitor to this kind of feature as much as your hard drive is a competitor to your memory.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#490

Post by kebman »

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,…

Long time Adobe user. I tried Gimp. Shut it down, and merrily went back to my Adobe subscription plan.
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