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The Decline of Usability

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Re: The Decline of Usability

#651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to power off an iPhone today for 5 minutes, failed, and just gave up. Why Apple, why would you make this simple action so damn obscure.

Wait, is it not press-and-hold power like on Android?

No, on the newer iPhones press and hold simply brings up Siri. Gotta press and hold main button and either volume button simultaneously. If that doesn’t work you should be able to use the trick I describe above.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#652
post #420

I'll give the author the complaints about modern scroll bars, which drive me up a wall, but the complaints about Firefox and Chrome really feel like grasping at straws to find something to dislike. "This new take on the [Firefox] URL bar pops up when you least expect it, is very hard to get rid of and, as a bonus, covers the tried, tested and highly usable bookmarks toolbar below it." What? It pops up when you click…

Example for Firefox: i click in address bar to copy link, it opens up and covers the bookmark i was planning to open.

"What? It pops up when you click on it, or when you hit Ctrl+ L. That seems perfectly expected, and is how URL bars have worked as long as I can remember."

Just tested on Chrome, and neither clicking or CTRL+L expands to cover bookmark bar.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#653
post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still remember the first time my young niece sat at my traditional desktop computer a few years ago. She must have been about five or six years old. She immediately started using her hands to try and interact with the screen and was utterly confused as to why nothing was happening.

Like Scotty in that iconic scene..."Hello, computer...........Hello, computer......" someone hands him the mouse, which he holds like a microphone "Hello, computer...."

For those unfamiliar, from the second greatest Star Trek film: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xaVgRj2e5_s

Re: The Decline of Usability

#654

It 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-co…

What's bothered me most is how if you collapse Gmail's sidebar, the "no Hangouts contacts" section in the bottom half doesn't resize or adapt.

It probably doesn't hurt usability directly, but it seems very unprofessional

Re: The Decline of Usability

#655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not your fault. It's the shitty ergonomics that have been pervading software UI design for several decades now. From the huge number of responses to this article, it's clear the software industry has a very major problem. The question I ask is why haven't users/user complaints been successful in stopping these irresponsible cowboys. Seems nothing can stop them.

> The question I ask is why haven't users/user complaints been successful in stopping these irresponsible cowboys. Most users don't complain, because technology is magic to them and they have no point of reference; they assume things must be the way they are for a reason. From the remaining group that does complain, many do it ineffectively (e.g. complaining to friends or in discussion boards that aren't frequented b…

An organizational problem seems to be that UX decisions are owned by the UX team, who tend to be extremely tribal in their opinions.

As in, if you are not a UX professional, your opinion is inconsequential.

See: replies on most Chrome UX feature requests over the last decade

Re: The Decline of Usability

#656

Definitely agree on the Firefox megabar. As soon as that came out I had to use userChrome.css to make it stop covering the bookmarks toolbar when opening a new tab. When I open a new tab, I'm either going to type something in the address bar, or open a bookmark. Having one cover half of the other makes no sense. It's not like the regular address bar size is insufficient.

Competely orthogonal to the megabar being shit, you can[0] middle-click on a bookmark entry to open it in a new tab immediately. 0: could at some point? I revert and stop updating software that sends downgrades and regressions as updates, so I'm not sure what all firefox-latest is doing.

Yeah, but the order of events in my brain is: 1. I want to go somewhere new. Opens new tab. 2. I have a bookmark for where I'm going!

Re: The Decline of Usability

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the problem with all software is people trying to “innovate” too much. They made this thing called a book once upon a time and those have worked for centuries. Same thing with UIs: the stacking window managers work well from Windows 95 and XP why change it?

"Honestly the problem with all software is people trying to “innovate” too much." You are spot on, and your 'book analogy' is perfect. If it works perfectly don't change it — that is unless an innovation arrives that offers a significant improvement and that's just as easy to use. Unfortunately, most so-called UI improvements over the last 20 or so years are not improvements at all, in fact many have been quite regre…

> Why is ('over innovation') done on such a huge scale and with such utter predictability?

Promotion & NIH management sydrome.

New shiny gets a promotion. Fixing a niche bug in a decades-old stable system does not.

And by the time all the new bugs you've introduced are found, you'll have a new job somewhere else.

So essentially, project managers' bosses not pushing back with a hard "Why should we change this?"

Re: The Decline of Usability

#658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 with Windows Hello does face recognition logon without any need to swipe or press key combinations. On a touchscreen, it responds to a swipe upwards. On a machine with a keyboard it responds to apparently any mouse click or keypress. Presumably Gnome copypasted it from Windows, because otherwise where did that idea come from into multiple distinct projects simultaneously? Windows has always had ctrl+alt+de…

Windows hello is such a nice experience (at least just for local login), but I will never use it because I don't trust Microsoft with my data.

"the info that identifies your face, iris, or fingerprint never leaves your device." - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4468253/windows-10-...

Re: The Decline of Usability

#659

UI/UX is just one side of the problem, talk about app sizes...specifically those Electron ones...I’m not kidding, the other day I saw a modern day Note taking app promoting itself as stellar Note taking solution which comes “featured packed in a single install file, just shy of 100MB“...and I thought to myself, oh gosh! Am I the only one that thinks WinAmp, an approx. 2.5MB install, is still the most kick ass app to…

Nowadays you need 100MB to really whip the llama’s ass.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#660

I love the article! Couldn't agree more! One of the trends was set by, who else, Microsoft. They went mobile first, failed miserably, but still kept the concepts. It's prevalent in their UWP apps - especially settings, in Win10 - one of the worst UI's I've ever seen. I can't explain how much I hate this.

Everybody doesn't agree with you. I believe going Mobile First was the best decision they made in decades.

Why? Windows is a desktop OS primarily used to get work done. “Mobile first” doesn’t make sense here and just gets in the way (it personally made me give up on the platform and switch to Mac instead).
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