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The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

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Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#421
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as humiliating as on Android, so there's that.

What makes one better or worse? I'm always a bit embarrassed when I'm in public and a buddy calls me over to look at something on a MacBook. Like - "No it wasn't me who fell for Apple marketing."

Well, at least Apple's assistant has a name. "OK Google" is just directly praying to the overlord :D

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#422

Car manufacturers are easily the winners here. If your car’s audio system doesn’t have a simple knob you can grab and twist, well, that just sucks.

The digital clock in my car audio is half of the year correct and half of the year one hour off, except after replacing battery when it's a random number. The winner are kitchen devices with digital clocks. Recently visited house with high-end kitchen with build in coffee machine, dishwasher, fridge(s), oven, stove - half a dozen digital clocks, every showing different time, all wrong. Satan himself knows and cares what combination of buttons hidden God knows where adjusts these clocks.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#423
post #202
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams is the reference for bad UI. Paste a code block. Select a word in the code block. Copy and you get the whole block copied not the selected word. I could write a page of the issues like this. Maybe it would not be so bad if you only used Teams but when you use slack at the same time it is like someone is wacking you in the back of the head every few minutes.

I was grading an online exam yesterday. You're lucky. This program used an SPA. The core workflow is hidden and split over multiple "tabs". Tabs include: question, given answer, score awarded. That's right, none of those are available simultaneously. Yes, 70% of its window goes unused when full-screen. Going through all students can be done in (at least) two ways. In the first, you can press a button to proceed to th…

As a student, I've never had any edtech site or "online textbook" that had good UX. It wouldn't be so offensive if I didn't have to pay $80 per semester per course for the privilege of using something that is never as good as a real textbook.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#424
post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes one better or worse? I'm always a bit embarrassed when I'm in public and a buddy calls me over to look at something on a MacBook. Like - "No it wasn't me who fell for Apple marketing."

Well, at least Apple's assistant has a name. "OK Google" is just directly praying to the overlord :D

Can't you squeeze the sides or something? I don't use voice search much because I prefer accuracy. But when I do, I don't use "ok Google"

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#426

Can someone explain the iPhone one? I've never had an iPhone, it looks just like a simple slider, I don't see the problem. Is the gif not playing for me?

Well, one issue (not shown) is that if your control center has so many items that it scrolls vertically, then there's ambiguity whether you're trying to scroll control center or drag the volume slider. This could have been fixed by making the volume slider horizontal.

Can you even place as many elements there? Vertical scrolling would not really make sense since you get into/out of that “menu” with a vertical swipe.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#427

This is the new volume control in windows 11 (some insider version they've randomly thrown at me): https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/786/aIfxKh.png It's atrocious. No slider, clicking on it "blips" the speakers so you can hear how loud it is. You have to hover pointer on top of it which enlarges the green circle by about 10% to show "Hey, you're hovering me, in case you missed it!" and then scroll so the the tin…

It's not all roses over in Mac land either, look how terrible this icon is for "External Headphones"

https://pasteboard.co/Kb9u3OY.png

Apple is slipping. (Probably an oversight because of Airpod-centric thinking.)

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#428

This is the new volume control in windows 11 (some insider version they've randomly thrown at me): https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/786/aIfxKh.png It's atrocious. No slider, clicking on it "blips" the speakers so you can hear how loud it is. You have to hover pointer on top of it which enlarges the green circle by about 10% to show "Hey, you're hovering me, in case you missed it!" and then scroll so the the tin…

It’s a plain bug expected of beta quality software. No need for any drama. https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/ogchx7/volume_ba...

Looks like the volume slider has no minimum width and is compressed down to a single blip. When there are other widgets in the container, it expands to a usable width. Reasonable bug for beta software.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was going to say. It saves screen space - should you need to save screen space - while allowing fine control. A slider would take much more screen area. This is a bigger issue on synth VSTs that have tens or hundreds of controls. When screen resolutions were smaller it was a toss-up between hybrid vertical/rotational scrolling, horizontal/vertical window scrollbars to get the controls to appear at all, and multipage…

You could keep the vertical "out-of-box" dragging but use a little vertical bar to show the current level. Humans are terrible at reading angles quickly.

Humans may be terrible at reading pie charts quickly, but I think we do fine with visualizations such as clocks, gauges and circular controls. I wouldn't even be surprised if a circular gauge can be read more quickly or with less attention than a linear one (size/area being equal).

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#430

Car manufacturers are easily the winners here. If your car’s audio system doesn’t have a simple knob you can grab and twist, well, that just sucks.

My Nissan has a center console that cedes ALL controls to the rear camera app when the car is put in reverse. So if you have music playing you can twist the physical volume knob all you like while in reverse and nothing will happen! If you parallel park daily you'll probably experience this every time: You jump in the car, start it and put it in reverse. The music will start playing after a couple of seconds at the l…

I believe Ford automatically lowers the volume to barely hearable while in reverse — since otherwise I think passing over the UI to a more important component is a good decision.
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