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The end of the nice GTK button

blog.brixit.nl

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Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#381

Post by gsinclair »

amatecha wrote: post #317
grishka wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Borderless buttons to have the right to exist, but you should be very careful with their use. For example, take this UI I made recently: https://mastodon.social/@grishka/107998100334356147 , 2nd screenshot. The button to decline invitation looks like a link (same color) and it's next to a real button. No one would ever get confused by this, it's pretty clear it's clickable. But a black word in a larger font among bla…

It's not very clear to me it's clickable.. Is it an action, or a link to a different page/view? If it's an action (accept/decline invite), make it a button. If it's navigation, make it a text link. You are giving totally disparate cues to the user when the actions taken upon clicking are of the exact same type. My initial reaction to a piece of text directly next to a button is "why is there random unrelated text the…

Literally zero reason not to? I think it’s emphasising the “default” action quite nicely, and de-emphasising the other action quite appropriately.

“Decline invitation” needs to be something you can do, of course, but it will be used I find that having buttons side by side forces me to think in a mildly unpleasant way, like I have to read two thinks more carefully because there is more onus on me to decide which is the typical action.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#382

Post by can16358p »

While I'd like the old button as well, I think flat design is great.

When MS brought Windows Phone and then incorporated same language into Windows 8 I was like "wow, Microsoft got it right for the first time".

Same for iOS 7, same for macOS. I never liked the "Apple" look of UIs before they went flat. After they've switched to flat I started to really love it.

Not even talking about developers and designers needing to do less, and users needing to process less cluttered visual stimuli.

Skeuomorphism and non-flat designs in general had a good purpose and they've fulfilled it perfectly by teaching people about how UIs work in those OSes of digital world by making elements looking like real world things like buttons being 3D-ish. But that era is over and we collectively don't need it, so we've switched to something simpler and more efficient it many terms.

Of course, taste is taste and one may hate it, but I love flat design in almost all aspects, and definitely don't think MS and Apple are "stupid" as the blogger says.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#384

Post by ephbit »

sgt wrote: post #329
porker wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In modern Windows, press Win-key and start to type, oops, it missed the first keypresses, presented the completely wrong results and made a mess of your workflow. On Win10 I'm getting regular delays in keypresses and just enough lag when typing to be noticeable. I've been trying plugging in two USB keyboards as a poor man's split keyboard, and the amount of software (looking at you IntelliJ in particular) that does…

Delays on keypresses.. in 2022. Are we going backwards?!

Related, about latency: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16001407

links to: https://danluu.com/input-lag/

Title: Computer latency: 1977-2017

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#385

Post by hulitu »

prox wrote: post #366
eloisius wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. It's the miscellaneous everything bucket. It also seems to only be motivated by either scarce screen real estate (it first showed up in mobile interfaces), or graphic designers who think everything is "clutter" and by sweeping it away into the hamburger menu they can have their beautiful screenshot-worthy interface. I have a 27" monitor, but tons of websites and even Firefox itself hide half the functionality be…

Originally the top menu was to have a way to access to all functions. Many still do (say LibreOffice) The hamburger is kind of a weird breed of design signaling because of it. In some desktop apps it still is the original top menu, but not always. On websites and apps it can vary tremendously. However, a top menu is not an expert level mode, it’s a beginners / proficient level mode. Expert level means using keyboard…

> Expert level means using keyboard shortcuts.

This is true when you use only an editor and a debugger. When you need to use 10 programs each with its own keyboard shorcuts (which, BTW you need to search in internet which they are because the company doing the software did not bother to make them accessible in a help menu) you're gonna have a hard time. In the (1985) past you had for such things a holder attached to your keyboard where you had a listing of those keyboard shortcuts. Now the world has evolved and we have ... tada... the hamburger menu. P.S. I would not feel good as a developer to know that someone , somewhere curses me and my family constantly for the work i done.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#386

Post by bajsejohannes »

Flow wrote: post #270

I really miss a consistent user experience. A core idea that I as a user can rely on to predict how a new app will work. I was in awe when I discovered as a kid that user interface were a research area. Things like Fitt's Law and so on. It was not just opinion. Today I get the feeling it's mostly just opinion. Either the designer's opinion or the wish to copy the look of something. Whenever I see a hamburger menu I s…

> Another thing is type-ahead. I remember in classic MacOS, people pressed shortcuts and started to type the filename or whatever. It was all perfectly recorded and replayed. In modern Windows, press Win-key and start to type, oops, it missed the first keypresses, presented the completely wrong results and made a mess of your workflow.

The arguably worst offender in MacOS these days is the emoji picker. Press ctrl+cmd+space, and depending on how recently you opened it, it can take some hundreds of milliseconds to open (on an m1). All while eating your keypresses.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#387

Post by sime2009 »

chefandy wrote: post #267
RachelF wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have had to explain to people tons of times that the random word in the UI somewhere in an application is actually a button they can press to invoke an action. Exactly this. I often help others use computers and phones. In the old days it was easy to see what could be clicked. Now input and output look the same. It makes it harder to use. In many ways it is a victory of style over substance - UI's are now designe…

> In many ways it is a victory of style over substance - UI's are now designed by the same crowd who designs high fashion, that is clothes not designed to be worn but to be gawked at. Oh? Where do the Gnome designers list their runway appearances on their site? https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/ I'm an art-school educated designer, decade+ full-time web developer for over a decade and regular FOSS contributor for about a…

The complaint about flat design isn't levelled only at FOSS, but at the whole industry. Your points may explain the situation in FOSS, but it doesn't explain the poor work being put out by the thousands of designers and UI/UX people working as professionals in industry.

The failings of flat design are everywhere.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#388

Post by nojs »

happymellon wrote: post #282
nojs wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever I see a hamburger menu I silently think "Here someone has given up" Can you explain what you don’t like about hamburger menus?

Is a dumpster of features, you have no idea what you'll find in there. Has someone hidden the zoom buttons in there? How about print? Perhaps that's also where save is, or tab colour? Most things in the hamburger menu are completely unrelated but exist for the removal of context. Button outlines so you have no idea what you can and cannot click on as well, which is mentioned in the fine article, are all modern design…

I see what you mean. Brave on desktop comes to mind as an offender.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#390

Post by hutzlibu »

sgt wrote: post #329
porker wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In modern Windows, press Win-key and start to type, oops, it missed the first keypresses, presented the completely wrong results and made a mess of your workflow. On Win10 I'm getting regular delays in keypresses and just enough lag when typing to be noticeable. I've been trying plugging in two USB keyboards as a poor man's split keyboard, and the amount of software (looking at you IntelliJ in particular) that does…

Delays on keypresses.. in 2022. Are we going backwards?!

No, forward. Because the delay is probably because all of the telemetry and tracking, that has to be activated and synced with the servers, before it can responds to your request. All that amazing technology, unthinkable 20 years ago.

So definitely forward to big brother Panopticon.

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