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Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

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Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#161

Post by victeknixco »

bee_rider wrote: post #152
layer8 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have all sorts of inconsistent “context menus” now on mobile. Sometimes after you select something, sometimes as items under the share button, sometime when you actually long press, sometimes a menu appears when you tap an item, sometimes as action items that appear when you slide an item to a side. And even for a single of those variations, different variants with different looks exist, etc. A uniform way to “…

Interesting. Actually, this conversation has made me realize I only do this sort of “give me more options” interaction in Safari (long press) and Panic Prompt (double tap). I think I hadn’t noticed the inconsistency because 2 is not very many, and also the Panic Prompt behavior is a sort of nice analogy to the typical Linux terminal behavior. Still though, only two programs and the inconsistency is immediate, haha.

So what is the issue again? Or all resolved?

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#162

Post by chongli »

leptons wrote: post #160
chongli wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who don't come to use a computer for the first time until middle age or later tend to struggle mightily. I'm not sure why, but they seem to have a strong aversion to experimenting with the system. I face this issue almost every day with my 74-year-old father and his iPhone. He can only do the tasks which I explicitly teach him and anything new (like changing a setting he's never changed before) requires me to…

My 72 year old mother installs her own video cards and has a mouse with 5 buttons. YMMV, I guess. The 1 button mouse was not superior in any way, and the people that get confused by a mouse with more than 1 button probably should never look at a web page with more than one thing to click. Did your father ever drive a car? Is he aware there's more than one pedal and lever to use? Did he ever find his way to the windsh…

The pedals in a car always do the same thing every time you press them, in every car you get into. Mouse buttons are not like this. Different applications use them differently. There may be a sizeable chunk that are reasonably consistent but there are tons of outliers that do all kinds of bizarre stuff like using right click to select or to cancel an operation or to bring up a tool tip. Sometimes it’s left click to select and right click to move.

Plus you never know what’s going to be in a context menu until you right click to open it. Sometimes you move the mouse slightly and right click something else and get a different context menu. For an older person with declining vision this can be very confusing. Fixed menus at the top of the screen are discoverable. You can even search for what you want in the help menu. Context menus are not discoverable.

I’m glad your mother knows how to install video cards. My aunt worked at a TV factory installing boards into the case and soldering all the through-hole components to the board. She’s still pretty baffled by computers but she’s almost 80 years old and rarely needs them.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#163

Post by DemocracyFTW2 »

dmoy wrote: post #83
hulitu wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> surprisingly bad UX for a Big Tech consumer-facing company. surprisingly bad ? Ever saw a Microsoft product ? A Google product ? I already set my preferencies. I don't want to set them a hundred times. No, i don't want a 1 px border, no title bar and no scrollbar.

Keep in mind that was written like 12 years ago, when things looked differently than they do now. (Notably that's pre material design and pre kennedy (the precursor to material))

article is from Aug 2005, so more like 19 years... I became suspicious when I was told the hero of the story left Amazon to join Yahoo!, which, y'know, was what people were wont to do back in the day, not so much anymore I'd guess

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#164

Post by DemocracyFTW2 »

bluGill wrote: post #38
II2II wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what the ideal number of mouse buttons, but agree that it is more than one. The odd thing is it's appearance in the Macintosh: a computer where the user was supposed to orient most of their actions around the mouse. That said, I'm pretty sure the double click came about because certain operations were costly. There is no particular reason why would couldn't use a single click to launch and application or…

Apple wanted to advertise you couldn't press the wrong button, which meant they couldn't have more than one button.

In the case the right thing to do would be a mouse with no buttons, wouldn't it? No buttons, no pain I say.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#165

Post by southernplaces7 »

nine_k wrote: post #146
southernplaces7 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that Amazon's UI could garner more sales and reconstruct more of its slowly fading popularity if it simply stopped being such a dumpster fire of bad design, confusion, chaos, searches that barely work and of course, rampant links to attempts at sales fraud. The confusion, coupled with Amazon's reputation inertia, does probably drive some bulk sales metrics, but it's a poison pill of scrounging what you…

What are these sites that are simply better? Also, Amazon's retail empire is very much buttressed by its speedy delivery service, and thus warehouses and the truck fleet. A much better web site sometimes cannot compete with next-day delivery. (And sometimes can, of course!)

well, for anything related to photographic equipment, try B&H, much better. Decent search too and without all the ridiculous crud of false buy leads that Amazon dumps on you despite being one of the world's biggest companies and perfectly capable of providing a clean product search that¿s reliable.

Or, for random products, even damn walmart does better, and that's just embarrassing. I could go on with this but if you're defending the obviously broken interface that Amazon provides for buying products, I suspect your motives.

The one single thing I continue to use them for is book reviews, not buys, but just reviews, and that's a low bar indeed.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#166

Post by southernplaces7 »

n4r9 wrote: post #149
southernplaces7 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that Amazon's UI could garner more sales and reconstruct more of its slowly fading popularity if it simply stopped being such a dumpster fire of bad design, confusion, chaos, searches that barely work and of course, rampant links to attempts at sales fraud. The confusion, coupled with Amazon's reputation inertia, does probably drive some bulk sales metrics, but it's a poison pill of scrounging what you…

I'm dubious. Investing in development and design is one of the more expensive ways for a company to increase returns. Plus, Amazon are in such a dominant e-commerce market position [0] that they don't need to worry about UX beyond the ability to click "buy". Despite the poor design, their share is forecast to continue growing past 40% this year [1]. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/274255/market-share-of-t...…

Yes but in arguing that you miss the point entirely. If Amazon's only motives in how it designes its customer interface are "hah, who gives a shit, we're so big that they'll keep buying even if we mistreat them and expose them to rampant fraud", that speaks of a shitty company which will eventually be eaten by the market. Consumer tolerance is finite, and smarter people than me have noticed the same thing and are working to chip away at it with shoppers.

I'd also hope for something a little bit more honest from Amazon, given all their multi-decade spiels about customer service, but here we are.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#167

Post by n4r9 »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #166
n4r9 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm dubious. Investing in development and design is one of the more expensive ways for a company to increase returns. Plus, Amazon are in such a dominant e-commerce market position [0] that they don't need to worry about UX beyond the ability to click "buy". Despite the poor design, their share is forecast to continue growing past 40% this year [1]. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/274255/market-share-of-t...…

Yes but in arguing that you miss the point entirely. If Amazon's only motives in how it designes its customer interface are "hah, who gives a shit, we're so big that they'll keep buying even if we mistreat them and expose them to rampant fraud", that speaks of a shitty company which will eventually be eaten by the market. Consumer tolerance is finite, and smarter people than me have noticed the same thing and are wor…

> that speaks of a shitty company which will eventually be eaten by the market

Agreed! Although "eventually" takes a very long time, possibly decades. In the meantime there are a host of cheaper tactics for maintaining and draining market share: acquisitions, exploitative terms (like Amazon's "best buy" conditions), regulatory capture etc... .

The issue is that the current system of shareholder capitalism strongly encourages short-term gains in lieu of sustainability. It's very difficult to justify spending on ease of use when you already have the users and there are things you could do to milk them like making ads more subtle.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#168

Post by leptons »

chongli wrote: post #162
leptons wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 72 year old mother installs her own video cards and has a mouse with 5 buttons. YMMV, I guess. The 1 button mouse was not superior in any way, and the people that get confused by a mouse with more than 1 button probably should never look at a web page with more than one thing to click. Did your father ever drive a car? Is he aware there's more than one pedal and lever to use? Did he ever find his way to the windsh…

The pedals in a car always do the same thing every time you press them, in every car you get into. Mouse buttons are not like this. Different applications use them differently. There may be a sizeable chunk that are reasonably consistent but there are tons of outliers that do all kinds of bizarre stuff like using right click to select or to cancel an operation or to bring up a tool tip. Sometimes it’s left click to s…

You have to be willfully ignorant or brain damaged to not understand how a 2-button mouse works after the first time using it. The context menu does different things depending on the context. Someone that can't understand that is seriously in trouble in life. It's not something that should be confusing at all.

And as I said, hopefully your father never visits any websites, because they are all different with information in different places on every website. The world must be an extremely frustrating and hostile place for someone that gets confused by a 2 button mouse. I honestly feel bad for your father if everything you say is true.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#169

Post by gymbeaux »

leptons wrote: post #156
gymbeaux wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main gripe with Amazon is how slow it is. It takes me like 30 seconds to change my shipping address and payment method before placing an order. I always assume it’s because they’re using Glacier on AWS to drive that functionality.

That sounds more like your hardware/internet than it does Amazon's fault - I have never had any delay when changing address or payment method while placing an order, and I place a lot of orders on Amazon.

Fiber 2000Mbps up and down ~5ms latency

It’s slow regardless of my internet connection

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#170

Post by juliendorra »

bluGill wrote: post #29

One button mouse was one of the worst inventions. Mice need at least 3 buttons to be useful. You sometimes need to select something and sometimes you need to launch it. Or you need to select in several different ways. Because of this miss-invention they had to invent the double-click and all the complexity of timing (try making double click for someone old an nearing senile and someone young and fast with the same ti…

All lab GUIs starting from Engelbart’s AUGMENT had 3-button mouses, including the Xerox Alto. The researchers and engineers using the Alto found that the mouse buttons were confusing, even this small group couldn’t remember the combinations in each application, and it lead to many inconsistencies between apps. Each button had a very precise function, and they were as much modal shortcuts than direct manipulation buttons.

Even Xerox tried to reduce it to one button for the Star (their first commercial GUI computer), but from their own published account they couldn’t find a way and the Star shipped with a 2-button mouse.

Remember, at the time most people targeted by Apple (or other computer manufacturers) had never used a computer, and the people who did use a computer never used a mouse! (Except for the PARC researchers and some other researchers, so maybe 2000 people worldwide)

It’s people coming from Xerox to Apple who were the most interested in having a one button mouse! They knew the 3-button mouse would confuse users and was entirely unnecessary for most users (as it is today, the secondary click being reduced to just a convenient shortcut, nothing more)

A previous comment about the 2-button Star and how these buttons were actually used: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31750283

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