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Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

lobste.rs

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Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#121

Post by lost_name »

incision wrote: post #98

What are there, 1B Android users? I'm sure Google would like that to be 7B. I'd wager the complaints of the sort of people who frequent lobste.rs or HN are not representative of the majority of current users and almost certainly not of the next 6B potential users. Overall, it's everything Google said they would do with material [1]. It's fine to dislike these things, I don't necessarily like them myself, but claiming…

I agree with you, but it seems the train has already left the station.

I don't use my tablet all that much, but I don't find myself questioning how something is done (that stuff didn't really change), or why things look different (I don't really care). It's just... different, nothing else.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#122

Post by shekhar101 »

smackfu wrote: post #38

I find the new Google Maps UI to be frustrating. The number of taps to just find directions to something after you search for it seems to be increased, for no good reason. I think it's mainly because there are multiple paths through the app to do the same thing, and some of them are optimized flows and others are not. So tapping the search bar is not the most efficient way to get directions anymore... you should tap…

Man! Move on. Start using Here maps. I don't know why people are stuck with GMpas when far more superior alternative is available. They have a new android app as well!

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#123

Post by yuriks »

hyperpape wrote: post #45

"There are a bunch of new ‘transitions’ between elements. I don’t know what the battery cost actually is for this, but as a user I just don’t care about cute transitions between elements. I want fast interaction with my mobile device." This is poorly phrased at best. Transitions exist to make it obvious what is happening: e.g. you minimize a window and it zooms into the taskbar/dock, as a visual reminder that it's no…

The transitions the author is probably complaining about are menu transitions: Every time you tap on a menu item you get a outward radial animation thing. It looks tacky but, more importantly, adds a half-second delay to every menu interaction.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#124

Post by pbhjpbhj »

PuffinBlue wrote: post #101
mattmanser wrote: post #52

Argh, lollipop's driving me up the wall! Vent time, woo! The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps, in an attempt to force you to use the bloody useless app switcher button instead of making it do something vaguely useful. And the lock screen, what the hell were they thinking? The amount of times I've opened the phone…

Agreed. Some more venting... Calendar is now rubbish, month view is gone, schedule view is too limited and there's way to much whitespace and 'fat' place cards. Got multiple Google accounts? You can't remove the 'events' calendar. And 'Events' is ostensibly the first calendar in your actual online Google Calendar which you might have named 'Home' but in the app is steadfastly refuses to be called anything but 'events…

>why is removing the key separators a good idea? //

I've a suggestion for this one - key separators support a paradigm of key presses, following the [traditional] keyboard metaphor. However with swipe-able keyboards it doesn't really make sense, you only need to approximate the position of the letter during your swipe - no "barriers" helps to enforce that new paradigm. If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board).

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#125

Post by pwnna »

zmb_ wrote: post #35
DontBeADick wrote: post #5

I stopped updating all my Google apps ~2 years ago because there were so many asinine, unintuitive UI changes with each new version. A lot of their changes didn't even conform to the standards recommended by Google (e.g. menu button locations). It's almost as if the UI team gets bored and decides to make changes just because they need to occupy themselves. And then instead of testing them with actual users, they just…

I just updated my Nexus 5 to KitKat. The update forced me to use GMail instead of the Email app, and almost 24h later GMail is still "Getting your messages". None of my email accounts work. Never mind changing the UI, they should start by not completely breaking the key functionality of their applications in their effort to force everyone to use their services.

CyanogenMod! Not only do they include the AOSP email, they built improvements on it as well!

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#127

Post by bluthru »

>why is the Compose button a floating button taking up space in my Inbox list?? There still exists a toolbar at the top for search and navigation. Why can’t the Compose button be there??

YES! That's where you scroll! Why would they put a button there?

Oh, I know why: because they painted themselves into a corner by thinking every app needs a cutesy circle button floating with a gross drop shadow.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#128

Post by mattmanser »

panarky wrote: post #112
mattmanser wrote: post #52

Argh, lollipop's driving me up the wall! Vent time, woo! The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps, in an attempt to force you to use the bloody useless app switcher button instead of making it do something vaguely useful. And the lock screen, what the hell were they thinking? The amount of times I've opened the phone…

I don't understand all the vitriol. Lollipop arrived on my Nexus 5 last week, and I couldn't be happier. Battery life is significantly longer, and the new UI ... ugh, this sounds almost cloying ... the new UI makes me happy , it gives me joy . It's beautiful, it's intuitive, it's functional, it's natural. What more could you want? I've never owned an iPhone, but this joyful experience must be a tiny bit like what iPh…

I had an iPhone, switched to Nexus 5. Nexus 5 already produced joy in me, it really is a great phone and as an ex-iPhoner I really think Android is prime time now and almost as good as iOS (my only issue is that some of the built in apps are a bit rubbish and Google Hangouts, the default, sucks as an SMS program).

But I'm getting no joy from Lollipop. Apart from all the interface issues I've hit, it seems fairly bug ridden.Some notification sounds suddenly turned themselves on (GMail), other sounds are really loud. Another example right now the lock screen on mine is showing a picture of a video I cast on BubbleuPNP last night. For absolutely no reason. I can't stop it.

That's totally not cool. I don't want a blurry video still as my lock screen picture. How do I clear it? Is that intentional? Or a bug?

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#129

Post by Mikeb85 »

Meh, I haven't found any of this to be a problem. I was a little confused by the new keyboard, but it works just fine, if not a little better than the previous one. Swiping around the letters still works great for composing words.

The behaviour with Chrome and tabs is much better than before, switching through tabs as though they're apps makes a lot of sense, better than switching through apps, then through tabs again, when I just want to see one page...

Overall I find the whole UI to be an improvement in Android 5 versus 4.4. It looks nicer, and everything seems just a little bit better.

But then again, I've never had a problem with things changing, I'm pretty adaptable.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#130

Post by yakshemash »

untog wrote: post #94
paganel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and bad (transitions are gross!). Serious question, why is this a "bad" complaint? Personally I hate transitions, I think they bring nothing of value and they're wasting my time, had the impression that there must be other people who thought exactly like me.

(IMO, of course) because it's a very broad complaint. You dislike absolutely every transition? It's been proven that they are helpful for users, so what is the request that comes with your complaint? Because if it's "remove transitions", that's not realistic. The majority like them. You might be surprised at the hints they give you subconsciously about where UI elements are going and what they're doing. Google's Mate…

Just to add, I think the transitions can also be disabled, but it's somewhat hidden in the developper options. The options are called "Window animation scale", "Transition animation scale" and "Animator duration scale". Putting them all to zero makes all transitions instantaneous.
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