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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

#231

Post by piyush_soni »

meepmorp wrote: post #143
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

> If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board). reply Do most people swipe? I honestly have no idea, and I'm not an Android user. I'm wondering if there are any stats on that. Particularly for older or less techno-phile users, swiping keyboards might be difficult to get into using.

I swipe heavily (using the original 'swype' app). It's still much faster than the others, and I've tried almost all of them, including the Google keyboard. Also, everyone else who sees me typing using that tries to learn the same. It's really more convenient than traditional touch typing.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#232

Post by grimman »

codingdave wrote: post #177

Khan academy is the worst offender in my mind. This past summer, it seemed like there was a change in how to navigate around the site every week. And changes to how reports displayed, even how questions were answered... across the board, constant changes. My kids, who range from 5-9, and use it to learn math, had to ask me for help constantly. 2 of my kids stopped using the site,as did I. One still uses it. I went fr…

Are there any alternatives in the same "range" as Khan Academy?

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#233

Post by coldtea »

jackmaney wrote: post #197
meepmorp wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board). reply Do most people swipe? I honestly have no idea, and I'm not an Android user. I'm wondering if there are any stats on that. Particularly for older or less techno-phile users, swiping keyboards might be difficult to get into using.

Wait...swiping? On a keyboard? That makes absolutely no sense. Most words contain a pair of letters that are not adjacent on a QWERTY keyboard.

Who said it has to be adjacent? To type WHAT just click W, swipe to H, then to A, then to T (and that roughly).

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#235

Post by Sakes »

neuralk wrote: post #179
Sakes wrote: post #162

The above blog has some valid points. But how the hell is it at the top on HN when there is a constructive, informative, and beautiful post about how to create aesthetically pleasing GUIs right below it.... I'm bitching about bitching. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8635082

They cover slightly different territory. The post you linked is more about the aesthetics of good UI, with a little bit about functionality and UX. The solutions there do not solve or address the problem brought up in the OP here, which is more about UX and the modification of existing user interfaces. For instance, it wasn't the updated graphical style of the keyboard that the OP complained about, but the rearranged…

I agree with you 100%. My comment was meant to complain about how the HN crowd was up voting an article which kicked off UI rants in the comments section when there was an article right beneath it with interesting techniques to add to your tool kit.

Keyboard complaints though... not sure why they changed that. But the "no good reason" is garbage because there are at least a couple reasons.

Google migrating the A team from "gmail" to "inbox" possibly introducing less experienced devs/designers.

Google trying to apply consistent UI principles across all applications in order to increase familiarity.

When trying to make improvements there should be some room for experimentation / failure. I would expect this community to understand that since it is heavily made up of makers.

So, for me, if the OP had titled it complaints about lollipop instead of stop changing UI for no good reason, I would have thought it to be right on. If the commenters didn't rally around it with pitchforks, I would have had no problem.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#236

Post by computerjunkie »

jarek wrote: post #147
computerjunkie wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I've been traveling into London for the past couple of days and I always feel annoyed just navigating through Google Maps

Citymapper is fantastic in London

Thanks, I will have a look at it.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#237

Post by _blob »

cjp wrote: post #200
_blob wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The month view is not gone ("three dot" menu on the right side -> Month) and you can easily untick `Events` per account to hide them. The gmail app still allows you to use a list to select different accounts (tap on the account name).

Nope. The three dot menu has Schedule, Day, 5 Day, Search and Refresh. There is no Month there. By the way, limiting to 5 days is at best inflexible. Many people want to look at 7 days because, you know, that's a week.

A quick search reveals, that the Week/ Month view is not available on phones (I only own an N7). Definitely a step backward.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#238

Post by joeyh »

halestock wrote: post #175
joeyh wrote: post #172

You know, programs could version their UI's. I was struck in Bram Cohen's interview by how much care he's taken to avoid changing vim's behavior at all, while still letting nice new features be added. In the case of vim, you have to learn about features and enable them to change the UI. That works, but it does mean that the default vim experience for a new user lacks a lot of its cool features, and it can be hard to…

Bram Moolenaar, you mean.

An embarassement of Brams.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#239

Post by msujaws »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #134
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…

When I help people out with their computers and I run updates (pretty much everyone I go to stay with!) they always complain if there's been a change in the UI at all - "why's that button moved?" "where's my favourites?" "how do I access my inbox now?" "why does it keep popping up that thing?" ... I'd really like to see some respect for this from people like Firefox - "we won't move any major UI elements or update th…

As a front-end engineer who works on desktop Firefox for Mozilla, I think we have actually held to your "no major redesigns more than once every 2 years" request ;)

Australis was a UI change that we don't anticipate doing more than once every two years. We recognize the costs of doing so, for users, add-on devs, and Mozilla devs.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#240

Post by Someone1234 »

9point6 wrote: post #228
Someone1234 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd maybe agree regarding the UI/animation. But L has brought some significant improvements (ART, Project Volta, background batching API, et al). So it is a good release inspite of the UI/animation updates. Google Maps and Windows Search are two products that have been over-worked to death. Both were better in older iterations (Windows Search pre-Vista, Google Maps before they went all minimalism-stupid). Google Maps…

I would say Windows search pre-Vista was unusable in general due to the poor/non-existent indexing and poor support of non-ASCII formats or anything beyond basic file metadata. Microsoft's solution to the not being able to support every file-type under the sun was to allow plugins to provide new types, which work quite well IMO. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFilter

I don't say this often but: Everything you just said is factually wrong.

- Windows had an indexer long before Vista (many many years)[0].

- Windows Search supports (and supported) UTF-8 and UTF-16 strings, as well as unicode if you had the correct language pack installed.

- Windows supported file content searches in Windows 95 (up through Vista).

- Microsoft could have allowed plugins to enrich search results WITHOUT gutting raw text searching (see Windows XP for a compromise, before they removed the work-around in Vista).

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indexing_Service

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