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Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

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Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#101

Post by ryandrake »

basilium wrote: post #98

Am I the only one who doesn't know what that "Keep me signed in" checkbox is for? I mean, I was a web developer for many years and I rarely encountered this checkbox in the wild, don't remember implementing it even once. I mean the choice itself is very ambiguous. It is supposed to mean that the login session will only live for the duration of the current browser session if I uncheck it. But for a user (and for me to…

I've never seen one that actually works. It seems like whether or not I check them, the next time I log into [every site] I have to re log in.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#102

Post by owlstuffing »

binarymax wrote: post #89
carlosjobim wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from a chat interface, when should enter ever submit your text?

In a multiline text box, enter should NOT submit the form. Chat interfaces violate this rule and it results in lots of premature chat submissions.

Precisely. 'member CUA?

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#103

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

strix_varius wrote: post #96
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author may have identified that "the idioms come from the use of system frameworks", but they absolutely got wrong just about everything about why apps are not consistent on the web (e.g. I was baffled by their reasons listed under "this lack of homogeneity is for two reasons" section). First, what he calls "the desktop era" wasn't so much a desktop era as a Windows era - Windows ran the vast majority of desktops…

I partially agree with you, but additionally there's a whole set of employees who would be clearly redundant in any given company if that company decided to just use a simple, idiomatic, off the shelf UI system. Or even to implement one but without attempting to reinvent well understood patterns. One reason so many single-person products are so nice is because that single developer didn't have the time and resources…

But every company I worked at in the past 10 years or so eventually coalesced around a singular "design system" managed by one person or a small core team. But that just goes back to my original point - every company had their own design system, and there is not a single, industry-wide set of "rails".

The bigger issue I see with "got to keep lots of designers employed" problem is the series of pointless, trend-following redesigns you'd see all the time. That said, I've seen many design departments get absolutely slaughtered at a lot of web/SaaS companies in the past 3 years. A lot of the issue designers were working on in the web and mobile for the 25 years prior are now essentially "solved problems", and so, except for the integration of AI (where I've seen nearly every company just add a chat box and that AI star icon), it looks like there is a lot less to do.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#104

Post by mohamedkoubaa »

JojoFatsani wrote: post #24

Most software is not designed by intelligent and thoughtful people anymore. It is designed by hastily promoted middle manager PM/Product type people who, as has been mentioned elsewhere, simply were not around when thoughtful human interface design was borderline mandatory for efficiency’s sake. There is incompetence and there is also malevolence in the encouragement of dark patterns by the revenue side of the busine…

Cybernetic natural selection should take care of this over time, but the rate of random mutations in software systems is much higher than in biological systems. Would be interested in modeling the equilibrium dynamics of this

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#105

Post by jwolfe »

physicles wrote: post #86
uhoh-itsmaciek wrote: post #58

In text boxes in some applications, enter submits the entered text, and ctrl-enter forces a newline (not at my computer, but I think Slack does this). In others, it's the other way around (pretty sure GitHub does this for comments). I don't know how we got here and I don't know how to fix it, but "bring back idiomatic design" doesn't help when we don't have enough idioms. I'm not even sure if those two behaviors are…

In Slack it can get even worse. If you turn on Markdown formatting, shift+enter adds a new line, unless you’re in a multi-line code block started with three backticks, and then enter adds a new line and shift+enter sends the message. I can see why someone thought this was a good idea, but it’s just not.

This is a user preferences setting for what it's worth.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#106

Post by layer8 »

One of my pet peeves is that increasingly frequently, pressing Enter to submit a web form doesn’t even universally work anymore. Instead you have to tab to the submit button, and (depending on the web page) have to press Space or Enter to actuate it.

Another annoyance is that many web forms (and desktop apps based on web tech) don’t automatically place the keyboard focus in an input field anymore when first displayed. This is also an antipattern on mobile, that even on screens that only have one or two text inputs, and where the previous action clearly expressed that you want to perform a step that requires entering something, you first have to tap on the input field for the keyboard to appear, so that you can start entering the requested information.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#107

Post by michaelmrose »

uhoh-itsmaciek wrote: post #58

In text boxes in some applications, enter submits the entered text, and ctrl-enter forces a newline (not at my computer, but I think Slack does this). In others, it's the other way around (pretty sure GitHub does this for comments). I don't know how we got here and I don't know how to fix it, but "bring back idiomatic design" doesn't help when we don't have enough idioms. I'm not even sure if those two behaviors are…

Anything which supports multi-line input shouldn't submit on enter it should submit on button press so anyone can use it instantly without learning or remembering anything.

Then make it easier for users to learn that they can enter more quickly with control+enter which you can advertise via tooltip or adjacent text.

Better that 100% find it trivially usable even if only 75% learn they can do it faster

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#108

Post by embedding-shape »

layer8 wrote: post #106

One of my pet peeves is that increasingly frequently, pressing Enter to submit a web form doesn’t even universally work anymore. Instead you have to tab to the submit button, and (depending on the web page) have to press Space or Enter to actuate it. Another annoyance is that many web forms (and desktop apps based on web tech) don’t automatically place the keyboard focus in an input field anymore when first displayed…

> One of my pet peeves is that increasingly frequently, pressing Enter to submit a web form doesn’t even universally work anymore. Instead you have to tab to the submit button, and (depending on the web page), have to press Space or Enter to actuate it.

The other day I used Safari on a newly setup macOS machine for the first time in probably a decade. Of course wanted to browse HN, and eventually wanted to write a comment. Wrote a bunch of stuff, and by muscle memory, hit tab then enter.

Guess what happened instead of "submitted the comment"? Tab on macOS Safari apparently jumps up to the addressbar (???), and then of course you press Enter so it reloads the page, and everything you wrote disappears. I'm gonna admit, I did the same time just minutes later again, then I gave up using Safari for any sort of browsing and downloaded Firefox instead.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#109

Post by embedding-shape »

8organicbits wrote: post #67
RobotToaster wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is automatically formatted based on the user's locale.

This is still a partial solution as the user needs to know that their locale is being used and know how their locale is configured to understand the format. This is most problematic on shared computers or kiosks, especially when traveling.

I mean, once in a different country, you either experience the locale shock once then adapt, or you've seen it before and kind of know what to expect.

And for the rest of the users who have no idea about locales, using whatever locale they have on their computer might be technically incorrect for some of them, but at least they're somewhat used to that incorrectness already, as it's likely been their locale for a while and will remain so.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#110

Post by tgv »

kevincox wrote: post #55
tgv wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure icons are easier and faster to recognize, except when you make them (too) small. In particular, they probably are easier in the long run, as long as they don't change position. But in a context where things change or you need a lot of buttons, words probably win.

This is why you need both. Icons are faster to recognize, but words tell you what the icons need. So you need the words at first to discover the icons, then the icons serve as valuable tools for scanning and quickly locating the click target that you are looking for.

That's what I tend to do too, but sometimes space requirements win.

But of course, a good design is adapted to its user: frequent/infrequent is an important dimension, as is the time willing to learn the UI. E.g., many (semi) pro audio and video tools have a huge number of options, and they're all hidden under colorful little thingies and short-cuts.

Space is important there, because you want as many tracks and Vu meters and whatever on your screen as possible. Their users are interested in getting the most out of them, so they learn it, and it pays off.

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