Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

essays.johnloeber.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 385 posts

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#111

Post by darrylb42 »

AgentEpsilon wrote: post #91
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…

Teams does both - normally it’s Enter to submit and Shift+Enter for a new line, but when you open the formatting tools it switches. They at least do have a message indicating which key combo inputs a new line, but it still gets me on occasion.

Slack is similar Shift enter in normal text. Enter in a code block, shift enter sends in a code block.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#112

Post by layer8 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #107
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

That isn’t workable for chat apps, at the very least on mobile. And that’s the most-used text entry interface that users nowadays grow up with. So I think you need to make an exception for such applications.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#113

Post by Terr_ »

PhilipRoman wrote: post #8
finghin wrote: post #4

> Prefer words to icons. Use only icons that are universally understood. Underrated. Except for dyslexic people, and the most obvious icon forms, I am pretty sure most people are just better and faster at recognising single words at a glance than icons.

...except for HN "unvote"/"undown" feedback which is especially unfortunate due to the shared prefix. Every time I upvote something I squint at the unvote/undown to make sure I didn't misclick.

I'm still shocked that the links are so dang close together on mobile. You don't even need the proverbial fat fingers.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#114

Post by layer8 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #73
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…

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

In single-text-input contexts, like search fields and the browser address field, and things like Save As dialogs. It’s the general expectation for dialogs with an OK or default button, just like Escape cancels the dialog.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#115

Post by bfbf »

jstanley wrote: post #77
bfbf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing how many blank stares I get when I, as mobile engineer, tell stakeholders that we shouldn’t just implement some random interface idea they thought up in the shower and we instead need design input! “But why can’t you just do it?” Because I recognise the importance of consistent UX and an IA that can actually be followed. Just like developers, (proper) designers solve problems, an we need to stop asking t…

There's a time and a place for it. If you already know exactly what the program needs to do, then sure, design a user interface. If you are still exploring the design space then it's better to try things out as quickly as possible even if the ui is rough.

But that’s the point, no? Prototyping is useful but beyond a proof of concept, you still need a suitable user interface. I have no problems if there’s a rationale behind UI changes, but often we have stakeholders telling us to do something inconsistent just so their pet project can be presented to the user. That’s not design.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#117

Post by layer8 »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #39

As the author identifies, the idioms come from the use of system frameworks that steer you towards idiomatic implementations. The system UI frameworks are tremendously detailed and handle so many corner cases you'd never think of. They allow you to graduate into being a power user over time. Windows has Win32, and it was easier to use its controls than rolling your own custom ones. (Shame they left the UI side of win…

That’s not the only reasons. When you are used to how your operating system does things consistently, as a developer you naturally want your application to also behave like you’re used to in that environment.

This eroded on the web, because a web page was a bit of a different “boxed” environment, and completely broke down with the rise of mobile, because the desktop conventions didn’t directly translate to touch and small screens, and (this goes back to your point) the developers of mobile OSs introduced equivalent conventions only half-heartedly.

For example, long-press could have been a consistent idiom for what right-click used to be on desktop, but that wasn’t done initially and later was never consistently promoted, competing with Share menus, ellipsis menus and whatnot.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#118

Post by jeberle »

layer8 wrote: post #97
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…

Decades ago, Return and Enter were two different keys for that reason: Return to insert a line break, Enter to submit your input. Given the reduction to a single key, the traditional GUI rule is that Enter in a multiline/multi-paragraph input doesn’t submit like it does in other contexts, but inserts a line break (or paragraph break), while Ctrl+Enter submits. Chat apps, where single-paragraph content is the typical…

Before that, page-mode terminals used to move to first field on a subsequent line (like a line-based ) and sent the page only on or . This made for quick navigation w/ zero ambiguity.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#120

Post by tpmoney »

embedding-shape wrote: post #108
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 co…

I would argue that behavior is idiomatic for macOS but not idiomatic for web browsers. Keyboard navigation of all elements has never been the default in macOS. Tab moves between input fields, but without turning on other settings, almost never moved between other elements because macOS was a mouse first OS from its earliest days. Web browsers often broke this convention, but Safari has from day one not used tab for full keyboard navigation by default.

And this highlights something that I think the author glosses over a little but is part of why idioms break for a lot of web applications. A lot of the keyboard commands we're used to issue commands to the OS and so their idioms are generally defined by the idioms of the OS. A web application, by nature of being an application within an application, has to try to intercept or override those commands. It's the same problem that linux (and windows) face with key commands shared by their terminals and their GUIs. Is "ctrl-c" copy or interrupt? Depends on what has focus right now, and both are "idiomatic" for their particular environments. macOS neatly sidesteps this for terminals because "ctrl-c" was never used for copy, it was always "cmd-c".

Incidentally, what you're looking for in Safari is either "Press Tab to highlight each item on a webpage" setting in the Advanced settings tab. By default with that off, you would use "opt-Tab" to navigate to all elements.

Post reply on HN