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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

#111

Post by keda »

mattmanser wrote: post #90
k-mcgrady wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "And the new calendar app only allows you to see 6 hours at a time, so you can't get an overview of your day." Try the 'agenda' view which does exactly that. I was also going to debunk most of your other complaints because I know they're false but I don't have my Lollipop device with my at the moment.

You probably mean schedule, and no it doesn't as it shows only 6 or so items per page and isn't good for glancing at. I can't glance at it and see I've a meeting in the morning, I've got to read it to see when the appointments are. There's a reason the old paper calendars work so well, cause you can just glance at them. The old calendar also had a week view where you could see most of the week and what was on. Now yo…

You can tap on the month to get a monthly view.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#112

Post by panarky »

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 iPhone owners feel. To bring this experience to the unwashed masses of Android users is a very good thing.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#113

Post by dethstar »

brodney wrote: post #103
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'm pretty pleased with lollipop. Some of your complaints may be down to personal choice, but not all. For example, the triangle animation changes from pointing left when the action would be 'back', to down when the action is 'down', as in hiding the keyboard. Some other thoughts: - Getting to settings is no different from before when I had to swipe down and then tap a button to see the settings button. Now it's two…

>the triangle animation changes from pointing left when the action would be 'back', to down when the action is 'down', as in hiding the keyboard.

I have a 4.4 device and a 4.0.something device and this happens in both (except is not a triangle)

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#114

Post by throwawayaway »

mattmanser wrote: post #107
PuffinBlue wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can actually reskin the keyboard back to the old look. Click the unlock button, swipe up on your phone, not left or right, pull down on your phone twice, click the settings button, ignore the randomly flashing menu items as you scroll down, find "language and input", click "Google Keyboard" ( not "Current Keyboard"), click "Appearance and Layouts", click "Theme", click "Holo White".

you forgot to say stand on one leg.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#116

Post by shekhar101 »

Started switching to alternatives after Gmail redesign fiasco. Last nail in the coffin was Google maps 'redesign'. I loved both these products but have now moved on. Luckily for us Here maps is alive and kicking and it's so much better than GMaps! Why are people still stuck with Google Maps, I don't know. Here has everything and more. Real offline navigation! And they have an Android app too!

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#117

Post by userbinator »

That keyboard looks somewhat alright at first, and you can sort of see where the buttons are for the most part, but the comma and full stop really makes me uncertain about where the borders between the keys are, and that's not a good thing for a touch UI - it's uncertain enough for people with fat fingers. Is it too much to ask for to have some lines separating the keys? On the other hand, someone will certainly propose that the spacebar should really be completely blank...

Wasn't one of the most important UI guidelines for a long time "things that behave like buttons should look like buttons"? The term "mystery meat navigation" was invented to describe the effects of not following this; it's even more difficult with a touchscreen as you cannot "hover" over UI elements to discover if they're clickable.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#118

Post by hackmiester »

theGimp wrote: post #81
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…

The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs Go into Chrome's settings and restore them.

I don't think users should have to tick the "behave in a less broken way" box.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#119

Post by lukeschlather »

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…

> It's been proven that they are helpful for users

Proven how? With first-time users? Phones are things where I want to pull it out of my pocket, do the thing I want to do, and have it take the absolute minimal amount of time. I don't think this is a techie thing. Even non-techies are willing to take a little more time to learn an interface if it means they can spend a few seconds less to send a message. That said, if I have a device that can send a message quickly, I don't want to pull it out of my pocket and find out I have to re-learn how to do it. I don't care if the interface is better - I want a 5-year interface, not a 5-month interface.

When you make statements like "helpful for users" you can't stop at a simple focus group. You have to think about how added complexity hurts the reliability and speed of the device.

It seems standard that phones older than 1 year are getting slower and slower. I've had the same Android phone for about 22 months, and it's been getting unusably slow (mostly, Google Apps (Gmail, Maps, Hangouts) take between 10-15 seconds to open on a white screen.) I'm willing to believe the hardware has degraded over the time I've had the phone. But primarily, I think software has been pushed out that was designed for flagship phones released in the past 8 months without looking at the performance impact.

This is not the kind of innovation we need.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#120

Post by pja »

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.

K9 Mail is the traditional answer to this problem. Google never put very much effort into the Android Mail App because they wanted to push you into using GMail. That said, Email still works fine in KitKat - why did you have to switch to the GMail App?
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