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Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

lukew.com

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Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#141

Post by brudgers »

EStudley wrote: post #130
brudgers wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What day do you want to travel?" > NoGUI.

I get the simplicity, but I really disagree that visual aspects of a website/program are not "something useful". I would bet that a well designed and clean GUI would be easier to use for a large percent of the population than text alone..

Why can I use a cookie rather than a GUI to log into HackerNews? Why can I use Oauth to log into StackOverflow? Would it be better if we all had to use a keyboard wudgut?

The idea that GUI's are great was good forty years ago when men worried about catching typing-pool-koodies from keyboards; college students would hire typists to turn longhand drafts into print on a page; and the only form of search was query and that query happened over a circuit based network on a mainframe running a non-relational database. Now we've all got a Cray in our pocket yet the industry is breeding faster horses.

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#142

Post by michaelt »

err4nt wrote: post #119
Lewton wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I try to zoom, it is already a demonstration that your design does not work for me on my device What? There's plenty of reasons to zoom even if the design is perfect.

Are you able to articulate 5 or more of those plentiful reasons? The reasons I can think you would desire to zoom in on a legible, functional, accessible website would be for curiosity, or to see a detail closer and admire the layout. There are details like this in apps all the time and I screenshot it and zoom in on my screenshot. Those are interests (I want to see that closer) that are separate concerns from me usi…

  Are you able to articulate 5 
  or more of those plentiful reasons?
At times I have zoomed in or out because:

1. I'm further away from the screen, because my screen is large.

2. I'm further away from the screen, because I am showing a website to a friend or colleague.

3. I'm displaying the site on a projector, and people at the back of the room say they can't see.

4. I'm viewing a website on my colleague's high-dpi display, which she uses at native resolution.

5. I'm viewing a website on my phone while being driven somewhere, and the ride's a bit bumpy so I don't want the text too small.

6. I have a comparatively low-end phone, that most people don't seem to test for; sometimes the live suggestion dropdown for a text box is obscured by my on-screen keyboard.

7. I have a comparatively high-end phone, and I'm not moving around, and I'd like to have more of the article on my screen.

8. I have a comparatively high-end phone, with a high-dpi display, and the page I'm reading just seems to have rendered everything quite small.

9. The website designer has opted for a skinny font I'm having trouble reading.

10. The website designer has decided a feature is unimportant and should be visually unimportant (maybe a link to some terms and conditions, or an EULA or something like that) but I want to be the judge of that.

11. My eyes are tired.

12. My eyes are fine, but I've had a few drinks and things aren't quite as crisp as they usually are.

TLDR: if a user in a test group says "I'm having trouble reading that text" would you say "No you're not"? Of course you wouldn't, it would be ridiculous to do that, the user has first-hand perfectly accurate information you don't have access to. And yet, when a user expresses that they're having trouble reading the text by zooming, and you disable zooming, that's exactly what you're doing.

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#143

Post by tajen »

err4nt wrote: post #118
DanBC wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing you list is a justification for disabling zoom. You can do all of that while allowing users to zoom.

Nothing in my list was meant to be a justification for disabling zoom. My justifcation for that is: I am a formally trained designer and I design UI properly for the devices and hardware my projects are intended to be accessed with. The other stuff I mentioned were just other examples of things 'from the frontline' that I do to optionally enhance the site for mobile users with no effect on desktop. I design everythin…

Please stop disabling zoom, period.

You mention you are properly trained. Who trained you, so we can fix them too ;) ? (joking)

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#144

Post by brudgers »

NathanCH wrote: post #139
brudgers wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What day do you want to travel?" > NoGUI.

User: I want to travel the last week of august. So, your program needs to calculate what date that is, or the user is will need to look at an external calendar (Windows GUI) to determine which date that is.

So, your program needs to calculate what date that is

Yes it does, Qnd that is harder for the programmer and easier for the user. Calendar wudguts suck for:

   > last week of august next year.
Twenty years ago parsing user input and calculating a date was resource constrained and ambiguity was expensive because the query was hitting Sabre on some mainframe. Today we've got gigahertz and gigabytes in our pockets and we're wired up at megabit speeds to caches and CDN's and search tools with autocompletion (Windows Intellisense)

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#145

Post by err4nt »

DanBC wrote: post #136
err4nt wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't my user pleas, and these users haven't even seen my sites. We do listen to our users, and there absolutely IS such thing as licensing in this industry: http://www.rgd.ca/

> http://www.rgd.ca/ Does it change your mind at all that you linked to a zoomable site? EDIT: and an organisation that produced accessibility guides that tell you not to disable zoom? http://rgd-accessibledesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/R... > any low-vision users have software-based screen magnifiers. Sometimes they augment the magnifier with text-to-speech software when reading longer passages of text. [...]…

>Does it change your mind at all that you linked to a zoomable site?

No, I said I decide based on the needs of the project and which devices will be supported which META tag makes the most sense. Not 100% of my projects disable zooming, and I don't believe 100% of sites should disable zooming. Zooming is a useful feature added to mobile browser that does serve a purpose: to allow the user to navigate a site that was designed without their device/hardware in mind. It's good at what it does, but it's not better than a properly designed site (whatever that means). My job is to figure out for each project what a properly designed site means, and for the big web-app type projects that make the most money, having zooming disabled allows me to deliver a better experience I couldn't with zooming enabled.

But I didn't link to the RGD.ca site to help prove my case, my learning comes from actually doing web development, not what an organization says is best practice. Mine comes from hundreds of hours of specializing in making sites that dont support mobile convert more users. People hire me because I help them reach more mobile customers, and I make a fraction of the money I make for my clients by supporting mobile better.

I posted the link to the Registered Graphic Designers site because the commenter above me said:

> If designers were actually licensed, I think that disabling zoom should be an offense that results in a 2-year revocation of design license.

Here where I live if you're RGD you get letters after your name like a dentist or reverend. So a little education before speaking can help keep the conversation on a contructive path.

I listen to my users and none have complained about zooming where zooming has been disabled. There are voices here offering opinions and I do actually care about their reasons.

Please, tell me the reasons why zooming on a legible, usable design is necessary. Explain your side of things, downvotes and ad hominems aren't constructive, and there is value in this conversation being had. Why is this conversation being treated like spam? Here's your chance to tell the guy who makes mobile sites the way they are how you wish they were different and all you want to do is stop others from seeing that I'm listening here on HN?

I'd appreciate any constructive input on the pain points of using mobile sites. Today's work includes taking a credit card form designes in 2009 and making it work on mobile. Seriously, if there's valuable insight you have that I can use to make this easier for you I'm all ears.

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#146

Post by brudgers »

shogun21 wrote: post #87
ff_ wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I firmly believe that in a short time computers will predict all of those little things really well. Let's see.

There will always be cases when the computer predicts wrong and the user will need a way to edit/correct the result.

That seems orthogonal to NoGUI.

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#147

Post by lelandbatey »

err4nt wrote: post #132
epistasis wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screenshotting is something that almost nobody knows how to do. And even if everybody did know how to screenshot, it's so much slower and inefficient that it's a completely unacceptable replacement for the natural, and designed zoom interface.

> Screenshotting is something that almost nobody knows how to do I got a really good laugh at this one, a cursory glance of user-generated content online shows tons of people not only know how to screenshot their devices, but are quite adept at figuring out how to share those screenshots with each other and the world.

The people that are taking those screenshots to generate that content make up a tiny minority of users. Most people don't know how to screenshot, and the basic point that you shouldn't have to take a screenshot to zoom into a page is still a good one.

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#148

Post by brudgers »

yesimahuman wrote: post #72
brudgers wrote: post #45

GUI's embody micromanagement as a virtue. GUI's in general should be a last resort. Computers are supposed to do our work automatically. Barring that, by delegation. Making rounded corners and gradients is easier than making something useful. that's why it gets so much attention. NoGUI.

...as he (probably) posts to HN through a web GUI

I used a browser and a keyboard to hit the address bar and enter the URI and type my comment. Logging into HN did not required HTTPS, not GUI.

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#149

Post by DanBC »

err4nt wrote: post #145
DanBC wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> http://www.rgd.ca/ Does it change your mind at all that you linked to a zoomable site? EDIT: and an organisation that produced accessibility guides that tell you not to disable zoom? http://rgd-accessibledesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/R... > any low-vision users have software-based screen magnifiers. Sometimes they augment the magnifier with text-to-speech software when reading longer passages of text. [...]…

>Does it change your mind at all that you linked to a zoomable site? No, I said I decide based on the needs of the project and which devices will be supported which META tag makes the most sense. Not 100% of my projects disable zooming, and I don't believe 100% of sites should disable zooming. Zooming is a useful feature added to mobile browser that does serve a purpose: to allow the user to navigate a site that was…

I have no idea why you would add css that diasbles zoom.

Do everything you currently do, but don't add "user-scalable=0" to the css. Doing so provides no benefit to anyone, but does make your pages harder to use for a large section of users.

You still haven't listed the benefits of disabling zoom.

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#150

Post by cleaver »

Lewton wrote: post #134
err4nt wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to articulate 5 or more of those plentiful reasons? The reasons I can think you would desire to zoom in on a legible, functional, accessible website would be for curiosity, or to see a detail closer and admire the layout. There are details like this in apps all the time and I screenshot it and zoom in on my screenshot. Those are interests (I want to see that closer) that are separate concerns from me usi…

1. desirability to look at content more closely 2. see above 3. see above 4. see above 5. see above

For me:

1. I'm old enough to need reading glasses. 2. etc.

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