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Sanding UI

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: Sanding UI

#151

Post by dsissitka »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #118
xyst wrote: post #80

I wonder what’s the most polished or “sanded” UI out there? You would think FAANG would have a half decent UI and UX with the amount of money they have. But anybody that has used Amazon.com or AWS, GCP, or even Azure would beg to differ. Personally, off the top of my head. The most polished UI/UX has to be “mcmaster.com”. I can find anything I need in what seems like a couple minutes. Compare this to big box stores l…

FastMail has one of the best-feeling web apps I've ever used. It's incredibly snappy and I never encountered any bugs while using it. They raised the bar for what I thought a web app could achieve.

I think the only thing I really dislike about Fastmail's UI is they've hidden the "Report phishing" and "Report spam" links and they're in two completely different places.

Re: Sanding UI

#152

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

fhdsgbbcaA wrote: post #101
meowface wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is cool and very polished, but my advice (which may not resonate with you) is that you should channel this attitude into some user-facing app instead of letting it basically go to waste on a personal website most people won't see or won't use for more than a second or two.

It may surprise you, but some people like to program computers for reason other than money. Makes no sense right? Weirdos, all of them!

Yes, but you can make free apps for a wider audience. Or even just useful apps for yourself.

Can do what pleases you though. I sometimes work on intentionally useless apps just to try things out, but the idea is always to carry those ideas over to some app that has some purpose.

Re: Sanding UI

#153

Post by smokel »

This is a great example of where unit testing does not apply.

I see many developers get caught up in rituals, and polishing (and monkey testing for that matter) seem to go against a reproducible approach, and are therefore frowned upon and even ignored. Still, it is a much more powerful technique to get something both working and user friendly.

Investing in developers to spot that something is 3 pixels off, or the basic idea that different users have different tastes, can be very productive.

Re: Sanding UI

#154

Post by dataviz1000 »

smokel wrote: post #153

This is a great example of where unit testing does not apply. I see many developers get caught up in rituals, and polishing (and monkey testing for that matter) seem to go against a reproducible approach, and are therefore frowned upon and even ignored. Still, it is a much more powerful technique to get something both working and user friendly. Investing in developers to spot that something is 3 pixels off, or the ba…

It is also very easy to develop systematic automated ways to do this with tools like Playwright and Nut.js.

Re: Sanding UI

#155

Post by robinsonb5 »

arendtio wrote: post #119
kmoser wrote: post #18

My beliefs in the same vein: - If you think you've found all the bugs, look again. - If you think you've just fixed a bug, test again. - If you think your program is done, you're wrong.

While I agree with the first two, the third is a problem. Yes, you can always extend your program, but should you? The more code and functionality you include, the harder it becomes to maintain. Finding the point where your software is so round or complete that you can call it done is somewhat of an art. You can undoubtedly add stuff beyond that point, but I won't improve the software in the long term.

Quite the opposite - a design (in general, not just software) isn't done until you can't take anything else away from it.

I've coined the term Bonsai Software here before, but I do like the sanding analogy. In the last week I've spent way more leisure time than could be considered sensible writing some user-interface code for the Amiga, in order to make defining the UI in future projects as simple and elegant as possible!

Re: Sanding UI

#157

Post by handsclean »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #154
smokel wrote: post #153

This is a great example of where unit testing does not apply. I see many developers get caught up in rituals, and polishing (and monkey testing for that matter) seem to go against a reproducible approach, and are therefore frowned upon and even ignored. Still, it is a much more powerful technique to get something both working and user friendly. Investing in developers to spot that something is 3 pixels off, or the ba…

It is also very easy to develop systematic automated ways to do this with tools like Playwright and Nut.js.

Ok, how would you use Playwright and Nut.js to discover the OP’s “splinter”? Note I’m specifically asking about discovery, not testing for it once you already know what to look for.

Re: Sanding UI

#158

Post by exe34 »

fhdsgbbcaA wrote: post #101
meowface wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is cool and very polished, but my advice (which may not resonate with you) is that you should channel this attitude into some user-facing app instead of letting it basically go to waste on a personal website most people won't see or won't use for more than a second or two.

It may surprise you, but some people like to program computers for reason other than money. Makes no sense right? Weirdos, all of them!

I think it's perfect. Art should be completely useless and yet spark joy - this one does both!

Re: Sanding UI

#159

Post by emsimot »

marcosdumay wrote: post #65
christophilus wrote: post #62

I generally wrap my radios inside of the label for this reason. Is there a reason not to do that?

AFAIK, the only reason to use the label's `for` is when you want to place it in a different place from the widget.

It also helps with accessibility, screen readers etc

Re: Sanding UI

#160

Post by rafram »

robin_reala wrote: post #123
ddtaylor wrote: post #29

The goto tactic for this specific ` ` problem is: Foo

Even with nesting you still need for/id attributes to make it accessible to common voice command software: https://www.tpgi.com/should-form-labels-be-wrapped-or-separa...

That’s the voice control software’s problem.
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