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Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

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Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#161

Post by Timwi »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #117

Dark patterns are certainly evil. I don't think they help the company in the long run. However, I just went on a sort of browser deep dive for the best browser on windows and came away, surprisingly, with edge. The requirements were vertical tabs, keep my chrome extensions, and got out of my way. Brave, firefox, chrome, and vivaldi all had issues that couldn't be resolved in the UI. For example, firefox's tree style…

> firefox's tree style tabs still kinda requires that you keep the top tabs for some uses.

Hm, I've been using Tree Style Tabs for many years without the top tabs visible and I've never needed them back.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#162

Post by ARandomerDude »

barbs wrote: post #51
noduerme wrote: post #35

MacOS allows you to "hard click" (long click) a text selection in any application, which pops up a bubble that lets you do a web search for that phrase. But the search only launches Safari. I wasted at least a couple hours scouring boards and kext files, screwing with automation macros, trying to find a way to make this potentially helpful shortcut not open Safari, but instead open Firefox. Eventually I just gave up.…

It's bullshit like this that makes linux attractive.

I always think this, then remember I also like sound, Bluetooth, and low-power sleep.

Maybe 2025 will be the year of the Linux desktop.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#163

Post by ARandomerDude »

hilbert42 wrote: post #61

When the fuck is this going to stop! Microsoft lost this monopolizing tactic in a court case decades ago. It seems either no one remembers this fact or that Microsoft hopes it's so. Regulators will you please damn-well regulate. In simple English, do your fucking job.

Get help, man. Don’t let the internet make you this angry.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#164

Post by frizlab »

lolinder wrote: post #150
atribecalledqst wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI -- on my MBP I use a program called Spectacle to snap windows around, and I now have no complaints relative to what you can do on Windows. Development on Spectacle ceased[1] and it looks like the community may have rallied around an open-source program called Rectangle, which is open source. At least, judging from this single Reddit thread lol: https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/kazpcn/spectacle_alter... [1] A…

I use Rectangle and still have complaints about Mac window management. Rectangle itself is great, but it's discernably a patch over a bad window management paradigm, and the awkwardness underneath pretty regularly shows through. As just one example—the dock is atrocious for a browser-centric workflow. I only ever have 2 "apps" open at a time, but I have 6 Firefox windows and 2 IDE windows, and remembering where I put…

*bad window management for you Believe it or not, some people actually do like to have free moving windows and such.

Also you seem to be ignorant of a lot of features of macOS, like cmd-tab, focus an app, cmd-up arrow to show the windows of the app, and so forth. Or swipe down from the trackpad on a Dock icon to show the windows of the app.

Anyway, YMMV as always. Personally I find the window management atrocious not because of the way it was designed, which definitely works for me (and I hate the Windows’ one), but because of the bugs which they insist on never ever fixing…

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#165

Post by user234683 »

6c696e7578 wrote: post #98
epolanski wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL2, power toys and hands down the best window management of any OS, I hate working on my MBP just due to the difficulty of managing different windows and aligning them on the same desktop.

Probably seems weird to you, but I've never got on with the Windows UI. There's too many things that steal focus. I've been XFCE for too many years now, but it doesn't change significantly that I find I have to invest time learning what's changed. There used to be a 'tile windows' since windows 2.0 or something like that, but it did just that, splatted the windows to take up all the space. One thing I like about X11…

I rarely get focus stolen on Windows 10. They now make it very difficult for applications to do this (see the allowed conditions here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/... ). In contrast, focus stealing is a way of life on XFCE, and I just have to put up with it. The settings they recommend to fix it don't actually help.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#166

Post by Sprocklem »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #162
barbs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bullshit like this that makes linux attractive.

I always think this, then remember I also like sound, Bluetooth, and low-power sleep. Maybe 2025 will be the year of the Linux desktop.

Support for the other two may vary based on hardware, but sound seems to have mostly been solved by pipewire.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#167

Post by kuchenbecker »

atribecalledqst wrote: post #111
epolanski wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL2, power toys and hands down the best window management of any OS, I hate working on my MBP just due to the difficulty of managing different windows and aligning them on the same desktop.

FYI -- on my MBP I use a program called Spectacle to snap windows around, and I now have no complaints relative to what you can do on Windows. Development on Spectacle ceased[1] and it looks like the community may have rallied around an open-source program called Rectangle, which is open source. At least, judging from this single Reddit thread lol: https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/kazpcn/spectacle_alter... [1] A…

I use BetterSnapTool.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#168

Post by m2mdas2 »

doix wrote: post #53
gbxyz wrote: post #20

I kind of get the vibe that Mozilla is laying the groundworks for Microsoft vs Netscape Round II - or at least some kind of antitrust litigation.

I really wish they'd go after Apple and Safari. Safari is basically the modern day IE. Whenever I do anything slightly weird, I'm fairly confident it works in chrome/Firefox and almost sure that it's broken in safari. The fact that you can't test on Safari without osx is insane. Some bugs can be reproduced in other WebKit browsers (I test with epiphany) but some are safari only. Not to mention the fact that Safari is…

They won't. They already have given both Apple and Google pass when chrome was launched or when smartphones took of. Mozilla sees Microsoft as devil's incarnation while Google and Apple are the ally in their holy war.

I am saying this as a developer who was using Firefox since firebug v0.8 era.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#169

Post by ryandrake »

squigz wrote: post #89
p0nce wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, Windows 11 came with many things I've wanted for years: - notepad with tabs - shell UI with tabs, VT-100 support and ability to replace the shell - Paint.net with AI - even Windbg has massively improved

Ahhh, tabs... it only took 40 years!

I sometimes think I’m the only person in the universe who doesn’t prefer tabs. I already have a way to manage multiple windows worth of content: my OS’s Window Manager. Why would I want every application I run to also implement its own custom window management—visually and functionally inconsistent from every other application’s custom window management?

I feel applications that do tabs are just like applications that do their own custom quirky File-Open dialog even though my OS provides a standard one.

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