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Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

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Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#181

Post by brudgers »

simoncion wrote: post #167
brudgers wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

You suggest that we use CLIs for pretty much every task? I -happily- spend most of my day in one CLI or another, but there are many, many things for which interactive graphical display of information is just the best choice. If you never have done so, find a copy of Edward Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information". You really need to find a professionally-printed dead-tree version; computer screens sti…

I bought my copy of Tufte almost 25 years ago (11th printing 1991). I see the $34.00 price sticker is still on the rear of the dust jacket and living within is the Graphics Press advertising collateral. Tufte is a good starting point, remove what is unnecessary. One "7/19/15" is a better user experience than three wudguts with 12-31 items each.

["Koodies" alliterates better with "keyboard" more Carrollingean like "wudguts".]

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#182

Post by err4nt »

DanBC wrote: post #149
err4nt wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

User scaling is more than just the zoom gesture, it's a different way of controlling the web page in Mobile Safari, and because of these differences the user experience is quite different. With User Scaling enabled, you can use the zoom gesture, pinch gesture, or double-tap gesture to scale the viewport.

But how does Mobile Safari know the difference between a single-tap and a double-tap? By waiting 300ms after the first tap to see if you tap again!

By disabling user scaling, yes the zoom gesture (and pinch gesture) no longer scale the viewport, BUT Mobile Safari also stops delaying all tap input 300ms to wait for a double-tap. that means every link you tap, every button you press, every field you highlight, and every other interaction with the site goes much faster and smoother.

Faster tap response time = a better user experience. Even if the site was 100% responsive, when I turn user scaling off Mobile Safari just works faster than with a fully responsive, scaled and accurately displayed site where Mobile Safari is waiting to tell single-taps from double-taps.

I know for some people 300ms doesn't sound like a lot, but for us it would translate into a loss of at least $,$$$ annually if not $$,$$$ due to the loss of those mobile users due to a 'non-responsive' site in a different way: time.

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#183

Post by err4nt »

abakker wrote: post #178
err4nt wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there some technical barrier for not enabling zoom? “Safari on iOS displays webpages at a scale that works for most web content originally designed for the desktop. If these default settings don’t work for your webpages, it is highly recommended that you change the settings by configuring the viewport. You especially need to configure the viewport if you are designing webpages specifically for iOS.” https://deve…

OK, so you're suggesting that we not enable a "usability feature" because Apple's guidelines suggest that there are alternative ways to specify the correct viewport? I get the design angle, and I don't disagree that setting the correct viewport is a good idea, but you shouldn't assume that good design and correctly setting the viewport will work for everybody. The fact remains that the zoom gesture is critical on mob…

> K, so you're suggesting that we not enable a "usability feature" because Apple's guidelines suggest that there are alternative ways to specify the correct viewport?

No that's the opposite of what I'm saying. Apple has created a usability feature called 'User Scaling' and enabled it by default for usability purposes. Apple also added the tags that control the viewport, including disabling User Scaling, and strongly urges designers & developers to do two things:

1) Design your site with iOS users and hardware in mind

2) Use the correct viewport tag that gives the best experience

> On responsive sites, the idea behind them is that the site does its best guess of being responsive based on the size of the viewport.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. There's not much guessing going on here, you are either able to define the viewport, or it will render the page at the widths specified in the page styles. If you have defined the viewport there is no guessing involved and it will render the same way from device to device.

> sometimes the websites behavior isn't as intended, sometimes the designer didn't test with my exact device, size, eyesight, etc.

Chances are I didn't test with your exact device, but when I style things I have a set of rules and tools that help ensure that the same content renders the same way anywhere. If I tested only against released hardware then my sites wouldn't be future-proof. I design my stuff to work on all screen sizes smaller and larger than would be in use today so it not only shows up the same everywhere, but will continue to show up the same on devices released years from today.

I also regularly test on quirky hardware like PS Vita, and anything else with a browser that I can get my hands on just to make sure there aren't any weird bugs or edge cases.

http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/04/a_pixel_is_n...

Here's a real-world case study: a friend had a sign up funnel and was tracking 900 different mobile devices on his site. On my main gig we have 1,300+ different devices a month! I put my responsive and mobile polish on top of his existing site and we moved the needle on signups 2% since then, and that change has lasted. Clearly, whatever I'm doing it making it easier for mobile users to get in the door with their dollars, and I have the numbers to vouch for that!

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#184

Post by bonif »

bite_victim wrote: post #44
deanclatworthy wrote: post #7

There is a small irony that when reading an article about mobile UX, the website has disabled zoom meaning I can't actually see any of the images in the article.

Yes, the internet is full of these so called experts. How do they end up being upvoted here is telling about the quality of the average reader unfortunately. Sorry if I am hurting feelings here but it is true. You have to be a special flake if you think this is quality content. So please, go ahead with your reactions, they speak volumes about who exactly is the gross of HN.

You're talking about yourself. If you had the opportunity to actually read HN for some time, you'd know there is no "average" here. None of us can be an expert in every field, but the level of knowledge you can find on HN is something I've never seen before

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#185

Post by bonif »

warbastard wrote: post #74
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.

While I agree with your point that computers should do the most they can to take the work out of things for the user, the flight search example used in the article is exactly the sort of thing that at some point you're likely to need to input. It's a plan that the user has that they want to action. While you could use voice recognition or call a person to do the same, some people are probably going to want to type it…

This would be the perfect use case for SIRI (or alternatives), but we're still a little far from that.

"I want to fly from X to Y in the first week of september"

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#186

Post by err4nt »

cleaver wrote: post #150
Lewton wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you have poor eyesight, are you aware that you have the option of increasing the font-size device-wide in your device settings?

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#187

Post by JupiterMoon »

iopq wrote: post #68
andrewingram wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think an average computer user fills out forms using just the keyboard? I'm a developer and I still use the mouse.

Do you think I can guess where "United States" is in your country dropdown? Oh, it's the sixth country, even though everything else is alphabetic order, but Sweden is on top because apparently you're based in Sweden and so is Denmark and Norway because apparently you have a lot of customers there. But I'm supposed to know this while looking under U and seeing "United States minor islands"? It's really annoying, I jus…

Try being British. Things have standardised a lot in the last few years but the UK ends up all over the place on drop downs.

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#188

Post by simoncion »

brudgers wrote: post #176
simoncion wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that even Lynx is properly considered a GUI? It's a text-mode GUI, but a GUI nonetheless. Edit: To figure out where you're coming from: do you consider text editors like vim, nano, and pico to be GUIs or CLIs? Why do you hold this opinion?

Ed is a visual line editor, and if that's a GUI then we can stop talking about PARC and just agree that Brainfuck is as good as Python via Turing Completeness while we're at it. If it's the turtles all the way down, any blinking light becomes a GUI, for what is a pixel?

I never brought up ed. You're not a good troll, you try too hard.

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#189

Post by err4nt »

tajen wrote: post #143
err4nt wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

My training was in graphic design, and the web training we got in college was behind where I was self-taught in web before getting to college, they only covered the basics.

By leaving the User Scaling on, the browser slows down all of your taps 300ms to wait and see if your single-tap is really a double-tap to scale the page. By disabling User Scaling, your interactions are read as soon as you make them, leaving you a much improved experience due to 'page reposnsiveness'. With user-scaling on, and a proper responsive design, there's no need to slow down every tap every user makes on the site 300ms just in case some users want to occasionally scale the page instead of finding another way to accomplish what they want.

Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort

#190

Post by chronomex »

brudgers wrote: post #144
NathanCH wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'r…

And yet we still have to manually query every combination of departure and return dates to find reasonable airfare.
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