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Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

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Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#231

Post by falcor84 »

irishcoffee wrote: post #125
layer8 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decades ago, Return and Enter were two different keys for that reason: Return to insert a line break, Enter to submit your input. Given the reduction to a single key, the traditional GUI rule is that Enter in a multiline/multi-paragraph input doesn’t submit like it does in other contexts, but inserts a line break (or paragraph break), while Ctrl+Enter submits. Chat apps, where single-paragraph content is the typical…

Carriage return and line feed go way back. Tty stands for teletype. A computer was the job description of a person. It’s turtles all the way down.

What lower turtles were there? My impression was that teletypes were the first proper keyboard-based interfaces.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#232

Post by no-name-here »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #195
cratermoon wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't get me started on backspace vs delete...

not just that ... plenty of web apps (and maybe desktop native ones too, though I don't notice it as much there) use "smart-delete" - if the cursor has a character after it, the delete key deletes it, but if not, it operates like backspace (which ought to be labelled "delete prev").

I haven’t happened to have seen that - which web apps do it?

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#233

Post by skydhash »

lmm wrote: post #229
weitendorf wrote: post #155

Guys, I found out about this technology called Cascading Style Sheets recently and I think it's the missing piece we've been looking for. It lets you declaratively specify layout in a composable, hierarchical system based on something called the Document Object Model in a way that minimizes both clientside and serverside processing, based on these things called "stylesheets". The best part is, it's super easy to cust…

> Cascading Style Sheets recently and I think it's the missing piece we've been looking for. It lets you declaratively specify layout in a composable, hierarchical system based on something called the Document Object Model in a way that minimizes both clientside and serverside processing, based on these things called "stylesheets" I tried that and it was an absolute nightmare. There was no way to tell where a given s…

> There was no way to tell where a given style is used from, or even if it's used at all

It's pretty easy. Open the inspector, select an element and you will find all the styles that apply. If you didn't try to be fancy and use weird build tools, you will also get the name of the file and the line number (and maybe navigation to the line itself). In Firefox, there's even a live editor for the selected element and the CSS file.

> if the DOM hierarchy changes then your styles all change randomly

Also styles are semantics like:

- The default appearance of links should be: ...

- All links in the article section should also be: ...

- The links inside a blockquote should also be: ...

- If a link has a class 'popup' it should be: ...

- The link identified as 'login' should be: ...

There's a section on MDN about how to ensure those rules are applied in the wanted order[1].

This way, your styles shouldn't need updates that often unless you change the semantics of your DOM.

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Guides/Casc...

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#234

Post by powvans »

AgentEpsilon wrote: post #91
uhoh-itsmaciek wrote: post #58

In text boxes in some applications, enter submits the entered text, and ctrl-enter forces a newline (not at my computer, but I think Slack does this). In others, it's the other way around (pretty sure GitHub does this for comments). I don't know how we got here and I don't know how to fix it, but "bring back idiomatic design" doesn't help when we don't have enough idioms. I'm not even sure if those two behaviors are…

Teams does both - normally it’s Enter to submit and Shift+Enter for a new line, but when you open the formatting tools it switches. They at least do have a message indicating which key combo inputs a new line, but it still gets me on occasion.

Teams is insane. You want a new entry in a bulleted list? Hit the enter key. If you dare.

I had managed to be on Slack exclusively for at least 10 years. Recent acquisition has me using Teams and it's hilarious to see for the first time what people have been complaining about. I thought surely people are exaggerating. No, no they are not.

It only took a couple weeks for me to figure out that I would have to compose longer messages somewhere else and then paste them into Teams.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#235

Post by hexasquid »

LunicLynx wrote: post #5
foobarbecue wrote: post #2

Lately I've occasionally been running into round check boxes that look like radio buttons. Why????

UX want to put their own spin on things. I’ve noticed this repeatedly. UX has gotten from something with a cause to being the cause for something

In 20 years of front-end web development I've never encountered a designer willing to use standard form controls. I assume they exist.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#236

Post by JoeyJoJoJr »

nkrisc wrote: post #17
teeray wrote: post #12

> There are hundreds of ways that different websites ask you to pick dates Ugh, date pickers. So many of these violently throw up when I try to do the obvious thing: type in the damn date. Instead they force me to click through their inane menu, as if the designer wanted to force me into a showcase of their work. Let your power users type. Just call your user’s attention back to the field if they accidentally typed 0…

Is 03/04/2026 March 4th or the 3rd of April? If you have an international audience that’s going to mess someone up. Better yet require YYYY-MM-DD.

A partial solution is to put DD/MM/YYYY (or the appropriate format) as the input placeholder. You could also display the format as a tooltip when the input field is focused. IMO this is better than dealing with date pickers.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#238

Post by hexasquid »

wffurr wrote: post #157

The number of JavaScript dropdown replacements that don't work correctly with the keyboard is stunning. It always amazes me how many forms fail at this basic usability aspect. The browser has homogeneous form controls built in, just use them!

This needs to be built into figma and taught to product managers. FE devs are telling each other this all the time (mentioned in every single FE conference), but most of the time

- they don't get to make this decision - they fail when pushing back - Hacker News eventually blames the FE dev

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#239

Post by Eji1700 »

JojoFatsani wrote: post #24

Most software is not designed by intelligent and thoughtful people anymore. It is designed by hastily promoted middle manager PM/Product type people who, as has been mentioned elsewhere, simply were not around when thoughtful human interface design was borderline mandatory for efficiency’s sake. There is incompetence and there is also malevolence in the encouragement of dark patterns by the revenue side of the busine…

> Most software is not designed by intelligent and thoughtful people anymore.

Eh nostalgia/survivorship bias. Not saying that you're wrong about the shift to shoving it out door for a PM, but "nerd who is adamant THEIR layout is the only one" wasn't exactly the heyday of software design either.

I'm still of the opinion most people should get more comfortable with layers and smaller keyboards, but I've also met the linux nerds who swear the world NEEDS insert.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#240

Post by glerk »

One trend that I can’t stand currently is the obsession with keyboard shortcuts everywhere even to the point of overriding browser defaults. Cmd+F focusing on the site’s search input instead of letting me search in the page with the browser’s search functionality (looking at you github and Linear).

I generally don’t need any fancy keyboard shortcuts on a website. I have a mouse, I can just click around.

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