Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

lobste.rs

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 326 posts

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#311

Post by pbhjpbhj »

msujaws wrote: post #239
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I help people out with their computers and I run updates (pretty much everyone I go to stay with!) they always complain if there's been a change in the UI at all - "why's that button moved?" "where's my favourites?" "how do I access my inbox now?" "why does it keep popping up that thing?" ... I'd really like to see some respect for this from people like Firefox - "we won't move any major UI elements or update th…

As a front-end engineer who works on desktop Firefox for Mozilla, I think we have actually held to your "no major redesigns more than once every 2 years" request ;) Australis was a UI change that we don't anticipate doing more than once every two years. We recognize the costs of doing so, for users, add-on devs, and Mozilla devs.

I've recently updated to 33 (on Linux and Windows) and had my startpage altered - hid a lot of the site links, added an unwanted search form. It did add a new cog, which usually means settings but in this case is a toggle for the pinned sites (completely breaking the expected standard-through-use, offering no affordance as to it's action, contradicting the use of the cog to access preferences).

Since the Firebird days I've been using FF (on and off, I had a dalliance with Opera, Chrome, some other variants) and even I had to first search what the newtab page was even called (I forget now, it doesn't tell me anywhere in the UI) then having read a few posts I noticed that some people had different size site links and tried scroll-zoom and so returned to my default of 3 x 5 sites shown.

It's tiny things like this - you open your browser and newtab has been altered (to make way for adverts in this case) and smack there you are. It's not "your" browser it's the company that offered the upgrade, it's theirs now .. until you can claw it back again. Then the next upgrade comes, some security fix and you apply it with trepidation.

Is it really 2 years since the addon bar was removed, the big orange menu button was removed and the new "burger" menu link was added, the new config for the menu link, the streamlined tabs, the removal of the menubar, tabs moved above the address bar. Time flies?¹

[Looking it seems the major Australis changes (removal of addon bar for example) came in 2013, this thread is full of rants against changing the UI and moving towards Chrome https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2013/05/27/major-compatibili...]

¹ - I genuinely don't remember. I also used to use fixes/addons to have a compact menu with chrome removed (using KDE settings) so I'm not clear on default UI.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#312

Post by archagon »

protomyth wrote: post #309
archagon wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it doesn't do that if all your tabs fit in the window, right? It only happens once you run out of space, and at that point you need to do something .

yes, and that something is to scrunch the right side not one tab to the left of the left side. Act like every other program on the platform using tabs.

Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, that's a bit annoying, and they should probably scrunch on the left, but I think the pros of the new UI outweigh the cons.

Also, the behavior is the same as the previous version of Safari, and Finder, at least, behaves the same way.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#313

Post by yuriks »

mdwrigh2 wrote: post #229
yuriks wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The transitions the author is probably complaining about are menu transitions: Every time you tap on a menu item you get a outward radial animation thing. It looks tacky but, more importantly, adds a half-second delay to every menu interaction .

> It looks tacky but, more importantly, adds a half-second delay to every menu interaction. No, it really doesn't. It's just an animation running in the RenderThread while the new Activity is loading on the UI (main) thread.

Are you speaking with any authority? I know this is a thing that can be done, but it doesn't seem to me that it is actually what's happening: It's interesting that the delay seems to be always constant, exactly as long as the animation, and was introduced only in this release. Such a coincidence.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#314

Post by yuriks »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #174
hackmiester wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think users should have to tick the "behave in a less broken way" box.

Except the new way works better, and casual users who are used to the concept of 'an app for everything' won't mind...

Most casual users (family, non-tech saavy people) that I've seen don't even use the task switch button. They go to the home screen and then open whatever app they want, even if it ought to be in the task list already most of the time.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#315

Post by mdwrigh2 »

yuriks wrote: post #313
mdwrigh2 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It looks tacky but, more importantly, adds a half-second delay to every menu interaction. No, it really doesn't. It's just an animation running in the RenderThread while the new Activity is loading on the UI (main) thread.

Are you speaking with any authority? I know this is a thing that can be done, but it doesn't seem to me that it is actually what's happening: It's interesting that the delay seems to be always constant, exactly as long as the animation, and was introduced only in this release. Such a coincidence.

This is actually how it works.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#316

Post by ajcarpy2005 »

nilkn wrote: post #279
ajcarpy2005 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usefulness does not increase linearly with increased feature interface/interaction complexity. Usually it's the opposite.

That's a very general statement which hasn't been customized at all to the current scenario. So really there's no way for me to respond, but I'll try. As I said, swiping up actually feels easier to me on a large screen than swiping left or right. And putting notifications on the lock screen is a critical feature in my opinion, something Android has desperately needed out of the box for a while now. I use a custom loc…

The notifications are a great addition in stock usefulness. You could always add that functionality through 3rd party lock screens but it's nice to see it baked right in.

It's the swiping that I'm specifically disliking. Every time I swipe to the right it opens up the phone app. Probably there are many users who have formed a really strong habit of swiping a certain way to unlock their Android phone. I would bet on that direction being left-to-right.

Do you know if it's possible to change the way the lock screen handles swiping in some settings page somewhere?

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#317

Post by protomyth »

archagon wrote: post #312
protomyth wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, and that something is to scrunch the right side not one tab to the left of the left side. Act like every other program on the platform using tabs.

Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, that's a bit annoying, and they should probably scrunch on the left, but I think the pros of the new UI outweigh the cons. Also, the behavior is the same as the previous version of Safari, and Finder, at least, behaves the same way.

the last version of Safari does not act like this.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#318

Post by exodust »

stinky613 wrote: post #259
exodust wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 'Excessive change is generally better than no changes at all.' Can't agree with that. If the change isn't needed then change can't be better. The burden of responsibility for justifying the change is on the person wanting the change. To identify why the change is needed and how it's an improvement. It's a weakness of the production team if there's a "must evolve no matter what" mentality on repeat-cycle. You could…

> If the change isn't needed then change can't be better I'm curious... when you say 'change' is there a contextual limit to what counts as a change? That is to say, am I taking you too literally if I consider an A/B test a change? Or is there a pervasiveness of rollout that you think is necessary to consider something as a change? In either case, I wouldn't want to underestimate the value of studying reactions to a…

Valid point, but clearly even the smallest changes upset people. Re-arranging furniture is a change. Changing the colour or number of cushions on the sofa is a change.

A-B testing won't reveal how many people reluctantly embrace the change, rolled their eyes and cursed your service as they completed the task. A-B testing is not all-knowing. It's suitable for colder functional changes, not things such as key separators on a virtual keyboard.

None of this would be a problem if users are simply given choice and meticulous control over the changes and how or whether they're applied. Choice, control, options and user preferences - those should be the key features. I wish for innovation in changes, such as inviting and allowing users to preview for themselves a particular change.

Fortunately we do have lots of options in our settings for a lot of things, but it doesn't go far enough. Their new "material girl in a material world" design philosophy is a distraction... and personally I think is weaker than commentators are declaring.

Who wants reliable, familiar interfaces and predictable functionality? Um.... try everyone!

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#319

Post by c22 »

zecg wrote: post #51
TeeWEE wrote: post #2

I thinks this guy is missing the point. Google did uix research and come up with a more usable design philosophy, which makes all apps more consistent. They are now executing those grand-design rules. In the end, apps should be more familiar, and easier to use. The change itself is always frustrating, people who are used to an uix (by learning it), hate change, even if the new uix is simpler.

Well, they can go back to the drawing board and do some more research. This was an example posted here a few weeks ago, by a heavy Calendar user. Look at the old and new app and see if you can answer a common question for a calendar user, like when do I have some free time in the next month: http://imgur.com/a/Qo91p Also, not that it matters, but the old app is 2 MB and works flawlessly, the new one is more than 20 a…

If they put colored sections indicating appointments around the circles in the latter example, as if they were 24h clock faces, it would be even more useful than the first example.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#320

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #275
jackmaney wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so I grabbed my phone and tested it out. It...actually works. It's a bizarre method of text entry, but interesting nonetheless.

> It's a bizarre method of text entry, but interesting nonetheless. And by bizarre you mean fantastic... It's even better in a language like French, where swiping means not having to type in the accents, whereas normally you'd have to do a long press of the letter and then select the accent you want...

You don't need to type spaces either and keyboards can be more compact as it's about the word shape rather than hitting a particular letter sequence exactly. Stock Android 4.1 version at least seems pretty forgiving provided I hit the correct first letter, a lot of weight in the algo appears to lie with first letter.
Post reply on HN