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Scrollbar Blindness

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Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#521

Post by nl »

andi999 wrote: post #487
breatheoften wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate icons without text! "Here's an image, guess what is supposed to happen when you click it, also i will give you no info on hover over -- you must push me and then try to guess what i did!" (btw if there's a bug or a configuration state in the app that you or i am unaware of -- you might've pushed me at the wrong time and i might've let you do that)

Exactly. Why should e.g. a floppy disk symbol signify anything to anybody born after 2000.

This is a bad example. The floppy disk icon means "save" and has now for very nearly as long as floppy disk were in common use. It's the same as a "tape" icon means something to do with video even though video cassettes were only a common thing for 10 years.

The Apple II was the first computer that was widespread enough for people to have seen that had a floppy disk. It came out in 1977. Apple dropped the floppy disk in 1998 (21 years later), so it's been 22 years since it was standard in Macs.

Even allowing for some switching time, it has meant "save" for longer than it was a common physical object.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#522

Post by nl »

bregma wrote: post #514
bmitc wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I had a VCR today I'd be the one struggling to figure out how to record something with it That's a little hard to believe. Nothing is hidden on a VCR. There's input connections, a tape, and a big record button. At most there is an additional source button to choose the input source. It's all there, in the open, and not hidden. Today's interface design is really all over the place. There's just too much stuff hid…

> Nothing is hidden on a VCR. 12:00 12:00 12:00 12:00

So true.

The other hidden complexity was reception and tuning - so many people had problems getting the antenna pass-through working, and then getting the VCR picture to display on a TV channel (no switchable inputs in those days).

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#523

Post by dahauns »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #425
dahauns wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very nice! And for Nuke Overdrive mode, add a check for position: sticky, i.e. (function () { var elpos,i, elements = document.querySelectorAll('body *'); for (i = 0; i

Here's that code written by someone who has used Javascript in the last 10 years: (function () { for (const node of document.querySelectorAll('body *')) { if (['fixed', 'sticky'].includes(getComputedStyle(node).position)) { node.style.display = 'none' // node.remove() } } })() I found tree mutation too aggressive in the first site I tested it on (the site's JS code expected the navbar to exist, so it just blew up wit…

Ah, thanks, looks much better! Yeah, I just took the original and quick'n'dirty-added the second condition, all the while thinking "hmm..." - and quickly losing interest again. :)

Regarding tree mutation - I have to admit, it gives me some petty satisfaction looking at the errors thinking "Where is your sticky NOW!"

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#524

Post by tta_8363075 »

boogies wrote: post #400
lordnacho wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just a couple of days ago I decided to revamp my VPS VM host. I ended up putting Ubuntu on a VM. So I connect to it via RDP for the first time, and it is using XFCE. I'm not a big user of the desktop, I have no idea what the choices are or what features are offered in Gnome or KDE, or whatever. I just sometimes need a GUI to do some random things. I open a window, and decide I need to resize it. There's no cursor…

This is how my WM (dwm) works (except I patched it to use Super instead of Alt), and it’s a better way of resizing (not requiring such finicky mouse placement). But that is really weird to hear XFCE doesn’t allow both methods like JWM (and I would have assumed, any WM not aimed at relatively extreme minimalists and power users), I wonder if it’s a bug.

> But that is really weird to hear XFCE doesn’t allow both methods

Don't blame Xfce for that but Ubuntu. For some reason they decided to make the resize area 1 pixel wide. It's specific to recent versions of Ubuntu. It worked fine on LTS 16 (or was it 14?) and on Debian.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#525

Post by SilasX »

jetpks wrote: post #462
SilasX wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not your comment's parent) Apple making touchpads bigger is why I stick to their 13" 2015 MacBook air! When I got a recent Pro for work, it was nearly unusable from the oversized, oversensitive trackpad. Yes, even after setting all the options that (I was assured) would make it stop picking up unintended presses. When typing, I'd unavoidably brush the trackpad and cause the cursor to move somewhere and click, redire…

Not saying I can make this better for your use case, but I'm curious if you use tap to click? i.e. click with a simple touch. I love the big track pads and also hate the tap to click setting (I want to press to click) and don't have this problem.

I wasn’t aware of this distinction and never saw something like that in the options. I think it was press to click.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#526

Post by IncRnd »

dmitriid wrote: post #470
IncRnd wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it seems like you are playing a game. Did you perform a search of tools that can test ui? There are lots of them. I find it hard to believe that you think there aren't any. That's like saying that compilers don't compile C code anymore, because you only compile C++. I see our testers doing this all the time - but I don't know what libraries they use. I know the testers at our shop do it with an house built…

> Honestly, it seems like you are playing a game. Did you perform a search of tools that can test ui? There are lots of them. It would'be been so easy to just answer the question I asked. Instead, it's now a thread of non-answers and thinly veiled ad-hominem attacks. The rest of your long answer is once again working hard on avoiding the answer. > I find it hard to believe that you think there aren't any. I didn't sa…

Except that I did answer as to specific toolkits - with two answers for two separate kits.

You used a lot of words to make it seem otherwise. As you yourself wrote, "Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?"

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#527

Post by IncRnd »

dmitriid wrote: post #477
IncRnd wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It was an answer. The correct answer is that there are many ways to test for this. Just look for one.

If you knew the answer, you would've already answered this. Instead, you keep giving non-answers until you admit that you don't test yourself, and that other people use some libraries, you don't know which.

I did - with two specific answers. Then I went and asked a security tester and told you the results of that question.

You can keep using all the words and comments that you want, but the simple truth is that this is a solved problem, I gave you two solutions, and yet you keep using ad hominem attacks.

As you yourself wrote, "Ignorance is bliss". Those are your words, not mine.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#528

Post by majewsky »

projektfu wrote: post #374
Viliam1234 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sometimes amazed how complicated UI can someone create with e.g. four arrows and two extra buttons. Like, I would naively assume that the arrows would move your selection up, down, left, right, and one of the extra buttons would be "select/confirm" and the other would be "escape". But no, that would be too easy. Depending on exact position in the menu, sometimes the right arrow, sometimes the first extra button,…

Monitor buttons are particularly awesome. Often you can't even see what you're pressing because it's behind the bezel or just an unmarked capsense location, and then whether it's up, down, increase, decrease, forward, back, reset, etc. is all different for each page of settings. Bonus points: turn the monitor to portrait mode and do it sideways.

Both monitors on my desk have a single button on the back side of the bottom right corner. The button can be pressed or pushed in each of the four cardinal directions (left, up, right, bottom). It's actually really nice. Since it's only one physical button, there's never any guessing which button you're on. And once you know the menu structure, common tasks can be done completely blind. (For example, I know that switching between input sources is press-left-press. I can do that without even looking at the screen.)

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#529

Post by majewsky »

rapind wrote: post #332
reaperducer wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features You don't even have to be elderly. The 20-somethings in the office (pre-pandemic) had no idea that on an inconsistent smattering of Apple apps, if you pull down, a hidden search bar magically appears. How did that conversation go? Dev: Where do you want the search bar to go? Designer: Put it somewhere that no one will ever see it, or…

I do think age can play a role, or rather experience. As you live through more UI churn the less your willing to invest time into each new UI generation or fad. If an application isn't either essential to me or incredibly obvious to use, I am unlikely to learn it's fancy new UI. Why bother? This extends to APIs and DSLs too since there are often so short lived.

> As you live through more UI churn the less your willing to invest time into each new UI generation or fad.

Hell yes. In most instances, I'm way beyond this point at only 30 years old. Come to think of it, it actually makes me wonder how I will feel about UIs at 50 or 60 years old.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#530

Post by dahauns »

sizzle wrote: post #324
supernova87a wrote: post #18

I have to pile onto the criticism of the hidden scroll bars, and other similar features (like the hidden buttons of PDF viewers now, such as in Chrome). Discoverability is a problem. For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features, these things can be utterly mind-boggling and frustrating. Even I was stumped for a good minute the first time trying to print/save/download a PDF when…

Reminded me of this great piece by Don Norman on Apple's undoing of design as of recent: https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-desi... "Once upon a time, Apple was known for designing easy-to-use, easy-to-understand products. It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible, clearly see how to select that action, receive unambiguous…

The part about recovery and the lack of a universal undo/back function and instead offloading it to the developer, resulting in an inconsistent mess really drives the point home.

What's most telling is how even Apple often does an astonishingly bad job at it - it really sets the precedent regarding diminished importance.

As an exercise: Browse the App Store for a while and count the number of different ways it implements "go back one step".

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