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The Decline of Usability

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Re: The Decline of Usability

#711

Post by flyinghamster »

bityard wrote: post #707
flyinghamster wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also noticed that XFCE's handling of hotplug monitors leaves much to be desired, and it also cheerfully ignores my preference of not suspending when I close the laptop lid (so I can use only the external monitor and an external keyboard when I have it plugged into my TV). Close the lid under XFCE and "BEEP!" it goes into suspend mode instead of doing nothing. Fortunately, Cinnamon is just an apt-get away, handle…

Can you elaborate on Xubuntu+Cinnamon? That sounds interesting. I also just noticed that there's an Ubuntu Cinnamon which might be right up my alley as well.

The setup I did was to just install Xubuntu, then:

apt install cinnamon

Once installed, I logged out, and then picked Cinnamon from the session selection menu (the little gear near the upper right corner). It comes right up, though it won't pick up your preferences from XFCE.

I hadn't realized there was now a Cinnamon spin - is that still in testing? It's not on Ubuntu's list of flavors.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#712

Post by lucabenazzi »

Some very good points here, I haven't been using Stack in a while and I can hardly believe they could come up with something like that! What a nightmare...! I can't fully agree with the rant about scroll bars: so easy to reveal them by just scrolling (easier than a mouse click), but a lot better in terms of aesthetic. Of course a compromise, but an acceptable one. I would rather prefer scrollbars on desktop to be larger, because they are not visible most of the times anyway, so why make them such small targets that are difficult to click on? The author seems to be critical towards flat design, what are the arguments around that? The emotional impact of design is not something that can be disregarded that easily, it's legit to expect a modern UI to be efficient and slick at the same time. Aesthetic is paramount, for the same reasons why typography matters. Users nowadays expect to deal with a clean, lightweight UI, rather than with one that looks like it was designed in the Pleistocene.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#713

Post by photawe »

julienreszka wrote: post #676
Nextgrid wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Windows is a desktop OS primarily used to get work done. “Mobile first” doesn’t make sense here and just gets in the way (it personally made me give up on the platform and switch to Mac instead).

Having a ui that adapts to screen width is important to me because I do a lot of things at once, the window manager on Mac is the worst for this

there's a difference between adapting to every screen, and being mobile first.

The point is: no matter what you do, to have an app that works on both mobile and desktop, you'll need two UIs (otherwise, you'll get a crappy UI on both platforms). So, if I use UWP on desktop, it should "bend" to desktop (all the controls should be desktop-friendly). If I use UWP on mobile, it should "bend" to mobile.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#714

Post by photawe »

Nextgrid wrote: post #660
julienreszka wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody doesn't agree with you. I believe going Mobile First was the best decision they made in decades.

Why? Windows is a desktop OS primarily used to get work done. “Mobile first” doesn’t make sense here and just gets in the way (it personally made me give up on the platform and switch to Mac instead).

I wholeheartedly agree. Even though I pretty much hate everything Mac, I'm also thinking of switching.

MS has lost its vision for years. Their "innovation" is just some idiot coming up with a completely stupid idea, and convincing their even more idiotic bosses it's cool, investing a lot of time and money, at some point semi-realizing it's crap, and then being ambivalent for years.

Case in point - WinRT - they pretty much rewrote the whole OS, re-invented everything, forcing us, the developers to use their s*it, everyone hates it, it brings no benefits whatsoever, it's waaay worse than non-WinRT code, and even now - after 9 years -, knowing everyone hates it, they're still re-wrapping it and saying it's "amazing".

They're launching an android phone - which is BEYOND STUPID. They're rewriting Edge using Chromium, instead of using Mozilla's code (basically, putting us a Google's mercy).

Then, they're building this Windows10X OS just to deal 2 foldable screens, something time and time again people have shown they're not that keen about it. They're willing to risk losing Windows 10 OS developers, since they're changing APIs, introducing countless bugs, just to deal with foldable screens (something that may or may not catch on).

The list could go on.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#715

Post by shrimp_emoji »

guug wrote: post #333
philsnow wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have avoided gnome as much as I can since the gnome2 days. The entire project is rife with UX decisions that leave a bad taste in my mouth. [0] is the example that always comes to mind. I guess this made sense to somebody at the time, but it adds overhead to a process that was simple before, and isn't enabled just for "Enterprise" deployments, it's just dumped on the user to figure out how to configure screensaver…

The problem with gnome is that they don't seem to validate their ideas at all. As a result, gnome users are directly subjected to the unfiltered whims of gnome's UI "designers". Instead of spending the substantial donations they received[1] on who knows what, the GNOME foundation should have spent some of it conducting proper focus groups. 1: https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/05/anonymous-donor-pledges-1...

I don't know if that's true. GNOME 3 is just a dark enlightenment experiment, like an attempt at neomonarchy or the Empire from Elite. Instead of feature creep and user accommodation to Windows idioms, they slash and burn despotically to ease developer burden and try to flesh out their own vision. Do you use Dropbox? Too bad. :3 There's extensions that break but whatever we don't care fuck the tray.

I think it's an interesting and worthwhile experimental path; I just wish it wasn't the "default" as much as it is. But I also feel that way about Ubuntu. And Windows. xD

Re: The Decline of Usability

#716

Post by necovek »

brabel wrote: post #691
necovek wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the keyboard layout switcher only with the keyboard which is pretty much instant, so I wonder how was it broken in any of the Ubuntu 19.x releases — that sounds worrying if it carries over to 20.04? (I am on 18.04) "Any Ubuntu 19.x" because non-LTS Ubuntu releases come out every six months, so there was Ubuntu 19.04 and Ubuntu 19.10, but never an "Ubuntu 19": they are never as polished or as stable as LTS relea…

The language switcher was broken in 18 already : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/1... People who switch between several languages just can't use Ubuntu because of this, read some testimonials on the bug linked above. This is just one of the pain points though. There were many.

That's quite interesting — I do not get that behaviour at all, both on newly installed and upgraded systems from older LTSes (3 laptops and a desktop). They are all on 18.04, and I do have at least 2 layouts on all of them (Serbian Cyrillic, Latin and sometimes US English) which I switch between hundreds of times a day.

Of the non-standard settings, I've got "make Caps lock an additional Ctrl" and "each window keeps its own layout" on. The rest, including keyboard switching shortcut (Meta+Space) is using the defaults.

I simply press the shortcut and start typing and works as expected — if I find the time, I'll debug further and report on the LP bug, but just wanted to report that I do not experience any of the problems mentioned.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#717

Post by necovek »

brabel wrote: post #691
necovek wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the keyboard layout switcher only with the keyboard which is pretty much instant, so I wonder how was it broken in any of the Ubuntu 19.x releases — that sounds worrying if it carries over to 20.04? (I am on 18.04) "Any Ubuntu 19.x" because non-LTS Ubuntu releases come out every six months, so there was Ubuntu 19.04 and Ubuntu 19.10, but never an "Ubuntu 19": they are never as polished or as stable as LTS relea…

The language switcher was broken in 18 already : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/1... People who switch between several languages just can't use Ubuntu because of this, read some testimonials on the bug linked above. This is just one of the pain points though. There were many.

I just noticed that the above bug refers to switching input methods vs. just keyboard layouts.

Input methods are a separate concept from keyboard layouts (XKB), and I only ever use XKB stuff. Input methods load separate libraries which interpret keycodes, and are commonly generic enough to allow "external" complex input definitions (think Arabic or CJK) — not sure how fast they used to be before, but perhaps combining IM and layout selection is the culprit.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#718

Post by anoncake »

ShirtlessRod wrote: post #629
anoncake wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before codexes – the kind of book we use today – scrolls had worked for centuries. > the stacking window managers work well from Windows 95 and XP why change it? To get something that works better.

> To get something that works better. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

"Experiments are bad. We've tried them once, didn't work"
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