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Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

lobste.rs

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Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#81

Post by theGimp »

mattmanser wrote: post #52

Argh, lollipop's driving me up the wall! Vent time, woo! The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps, in an attempt to force you to use the bloody useless app switcher button instead of making it do something vaguely useful. And the lock screen, what the hell were they thinking? The amount of times I've opened the phone…

   The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs
Go into Chrome's settings and restore them.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#82

Post by vibrolax »

_lce0 wrote: post #17
pilsetnieks wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are four themes for the builtin keyboard now: - Material Light (the default, the one that's shown in the article); - Material Dark (the same but dark); - Holo White (the old one); - Holo Blue (the old one with blue accents)

sweet! can you post a shot?

The menu sequence to change this is: Settings / Language & input / Google keyboard / Appearances and layouts / Theme

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#83

Post by iamben »

_lce0 wrote: post #17
pilsetnieks wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are four themes for the builtin keyboard now: - Material Light (the default, the one that's shown in the article); - Material Dark (the same but dark); - Holo White (the old one); - Holo Blue (the old one with blue accents)

sweet! can you post a shot?

Sure, this help?

http://i.imgur.com/WDLz0Ju.png

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#84

Post by Clanan »

DontBeADick wrote: post #5

I stopped updating all my Google apps ~2 years ago because there were so many asinine, unintuitive UI changes with each new version. A lot of their changes didn't even conform to the standards recommended by Google (e.g. menu button locations). It's almost as if the UI team gets bored and decides to make changes just because they need to occupy themselves. And then instead of testing them with actual users, they just…

Perhaps it's a case of busywork - teams creating work to justify their existence.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#85

Post by gdulli »

The problem is that software companies acquire the amount of labor (which is large) that they need to create something but then don't have anything to do with that extra labor when it's finished and all that's needed is maintenance and a reasonable amount of additional upgrade work.

So if the company is profitable enough that it doesn't need to lay anyone off, it has the excess labor keep iterating on a product that's already very good and only needs a small amount of labor to keep it ideal. This makes the product worse.

Once you see this you can't un-see it.

(Also there's the more cyncial explanation that by changing things dramatically you get people to think they need to keep spending money.)

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#86

Post by ToastyMallows »

mattmanser wrote: post #52

Argh, lollipop's driving me up the wall! Vent time, woo! The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps, in an attempt to force you to use the bloody useless app switcher button instead of making it do something vaguely useful. And the lock screen, what the hell were they thinking? The amount of times I've opened the phone…

> they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps

To be fair you can turn this off, that's the first thing I did when Chrome notified me of this "awesome" change.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#87

Post by throwawayaway »

rogeryu wrote: post #76

I do care about Windows desktop changes. Not for me, but for my mother, over 80 years old, and although she still can handle changes, it becomes more difficult. She's using Windows 7 right now (coming from XP via 2000 and 98), with the classic (grey Windows 2000) design. I hope that stays with Windows 9. I'm very glad we could skip Windows 8. I guess many older people will have these problems, and I can't understand…

I got a battery for a nokia 3310 to replace the dead one in my 86 year old grandfather's 14 year old phone and he was delighted not to have to go and learn something new. He's very mentally agile but he recognises a waste of time when he sees one.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#88

Post by usingpond »

shawnwall wrote: post #30

Google is making a huge amount of progress in UI and UX; the company has historically been rather mediocre in terms of it's UI and UX, while Apple was always the star. Over the past year or so the roles have reversed, and Google continues making strides towards unifying their applications in a single user experience and ui paradigm that allows for simpler app use, particularly for new users. It's easy to get upset wh…

In some apps, yes, but in many others they are just as atrocious as they've always been—just adhering to material design a bit more. For example, Chrome on iOS has a pretty wonderful UX but Maps is a shitshow; it takes me several frustrated clicks to do what I want. You can never tell what a UI element does simply by looking at the screen.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#90

Post by mattmanser »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #70
mattmanser wrote: post #52

Argh, lollipop's driving me up the wall! Vent time, woo! The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps, in an attempt to force you to use the bloody useless app switcher button instead of making it do something vaguely useful. And the lock screen, what the hell were they thinking? The amount of times I've opened the phone…

>> "And the new calendar app only allows you to see 6 hours at a time, so you can't get an overview of your day." Try the 'agenda' view which does exactly that. I was also going to debunk most of your other complaints because I know they're false but I don't have my Lollipop device with my at the moment.

You probably mean schedule, and no it doesn't as it shows only 6 or so items per page and isn't good for glancing at. I can't glance at it and see I've a meeting in the morning, I've got to read it to see when the appointments are. There's a reason the old paper calendars work so well, cause you can just glance at them.

The old calendar also had a week view where you could see most of the week and what was on. Now you're constantly having to scroll.

As for the rest, how can you debunk what actually happens? If you don't have your lollipop device on you, that probably means it's not a phone...

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