Topic: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design (Read 25816 times)

Thad · « **Reply #200 on:** March 21, 2013, 08:10:37 PM »

Timo Arnall has a good piece called No to NoUI that lays out many of the problems with the trend toward hiding UI elements. tl;dr it makes it harder to figure out what the fuck is going on.

Lottel · « **Reply #201 on:** March 21, 2013, 09:03:31 PM »

I am currently in the process of updating my system software for my PS3 so I can check the store.
Which annoys me for several reasons.
1. I was ready getting updates from the store in that advertising ticker on the top right.
2. They automatically just kick me out of programs and make me sign-in in order to use them again. Which requires updating the whole system. Just so I can watch YouTube.
3. I just updated a few days ago.
4. They don't tell you what they are updating anywhere I can find.

I'm already sure I won't buy next gen's consoles. Quit making me regret this gen.

Thad · « **Reply #202 on:** April 27, 2013, 09:10:29 AM »

"Invalid arch-independent ELF magic."

You call that an error message? FUCK YOU.

A² · « **Reply #203 on:** April 27, 2013, 02:08:50 PM »

is...is that from one of the D&D games?

dtsund · « **Reply #204 on:** April 27, 2013, 05:32:04 PM »

ELF = Executable and Linkable Format; this is undoubtedly related to his issues trying to get OpenSUSE to behave, as going on in the Linux thread.

Royal☭ · « **Reply #205 on:** May 22, 2013, 02:53:54 AM »

So NewsBlur, my new RSS reader of choice, recently had a big UI overhaul. I'm not one to freak out about UI redesigns, so it doesn't really bother me. Except now, on the popup menus to control each Folder or Subscription, the "Mark Folder As Read" option has been moved to the bottom of the menu, and "Delete This Folder" has taken its place at the top.

Thad · « **Reply #206 on:** June 02, 2013, 05:00:33 AM »

The Evolution mail client keeps giving me errors on my Gmail password for some damn reason. Like, once a day it'll fail to connect and it gives me a prompt saying I need to re-enter the password. If I click Cancel, it will forget the password it already has saved.

Now, I've got my Google account set up to provide passwords on a per-app basis. And I don't keep my per-app passwords in my wallet, because you're not supposed to; the whole idea is to generate them once and never have access again.

Most hilarious of all, while Evolution's password prompt is up, I CANNOT USE THE KEYBOARD FOR ANYTHING ELSE. It steals keyboard input from the entire system; I can't so much as alt-tab while that damn window is up.

And once I cancel out of it, Christ only knows when I'm going to get another prompt. It doesn't come up automatically when I do a send/receive; it doesn't even appear reliably if I close out of the program and then reopen it. It just stops retrieving my mail on that account until some seemingly arbitrary point where it prompts me for my password again and, if I'm lucky, I've already got a Google window up so I can navigate it with my mouse.

Now, Thunderbird is no longer under active development, and on the whole Evolution has a cleaner, prettier interface and more complete functionality.

But this is so goddamn infuriating that I'm seriously considering switching back.

(And KMail is right out. I will be damned if I'm going to configure command-line bogofilter just to get a spam filter on my E-Mail client.)

Meanwhile, a UI design decision that isn't just unforgivable but I personally believe should actually be illegal:

ISP-provided 404 pages. You know, when a page doesn't go up and your ISP gives you a custom error page (with ads!) instead of a real, standards-compliant 404 page.

On top of everything else that's wrong with this, it fucks up Firefox's cache. If I'm trying to pull up, say, brontoforum.us, and my connection hiccups in the middle of it, I get a Cox-provided error page -- and it gets cached like that. I cannot access the page even after recovering my connection; it still takes me to the error page until I clear my cache or restart my browser.

Kayma · « **Reply #207 on:** June 02, 2013, 08:10:36 AM »

You know, how do they actually manage that? Is that a function of using an ISP's DNS, or do they throw them out some other way?

Royal☭ · « **Reply #208 on:** September 12, 2013, 06:54:19 AM »

After reading the articled Büge linked to in Funnybooks, I realized how much using underlines for emphasis on a webpage annoys me.

Thad · « **Reply #209 on:** September 12, 2013, 03:23:25 PM »

Oh yeah, I would never use underlines or the color blue for anything but links (unless paid, and even then against protestations).

Mothra · « **Reply #210 on:** September 13, 2013, 03:27:41 AM »

Has anyone ever used the feature in copy/paste where it carries over the font type and size? What possible instance could there be wherein one would want to carry over the font size and style?

Mongrel · « **Reply #211 on:** September 13, 2013, 03:40:12 AM »

The worst is when some program like Word preserves the weird formatting too and it fucks up your whole document's formatting and you can't get rid of it, even if you force the whole document to clear all formatting (I've had that happen a lot with non-standard double-spacing).

Royal☭ · « **Reply #212 on:** September 13, 2013, 06:05:06 AM »

Copy past will pickup inline styling on certain elements, precisely because some people DO want a lot of markup and styling preserved.

Mongrel · « **Reply #213 on:** September 13, 2013, 06:53:09 AM »

No one's saying that there isn't a place for that, but when you want to just paste the text sans formatting, that should be an easy option and it should respect that choice.

In fairness, the new paste mini-menu on the very newest version of Word/MS Office does seem to do just that.

Mothra · « **Reply #214 on:** September 13, 2013, 07:33:59 AM »

Quote from: Royal on September 13, 2013, 06:05:06 AM

Copy past will pickup inline styling on certain elements, precisely because some people DO want a lot of markup and styling preserved.

When would you ever want to carry over the font style, and font size, of another page? It would almost never be appropriate for whatever different size and styling you pasted it into.

R^2 · « **Reply #215 on:** September 13, 2013, 07:43:03 AM »

I showed my boss at work the Format Painter tool in Word for exactly this reason. It doesn't prevent style from pasting over, but made cleanup faster.

I'm with Mothra on this one.

Brentai · « **Reply #216 on:** September 13, 2013, 08:12:43 AM »

I usually just paste into NotePad first to get rid of that crap, but you're right, I shouldn't have to.

Meanwhile: You'd think I'd learn not to be bothered when people think my (much more common sounding) last name is my first, but somehow you'd be wrong.

Mongrel · « **Reply #217 on:** September 13, 2013, 09:36:16 AM »

Yeah, I paste into notepad sometimes too. That was the old workaround.

R^2 · « **Reply #218 on:** September 13, 2013, 09:59:39 AM »

Quote from: Brentai on September 13, 2013, 08:12:43 AM

I usually just paste into NotePad first to get rid of that crap

Was going to bring that up, but it seemed a bit too close to

Quote from: Thad on September 08, 2013, 03:21:58 PM

...you know, coming in when somebody else complains about a piece of software not working to say that you don't need it yourself is a pretty good example of a pet peeve, too.

Mothra · « **Reply #219 on:** September 13, 2013, 10:40:42 AM »

Yeah, I usually copy, open notepad, paste, highlight good god why do I need to say this

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Author Topic: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design (Read 25816 times)