Topic: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design (Read 25889 times)

Thad · « **Reply #80 on:** June 06, 2011, 08:06:43 PM »

So who's the prick responsible for hold music periodically getting interrupted for a voice recording, anyway?

Yeah, I KNOW I'm on hold, asshole. In fact, the only thing that might make me think I WASN'T on hold is if the music abruptly stopped and someone started speaking to me instead.

Thad · « **Reply #81 on:** August 05, 2011, 09:43:29 PM »

I've been working on setting up ROM Collection Browser in XBMC. (Maybe I will someday do a blog entry about it. tl;dr it's way too goddamn fiddly and not nearly as simple to set up or change anything as in XBMC's video browser.)

One of the problems is that games do not have dedicated sites explicitly intended to be scraped for pics, metadata, etc. (at least, none that are ready for prime time yet) and it scrapes from places like MobyGames that are clearly not intended for this purpose and have ridiculously long-winded descriptions that you then have to edit down.

But you know what I really hate? Descriptions that start with, eg, "Phantasy Star II is the sequel to Phantasy Star." NO SHIT. Thanks for spending 50 characters explaining that to me, asshole.

(In fairness, helpful hints like that ARE a great approximation of an 8-bit JRPG.)

Thad · « **Reply #82 on:** August 11, 2011, 09:39:46 AM »

Any file browser that won't let you type the fucking path in.

Any file browser that starts from the root instead of some kind of reasonable default (your home directory, the currently-set directory, or the last directory you browsed to).

And of course any file browser that has both these problems.

Kfroog · « **Reply #83 on:** August 11, 2011, 10:01:20 AM »

Which browser are you talking about? You can do both of those things in Finder, and at least one of those things in Explorer…
Is there really an operating system which offers even less freedom than Mac OS or Windows?

Caithness · « **Reply #84 on:** August 11, 2011, 12:25:38 PM »

Judging from the post that his complaint immediately followed, I'm going to guess it's the XBMC file browser.

Thad · « **Reply #85 on:** August 11, 2011, 12:56:10 PM »

Good guess.

Though it also applies to some of the Win7 file dialogues.

Thad · « **Reply #86 on:** August 31, 2011, 09:49:30 AM »

Windows that can't be resized.
Prompts where the Alt keybinding is something other than Y/N/A, O, etc.
Menus where the Alt keybinding for something is something other than the first letter of the word, even though that first letter is not used for any goddamn thing else in that menu.

Thad · « **Reply #87 on:** September 01, 2011, 12:54:23 PM »

Quote from: Thad on August 31, 2011, 09:49:30 AM

Prompts where the Alt keybinding is something other than Y/N/A, O, etc.

This is probably a little ambiguous so let me clarify: prompts like the WinXP Unknown Hardware popup, where your options are "Use Windows Update to search for a driver every time/Use Windows Update this time only/Not this time", where the keystroke for "Not this time" is goddamn inexplicably "T" instead of "N". (Come to think of it there's probably a Next, but who the hell hits Alt-N for Next instead of just Enter?)

And also there's not a fucking "Never". I've argued on more than one occasion that the "Never ask me this question again" checkbox should appear on nearly every Yes/No prompt I see.

Mongrel · « **Reply #88 on:** September 03, 2011, 04:15:19 PM »

Programs with no way to turn off update notification.

Fuck you Winamp!

I oughtta just revert to v2.9x...

patito · « **Reply #89 on:** September 03, 2011, 04:32:41 PM »

Uh, dude, on options-preferences under general preferences there's a checkmark for "check for new versions of winamp at startup".

It took me longer to type this post than to actually find that option.

Mongrel · « **Reply #90 on:** September 03, 2011, 06:11:31 PM »

I checked options > general preferences several times looking for that. Twice before when it drove me crazy, and once again today. I even googled it twice too.

How did I not see that?

Mongrel · « **Reply #91 on:** September 10, 2011, 07:38:35 AM »

Due to all the sensitive information on our computers, it's drilled into us to lock our computers as soon as we get up from them.

I'm starting to hit the keyboard by reflex at home, even though the key combination does totally different things on my home computer and there's no one here but Starr and I. >__<

Thad · « **Reply #92 on:** September 10, 2011, 08:11:10 AM »

The horrible job that fired me had a "Lock Computer" icon on the desktop.

If you deleted it, it automatically respawned the next time you logged in.

I, of course, lock my computer with Start-L. Who the fuck goes to the desktop to hit a Lock icon?

Mongrel · « **Reply #93 on:** September 11, 2011, 03:14:25 PM »

Okay for most browsers, tabbed browsing has been standard for years now, right? And on most browsers with tabbed browsing you can set "open in a new tab" to be a single click (in fact by default it's usually mouse3).

When you look at a page of ebay listings there are two links to each individual auction; you can click the little image in the listing, or you can click the text. It drives me nuts that while the text always takes you to the actual listing, clicking the image using the "open in a new tab" button will only give you a copy of the same listing page.

So whenever I forget this and do the intuitively obvious thing by clicking on a image link, I instead get fuckall and have to go back through the search and find all the listings I was going to look at in more detail all over again. This is 2011 guys. Fix your fucking linking system.

Thad · « **Reply #94 on:** September 26, 2011, 06:43:56 PM »

Motherfucking Youtube instructions.

If there's something really complicated that you just HAVE to show me video of because it can't be conveyed clearly in text and pictures, then sure, by all means, make it a video.

Short of that? Fuck you. Video is inherently goddamned inferior to static words and pictures at providing instructions. I want to be able to skip ahead, reread, or stare at something for a minute if I don't understand it right away, and I don't want any goddamn bullshit interfering with my ability to do it.

Royal☭ · « **Reply #95 on:** September 26, 2011, 06:49:06 PM »

Yeah, I really hate that there are tons of YouTube videos for things that could be four paragraphs. The worst part is that with instructions, I tend to read through them first, get a feel, and then go through them doing them one at a time. With a video, that would mean waiting like 15 minutes before I start.

Also some instructors seem to interpret showing as meaning they don't have to describe what they're doing.

Mongrel · « **Reply #96 on:** October 11, 2011, 10:32:04 PM »

Firefox's stock dictionary plugin updated itself.

Now every word that isn't the pure dictionary form is being underlined in red. The dictionary refuses to accept contractions, pluralization, modal stuff like -ed (so "checked" or "forwarded" are no longer valid words). It doesn't even recognize words like "his" anymore.

I mean, I'm actually a decent speller, but the spellcheck is extremely useful to me due to my fast type speed and hamfisted button mashing. Who the fuck is the application genius responsible for fucking up a spell checker of all things.

Thad · « **Reply #97 on:** October 12, 2011, 09:52:59 AM »

You know, we're really way past the "should have split this off into 'Unforgivable Sins of UI design'" point. Maybe later.

I hate any noncritical error that behaves like a critical error. For example, if the Unison client times out trying to connect to the server, it fucking exits. Ever hear of a Retry button, asshole? How about Cancel?

And I spend enough hours a day imaging Windows machines to be utterly infuriated by the sheer number of errors that completely shut down the installation process and require a full reboot. Forgot to remove the machine from AD before starting the reimage? Well, that's a permissions error; you're going to have to reboot.

In their defense: loops are hard to code.

Thad · « **Reply #98 on:** October 12, 2011, 02:43:00 PM »

...you know, reading this thing all at once, it's funny seeing how much of it is me making the same two complaints for three years.

Ziiro · « **Reply #99 on:** October 12, 2011, 02:54:06 PM »

-Contextual menus that block any kind of fillable forms.
-Tabbing through fields that are in an obvious sequence but tabbing through doesn't follow it.
-Screens/UIs that require a certain resolution to have any functionality at all and putting them into window rather than full screen doesn't fix it

I could go on for hours about the awful systems my work uses that are from the 90's and they've tried to cobble together to work in modern systems.

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Author Topic: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design (Read 25889 times)