Topic: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design (Read 25841 times)

sei · « **Reply #120 on:** November 13, 2011, 10:21:32 AM »

Gnome's volume control widget uses the window background color as a background, and uses the tooltip background color as a foreground for the volume slider. If the backgrounds are similar colors...

Brentai · « **Reply #121 on:** November 13, 2011, 01:20:08 PM »

Heh, while we're on the topic of Excel, I found out that if you change something in one workbook, switch to another one, and try to undo, it'll undo the change in the last workbook you edited. If you keep doing it it'll just keep bouncing around instances like that. There's no undo list by file; everything's glopped into the same global stack.

Thad · « **Reply #122 on:** November 13, 2011, 02:29:51 PM »

Oh yeah, forgot about that. That's horrible also.

Thad · « **Reply #123 on:** November 15, 2011, 04:41:44 PM »

Anybody else noticing a severe fucking decline in the quality of Google search results?

It's gone from the "Did you mean [...]?" to just automatically assuming you meant [...] to completely ignoring the plus sign to tell it that no I goddamn well did not mean [...], to providing mixed results so that if I search for restaurants in Tempe I'll get a good mix of restaurants in Tempe and restaurants in goddamn Temple.

I fucking hate spellcheck. I am a better speller than any spellcheck yet devised by man. If I type "goodnes", it's because I goddamn well MEAN "GoodNES", not "goodness". Give me the fucking thing I typed, not the thing you think I MEANT to type.

How's Bing looking these days?

Caithness · « **Reply #124 on:** November 15, 2011, 04:53:17 PM »

It's still got big unnecessary pictures that change daily.

Duck Duck Go, on the other hand, has a nice clean homepage AND searches for what you asked it to search for.

If you're one of those people who only uses the search bar in your browser, though, Bing's probably fine.

Thad · « **Reply #125 on:** November 15, 2011, 05:05:11 PM »

DDG's just a less-stalkery frontend for Google. It gives me "Temple" (and even goddamn "tempers") instead of "Tempe" too.

Bongo Bill · « **Reply #126 on:** November 15, 2011, 05:56:29 PM »

I remember reading recently that they changed the functionality to indicate that a search term is important and exact. Putting the term you want in quotes should do the same thing that putting a plus in front of it used to. It might have been brackets.

Thad · « **Reply #127 on:** November 15, 2011, 07:15:04 PM »

Dammit, but quotes are supposed to be for PHRASES. They were supposed to have a DIFFERENT FUNCTION from the plus sign.

Bongo Bill · « **Reply #128 on:** November 15, 2011, 08:32:39 PM »

They seem to have redefined quotes to indicate searching for what's between them without substitutions, corrections, or synonyms. It's kind of overloaded, as it's unclear how it'll function if you want to search for a phrase but will accept substitutions for individual words inside (presumably they want you to just type the phrase without quotes?). It also loses symmetry with the minus operator, which still functions. But at least there's less confusion with the +1 button!!!!.

It is documented, fortunately. And it also seems that "Verbatim" exists under the "More search tools" pane.

Thad · « **Reply #129 on:** December 14, 2011, 08:42:51 AM »

Sites that make it difficult to get to video drivers.

I'm not asking that your whole site be easily accessible in IE6 at 640x480; that would be crazy. But the part that gets me to my video drivers should be accessible if I'm unlucky enough to be running a virgin WinXP install.

Lenovo: kind of a pain in the ass; renders shit offscreen and mostly-obscured in 640x480xIE6.

nVidia: fucking awesome, or at least it was the last time I was stuck without a working video driver under Linux. How long does it take to get to the drivers section using Lynx? SECONDS. THAT is how it is done.

Caithness · « **Reply #130 on:** December 23, 2011, 06:23:15 PM »

Quote from: Thad on November 15, 2011, 05:05:11 PM

DDG's just a less-stalkery frontend for Google. It gives me "Temple" (and even goddamn "tempers") instead of "Tempe" too.

Really? That's disappointing. I guess I didn't test it as fully as I thought I did.

In related news, Bing is doing a similar kind of thing: when I search for something in Japanese it includes results for completely unrelated English phrases.

Defenestration · « **Reply #131 on:** December 23, 2011, 07:57:04 PM »

Quote from: Thad on November 15, 2011, 05:05:11 PM

DDG's just a less-stalkery frontend for Google. It gives me "Temple" (and even goddamn "tempers") instead of "Tempe" too.

I think you may be crazy or have set something off in the advanced settings. It works just fine for me.
Searching for Tempe, I got this on Google and this for Duck Duck Go.

Also, I can assure you that the people who check for site relevancy are instructed to respect the query is as it is entered foremost, unless absolutely nothing exists by that spelling after a reasonable amount of research.

In short, Google still works fine for me.

Thad · « **Reply #132 on:** December 27, 2011, 07:23:33 AM »

Quote from: Caithness on December 23, 2011, 06:23:15 PM

Really? That's disappointing. I guess I didn't test it as fully as I thought I did.

Nah, Defenestration's right; I was wrong on that one. DDG's results are similar but they're not the same as Google's.

Over the past few weeks I've come to use DDG more and Google less, but haven't quit using Google entirely.

Quote from: Defenestration on December 23, 2011, 07:57:04 PM

I think you may be crazy or have set something off in the advanced settings. It works just fine for me.
Searching for Tempe, I got this on Google and this for Duck Duck Go.

I must have been unclear. I wasn't searching for "Tempe" by itself; I was searching for something that INCLUDED "Tempe".

Quote from: Defenestration on December 23, 2011, 07:57:04 PM

Also, I can assure you that the people who check for site relevancy are instructed to respect the query is as it is entered foremost, unless absolutely nothing exists by that spelling after a reasonable amount of research.

If that's what they're instructed to do then they're not following instructions.

This is not a unique problem to me; here are a few quick results from searching for google "did you mean":

"EmotionML" produces "emotion"
"Danae Levy" produces "Dana Levy"; "Arits Sanchez" produces "Artists Sanchez"

Results for "did you mean" disable site:google.com

First result:

Quote

So, I tried to search for Stephen Hawkins - not Stephen Hawking.

Search results? "Did you mean: stephen hawking" and it searches for that.

So I added quotes - "Stephen Hawkins".

Search results? "Did you mean: "stephen hawking" with the same damn results.

Add a freaking "no" button next to it, please - don't ask me a question and assume the answer is 'yes' with no way for me to disagree. I don't need a physicist, I need a CPA.

Those links are from '09 and '10, but in my experience the problem has gotten worse, not better.

Zaratustra · « **Reply #133 on:** December 27, 2011, 08:53:08 AM »

What you can do is search for

"Stephen Hawkins" -hawking

But yeah, between Google's move towards assuming everything is a misspelling of a more popular thing and the giant wads of SEO stuck everywhere, search is crappier than ever.

Thad · « **Reply #134 on:** December 27, 2011, 10:04:03 AM »

Right, you shouldn't HAVE to add terms to tell it that no, really, I mean the thing I typed and not a thing I did not type.

And as I point out in the comments, I'm only going to add those extra items if I already know Google is going to return a result I don't want. Which I usually don't.

Rico · « **Reply #135 on:** December 27, 2011, 11:14:54 AM »

Some of it I almost understand, but it's a really aggressive algorithm. Just yesterday I was searching for a username and Google wouldn't shut up about how I must've meant to type an e instead of a 1. They need to roll it back a little to near-letter typos, which Android generally handles pretty well.

Thad · « **Reply #136 on:** January 30, 2012, 09:11:12 AM »

There's no reason any program should EVER steal the volume keys' input from the shell (leastways, without an advanced user deliberately setting it to).

The latest builds of XBMC have this irritating internal volume control that's adjusted by the media keys. So that when I fill the bar in XBMC and it's still too quiet, I have to alt-tab out to adjust the system volume. There's probably a place to disable this but I haven't found it yet. (EDIT: Oh right, it's in a fucking XML file. This is my principal problem with XBMC in a nutshell: the devs are more concerned with constantly re-theming the goddamn thing than with actually letting you configure it from the GUI.)

And the new Sonic CD disables the volume keys, which was really quite an enjoyable thing to discover by accident.

You know how when your speakers start blasting at an intolerable volume there's this kind of panic where you don't immediately know how you're supposed to react? I tried adjusting the volume; no luck. Tried alt-tabbing out and seeing if they keys would work with the desktop up; no luck there. I started fumbling for the volume icon and then decided the obvious thing to do would be to tab back into the game and Alt-F4, and THEN worry about adjusting the system volume before relaunching. (Bears adding that this is in my living room, so I couldn't just reach over and power the speakers off.)

And meanwhile, under KDE I still have that problem where adjusting the volume from the keyboard kicks Youtube out of fullscreen.

Brentai · « **Reply #137 on:** January 30, 2012, 10:10:15 AM »

One of the many reasons I still use a headset exclusively for the PC, even now that I live alone.

JDigital · « **Reply #138 on:** January 30, 2012, 01:34:31 PM »

Some video player programs will do this, but at least they're easy to alt-tab out of.

Thad · « **Reply #139 on:** February 03, 2012, 01:18:27 PM »

I understand why there is a Trash folder instead of shit getting completely irrevocably deleted when a user presses the Delete key.

But honest to Christ, Microsoft, could you make the default behavior for Exchange Server be to, I don't know, automatically delete anything that's sat in the Deleted Items folder for more than a week?

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Author Topic: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design (Read 25841 times)