I just accidentally clicked the “clear all” on the browser URL and wished that it was a bit harder to click but was still there. If it took three clicks to make happen, its still useful in most circumstances but would drastically drop the mistaken clicks
Anyway, what are your unpopular UI opinions?
I like chunkier scrollbars. Fuck the tiny disappearing scrollbars where you need to mouse over… somewhere… to maybe be graced with its presence, only for it to be 1px wide for some reason.
Also fuck the endless scroll, especially when you already know what you’re looking for is on page 4 because you had to reload the page for some reason but the infinite scroll didn’t save your position and you have to go down (without an actual scrollbar) only to “load more” 3 times until you’re (maybe) on page 4.A related peeve of mine is stateless URLs. When backend engineers built UIs they were terrible in a lot of ways but the URL would often reflect the state of the UI so you could refresh and get back to the same view. I think web frameworks and people specialising as frontend engineers helped kill this being something that was added as you developed
One that gets me is the number of menus below infinite scrolls. I think this is a reflection on people doing responsive design for variable screen sizes but only as a checkbox / meeting some UX redlines / implementing once without basic testing. An example of this is Google Flights for some screen sizes where the currency selection is below the infinite scroll on some screen sizes (but its not an ideal example because on other screen sizes the currency select just disappears or at least it used to)
Ah yea that too!
Sometimes you can kinda get there by hitting the End key, sometimes you need to open the DevTools to get to their About page or change the language or whatever option they put below the endless scroll.
I am 100% with you on both of those!
I just stopped using Libre Writer and switched to OnlyOffice because it was impossible to get a normal goddamn scroll bar in an application literally designed around scrolling text. Holding the scroll Arrow button to scan for something is impossible because there are no scroll Arrow buttons.
But OnlyOffice has a Header navigation tool, too, so fuck Libre Writer right in the face.
Auto hide bullshit scroll bars should be illegal on desktop. Who the fuck needs that 7 extra pixels on desktop?
I now have very strong opinions about scroll bars.
Scroll bars don’t just let you scroll, they tell you where you are. If I’m reading and wonder how much I have left to go, I want to be able to just glance at the scroll bar, I don’t want to have to wave the pointer around to make to scroll bar appear. Fuck people’s anal-retentive fetish for “cleanness”.
Why would you ever need that in a 10 chapter story? Sounds a little indulgent. Next you’re gonna ask for fonts.
I JUST updated Raspberry Pi imager and the new UI is a huge step back… and it has the TINIEST scroll bars that don’t even exist until you try to mouse over everything! I hate it so much.
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Maybe popular among users but somehow not popular among devs?
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I absolutely hate those scrolling number pickers, like on alarm apps. Just pop up the numpad and I can enter a time in 2-4 taps, not 2-3 coarse scrolls of minutes, a fine scroll to the minute I actually want, then repeat that process on the hours.
I like when they have both, like the roller thing you can click to input a number, best of both worlds.
I hate it when the numbers affect each other too, so if you roll back on the minutes, the hour changes too. It’s awful.
I don’t mind one way or the other, I just wish people would settle on one convention!
Even if iPhone did everything else better than android, you could still never convince me to switch over to their hell of every date and time being entered via scroll.
Give me the little clock or a numpad.
As an old guy with a Birthday in Late December, fuck scrolling for dates.
Bro why is it any other way, ever.
I despise setting alarms. Why do I have to scroll? Fucking let me type in the time on a numpad.
I have like 50 alarms that are 15 minutes apart and I toggle them on and off as needed.
It’s a fucking mess, bro. Fuck.
Scroll bars are way too fucking thin now. When I have an app on one monitor, and try to scroll it, I’m battling the move to the next monitor with the teensy tiny scrollbar.
I’m even someone that knows how to use the mouse wheel and page down keys. It still has its place and so many refuse to acknowledge that. Sometimes I can’t even tell where on the page I am because the scrollbar activated its Octocamo.
Even worse are the scrollbars that are hidden until your mouse is over to of it.
I posted just now about this to someone else but I just updated my Raspberry Pi imager and the new UI is horrible, convoluted, and had scroll bars hidden by default with no way to show their MINUSCULE TINY ASSES without hovering over their one-pixel-wide bullshit bars ughhh
Unpopular because most people don’t notice at all, not because they disagree:
Bring back ellipsis to signal a new dialog instead of a complete action. E.g., a button “Save…” opens a dialog where you want to save, whereas a button “Save” saves it immediately
I didn’t know that was a standard until I started working in UIs. It’s great when you know, but it’s a clear sign that the standard isn’t clear enough when everyday users don’t realize.
If it doesn’t need JavaScript, it shouldn’t have JavaScript.
If it doesn’t need dynamic styling, it shouldn’t have dynamic styling (especially if it makes other elements move around or become occluded).
If it doesn’t need images, it shouldn’t have images. When it does need images, they should be in an appropriate format and minimum useful filesize.
It shouldn’t have audio. It doesn’t need audio, and should not have it.
I develop JS for a living, but for my personal site I faced the burden of PHP to load it directly, and kept minimal JS. I’ve had people note to me how quickly it loads.
Mobile phones have caused a dark age of UI design
The modern trend for “flat” UIs absolutely sucks. There is no separation between element layers, so you can’t tell where one windows starts and another begins when they are overlapping.
Respectfully I’m on the other side of that, but I see what you’re saying. I hate skeumorphism and (IMO) flat is a much more professional looking design motif. BUT…that flat has to come with just enough drop-shadow to be able to delineate the layers, otherwise yes, its too flat and indistinguishable.
GIVE ME HIGH CONTRAST COLOURED BORDERS
Any button that’s grayed out should say why it’s grayed out when you hover the cursor over it, or attempt to tap it.
For every UI app that runs commands in the background, Instead of a “Doing XYZ. Please Wait”, I want the logs of the commands being run. Not just the commands themselves, but their verbose outputs too. I want it ALL on display.
I want to know what the software I am using is doing to my computer. I dont want black box software on my PC.
Yeah, try telling that to my boss. Or any dev boss for that matter.
This used to be so common with installers in the past. Sometimes you had to click a button to show it. But I don’t really see it anymore
While I do want the logs accessible, I don’t know if I want it all on display.
Ever like, dig through Windows or Proton logs? Plain text files measurable in megabytes within seconds.
Running a program in terminal on Linux gives you a detailed output log that you can pipe into a txt file.
Having ambiguous toggle labels should cause you to lose your job
Don’t have a window named something like “Disable Features” and then the options be a toggle for “Cookies” or “Carry weight”
Does turning the toggle ON turn the feature OFF? Or do I need to turn the toggle to OFF to turn the feature OFF? Even worse when some are already in the off position.
Samsung does this in the phone settings because they have way too many features and half of them are Feature™ that you can’t even search for because it doesn’t describe the function at all.
Overriding browser functionality because of designer preferences or shitty implementation of tracking or whatever.
Don’t fuck with my scrolling.
Don’t fuck with my ctrl clicking to open links in a new tab.
Don’t capture window keyboard events unless you have a really excellent reason to and even then think about it really hard and decide not to.
And learn how to support basic keyboard navigation, damn it. It’s just about marking up your html properly, no scripting required.
I think all of these opinions are popular on the user side.
Every modern design trend sucks. Overly minimalistic/simplistic UI harms usability and actively makes users dumber and helpless.
I don’t want rounded corners, transparency, shadows, animations, modern icons etc…
Give me boring panels with clear boundaries between conceptual sections, explicit text on buttons, and no theming. I don’t care if it’s a fugly Win95 grey, I’d rather it be usable than flashy.
Always makes me laugh what people prioritize. Perfectly blended shadows underneath my windows that takes noticeable resources to render
“But computers are so powerful these days, clock cycles are basically free”
My partner and I watch a fellow (Brutalmoose) play retro/vintage games. Mostly Windows 98/XP/DOS/older consoles. When he busted out his Windows 98 machine built by LGR on YouTube, I was astounded at how simple and professional 98 looks. Windows XP looks like a toy compared to 98.
I will never get over Windows 7 Start Menu/Explorer, though. I loved it. I use OpenShell to make all of my Windows 10 machines have Windows 7 start menus, with their good indexed search (no internet results) and excellent Explorer UI I’ve been used to forever.
I got a Windows 11 machine at work and I fucking hate everything about it. They won’t let me install OpenShell because they “don’t allow open-source software” (insane)
Yeah, I remember going from 98 to XP. My schoolmates and I used to joke that it looked like an OS made by playskool. But to be fair, iirc, that was kind of the trend then and not uniquely some MS bullshit. We were saying the same about the appearance of the GameCube controller (even though it’s objectively great to use).
Not allowing open-source software as a blanket policy sounds pretty unhinged. I feel for you.
I don’t want rounded corners, transparency, shadows, animations, modern icons etc…
real
- Rounded corners are ugly and a bit wasteful and it not being square sounds annoying for devs.
- Transparency is ugly and less performant.
- Shadows are sometimes nice (movable floating windows/popups, large boxes of any sort, and text on images) but otherwise not.
- Animations are really annoying. The recent Firefox mobile UI update features even slower and more annoying animations. WHEN I OPEN A MENU IT SHOULD BE FULLY OPEN NEXT FRAME.
- I don’t really care about modern icons, but they should be coloured. Also old firefox logo better.
I see you are a fan of FVWM style of UI design.
I wish UI design had followed that kind of paradigm to be honest. My high school library had some Sun workstations running Solaris, instead of the shitty outdated Windows computers that would have been the norm then. I was in the minority enjoying it, but that’s how I got to use my first Unix system.
I can understand the sentiment though I can’t stand ugly as sin flat pixels unfortunately.
…win95 had the same minimize, maximize/restore and close buttons that modern ones do. _ □ x in the left upper corner…
You mean in the right upper corner.
Yes. It did. And?
Haha, mixed my directions up.
I just find it curious how modern minimalistic design harms users when we have had those in use from the very beginning of the visual operating systems.
Well, apart from the fact that Win95 is not the “very beginning of visual operating systems”, and it’s not even close (it’s not even MS first, second or third OS with a GUI), I don’t think this is necessarily relevant?
You’ve chosen pretty much the only windows element that has been left unchanged since windows 95, when MS has tried to “simplify” a bunch of other stuff as time went on. For instance, the whole settings situation in Windows 10 and 11 just shows the various iterations of trying to make the settings more and more minimal, but all it’s managed to do is:
- Hide away other options, or straight up not making them available anymore
- Fragmenting the experience by having to keep other legacy settings and control panel…
Or, in windows 11, again in an effort to oversimplify things, by default the right click menu now has fewer options, symbols in lieu of text for common operations, and needs expanding to access other options. This is more work, and a hidden layer, instead of just laying out the options because it’d feel “cluttered” or something.
This is symptomatic of the issues I am arguing about: there is a trend of trying to lay out things flatly and “simply”, but all it does is:
- Reduce what is obvious to what the product people have decided is essential for the user;
- Remove conceptual boundaries that should exists between subsets of tools (when flat design + no “ugly” separators);
- Shove everything else in deep nested menus or a dump-all burger menu. It’s fine, now the clutter is hidden away and you have a “clean” UI.
The funny thing is, it’s still not successful at being user friendly. Phones and tablets are, but it makes the issues even worse. A lot of kids my partner teach only ever use phones and tablets so in IT lessons it’s apparent they don’t know what files are, and “where they go” for instance. Because on iPhone and Android, in an effort to keep the UI simple, the directory structure is pretty much hidden by default.
Computers are complex tools, users should be helped in learning them, not infantilised with a “we know best” attitude.
I chose win95 because it was the one you gave as an example. I wanna also point out that i remember time when floppy discs were still floppy, so im not completelly talking from my ass.
Also i mostly agree with you. But purely from argumentive perspective i wanna bring up few point.
Symbols are universal reducing the need of localization. This is usefull when lets say my mother who does not speak English that well is searching help with some setting. Its easier for her to press the button with a gear, than reading from the list and trying to find option that in her computer is “Järjestelmä asetukset” and on the website is “System settings.”
Good place to notice how well visual symbols work are airports. No matter where in the world you are in international airports you can always wind bathrooms, exits, gates, shops and restaurants without knowing the local language bacause the symbols used at the airports are so universal. Similary now days i know to look for three dots or hamburger when im looking for more settings.
Thing to remember is that you and me arent the microsofts main customers. Most people using windows dont know anything about computers, and im willing a bet lot of money that MS have data of how many people use spesific menus and settings and that the now nested menus in win11 dont get that much of an use ie. Listing those are unneccessary clutter for most users.
Also i share your worry about kids gettkng used on mobile devices and having no understanging of basics of computers, BUT same argument could have been said when we jumped from text based operating systems to visuals, or when we jumped from punch cards to text based system, or when jumped from using cables to punch cards.
That makes us about the same age then.
Yeah, I am not arguing “all symbols bad”, more than we are trying to push symbols where it could be questionable. Also these symbols still need to be learned: talking of my mother for instance, I absolutely remember having to teach her that the X was for closing the window, and having to do it multiple times. I don’t argue the usefulness of the X over a “quit” or “close” button btw. Just that this has to be learned too. That’s fine.
That’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation though. Would some settings not be useful to almost anyone, even if they all knew about it? Absolutely, so it should be harder to access. Are there features that would be better for a lot of users but barely anyone knows about because of this? Certainly true too. And that’s being charitable to companies, and assuming that they collect and present data as fairly as possible internally rather than use it in a way that makes a case for what they want to push… And yeah, we aren’t Microsoft target, but I’d argue most companies share this trend. Even some open source projects buy into that when not necessary (imo).
And yeah, there is a good amount of subjectivity here of course. I think we (probably?) both agree with saying that making things simpler is not inherently bad, it’s good even. I was trying to argue we are making a lot of things “simplistic” instead. As an aside, MS developing PowerShell is a form of admission that, for certain tasks, command line is better suited than graphical user interfaces. So yes, automatic jumps between paradigm could, and should, be argued on a case by case basis rather than blindly following it.
I absolutelly agree most people would benefit if they had the possibility and intrest to go trough all the settings. But most i also think most users would never go trough them. And for some reason some people just are against learning anything new.
Thinking about programs that show everything my mind goes straight to Blender. For first time user the amount of information is overwhelming, even if everything has pretty clear explanations and plenty of tutorial material online, for average person its borderline unusable program. Add the ability to customize the layout and thousands of possible plugins, if you mess with things there and you dont know what you are doing, you are going to have bad time with it.
Sorry i got stuck at the microsoft/windows thing.
Personally i hate win11 and if i were the king of the world, we would have stopped at win7 or xp. I also loathe how microsoft has started to force people in their enviroment, forcing people to have online account, in every turn trying to push their cloud service, trying to prohibit downloads outside of their store and generally trying to take personal out of personal computers.
But even after so i think their UI is pretty smartly designed for what is their core userbase. (Not that much for professional side)
Generally i agree with you and i see three kinds of UI designs: professional stuff like photoshop, ui that is trying to sell you something like most apps or websites and engaging uis like games or social media.
What i hate in modern times is when companies start to mix those things up. Like for example Canva is supposed to be tool for making graphics, but the sites design is allover the place.
Computer UI has been made to follow mobile UI when the two have very different sets of constraints. It is ok for a computer program to look cluttered; that’s how you can access everything easily.
I don’t know how unpopular this is - I’ve never asked anybody:
Phone-optimised UIs suck, even on phones. One of the first things I do on setting up a new phone is tick ‘request desktop website’ in the browser.
Ooh, that one is probably pretty unpopular… Most desktop sites are absolute garbage on mobile.
Though I do hate when a mobile site won’t let you zoom for some asinine reason.
If all you want is to read 5000 words of something you were looking for … just display those 5000 words and nothing else.
We don’t need graphics, pictures, images, blocking, ads, pop-ups, videos or any other suggestions … just give us the content, it’s all we want sometimes.
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I mean, Firefox Reader View is probably the closest you will get…
Reader mode in the browser is a godsend.
There are still plenty of websites and even news websites that either avoid this or break reader mode to prevent people from using it.
Seems to work almost every time for me in safari / Orion? Best part is in lots of paywalled sites, reader mode shows all content.
