Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?
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@Applied-Mediocrity interesting, I’ve only ever heard of Y2038, when the Unix time rolls over. Didn’t realize there’s another one of those two years earlier.
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@Gąska said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
Can someone explain to me why clock synchronization protocol has chosen its epoch to start over 80 years before the protocol's creation so that it's already 60% toward rollover on day one!?
Common Lisp universal-time seems to be the only thing that has the exact same format.
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@Vixen said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
so..... you want to rethink talking in absolutes?
That's for "I have the high ground," not "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." If you're going to prequelmeme, at least be consistent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09IBPbv8KgI
And yes, prequel memes are my specialty.
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@Groaner said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
And yes, prequel memes are my specialty.
:man_of_culture.svg:
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@Groaner said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Vixen said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
so..... you want to rethink talking in absolutes?
That's for "I have the high ground," not "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." If you're going to prequelmeme, at least be consistent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09IBPbv8KgI
And yes, prequel memes are my specialty.
if i was going to make my own memes i'd bne significantly less
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@dkf said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Zenith said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
Here's the actual problem. They're not closing sockets, so it's leaking memory until it crashes. If we change these eight lines, we can actually decommission all of the additional servers they had us rent last time this issue came up.
7 You're really starting to piss people off.Your problem is right there. Fix the socket closing issue, sure, but don't then make recommendations on reducing the size of empire the bozos have built up. Instead, sell the change as helping reduce the crashing problem. (Reducing down to zero works for me.)
The poor server utilization is something to raise at a later date.
The problem is that there are some management types who don't hear anything until and unless you bring up dollar amounts, so it becomes a necessary tactic.
Also, I'm somewhat appalled that socket/handle leaks are still that much an issue in
$CURRENT_YEAR. In a language like C#, even if you forget to enclose anIDisposablein ausingblock (or forget to callDispose()), the GC still eventually cleans it up, right? Right?
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@Groaner said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
Also, I'm somewhat appalled that socket/handle leaks are still that much an issue in $CURRENT_YEAR. In a language like C#, even if you forget to enclose an IDisposable in a using block (or forget to call Dispose()), the GC still eventually cleans it up, right? Right?
The GC does not call
Dispose(), not directly, anyway. If the object has a destructor that happens to callDispose(), then it would work that way, but nobody really does that because the GC is so lazy. (On my workstation with 32 GB RAM, destructors never get called if I'm running a 64-bit process because there's never enough memory pressure to wake up the GC.)
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@mott555 said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
The GC does not call
Dispose(), not directly, anyway. If the object has a destructor that happens to callDispose(), then it would work that way, but nobody really does that because the GC is so lazy.Ah, okay, so it's effectively a Raymond Chen-esque null garbage collector. That would be a problem. Still, I'd hope that a properly-implemented class would have finalizers that perform necessary cleanup (even though we're supposed to assume that finalizers may never actually run).
(On my workstation with 32 GB RAM, destructors never get called if I'm running a 64-bit process because there's never enough memory pressure to wake up the GC.)
And this is how we ended up with Kerbal Space Program stuttering every second or two after either loading a 500+ part craft or playing the game for more than an hour.
God, I hope KSP 2 doesn't have these problems.
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@Groaner said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
this is how we ended up with Kerbal Space Program stuttering every second or two
That's why at some point I replaced our session timeout mechanism to use a sorted queue instead of full scans of the session table. It ended up about equally fast, but it could run more often so the individual cleanup passes no longer caused the input buffer to overflow.
Similarly I do believe there are GCs which have good incremental cleanup, though they may not have been around when KSP was first built.
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@Groaner said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
Rumor has it that they're still telling "Don't taze me, bro!" jokes to each other.
Heh...that dude was hilarious.
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@Zecc said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@error said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
I do have an ex who liked to have sexPaging Dr. Seuss.
...in a box with no socks
while a blue ox G'Nox liked to watch.
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@Carnage said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Jaloopa said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@levicki said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
As for the "OK, boomer" thing -- it is a dangerous generalization. It also means "I am dismissing everything you say because I think you are out of touch" while actually not giving any thought to the real cause of disagreement nor attempting to get to the bottom of it and settle things like normal adults.
Yeah, it must be terrible to be dismissed just because of your age and presumed lack of experience in the matters being talked about. Especially when people assume your generation is a different age to what it actually is.
Luckily, us millenials haven't had to go through that
Ok boomer.
"Best Yoda I am."
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@boomzilla boomer, ok.
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@Zenith said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
Why do some sites render checkmarks and radiomarks the same way?
I've been asked to impelment this one multiple times by some 'UX designer' (a girl fresh out of art school). In all cases, it was simply impossible to explain to them that checkboxes and radiobuttons are different things.
Edit: I also remember a more malicious variant of this idea, this time from some marketing/managerial guy. It was not to just style them, but make checkboxes behave like radio.
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@sebastian-galczynski said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
some marketing/managerial guy
Chaotic Evil, by definition. Continue.
@sebastian-galczynski said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
make checkboxes behave like radio.
why not just use radio buttons at that point? or did they also want the thing laid out so that the various radio button options were never all onscreen at the same time so when they flipped one they didn't necessarily see the others?
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@Vixen said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
why not just use radio buttons at that point? or did they also want the thing laid out so that the various radio button options were never all onscreen at the same time so when they flipped one they didn't necessarily see the others?
I don't remember exactly, but probably he just didn't like how the radiobuttons looked in his browser.
It was one of these 'let's do this like $BIG_COMPETITOR' projects, where the "idea guy" sees some interface on a competitor app or website without any grasp of the underlying mechanisms and tries to cram it into another mechanism.
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@sebastian-galczynski said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
he just didn't like how the radiobuttons looked in his browser.
.......I need to get another 44" section of 2x4 ash, or possibly maple, and borrow my friends wood lathe for a weekend. Make myself a new clue-by-four..... also a version of that made of Quebracho for those particularly stubborn cases.
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@Vixen said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
ash, or possibly maple
That's one of the things which are better in America. Where I live the only wood you can buy is shitty styrofoam-like pine which splits in your hand, and sometimes oak (but smaller than 2x4'') :/
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@sebastian-galczynski said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Vixen said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
ash, or possibly maple
That's one of the things which are better in America. Where I live the only wood you can buy is shitty styrofoam-like pine which splits in your hand, and sometimes oak (but smaller than 2x4'') :/
oh, pines all i can get in the usual getting spots. I'll have to go to a specialty wood store for the wood. for two reasons. One because those woods don't get sold at the usual getting spots in those dimensions, and Two because i want those to be the finish dimensions not the roughcut dimensions....
which means even for the relatively common Oak that's going to be pricy.
worth it tho.
totally worth it.
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@Vixen We don't have things like maple or ash even in specialty stores, at least not in central Poland. You need to drive 300km to find some remote sawmill in the mountains, and if some ash tree fell recently in their vicinity, they may process and sell it.
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@sebastian-galczynski said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Vixen We don't have things like maple or ash even in specialty stores, at least not in central Poland. You need to drive 300km to find some remote sawmill in the mountains, and if some ash tree fell recently in their vicinity, they may process and sell it.
sadness and woe.
i guess you could order from some online store and get it shipped but then you won't get to inspect the wood for fitness before you purchase and in any case shippings likely to be both highway robbery and murder.
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@Zenith I'm probably mentioned my gripe with 20-character maximum limits on password fields before somewhere, since I fancy adding petroleum to the fire.
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@Shoreline said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Zenith I'm probably mentioned my gripe with 20-character maximum limits on password fields before somewhere, since I fancy adding petroleum to the fire.
I don't mind that limit as long as their password changing page tells you that. I just changed my password for Centurylink and the only length rule they state is it must be >=8 characters. I set a 64 character autogenerated password and it said it failed the 8 character check. I knocked it down to 20 or 32 and it worked. Somebody was doing max length validation without stating a max length!
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@levicki said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
It's also easier to clean
Good point, it's a bitch getting blood out of wood grain.
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@mikehurley said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Shoreline said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Zenith I'm probably mentioned my gripe with 20-character maximum limits on password fields before somewhere, since I fancy adding petroleum to the fire.
I don't mind that limit as long as their password changing page tells you that. I just changed my password for Centurylink and the only length rule they state is it must be >=8 characters. I set a 64 character autogenerated password and it said it failed the 8 character check. I knocked it down to 20 or 32 and it worked. Somebody was doing max length validation without stating a max length!
That's optimistic. They're probably storing it plaintext in a varchar(32) column.
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@Vixen said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
oh, pines all i can get in the usual getting spots. I'll have to go to a specialty wood store for the wood.
Interesting the kinds of wood that are available in different places. I haven't had any reason to go to a lumber store in TX, yet, but in CA, construction-grade wood is fir or, for outdoor use (rot-resistant, what a lot of places use red cedar for), redwood. The usual getting spots all carry red oak, birch, and poplar. Pine is limited mostly to moldings, trim, shelving, and the like. I know of one store in San Jose that carries specialty hardwoods (I'm sure there must be others in the area, but that's the only one I know of). WA is pretty much the same, but with cedar instead of redwood.
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@HardwareGeek said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Vixen said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
oh, pines all i can get in the usual getting spots. I'll have to go to a specialty wood store for the wood.
Interesting the kinds of wood that are available in different places. I haven't had any reason to go to a lumber store in TX, yet, but in CA, construction-grade wood is fir or, for outdoor use (rot-resistant, what a lot of places use red cedar for), redwood. The usual getting spots all carry red oak, birch, and poplar. Pine is limited mostly to moldings, trim, shelving, and the like. I know of one store in San Jose that carries specialty hardwoods (I'm sure there must be others in the area, but that's the only one I know of). WA is pretty much the same, but with cedar instead of redwood.
given the usual getting spots around here are all construction based (for the 2x[2-16] form factor) everything is pine... but i wouldn't be surprised if other evergreens are mixed in because is for walls and shit.
not too surprising when you look at what's in the nearby woods....
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Yeah, all the general purpose stuff around here is pine at the local hardware store. There are some nice wood stores around though for anything special.
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@Dragoon said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
There are some nice wood stores around though for anything special.
we have a few of these as well. the one i'm thinking of going to specializes in cabinetry and other finish wood working projects, so it's much more likely to have the good stuff, and if not it can certainly order it.
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@Vixen said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
not too surprising when you look at what's in the nearby woods
Exactly. CA has redwood because it grows (more or less) locally. WA doesn't because it doesn't. Most of the fir sold in CA probably comes from WA and OR, but that's still relatively local compared to the nearest pine forests. (CA has pines, but they tend to be a minority component of mixed forests and varieties that are relatively small and don't yield a lot of high-grade lumber, so not worth harvesting on a large scale.)
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@error said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@mikehurley said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Shoreline said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Zenith I'm probably mentioned my gripe with 20-character maximum limits on password fields before somewhere, since I fancy adding petroleum to the fire.
I don't mind that limit as long as their password changing page tells you that. I just changed my password for Centurylink and the only length rule they state is it must be >=8 characters. I set a 64 character autogenerated password and it said it failed the 8 character check. I knocked it down to 20 or 32 and it worked. Somebody was doing max length validation without stating a max length!
That's optimistic. They're probably storing it plaintext in a varchar(32) column.
And probably just relying on the DB throwing a string truncation error instead of doing any actual length checks at any point before it tries inserting it into the DB. You were probably implying that though.
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@CodeJunkie said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
And probably just relying on the DB throwing a string truncation error
Which will not be thrown
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@levicki said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
maybe even a steel pipe might be challenging to clean.
Nah, just soak it in bleach or Coca Cola for a little while.
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@Zenith said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
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Why is "oops something happened, try again later" an acceptable error message?
Because in all cases where a server-side error has occurred, the end user can do absolutely nothing to remedy it, and providing any more information could constitute a security risk, or hint at where one could be found
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Why is a page whose elements keep jumping around as parts load so you can't click anything for a full minute acceptable?
It's not, get a faster internet connection.
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Why is server side, and only server side validation, considered efficient?
Because maintaining two separate sets of validation code has both a development and maintenance overhead. There are frameworks which generate both, people just don't know about them or use them. Plus client-side validation is often annoying if it presumes you'll fill in a form linearly.
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Why is validation done one field at a time considered efficient?
It's not, anyone who codes a web-app which does this is a complete dick.
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Why do so many form fields (besides passwords and the like) reset on a failed form submission?
I'd say this would be easier handled by the browser, but it isn't. If you use ASP.NET MVC properly, this doesn't happen. Cant speak for other languages, but I imagine they have a similar MVC paradigm which will repopulate fields for you on a failed submit.
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Why is not focusing on any fields upon loading considered user friendly?
Is pressing [Tab] so hard.
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Why is a postback on filtering and sorting and paging lists of less than 50 items acceptable?
Because despite the rapid trend towards JavaScript heavy web-apps which use APIs isn't happening fast enough for you.
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Why is the even worse infiniscroll abomination not just tolerated but embraced?
What's so bad about it. For the intended use-case, it's a perfect interface. I scroll cause I wanna see more stuff, keep scrolling, see more stuff.
If you need to have a dimensioned list, there are TONNES of JS grids which will allow you to have virtual scrolling which loads a page at a time, so when your list has a billion records in it, you don't have to load them all up front, or kill the database with a select * on a massive table.
My pet peeve, is freaking pagination, in this day and age. And most of the time when you sort a paginated list, you only sort the current page :(-
Why don't sites underline regular links anymore?
Most sites I use do.
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Why can't we just have actual buttons for actions instead of styled links?
I don't see this much, maybe there are a bunch of people who don't know how to make a button do a GET vs a POST? I don't know, but it's not common.
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Why is there a push to remove borders that would define the edges of elements, in particular mouse-activated elements?
I don't really understand what you're getting at. Designers be designers, and who am I to argue with what "looks good"
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Why doesn't anything online ever print right?
It never has. Everyone who want's you to print something gives you a way to download a PDF. If you spend a few weeks, and a couple of trees of paper, you may be able to write some CSS with @media for print that actually works in one browser.
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Why do people reinvent the selectbox if they're not going to do anything that the browser's built-in selectbox can't do?
Designers be designers, plus too many JQuery components to make it all too easy to "jazz up" your site
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Why do some sites render checkmarks and radiomarks the same way?
Bad CSS, insufficient testing. Gen Y and later have never seen a "radio button" in real life, making it a redundant interface metaphor. Plus, in all but the most trivial cases a drop-down is always superior. And don't even mention "gender" in 2020 it's virtually a tag-cloud or a user-editable database table with so many made-up choices it's a joke.
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Why do mobile-optimized storefronts have pictures that only zoom in ~20% because they're constrained by being inline elements inside a fixed viewport?
Insufficient testing, inadequate tooling, or just a mistake.
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Why don't "specifications" tabs include physical dimensions, OS requirements, or other critical details?
What's a "Specifications" tab?
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Why are window sizes fixed and unscrollable when they're clearly way too small for the content?
Because someone forgot to set the minimum size attribute in their style-sheet.
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Why didn't anybody involved with HTML standards ever make table headers/footers fixed so the rest of the rows could scroll?
Great idea, you should join the IETF
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Why is absolute positioning still such a kludge that I can still see headers/footers jump away from the edge when I scroll?
Probably because there is some JavaScript doing it. Absolute positioning works fine, but is a waste of screen real-estate in most cases.
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Why did non-IE browsers fight against a modal/blocking dialog window?
Because nobody really likes modal dialogs. There are PLENTY of JS implementations which are equally annoying.
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These are all easily solved problems. Yet, somehow, they persist. Does somebody out there like it this way or what?
Because usability is a matter of opinion, or a well-paying career for wannabe Hipster designers who can't draw. If you don't like it, build your sites to your own taste.
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@idzy said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
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Why is not focusing on any fields upon loading considered user friendly?
Is pressing [Tab] so hard.
Not everyone knows this, and in any case, setting the focus on the most likely field a user will want to type into first is going to be quicker all round (except for the programmer, of course).
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Why don't "specifications" tabs include physical dimensions, OS requirements, or other critical details?
What's a "Specifications" tab?
I took that to mean the part of a webshop that shows you the specifications of a device you’re considering buying. Not sure what this has to do with the quality of the UI, though — it sounds more like a general complaint about webshops.
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@djls45 said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
or Coca Cola
Soak it in sugary syrup, that'll get it clean
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@levicki said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
there is no way to save the current position in case you want to come back later and continue from that point
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@Jaloopa said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@levicki said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
there is no way to save the current position in case you want to come back later and continue from that point
This black magic doesn't work with slow-Loading images.
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@Jaloopa I think they were talking about feeds. This forum is not a feed.
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@djls45 the concept is the same. There's no technical reason not to have a permalink to each item on an infiniscroll feed of any sort
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@hungrier said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@djls45 said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
or Coca Cola
Soak it in sugary syrup, that'll get it clean
Sure. A quick rinse and scrub, and the sugar comes right off. Blood doesn't do that.
I don't remember exactly, but I recall reading somewhere that some EMTs and (homicide) cops will carry a case of coca-cola in their cars in order to help clean up blood stains from accident/crime scenes. Maybe it's the carbonation, or maybe something in the formulation, or both. It's almost certainly cheaper and easier to handle than many chemical cleaners.
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@Jaloopa Oh, I agree. But often you'll get an index into the infiniscroll feed instead, unless you hunt around for the permalink, which is sometimes hidden away for some reason. Sites that actively hide permalinks are
.
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@levicki said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
If there is no technical reason not to have a permalink and no technical reason not be able to start at a random position and have a finite number of items shown, then there is also no reason to use infini-scroll at all.
The concept of infini-scroll is stupid because it mimics paper scrolls which were replaced because we invented something better. Therefore, people who defend it are also stupid and we should replace them with something better as well.I think you're conflating. You couldn't instantly access an arbitrary location on a long scroll. You can do so on an infiniscroll page.
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@Tsaukpaetra Only if you have a direct link, which is the whole issue under discussion here: sites that don't offer them.
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@levicki said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
Instagram
Fuck instagram.
And not only because:
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@levicki said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
a shitty infini-scroll page.
And I can also produce a shitty paginated page.
Case in point, IIRC the default table editor I'm using has four buttons to select the page: First, Previous, Next, and Last. You wanted page 12 in a 1921-page table? Fuck you!
Shitty implementation does not mean the system itself is shitty.
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@levicki said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
if the majority of implementations of some system are shitty, then it's the system which is shitty, because it obviously doesn't lend itself well to proper implementation.
IOW: Just because lazy therefore bad system. Got it.
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@levicki said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
jumping over huge gaps involved.
You're pretty good at that, it seems. I'm just following your example.
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@djls45 said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
I don't remember exactly, but I recall reading somewhere that some EMTs and (homicide) cops will carry a case of coca-cola in their cars in order to help clean up blood stains from accident/crime scenes.
I've also heard this, in emails forwarded by people who don't know better. It's fake like most things in those lists.
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@levicki said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Do people actually like poor quality user interfaces?:
You're pretty good at that, it seems. I'm just following your example.
Are you sure you want to join this club? It's lonely in here...
There will be tears and shouts, are you inviting?
