Discussion Software design bad practice: 2023 edition

[dave_the_nerd]

I am completely serious when I say that the UI was perfected 20 years ago - stop screwing with it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I am completely serious when I say that the UI was perfected 20 years ago - stop screwing with it.

I feel the same way. Windows 95/98/2000 was perfection. Make everything look like that, just make things run better under the hood.

XP was ok too, but only after setting everything to Windows Classic.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I feel the same way. Windows 95/98/2000 was perfection. Make everything look like that, just make things run better under the hood.

XP was ok too, but only after setting everything to Windows Classic.

Honestly, there's also a lot to be said for a blinking green cursor.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Isn't this the same thread I did a while back?

Hey IT Guys ... KNOCK IT OFF!!!!!

I don't care about your job security changes for the sake of changes to show off your fancy new tricks. I don't care if you learned a new code gimmick. STOP changing stuff that works!!!! Proton Mail for one has changed stuff about six times in the last year. Banks keep changing stuff. I got...

forums.anandtech.com

 

[pmv]

- No definition between different UI elements, such as buttons, or things you can click on and empty space

Definitely this. Been irritating me since Windows 10/"Metro" first came out.

That "flat" aesthetic seems to mean I constantly have to pause and peer at the screen to work out where the edges of things are, e.g. where a window begins and the background ends, and I repeatedly find myself missing the UI element I was trying to click on and clicking on the wrong thing. Without faux-3d borders and all the other graphical flourishes that they presumably decided were too 'fussy' and not elegant enough, you have to be pixel-perfect in selecting things.

 

[yottabit]

Progress bars that lie, especially when there are multiple passes that aren’t indicated initially

Things that should be separate processes but hitch the main process making the UI totally unresponsive and trying to click will cause the “This app isn’t responding” white ghost image with Windows overly aggressive timeout

And by far my most hated, “Press Esc to Cancel” that doesn’t work! I can’t tell you how many huge operations I’ve initiated in so many different programs, where the cancel functionality either doesn’t work or takes until the process is almost complete to actually cancel. I can’t really think of a single program where they have that option that it behaves like a hardware interrupt. It’s usually faster to kill via Task Manager and relaunch to get back to where I was.

I would complain about non-native apps like all the Electron Js “desktop” apps but they work well enough, and though the file sizes are large storage is cheap now.

 

[yottabit]

Oh and the amount of whitespace associated with the flat UI trends is insane, when even “compact” mode takes up about 30%+ more space than the old version of the software, usually just enough bloat that it becomes nearly unusable without fullscreen at 1080p

Compare the information density of MS Teams to AOL Instant Messenger or an old IRC client for instance

 

[pmv]

Progress bars that lie, especially when there are multiple passes that aren’t indicated initially

Isn't that pretty much "every progress bar, ever"? So often they will get to 100% and then stop for as long as the previous 99% took put together.

Things that should be separate processes but hitch the main process making the UI totally unresponsive and trying to click will cause the “This app isn’t responding” white ghost image with Windows overly aggressive timeout

Maybe this is a specific case of that? What bugs me is when you attach an external device, like a card-reader, say, or put a slightly-scratched disk in an optical drive, and Windows becomes so single-mindedly fixated on reading that one drive, that Explorer becomes entirely unusable, preventing you from looking at _any_ drive or folder, while it obsessively attempts to read the problematic one.

 

[yottabit]

Isn't that pretty much "every progress bar, ever"? So often they will get to 100% and then stop for as long as the previous 99% took put together.




Maybe this is a specific case of that? What bugs me is when you attach an external device, like a card-reader, say, or put a slightly-scratched disk in an optical drive, and Windows becomes so single-mindedly fixated on reading that one drive, that Explorer becomes entirely unusable, preventing you from looking at _any_ drive or folder, while it obsessively attempts to read the problematic one.

Oh yeah or god forbid you try to access a network drive that is disconnected. Honestly the amount of time I’ve had to kill and relaunch explorer.exe is disheartening, basic file management should be such a core function of the OS you’d think they’d have it bulletproof.

edit: oh and there’s a mitigation for this, why it isn’t enabled by default I have NO idea

Enable or Disable Launch Folder Windows in a Separate Process in Windows 11 Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable launch folder windows in a separate explorer process by default for your account in Windows 10 and Windows 11. Each process running in Windows is assigned a unique decimal number called the process ID (PID) to identify an active process. This...

www.elevenforum.com

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

I just want to know what svchost.exe is doing.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Oh yes the network drive locking up thing is super annoying. Why can't the GUI and the connectivity be two separate threads? This is even an issue in Linux. If the NFS drive is not responding it will lock up the entire GUI if you try to access it. In fact it will do that even if you try to access it via command line. There should also be like a 5sec time out and give an error, can't be that hard to implement that. If there is no easy way to tell the file browser that for whatever reason, then just display a file that says error. That would literally be better than locking up the entire file system.

 

[PlanetJosh]

Trying to get ChatGPT to help write instructions to teach non artistic people how to create high quality museum worthy paintings using an art kit they would purchase. Never in history have large numbers of non art trained people been taught how to make high end quality paintings. You can Google it or search on any search method and you will see it's never been done yet. This would be with acrylic paint on a canvas or other flat surface material. And eventually with oil art paint.

Lots of trained artists have bee shown how to make museum quality paintings. But not the masses. I'm talking well over most people, so maybe 6 or 7 billion people could be taught it. World pop will hit 8 billion in January btw.

 

[sdifox]

I just want to know what svchost.exe is doing.

It's shared service host, so whatever services you are running.

 

[repoman0]

Oh you know what I thought of another one, software where the window borders are flat white, mainly Microsoft shit. Can't tell where the edges are.

Can't remember what it looks like normally but dark mode in Win 11 isn't bad at all imo. There's a thin light surround and a shadow effect that makes window edges pretty obvious. The UI overall is still a nightmare mashup of old Win 95 style settings boxes and new ones but it's slowly getting better.

 

[repoman0]

Yeah I have not been a fan of Gnome since they came out with Unity. I imagine it must be even worse now. I'm on Mint Cinnamon which is much more tame and usable. (I think it's based on KDE?). I've used KDE as well which I find nice... but buggy. XFCE is ok too, I've used it on lower power machines.

Unity gnome 3 as packaged by default in Ubuntu is different from vanilla gnome 3. I don't actually hate the latter. It's different at first but after using it for a while it's really seamless and doesn't get in my way for productivity. Mouse to top left or windows key to see the overall view of all open windows is great. I prefer it to the other Linux desktops that I've tried.

 

[sdifox]

my pet peeve is thin video progress bar. What is the point of making a skip bar that is hard to hit?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Here is one that has always annoyed me, but not enough to remember until I just ran into it now.

When using a GUI to copy files, it will prompt you if there is a duplicate, or an error, or any issue that requires input, but only once it runs into that situation. So you start a copy and leave your PC and come back and it's sitting there at a prompt. Why not just have the options directly on the progress dialog box in a little pull down tab or something. "In case of duplicate: [overwrite] [ignore] [prompt]". Then you can select ahead of time and know that the copy will continue on. Ideally it should default at prompt, but at least make an option to select it in advance.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

How putting God damn everything in a cloud introduces little delays and latencies in everything.

The last fully offline non sub you own it office (16?) was solid, but now work has switched over to 365 and all my address book is stored "in the cloud" the number of times the prediction algorithm is a second behind my typing and loads the wrong name based is wayyyyyy too high.

I've had to slow myself down and triple check names on e-mails (always a good practice, but I'm actually finding the wrong names there now).

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

How putting God damn everything in a cloud introduces little delays and latencies in everything.

The last fully offline non sub you own it office (16?) was solid, but now work has switched over to 365 and all my address book is stored "in the cloud" the number of times the prediction algorithm is a second behind my typing and loads the wrong name based is wayyyyyy too high.

I've had to slow myself down and triple check names on e-mails (always a good practice, but I'm actually finding the wrong names there now).

Same, it's also super fun when said system has a bunch of thumbnails or other high file size content that comes with it, and no caching, so it takes fucking forever to scroll or load or query or whatever.

 

[nakedfrog]

I just want to know what svchost.exe is doing.

I used to use Process Explorer for this.

 

[VashHT]

Accounts and launchers within launchers.

For example, I recently bought BG3 on GoG. Happy to support DRM-free purchases. When I fired up BG3, I then had the Larian launcher, which required me to make a Larian account.

I still love BG3, but damn that infuriated me.

My wife ended up buying me BG3 on steam instead of GoG because GoG's gifting policies are absolute garbage. Apparently you have to spend $10 and wait 3 months before you can pay for a gift using CC, Paypal or Google Pay. Until then you're only allowed to use some scammy ass sounding services called skrill and gosafecard. Not that steam was much better, you shouldn't have to make an account and add someone to your friends to buy them a game, just seems like way too much.

 

[mikeymikec]

@VashHT My wife had similar trouble a year or so ago when she wanted to gift me stuff to my Blizzard account, there were quite a few hoops for her to hop through but she managed it eventually.

One of the first things that I learnt about commerce is that you're meant to make it as easy as possible for your prospective customers to buy stuff through you. Sometimes I think some companies forgot about that and instead arrogantly presumed that *everyone* uses their service already or at least ought to, so lots of those hoops don't count.

 

[pmv]

One of the first things that I learnt about commerce is that you're meant to make it as easy as possible for your prospective customers to buy stuff through you.

Unless, I suppose, you are aiming for artificial scarcity and exclusivity. As with upmarket perfumes and such-like. You don't want your product becoming associated with the plebs!

Can't imagine that computer game publishers would be operating on that principle, though.

 

[Zorba]

This too! Worse is having multiple windows stacked can't even tell where one ends and other starts.

On similar note, invisible or nearly invisible scroll bars are terrible too. MacOS is very guilty of that, and to make matters worse, their mice don't even have a scroll wheel. I always get annoyed with that at church when I have to run Zoom since they decided to go Mac.

Can't believe macs still use mice from the 80s.

 

[sdifox]

Can't believe macs still use mice from the 80s.

Their access to PARC got revoked after they stole the mouse.