This article talks about how modern apps are plagued with the overuse of animation and white space, resulting in interfaces that look great in tech demos, but are bulky and slow to use. The author...
This article talks about how modern apps are plagued with the overuse of animation and white space, resulting in interfaces that look great in tech demos, but are bulky and slow to use. The author asserts that interfaces should strive to be more like the terminal: fast, customizable, and rewarding to power-users who bother to learn them.
I think that the new reddit redesign is a great example of the flaws of modern interface design. The site is much slower to load. The design looks nice (subjectively), but the interface gets in the way of usability.
My arch nemesis these days. So many web interfaces, from Gmail & Youtube to Reddit's redesign to the examples in this article (Slack, Gitlab, etc), have cranked up the unnecessary use of white...
overuse of... white space
My arch nemesis these days. So many web interfaces, from Gmail & Youtube to Reddit's redesign to the examples in this article (Slack, Gitlab, etc), have cranked up the unnecessary use of white space so much that I honestly feel like my screens are shrinking. The new Gmail, even on compact view only shows 60% the numbers of email headers on the screen as before. YouTube is a white space haven with subscription icons 4x the size they previously were (thankfully YouTube Classic fixes that). Etc.. Etc.. Etc...
Frankly, I blame the rise of tablets for this... well, that and companies trying to save money with a one size fits all approach, attempting to unify Desktop and Tablet sites rather than designing separate interfaces for each. Thank God for Stylish, responsive design and browser zoom so at least we're somewhat able to counteract it. :/
Let's build a command line interface right into Tildes. No, really! The reply box will do fine. How often have you seen on reddit all of those "!remindme 2 days" and similar comments? Why not just...
Let's build a command line interface right into Tildes. No, really!
The reply box will do fine. How often have you seen on reddit all of those "!remindme 2 days" and similar comments? Why not just have a special command character and commands like that as part of the site itself?
No, really, indeed. A CLI for Tildes, especially relegating interactions with bots to that, so it doesn't clog up the comments section, would be amazing.
No, really, indeed. A CLI for Tildes, especially relegating interactions with bots to that, so it doesn't clog up the comments section, would be amazing.
And for premium memberships, we could give people shell accounts and email... though after what happened to Lavabit, I'm glad Tildes lives in Canada instead of the US.
And for premium memberships, we could give people shell accounts and email... though after what happened to Lavabit, I'm glad Tildes lives in Canada instead of the US.
It is, but that doesn't mean Canada is going to issue federal orders to turn over encryption keys. We know the US gov will do that without a second thought. We could also build a system that...
It is, but that doesn't mean Canada is going to issue federal orders to turn over encryption keys. We know the US gov will do that without a second thought.
We could also build a system that recycles/regenerates keys all the time, so that there's nothing like a single set of keys to the kingdom to turn over.
Spectria (the non-profit behind Tildes) could do all sorts of cool things, Tildes itself is just the main project. It all comes down to what people are willing to donate and pay for, both in terms of money and in terms of code/time.
Never put it past the Canadian government to do some shady shit in the name of "national security", my friend. CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) is incredibly good at keeping a low...
Never put it past the Canadian government to do some shady shit in the name of "national security", my friend. CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) is incredibly good at keeping a low profile, but they are every bit as large and data collection happy as their counterparts elsewhere. Thankfully our courts are pretty pro-privacy and aren't afraid to rule against the government in that regards though. E.g. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-csis-purging-data-amassed-over-years-about-ordinary-canadians/
That's just hoovering up everything on the wires. If it's encrypted, they'll get nothing useful. When that happens in the US, the government uses the courts to force people to turn over the keys...
That's just hoovering up everything on the wires. If it's encrypted, they'll get nothing useful. When that happens in the US, the government uses the courts to force people to turn over the keys so they can get at the data. Has Canada ever done that?
Meh. People can always collapse this off-topic discussion if they don't want to read it. Although I think the CLI idea is definitely worth discussing in more detail at some point.
Meh. People can always collapse this off-topic discussion if they don't want to read it. Although I think the CLI idea is definitely worth discussing in more detail at some point.
Fair enough... I certainly wasn't trying to suggest CSIS/CSE and the Canadian government are as bad as the CIA/NSA and US Government is in that regard, but things change and Trudeau, while...
Fair enough... I certainly wasn't trying to suggest CSIS/CSE and the Canadian government are as bad as the CIA/NSA and US Government is in that regard, but things change and Trudeau, while slightly better than Harper, is still very much for "improving" national security at the expense of citizens' privacy. See: https://ccla.org/ten-things-need-know-bill-c-59/
Also keep in mind that it's only our courts that are currently standing in between us Canadian citizens and laws very similar to the US being passed here regarding national security, not our representatives who would overall be very much for them (Conservatives and Liberals, at least).
I find it somewhat amusing that the author complains about overly-large type, yet the title of the blog post is 100px high – nevertheless, the overall point is a good one.
I find it somewhat amusing that the author complains about overly-large type, yet the title of the blog post is 100px high – nevertheless, the overall point is a good one.
I'm usually all for complaining about software but I don't think this blog post was very good. I have a hard time relating to or really seeing what they want out of their software other than to be...
I'm usually all for complaining about software but I don't think this blog post was very good. I have a hard time relating to or really seeing what they want out of their software other than to be "faster" which isn't much of a point. I also think it's funny to complain about animations when using a mac, it's an integral part of their whole shtick. But other than that I think software typically rises to the needs of the user. The reason Slack, Facebook, and whatever shitty web app your using is slow and shitty isn't solely due to poor design. It's just because the users don't need anything more. There's not much for power users to do in those apps.
On the other hand, if you look at applications that where users really asks a lot from the software in terms of complexity you'll see a lot of the features the author is looking for. For example using Maya, Blender, ZBrush and to an extent NUKE you'll find they each have a fast, animation free user interfaces that make hundreds of tools and commands accessible to the user. However they all also offer systems that power users can learn to make those tools and commands even easier to access. Web apps just don't require that level of access and so they settle into the "good enough" territory. At least for right now, it's not like the limitations of the web and web apps aren't understood.
Learning to use Visual Studio Code as a text editor has been an interesting experience. It's a GUI app, but very little of value is in the menus. You can intuitively switch tabs and save files and...
Learning to use Visual Studio Code as a text editor has been an interesting experience. It's a GUI app, but very little of value is in the menus. You can intuitively switch tabs and save files and other basic stuff with a mouse, but most functionality is hidden behind a Spotlight-type search box you summon with a key combination. From there, you just search for whatever feature you want and hit enter. You don't have to memorize the exact command like you would at a terminal, just something close (auto format, run in shell, etc). While you're there, it also shows you the key combo you need to avoid the search box ("Command Palette") next time.
It's not especially composable the way Vim commands are, but it's about the best example I've seen of software passively teaching you how to use itself (not in-your-face with tutorials or help docs). You can start to use it productively without the sheer-cliff learning curve of Vim or Emacs. Many people hear the benefits of Vim, but once they launch it can't even figure out how to close app. I think this is a bigger problem than many of the things the article complained about (I don't mind animations?)
Easy enough: monospace fonts are best for reading individual characters because they have great spacing and alignment, whereas other font families are better for reading content naturally because...
Easy enough: monospace fonts are best for reading individual characters because they have great spacing and alignment, whereas other font families are better for reading content naturally because the characters are spaced in such a way that you can more easily read a word as a single entity. Because of a monospace font's effect of isolating individual characters, it's easier to see those characters in greater detail and determine whether or not you've e.g. missed a comma. In contrast, that extra kerning makes reading e.g. an article or a novel a bit of a chore.
In other words, the advantages and disadvantages of monospaced and non-monospaced fonts is in the way we parse the information, and the font you use should reflect the way you want that content parsed.
Edit: Another way to think about it is that monospace makes it easier to tokenize characters, whereas non-monospace makes it easier to tokenize words.
It's about keeping alignment consistent and making cursor navigating easy. Yeah, but most of the time you're not just reading something to see how it works or what it does, you're making changes...
It's about keeping alignment consistent and making cursor navigating easy.
don't we read everything we're programming just like we read normal text?
Yeah, but most of the time you're not just reading something to see how it works or what it does, you're making changes to it. When things are truly only meant to be read like in academic papers then they'll often be typed in a variable-width font.
Also you read code very differently than you read normal text, you skip around, go backwards, jump from section to section, etc.
Eh, not really. Native apps are good, but they can access all sorts of permissions. If I want privacy when using, say, reddit, I can at least use an adblocker to stop some of the tracking.
Every one of us knows that when it comes to a smartphone, we’d use a native app over an in-browser HTML5 any day of the week.
Eh, not really. Native apps are good, but they can access all sorts of permissions. If I want privacy when using, say, reddit, I can at least use an adblocker to stop some of the tracking.
I wanted to develop a desktop app a while ago, and was really shocked that my only options to do it (and have it look good) were either using Qt or something like Electron. Since qt is meant for...
I wanted to develop a desktop app a while ago, and was really shocked that my only options to do it (and have it look good) were either using Qt or something like Electron. Since qt is meant for C++, that felt like overkill for my app idea. It's a simple idea and doesn't need all the features in C++, and I only know the very basics of C++ development.
Electron on the other hand felt like overkill because I don't think a simple app should need a whole instance of chromium to run.
This article talks about how modern apps are plagued with the overuse of animation and white space, resulting in interfaces that look great in tech demos, but are bulky and slow to use. The author asserts that interfaces should strive to be more like the terminal: fast, customizable, and rewarding to power-users who bother to learn them.
I think that the new reddit redesign is a great example of the flaws of modern interface design. The site is much slower to load. The design looks nice (subjectively), but the interface gets in the way of usability.
My arch nemesis these days. So many web interfaces, from Gmail & Youtube to Reddit's redesign to the examples in this article (Slack, Gitlab, etc), have cranked up the unnecessary use of white space so much that I honestly feel like my screens are shrinking. The new Gmail, even on compact view only shows 60% the numbers of email headers on the screen as before. YouTube is a white space haven with subscription icons 4x the size they previously were (thankfully YouTube Classic fixes that). Etc.. Etc.. Etc...
Frankly, I blame the rise of tablets for this... well, that and companies trying to save money with a one size fits all approach, attempting to unify Desktop and Tablet sites rather than designing separate interfaces for each. Thank God for Stylish, responsive design and browser zoom so at least we're somewhat able to counteract it. :/
Let's build a command line interface right into Tildes. No, really!
The reply box will do fine. How often have you seen on reddit all of those "!remindme 2 days" and similar comments? Why not just have a special command character and commands like that as part of the site itself?
No, really, indeed. A CLI for Tildes, especially relegating interactions with bots to that, so it doesn't clog up the comments section, would be amazing.
And for premium memberships, we could give people shell accounts and email... though after what happened to Lavabit, I'm glad Tildes lives in Canada instead of the US.
Canada is 5-Eyes too isn't it?
It is, but that doesn't mean Canada is going to issue federal orders to turn over encryption keys. We know the US gov will do that without a second thought.
We could also build a system that recycles/regenerates keys all the time, so that there's nothing like a single set of keys to the kingdom to turn over.
Spectria (the non-profit behind Tildes) could do all sorts of cool things, Tildes itself is just the main project. It all comes down to what people are willing to donate and pay for, both in terms of money and in terms of code/time.
Fair point.
Never put it past the Canadian government to do some shady shit in the name of "national security", my friend. CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) is incredibly good at keeping a low profile, but they are every bit as large and data collection happy as their counterparts elsewhere. Thankfully our courts are pretty pro-privacy and aren't afraid to rule against the government in that regards though. E.g. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-csis-purging-data-amassed-over-years-about-ordinary-canadians/
That's just hoovering up everything on the wires. If it's encrypted, they'll get nothing useful. When that happens in the US, the government uses the courts to force people to turn over the keys so they can get at the data. Has Canada ever done that?
Does Deimos like to travel?
I think this may have de-railed conversation quite a long way. The tildes CLI worth splitting into a new topic?
Meh. People can always collapse this off-topic discussion if they don't want to read it. Although I think the CLI idea is definitely worth discussing in more detail at some point.
Fair enough... I certainly wasn't trying to suggest CSIS/CSE and the Canadian government are as bad as the CIA/NSA and US Government is in that regard, but things change and Trudeau, while slightly better than Harper, is still very much for "improving" national security at the expense of citizens' privacy. See: https://ccla.org/ten-things-need-know-bill-c-59/
Also keep in mind that it's only our courts that are currently standing in between us Canadian citizens and laws very similar to the US being passed here regarding national security, not our representatives who would overall be very much for them (Conservatives and Liberals, at least).
I find it somewhat amusing that the author complains about overly-large type, yet the title of the blog post is 100px high – nevertheless, the overall point is a good one.
I'm usually all for complaining about software but I don't think this blog post was very good. I have a hard time relating to or really seeing what they want out of their software other than to be "faster" which isn't much of a point. I also think it's funny to complain about animations when using a mac, it's an integral part of their whole shtick. But other than that I think software typically rises to the needs of the user. The reason Slack, Facebook, and whatever shitty web app your using is slow and shitty isn't solely due to poor design. It's just because the users don't need anything more. There's not much for power users to do in those apps.
On the other hand, if you look at applications that where users really asks a lot from the software in terms of complexity you'll see a lot of the features the author is looking for. For example using Maya, Blender, ZBrush and to an extent NUKE you'll find they each have a fast, animation free user interfaces that make hundreds of tools and commands accessible to the user. However they all also offer systems that power users can learn to make those tools and commands even easier to access. Web apps just don't require that level of access and so they settle into the "good enough" territory. At least for right now, it's not like the limitations of the web and web apps aren't understood.
Learning to use Visual Studio Code as a text editor has been an interesting experience. It's a GUI app, but very little of value is in the menus. You can intuitively switch tabs and save files and other basic stuff with a mouse, but most functionality is hidden behind a Spotlight-type search box you summon with a key combination. From there, you just search for whatever feature you want and hit enter. You don't have to memorize the exact command like you would at a terminal, just something close (auto format, run in shell, etc). While you're there, it also shows you the key combo you need to avoid the search box ("Command Palette") next time.
It's not especially composable the way Vim commands are, but it's about the best example I've seen of software passively teaching you how to use itself (not in-your-face with tutorials or help docs). You can start to use it productively without the sheer-cliff learning curve of Vim or Emacs. Many people hear the benefits of Vim, but once they launch it can't even figure out how to close app. I think this is a bigger problem than many of the things the article complained about (I don't mind animations?)
Easy enough: monospace fonts are best for reading individual characters because they have great spacing and alignment, whereas other font families are better for reading content naturally because the characters are spaced in such a way that you can more easily read a word as a single entity. Because of a monospace font's effect of isolating individual characters, it's easier to see those characters in greater detail and determine whether or not you've e.g. missed a comma. In contrast, that extra kerning makes reading e.g. an article or a novel a bit of a chore.
In other words, the advantages and disadvantages of monospaced and non-monospaced fonts is in the way we parse the information, and the font you use should reflect the way you want that content parsed.
Edit: Another way to think about it is that monospace makes it easier to tokenize characters, whereas non-monospace makes it easier to tokenize words.
Ah, that makes sense, thanks.
It's about keeping alignment consistent and making cursor navigating easy.
Yeah, but most of the time you're not just reading something to see how it works or what it does, you're making changes to it. When things are truly only meant to be read like in academic papers then they'll often be typed in a variable-width font.
Also you read code very differently than you read normal text, you skip around, go backwards, jump from section to section, etc.
I didn't understand that either. Programming has more symbols than average English text, but it's still primarily English.
Eh, not really. Native apps are good, but they can access all sorts of permissions. If I want privacy when using, say, reddit, I can at least use an adblocker to stop some of the tracking.
I wanted to develop a desktop app a while ago, and was really shocked that my only options to do it (and have it look good) were either using Qt or something like Electron. Since qt is meant for C++, that felt like overkill for my app idea. It's a simple idea and doesn't need all the features in C++, and I only know the very basics of C++ development.
Electron on the other hand felt like overkill because I don't think a simple app should need a whole instance of chromium to run.