Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Oh Christ, I'd forgotten the reason I haven't booted Windows on this computer in a month is that Windows Update quit working.
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Windows Update is fucking garbage. Many times I've had to stop the service, whack the whole cache folder, and reboot. Sometimes, it even works.
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Brantly B.
- Woah Dangsaurus
- Posts: 3679
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 2:40 pm
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Autoplaying video ads on a mobile device at full volume.
EVERYBODY INVOLVED IN THIS SHOULD BE EXECUTED
EVERYBODY INVOLVED IN THIS SHOULD BE EXECUTED
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Fixed sin of UI design: Since app updates and the update to Android 5.0 lollipop, (dunno which caused it) I can run the YouTube app in the background just listening to the audio (ie for music listening).
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Thad wrote:healthcare.gov is still pretty much terrible.
It's less terrible each time I use it. But it's still terrible.
Why is the "Answer questions about your household" section just a single question about whether I smoke? Would it be more questions if I said I did? Who knows?
Oh, and then there's this:
Did you have 2014 coverage, and want to keep it the same plan for 2015?
If you had Marketplace coverage in 2014, and you want to keep your current coverage for 2015, enter your plan ID under "SEARCH BY PLAN ID" to the left.
WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?
I am currently signed into the healthcare website. It has all my information stored on file. It has access to a database that contains the information on what plan I signed up for last year.
But instead of accessing that database, it wants me to rifle through my goddamn filing cabinet for my plan paperwork and track down some obscure identification number.
Here's an idea: next time hire some guys who don't think "usability" means "fucking around with opacity settings".
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Well, fixed the resolution on my Mac.
I was going to put Yosemite on it (there's a custom EFI you can bootstrap to make it run on 1,1 Mac Pros) but as I was reading up on it I found out that Yosemite won't support the GeForce 7300GT in it. But that it WILL support the Radeon HD 5770 I also had lying around.
So I put that in, and...as soon as it booted up it was in 2560x1440. No need for Yosemite after all. (Would probably need it for actual HiDPI stuff -- larger icons etc. -- but not just for the basic resolution.)
So it wasn't actually an inability to change the resolution in Lion; it's that the old card was too puny for the monitor's native resolution.
Doesn't explain why it didn't work when I had my GTX 570 in there, though I suspect it's because I also had the 7300 in there as a helper card.
So I've got the resolution without installing Yosemite. Which is good, because the Yosemite installer hangs on boot.
Downside is that the Mac Pro is noticeably louder with the Radeon (which has fans on it) than the GeForce (which just has a heatsink). Which could be a problem since I want to use it to start recording again. Maybe I'll get things set up, see how bad it is, and if it's too noticeable I'll just go back to the old card and deal with 1080p.
So this may be one of those things where I've been blaming Apple for something that wasn't Apple's fault. (Though having to install Xcode Tools to get HiDPI is still bullshit, and on the whole everything's not nearly as transparent as it should be.)
ETA: Come to think of it, the "7300 is too puny to do 2560x1440" theory doesn't make sense. It's got two dual-DVI ports on it. The dual-DVI spec is for resolutions up to 2560x1600, and even just a pair of 1920x1080 monitors on it would take up more pixels than a single 2560x1440 one.
So yeah it probably IS still some kind of Apple problem rather than a hardware one, even if swapping out hardware fixed it.
Maybe I'll keep poking it. Who knows, maybe now if I take the ATI card out and put the nVidia one back in it'll work.
I was going to put Yosemite on it (there's a custom EFI you can bootstrap to make it run on 1,1 Mac Pros) but as I was reading up on it I found out that Yosemite won't support the GeForce 7300GT in it. But that it WILL support the Radeon HD 5770 I also had lying around.
So I put that in, and...as soon as it booted up it was in 2560x1440. No need for Yosemite after all. (Would probably need it for actual HiDPI stuff -- larger icons etc. -- but not just for the basic resolution.)
So it wasn't actually an inability to change the resolution in Lion; it's that the old card was too puny for the monitor's native resolution.
Doesn't explain why it didn't work when I had my GTX 570 in there, though I suspect it's because I also had the 7300 in there as a helper card.
So I've got the resolution without installing Yosemite. Which is good, because the Yosemite installer hangs on boot.
Downside is that the Mac Pro is noticeably louder with the Radeon (which has fans on it) than the GeForce (which just has a heatsink). Which could be a problem since I want to use it to start recording again. Maybe I'll get things set up, see how bad it is, and if it's too noticeable I'll just go back to the old card and deal with 1080p.
So this may be one of those things where I've been blaming Apple for something that wasn't Apple's fault. (Though having to install Xcode Tools to get HiDPI is still bullshit, and on the whole everything's not nearly as transparent as it should be.)
ETA: Come to think of it, the "7300 is too puny to do 2560x1440" theory doesn't make sense. It's got two dual-DVI ports on it. The dual-DVI spec is for resolutions up to 2560x1600, and even just a pair of 1920x1080 monitors on it would take up more pixels than a single 2560x1440 one.
So yeah it probably IS still some kind of Apple problem rather than a hardware one, even if swapping out hardware fixed it.
Maybe I'll keep poking it. Who knows, maybe now if I take the ATI card out and put the nVidia one back in it'll work.
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Grath wrote:Fixed sin of UI design: Since app updates and the update to Android 5.0 lollipop, (dunno which caused it) I can run the YouTube app in the background just listening to the audio (ie for music listening).
Better info: It's because I have Google Music All Access -> Youtube Music Key -> can listen to background youtube videos on Android
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
More on healthcare.gov:
Well, I found a SEPARATE place where my address was listed, in a profile link that shows up on the lefthand side of the screen on some pages but not others.
When I tried to change my address, it prompted me for the answers to my three security questions. And apparently I still don't fucking remember how I answered them, because it gave me an incomprehensible error when I answered them.
Fortunately, on exactly the same page where you change your address, and right below the part where you change your address, there's a section where you can change your security questions, and all you have to do is reenter your password. Which sort of defeats the purpose of requiring you to answer your security questions to change your address.
So then I went in to change the income information I had entered in my application a few weeks ago (because, as noted elsewhere, I thought I was going to be getting unemployment but I'm not -- I've got an appeal in but at this point my forecast salary for 2015 is $0. I hope it is not actually $0, but that's the best number I can come up with right now with the information I've got.).
And I could view the RESULTS of my previous application, but if there's a way to view the application itself, I sure as hell couldn't find it in about 10 minutes of searching. You could only review the results, or remove the application to file a new one.
And I wanted to view what I'd entered before because I do not actually remember my wife's income off the top of my head.
And sure enough, once I removed the previous app and started a fresh one, it didn't have what I'd entered for her income the last time, it just had what I'd entered when I applied a year ago, which of course is no longer accurate.
So I had to go dig up her paycheck information and fill the whole thing out again.
None of which wound up mattering, because the response it immediately sent back to me is that I'm STILL ineligible for a tax credit. Bullet point number one is that that's because we're filing our taxes separately.
Which, okay. That doesn't make very much sense to me, but okay. But why did I have to fill out the rest of the fucking thing if that's a dealbreaker all by itself? Why does it even need to KNOW any details about my wife after I select the "Filing Separately" radio button? Why did I have to look up the rest of that crap?
I guess so it could give me the second and third bullet point. Which say that our household income is too low to be eligible for a tax credit but too high to be eligible for Medicaid.
I am inclined to believe that the "too low to be eligible for a tax credit" bullet point is a mistake, because it follows up by explaining that eligibility is generally between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty line, and we do indeed fall in that range.
So, I dunno. I guess I can talk to the wife about filing jointly? And we can look into whether that'll save us more money than it costs us.
I don't know. Guess I should figure out what plan I'm going with anyway.
I'm probably going to go with the one that I'm getting defaulted to anyway after my current plan sunsets at the end of the year.
Which of course means I could have done absolutely nothing and achieved exactly the same result.
Except maybe they'll finally have my fucking address right next year.
Well, I found a SEPARATE place where my address was listed, in a profile link that shows up on the lefthand side of the screen on some pages but not others.
When I tried to change my address, it prompted me for the answers to my three security questions. And apparently I still don't fucking remember how I answered them, because it gave me an incomprehensible error when I answered them.
Fortunately, on exactly the same page where you change your address, and right below the part where you change your address, there's a section where you can change your security questions, and all you have to do is reenter your password. Which sort of defeats the purpose of requiring you to answer your security questions to change your address.
So then I went in to change the income information I had entered in my application a few weeks ago (because, as noted elsewhere, I thought I was going to be getting unemployment but I'm not -- I've got an appeal in but at this point my forecast salary for 2015 is $0. I hope it is not actually $0, but that's the best number I can come up with right now with the information I've got.).
And I could view the RESULTS of my previous application, but if there's a way to view the application itself, I sure as hell couldn't find it in about 10 minutes of searching. You could only review the results, or remove the application to file a new one.
And I wanted to view what I'd entered before because I do not actually remember my wife's income off the top of my head.
And sure enough, once I removed the previous app and started a fresh one, it didn't have what I'd entered for her income the last time, it just had what I'd entered when I applied a year ago, which of course is no longer accurate.
So I had to go dig up her paycheck information and fill the whole thing out again.
None of which wound up mattering, because the response it immediately sent back to me is that I'm STILL ineligible for a tax credit. Bullet point number one is that that's because we're filing our taxes separately.
Which, okay. That doesn't make very much sense to me, but okay. But why did I have to fill out the rest of the fucking thing if that's a dealbreaker all by itself? Why does it even need to KNOW any details about my wife after I select the "Filing Separately" radio button? Why did I have to look up the rest of that crap?
I guess so it could give me the second and third bullet point. Which say that our household income is too low to be eligible for a tax credit but too high to be eligible for Medicaid.
I am inclined to believe that the "too low to be eligible for a tax credit" bullet point is a mistake, because it follows up by explaining that eligibility is generally between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty line, and we do indeed fall in that range.
So, I dunno. I guess I can talk to the wife about filing jointly? And we can look into whether that'll save us more money than it costs us.
I don't know. Guess I should figure out what plan I'm going with anyway.
I'm probably going to go with the one that I'm getting defaulted to anyway after my current plan sunsets at the end of the year.
Which of course means I could have done absolutely nothing and achieved exactly the same result.
Except maybe they'll finally have my fucking address right next year.
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Also, in addition to the "Compare Plans" function no longer displaying multiple plans side-by-side like it did last year, it also now has a neat bug where all your selected plans say they have the same premium.
Also, if there is a way to actually access the list of plans while you are logged in, I sure as hell can't find it.
Also, if there is a way to actually access the list of plans while you are logged in, I sure as hell can't find it.
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
But even among all the terrible things on healthcare.gov itself, the worst thing I've seen all day is the site you use to see if a provider is in-network through United Healthcare, which is called providerlookuponline.com.
I don't know what the fuck kind of JavaScript horrors they're performing on the input field at the top of the page -- but in Firefox, if I don't pause for a second after every character I type, it drops about half of them. (It picks up all my keystrokes in Chrome but there's a noticeable delay between when I type them and when they appear onscreen. Conclusion: it was tested in Chrome but not Firefox.)
I don't know what the fuck kind of JavaScript horrors they're performing on the input field at the top of the page -- but in Firefox, if I don't pause for a second after every character I type, it drops about half of them. (It picks up all my keystrokes in Chrome but there's a noticeable delay between when I type them and when they appear onscreen. Conclusion: it was tested in Chrome but not Firefox.)
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Oh, there IS a way to get to the plan listing if you're logged in.
You have to select your application, and then click on Eligibility & Appeals on the lefthand side.
This gets you to a page that is similar to what you see if you aren't logged in, except that it actually works -- my gripes about the "Compare" option don't apply here; this version of the site DOES allow side-by-side comparisons of plans, and shows the correct premium instead of displaying all of them with the same premium.
Which of course raises the question of why the FUCK the frontend is different when you're not logged in, given that it's accessing the same database and giving you the same information.
Wound up switching to the HMO version of the Blue Cross Blue Shield plan I was on. I'm not crazy about the HMO system, but the PPO plans are $60-$100 more per month than HMO, and closing in on the cost of going on my wife's health insurance (which I went off last year because it was so damn expensive).
Short of an emergency -- say, getting picked up by an ambulance and rushed to the nearest hospital whether it's on my plan or not, or getting really sick when I'm out of town -- HMO should be fine.
Man, healthcare in this country.
You have to select your application, and then click on Eligibility & Appeals on the lefthand side.
This gets you to a page that is similar to what you see if you aren't logged in, except that it actually works -- my gripes about the "Compare" option don't apply here; this version of the site DOES allow side-by-side comparisons of plans, and shows the correct premium instead of displaying all of them with the same premium.
Which of course raises the question of why the FUCK the frontend is different when you're not logged in, given that it's accessing the same database and giving you the same information.
Wound up switching to the HMO version of the Blue Cross Blue Shield plan I was on. I'm not crazy about the HMO system, but the PPO plans are $60-$100 more per month than HMO, and closing in on the cost of going on my wife's health insurance (which I went off last year because it was so damn expensive).
Short of an emergency -- say, getting picked up by an ambulance and rushed to the nearest hospital whether it's on my plan or not, or getting really sick when I'm out of town -- HMO should be fine.
Man, healthcare in this country.
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
So Windows 10 Technical Preview sure doesn't want to install on my computer. I'm giving up on trying for now, because if new untested Windows really really doesn't want to go on my computer I should probably listen to it.
But before I gave up, I tried the usual troubleshooting steps. Among other things, I was going to quit out of all unnecessary programs.
There is no "Exit" option when you right-click on the Avira Antivirus icon.
So I did a search for avira exit and the top match is this lovely it's-not-a-bug-it's-a-feature response:
So of course I fucking uninstalled it.
Delightfully, it is one of those programs that, when you uninstall it, sends you to a page asking you to explain why you uninstalled it.
I explained why I uninstalled it.
I believe the phrase "I am not a child and do not need mittens pinned to my jacket" was in there somewhere.
Panda is supposed to be good. So I'm going to try that.
ETA: Panda appears to have the same thing going where you can't actually exit out of the client, which is pretty annoying. But at least it's got a simple "disable antivirus" option when you right-click it in the tray.
But before I gave up, I tried the usual troubleshooting steps. Among other things, I was going to quit out of all unnecessary programs.
There is no "Exit" option when you right-click on the Avira Antivirus icon.
So I did a search for avira exit and the top match is this lovely it's-not-a-bug-it's-a-feature response:
How do I exit from the Avira client? wrote:
It is Avira’s job to keep you safe and that is why there is no “Exit” option. For your security it is important for Avira to run at all times.
The new Avira interface is very lightweight and will not slow down your computer. It is still possible to stop the Avira components from the Avira Dashboard, if you wanted to.
So of course I fucking uninstalled it.
Delightfully, it is one of those programs that, when you uninstall it, sends you to a page asking you to explain why you uninstalled it.
I explained why I uninstalled it.
I believe the phrase "I am not a child and do not need mittens pinned to my jacket" was in there somewhere.
Panda is supposed to be good. So I'm going to try that.
ETA: Panda appears to have the same thing going where you can't actually exit out of the client, which is pretty annoying. But at least it's got a simple "disable antivirus" option when you right-click it in the tray.
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Brantly B.
- Woah Dangsaurus
- Posts: 3679
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 2:40 pm
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Currently running an AVG/Online Armor pair. Online Armor is annoying in that there are times you basically have to exit out of it (there's no Game Mode or temporary shut-the-fuck-up feature that I've found, but admittedly I haven't looked very hard) but, well, it's definitely exitable.
And AVG... does the same shit as all the other AVs. Nevermind.
And AVG... does the same shit as all the other AVs. Nevermind.
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
I use NOD32, 'cause I used to cheese it by chaining free trials (there was a website that would just sign up for free trials and publish the credentials, and it wouldn't lock you out of using a future free trial if you used one already) but then now that I actually make money I decided to buy an actual license. I like it because it's pretty unobtrusive and has convenient "temporarily disable antivirus" and also a "gamer mode" where it postpones database updates and scans, disables notifications, and minimizes CPU usage - either automatically when you run a full-screen program, or on-demand from the tray icon.
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Getting pretty fucking tired of Firefox sticking that chat icon into my toolbar every time it updates, no matter how many times I remove it. (ETA: This looks like it may have been fixed on the latest update. Restarted Firefox for update; no chat icon this time.)
Also not a fan of how the new Android version changed my default search provider to Yahoo. I get that you guys aren't working with Google anymore. I get having Yahoo as the default on new installs.
But switching my default search provider on an update is bullshit. Especially if I've already manually set it to something other than Google.
Also not a fan of how the new Android version changed my default search provider to Yahoo. I get that you guys aren't working with Google anymore. I get having Yahoo as the default on new installs.
But switching my default search provider on an update is bullshit. Especially if I've already manually set it to something other than Google.
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Brantly B.
- Woah Dangsaurus
- Posts: 3679
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 2:40 pm
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
They stopped doing that on desktop at least. Not sure why they managed to think that they'd get less of an outcry pulling that same shit on mobile.
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Disposable Ninja
- Posts: 462
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 8:50 pm
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
Have I mentioned the trouble I've been having with Firefox lately? It wants me to update some of my add-ons, but in order for me to do just that I have to go through a specific page that scans my add-ons for updates (despite the fact that I already know which add-ons need updates). Also, the scan page in question? It doesn't work. It won't load. I can leave it open all day and it still will never finish scanning my add-ons.
And what add-on needs updating? Why, it's for Flash of course! Firefox won't let me watch Youtube videos unless I tell it to let me watch them first.
And that's why I'm slowly migrating to Chrome.
And what add-on needs updating? Why, it's for Flash of course! Firefox won't let me watch Youtube videos unless I tell it to let me watch them first.
And that's why I'm slowly migrating to Chrome.
For the White Witch!
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
I thought Youtube had switched to showing videos through HTML5 by default?
Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design
I have a similar problem with PSN on the PC. I got a PS4 and when I did I had to recover and change the password for the account I had on my PS3. I tried repeatedly to request a new password and they'd send me links for password change that were only good for 24 hours but the page it linked to would just lag out constantly for the entire 24 hours. This also happens if I go directly to the sony entertainment network website directly.
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