Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

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Thad
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Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Sun May 11, 2014 3:02 am

I finally figured out why the surround sound in my living room never worked as well on my PC as on my Xbox or antenna TV:

Windows 7 reverts its audio settings back to stereo if you turn off your receiver.

(I guess I should have pieced that together sooner -- I had a devil of a time when I changed out the graphics card a few months ago because every time I turned off the receiver it changed its audio to go through the graphics card instead of onboard audio; I finally had to get a DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter and just run the audio through the graphics card since that was what Windows wanted to do anyway.)

So basically, if you've got a Windows 7 PC hooked up to an audio receiver, you can never turn the receiver off, unless you want to reconfigure your audio settings every single time.

Actually, anyone know if Windows 8 is any better about that? An HTPC is one of those cases where the Win8 UI might make sense.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Mongrel » Sun May 11, 2014 10:23 am

Windows 7's audio options are a disaster in general, I found.

I know this post doesn't help you. Sorry.
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Sat May 17, 2014 3:58 pm

The wireless whitelist on my router maxes out at 20 MAC addresses. Which may have made sense in 2006 when a single househould would have maxed out around 10, but is ridiculous in a world where it's common for any given person to have a phone, a tablet, and a laptop and where a typical household may have multiple game consoles.

I mean, I think my wife and I have 10 or so wireless devices between the two of us. But sometimes we have company.

I periodically look around to see if anyone's put out a custom firmware for my router that will get around this issue, but no such luck as yet. EDIT: Oh snap, source code.

And aside from that, I can't really justify getting a new router. N is fast enough to stream video from the living room to the bedroom and I don't really need anything higher-bandwidth than that.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Fri May 23, 2014 2:37 pm

I installed Helvetica Neue on my work computer because I needed it for a graphic in Photoshop, and now I am being assaulted by a bunch of websites that inexplicably have it as their default font despite using a bunch of smartquotes and other shitty-ass MS Word replacement characters that show up as the wrong character when rendered in Helvetica Neue.

Here's a fucking thought: maybe try seeing what your website actually looks like in the font you just thoughtlessly pasted into a CSS file as the font it's supposed to render in. On a PC maybe. You don't like PC's? Yeah, I don't either, but I fucking test websites on them before I publish them. If you're thinking "Well, it looks okay on MY computer" when you build a website, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

(Of course, if some jagoff hadn't stuck text in an image instead of using HTML/CSS like a grownup, I would never have installed Helvetica Neue and seen these horrible travesties in the first place.)

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Mon Jul 21, 2014 1:20 pm

healthcare.gov is still pretty much terrible.

I am trying to change my address. Which you would think would fall under basic fucking functionality.

Well, apparently they forced a password reset on everybody back in April. I assume that this indicates that, in addition to everything else wrong with the site, they had issues with password security.

So I go to reset my password. Which you would think would be even MORE basic functionality than changing my address.

Won't reset at all in Firefox; just hangs on a "Please Wait" screen.

In Konqueror, it gives me a vague error that doesn't tell me specifically what I did wrong. I think I used invalid characters in my password but it says I may have answered my security questions wrong or not provided a new password.

...and when I go back to try again, now Konqueror is giving me the same fucking "Please Wait" hang as Firefox.

I think I'm going to have to make the site re-send a brand new password reset email.

Or just give up and call them on the fucking phone.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Blossom » Mon Jul 21, 2014 1:31 pm

Having also not reset my password since then, I went and tried to do the exact same thing. Yeah, if you botch entering a new password, you need to request a fresh email. It also won't let you set a new password that's the same as any of your previous 6 passwords there.

Having resent the email, following the new link, and using a fresh password, it all worked perfectly.
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Mon Jul 21, 2014 2:46 pm

Any fucking file dialog that won't let you just type the fucking path to the fucking file.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby IGNORE ME » Mon Jul 21, 2014 4:46 pm

guys i think the swear filter broke

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Smiler » Mon Jul 21, 2014 5:21 pm

Good.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Classic » Mon Jul 21, 2014 5:30 pm

Smiler, you dumb apple. Dumbass. Idiot!
The swear filter just isn't robust.
Nor, at time of writing, does it include "fucking" although, as you can see, it still works with pineapple.
FUUUCK!
Fuck!
Fucking Fuck Shit Fuck!

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Sat Aug 23, 2014 8:38 pm

It is amazing how many ROMs ask you to sign into your Google account BEFORE asking you to configure wifi.

Yeah, I know it's a phone and most people should, hypothetically, have Internet access the first time they power it on. "Should, hypothetically" is a stupid thing to code basic setup functionality around.

There should, at least, be a "Set up wifi..." button on the same screen that prompts you to sign into your account.

Or, at even leaster, it could maybe not actively BLOCK me from pulling down the menu and setting up wifi when the prompt is up.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Mon Sep 08, 2014 8:30 pm

In "KDE4 still does not deliver the basic functionality that KDE3 did and at this point it is clear that it never will" news:

You can open the application launcher and type the name of a program into it. This is good.

But when you right-click on it, there is no "Properties" option to change the name or the description of the program. (I need this because I've installed the Linux-native version of Steam on my computer but would also like to install the Windows version via WINE, and I want to be able to tell them apart at a glance.)

You CAN right-click on the application launcher and click "Edit Applications".

This opens up an interface where you can edit a program launcher.

Provided you can goddamn FIND the motherfucking thing, because while the applications menu itself has a Search function, the editor does not. It also does not have an "expand all" function, meaning that if you want to drill down through all the different categories and subcategories on the menu (I count a total of 11 top-level categories and fucking 50 subcategories on my system, which, it bears noting, I set up all of three days ago and haven't really gotten settled into yet) you're going to have to expand them all fucking manually.

It turns out that the OpenSUSE installer for Steam sticks the launcher under the inexplicable category of Internet > Data Exchange (as opposed, presumably, to all the programs that use the Internet for some purpose that does not involve exchanging data) instead of, say, Games.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Fri Sep 26, 2014 3:27 pm

When I do a Ctrl-F on a Google spreadsheet, the highlight around the cell is, like, a slight dimming. It is far less visible than if, say, somebody else is looking at the same sheet and has a cell selected.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Mothra » Mon Sep 29, 2014 12:18 pm

Definitely could stand to be more obvious.

Kind of annoys me how, if you search for something with a filter on, then remove the filter, then go into the search bar and hit enter, it doesn't work. You need to delete a character and add it back, or add/remove a space or something. It's a weird little quirk.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Rico » Wed Oct 08, 2014 11:29 pm

I've got a twofer today:
1) I somewhat recently cracked my 3ds touchscreen during some bad turbulence. While I'm waiting for the local shop to get the part (yeah, I could actually take it to Nintendo but it's a bit of an annoying drive) I thought I'd buy Smash since it's playable without a touchscreen, unlike Wright v. Layton. Needed to update my wifi information to get into the eShop, menu is touchscreen only for no goddamn reason.

2) Got a new work laptop recently, took it off of my corporate domain to put it on our client's domain. Get a message that if I don't connect to the corporate network my Windows and Office licenses will expire. Okay. Look closer at the warning before I VPN in. The licenses expire in 170 days. Just for kicks I connected. They refreshed to 180 days.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Mongrel » Fri Oct 10, 2014 12:45 pm

Maybe this is just a pet peeve, but ebay's shift to endless automated notification messages that taunt you ("Hahahah! This item got away. Better bid faster, you schmuck! Fast fast right now now now! Too slow! IT GOT AWAY. You're a loser, loser!") when you lose an auction or even just get outbid is... grating.
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Büge » Fri Oct 10, 2014 6:26 pm

God, tell me about it. It's especially galling when you're watching something. Then the auction just sits in your inbox, staring at you like the dead eyes of a corpse.

In other news, Imgur briefly had hashtags on their image galleries yesterday, but I think there was a big enough outcry that it was disabled.
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Disposable Ninja » Sat Oct 11, 2014 10:16 am

I installed an NVidia graphics card! I Installed the Driver for the NVidia graphics card, like 5 times, and at least twice more than I actually needed to!

Fuck you NVidia GeForce Experience, you unclear piece of shit!
For the White Witch!

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Sat Oct 11, 2014 12:37 pm

It's a great idea in theory, but yeah in practice it's pretty much a mess.

I've also had lots and lots of issues using the latest nVidia drivers. If you have any BSoD/lockup/spontaneous reboot problems, try rolling back to 314.22.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Disposable Ninja » Sat Oct 11, 2014 1:03 pm

Oh yeah, I was having a shitload of problems. For starters, the installation kept "Failing", and not telling how or why it was failing, and it wouldn't let me go back and do a clean installation (only giving me a "Try Again" prompt -- which of course didn't work, because the "Try Again" prompt never works by itself). I tried restarting the computer, but then Windows wouldn't load, so I started in Safe Mode and uninstalled the drivers that way. Tried doing a custom/clean install instead of the express, ran into the same problem again, although I was eventually able to somehow get Windows to load and, magically, it seemed like the drivers installed.

Then I started looking through fucking Geforce Experience, and it was telling me that my "Computer Is Not Optimized For Games" and there was a big grey 'X' right next to my card, and it didn't tell me what that meant, so I naturally figured "okay, something is still going wrong". So I went to the website and was able to find the exact driver for the exact card I had, did a clean install again, restarted the computer, Windows loaded just fine (although in 600x800 for some reason)... and Experience was still telling me that my computer isn't optimized. So I grew a brain, decided to see if I could find an answer on the website, and discovered that that just meant that I bought a cheap card.

No shit, NVidia. I spent 30 dollars on it, I know it's cheap.

EDIT: I was going to the website through Geforce Experience, in case you were curious as to how I able to find the driver before the explanation.
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