Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

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Thad
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Mon Apr 25, 2022 3:13 pm

The latest chapter in Firefox's campaign to behave like Chrome instead of like I want it to is that it's changed the default behavior for downloads to always save instead of ask whether you want to save or open.

It's trivial to change it so that it asks (or just automatically opens in the preferred program) from the settings menu -- if the file type is actually listed under MIME types. I haven't really had any problem with it on my home desktop.

But at work, it had a MIME type for .doc but not .docx. So any time I wanted to open a modern Word doc from my browser, I'd have to save it, open it, and then delete it, instead of all that shit just happening automatically.

There is no UI for manually adding a MIME type to Firefox. You have to edit a fucking JSON file.

BTW, here's Mozilla's list of common MIME types. The MIME type for .docx is application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Mongrel » Mon Apr 25, 2022 3:25 pm

Reminds me of a laugh I had recently.

One thing I IMMEDIATELY noticed on Waterfox after putting it on the new machine was it trivially allowed you to move your search bar over or under your tabs & menu bar. No bullshit forced arrangement, just shuffle the UI however you fucking well please.
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Sun Jun 19, 2022 9:37 pm

Flight status
(!) Something went wrong


Hey, think you could maybe think of a better way to phrase your generic error message in this particular context?

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Wed Jul 06, 2022 12:42 pm

How to Change the Default Browser in Thunderbird: Choose the browser Thunderbird uses to open links in emails

  • Go to Menu > Preferences > Config Editor. Search for network.protocol-handler.warn-external.http.
  • Set values to True for network.protocol-handler.warn-external.http and .https.
  • Open a link in Thunderbird, select Choose, and pick a web browser. Check Always use this application.


What the actual fuck?

"Default Browser" was a system setting that already existed when Thunderbird was first released. In 2003. Just how? How does Thunderbird have its own separate "default browser" setting, that isn't user-facing, and can only be changed by digging into the got-dang about:config to set it to ask the next time you open a link? How did that make it to release 20 fucking years ago, and how is it still like that?

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby beatbandito » Thu Aug 18, 2022 5:27 pm

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Fri Aug 19, 2022 2:26 pm

Well, at least we can chalk that one up to malice instead of incompetence.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby nosimpleway » Fri Aug 19, 2022 5:27 pm

Original post was something like "The world's absolute worst security feature came to me in a dream and I had to mock it up for you."

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby beatbandito » Mon Aug 22, 2022 2:50 pm

Now let's cheer this place up with the best UI of all time.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Fri Oct 07, 2022 1:36 pm

Had to renew the card to get free migraine medicine.

The JS they use to render the card as a PDF renders a fucking cookie notification on the PDF. On top of the card.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Fri Dec 09, 2022 2:52 pm

If you pull up the menu on the Pocket, there's a menu item called "Memories" that handles your save states.

Good: It has the Rutger Hauer quote from Blade Runner.

Good: It tells you the button combination to save your state.

Bad: You can't actually save your state from the menu, only restore a previous save. A menu item telling me how to do a thing somewhere else, but not actually giving me the option to do the thing on the screen I'm currently looking at, is dumb. Don't do that.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Mongrel » Sun Dec 11, 2022 2:04 am

Some 20-odd years on and Excel still has no way to start the numbered heading column at 0 instead of 1 (or any other sequence). The only real alternative (short of fiddling with formulas), is to hide the heading entirely and then add a new one manually using the first row of regular cells (which, oops, is a universal setting rather than a document-specific one).

How in the everloving fuck is this still a thing.
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Mon Dec 19, 2022 5:30 pm

Who came up with this "let's make the console window transparent" bullshit? Who was asking for that? Who was like "You know, I like entering commands into a terminal, but you know what would make it better, would be if instead of a solid color, the background was some fucking bullshit that made the text harder to read. You know what? Let's not even make it consistent bullshit; let's just show whatever the fuck other windows are open at the moment. The ones I'm not using because I'm trying to type commands into a fucking terminal."

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Mon Jan 02, 2023 3:12 pm

Including results for opthamologist
Search only for "ophthalmologist"?

Yeah, how about you show me results for the thing I told you to, asshole? Somehow I think my matches might be more relevant if we stick to just people who know how to fucking spell the thing I'm looking for.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby nosimpleway » Mon Jan 02, 2023 3:17 pm

I don't want any of those mid-tier eye doctors, I'm looking for an OPthamologist

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Mon Jan 02, 2023 3:34 pm

And then I waste half an hour searching for dog ophthalmologists on the Internet because the person I spoke to on the phone thought the phrase "Eye Care for Animals" in the vet's notes was a generic description of what an ophthalmologist is, when it is in fact the name of a specific establishment she was referring me to.

(Dog is, so far as I know, okay, but has had a swelling in the corner of one eye for several weeks and the vet has recommended that we escalate to a specialist at this point.)

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Wed Feb 01, 2023 3:37 pm

So at some point the Outlook installation on my work phone decided it's going to open Zoom links in Edge.

I looked up how to get them to open in Zoom again, and it turns out the easiest way is...to uninstall Edge.

On the one hand, it's kind of astounding that anyone could be so fucking bad at this. On the other, it does serve to highlight that their past successes have all been predicated on the premise that (1) they own the operating system and therefore (2) can force you to use their shit.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby beatbandito » Sat Mar 11, 2023 1:45 pm

More like an interesting event of UI Design.

The target drive-up screen asks you to punch in the space number, then gives a white screen with some text about their order and a big red button on the bottom that says "SHOW MY CODE".

It's never been an issue before that I've seen, seems to just immediately make sense to most people that use it for the first time. But I just had an older couple desperately pleading that they don't know what code it's talking about or where they would get it. I figured there was an actual issue with the app/order so I look at it for them. But it's all as designed. She just thought the red bar was because it was an important note, not a button telling you what it will do.
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Silversong » Sat Mar 11, 2023 6:42 pm

Do not make it blue and underlined if it is not a link.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Sun Mar 12, 2023 5:26 pm

Silversong wrote:Do not make it blue and underlined if it is not a link.

In fact, don't make it blue or underlined if it's not a link.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of UI Design

Postby Thad » Wed Mar 15, 2023 1:45 pm

"A new version is available; do you want to update?"

I'm using the package maintainer's version, you Windows-ass motherfucker. Nagging me about it every time I launch the goddamn program isn't going to make them update it any faster.

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