Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[IDEngineer]

Some browsers used to interpret the Escape key as "go back" or "clear all". If you brought up an overlay menu for some feature and then dismissed it with Esc, it was a dice roll if you'd get a keystroke bounce and undo all of your work.

Seriously, some of these user interface designers must never work in the real world.

[james_s]

I don't know how much fraud actually occurs

317 cases here  in the uk going by the 2021 records,so a fairly small amount compared to the estimated £40-£120 million (depends whos figures you trust)  its going to cost over 10 years

317 cases that were caught, I don't know how anyone can measure those that aren't caught. Personally I suspect fraud is not a huge issue but I don't really know. What is a huge issue though is people believing that there is fraud taking place, and if requiring ID quells that and restores faith in fair elections then I'd say the money is worth it. £40-£120 million sounds like a lot of money but it's <£2 per UK citizen over 10 years which really is nothing. Pocket change. Even if you count only citizens that are of voting age it's got to be less than £1 a year per person. Mountains out of mole hills.

[james_s]

Some browsers used to interpret the Escape key as "go back" or "clear all". If you brought up an overlay menu for some feature and then dismissed it with Esc, it was a dice roll if you'd get a keystroke bounce and undo all of your work.

Seriously, some of these user interface designers must never work in the real world.

Having spent the large bulk of my career in software development I can tell you that they haven't. Most of those decisions are made by PMs, and they are often not particularly technical people.

[Ian.M]

Ctrl-Z should be a progressive undo not a form or page reload, with Ctrl-Y as a progressive redo.   Any browser that gets that wrong (other than on f***ed up continuous loading pages), isn't fit for purpose

[shapirus]

Uhg! Seriously! I have never once wanted to navigate back by pressing a key, certainly not by pressing backspace! That's just idiotic, they could have made it Ctrl-Backspace and that would be fine. I have had to re-fill-out countless forms due to that moronic "feature".

How do you turn on the "back" action on backspace?

update: LOL. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.backspace_action
it's platform-dependent. It is set to a sane value (do nothing outside of text inputs) by default on Linux. On Windows, some bright mind thought that it was a good idea to do it...

for consistency with Internet Explorer.

Calling it "moronic" is inappropriate. I'd call it outright anencephalic.

[IDEngineer]

Having spent the large bulk of my career in software development I can tell you that they haven't. Most of those decisions are made by PMs, and they are often not particularly technical people.

Those must be the same morons who completely redesign user interfaces for popular programs when literally NO ONE was asking for such changes, leading to a worldwide population of experienced users having to re-learn their daily tools. Microsoft Office, I'm thinking of you (in terms not suitable for a family website).

[tooki]

Having spent the large bulk of my career in software development I can tell you that they haven't. Most of those decisions are made by PMs, and they are often not particularly technical people.

Those must be the same morons who completely redesign user interfaces for popular programs when literally NO ONE was asking for such changes, leading to a worldwide population of experienced users having to re-learn their daily tools. Microsoft Office, I'm thinking of you (in terms not suitable for a family website).

Assuming you’re talking about the Ribbon, I think it’s important to point out that it absolutely was not a situation of a change “no one was asking for”. At the time, Microsoft had been getting complaints for years and years about “bloat” in the Office menu-and-toolbars interface, combined with countless feature requests for features it already had but users struggled to find, as well as huge amounts of user telemetry and usability testing demonstrating real difficulties with the interface. The Ribbon was a bold, ambitious attempt to redesign the interface from the ground up for the complex applications the Office programs had become, not the comparatively tiny, basic programs they were when the menus-and-toolbars interfaces were first applied to them for the Mac. (Office for Mac actually predates Office for Windows!)

The Ribbon is a fascinating case study, in that it was created with a huge amount of care given to sound UX methodology, with tons of thought behind it, and massive amounts of usability testing. And yet lots of users hate it. For example, most commands require fewer clicks in the Ribbon UI than the old menus and toolbars, yet to many people they feel like they take more clicks. (I know I sometimes get that feeling.)

I also know, from attempting to discuss the Ribbon with users who hate it, that there is a visceral component to the hate, because most are unable to even articulate why they dislike it beyond “it’s different”. I had one coworker who was frothing at the mouth because I didn’t agree with him unconditionally about it being anything but an unmitigated disaster. The fact that I didn’t hate it (even though I slightly preferred the old interface) was enough to send him into near rage. There was no arguing that it was anything other than “stupidity” — no room for even the possibility that it could be a really solid effort that just didn’t pan out.

That was back in 2009-2013 and I haven’t seen him in many years. I wonder how he feels about the tablet versions of Office, which have only the most abbreviated of toolbars, with many commands available only by search box… 

(To anyone who misses the menus in Office: buy a Mac. While Office for Mac does use the Ribbon, it still has all the menus!)

[IDEngineer]

My issue with the revised interface was simply that most users only use perhaps 5-10% of the many features of such programs, *and they already know where those features are*. No matter how "careful" the redesign, it's still a completely artificially created learning curve for a office suite that already had what, 90% of the market? They cannot justify it on the basis of "it will make things easier for new users". All it did was frustrate the 90% of the market they already had captured. Idiocy.

[tooki]

My issue with the revised interface was simply that most users only use perhaps 5-10% of the many features of such programs, *and they already know where those features are*. No matter how "careful" the redesign, it's still a completely artificially created learning curve for a office suite that already had what, 90% of the market? They cannot justify it on the basis of "it will make things easier for new users". All it did was frustrate the 90% of the market they already had captured. Idiocy.

It wasn’t just designed for new users. As I literally just told you, existing users were complaining about it constantly and that was the main reason they even embarked on a new UI. So it absolutely was an attempt to make things easier for existing users. It wasn’t about increasing sales; as you say, they had already cornered the market. I don’t know why Ribbon haters believe it was only designed with beginners in mind, because that’s really anything but the truth!!

I’m not claiming they succeeded in their goal, just that that was the intent.

One of the things they explored in their research before starting on the Ribbon was about which features got used the most, in the hopes they’d find some that were used so little they could be jettisoned altogether. This was done by analyzing telemetry data from millions of real users. I forget the exact numbers, so don’t hold me to these exact ones, but it was some variation of the 80/20 rule (20% of the features are used 80% of the time), but with the big surprise being that the other 80% of features all got used roughly equally, making it nearly impossible to prioritize them, never mind drop them.

[PlainName]

And yet lots of users hate it. For example, most commands require fewer clicks in the Ribbon UI than the old menus and toolbars, yet to many people they feel like they take more clicks.

I think a big part of it was the massive amount of space it took out of the screen real estate. Menus take just a line when you're not, ah, menuing whereas the ribbon takes a quarter of your page, seemingly. Also, when you're hunting and pecking for a command, a menu list is quickly perusable whereas with with the ribbon some command are hidden behind dropdowns. You need to know what part of the ribbon to look at, but many time you don't associate the command with the right category. So with the menu you can quickly trawl all menus and find the thing, but the ribbon does indeed take longer.

And that's without considering the icons. Icons are OK if there are few and you know what they mean (most are non-obvious, particularly when they are in a menu analog where there are several very similar ones). Having a lot of them is just graphical blur, so you end up enabling the text description too, and that takes up even more space.

[SiliconWizard]

Having spent the large bulk of my career in software development I can tell you that they haven't. Most of those decisions are made by PMs, and they are often not particularly technical people.

Those must be the same morons who completely redesign user interfaces for popular programs when literally NO ONE was asking for such changes, leading to a worldwide population of experienced users having to re-learn their daily tools. Microsoft Office, I'm thinking of you (in terms not suitable for a family website).

Yep, but looking at it in a different light may make you see the benefits - for the vendor.

New users are usually easier to deal with, and they are the ones making companies grow, at least for this kind of products.
So transforming every user, even the old ones, into new users is a great deal.
And if you have done what it takes to make them captive, they won't go to the competition anyway (if there is any.) So it's all benefits and almost zero risk.

[helius]

Not being an MS Office user myself I don't have a deeply emotional opinion about "the ribbon interface". I'm not totally sure I even understand its underlying logic or widget structure. But the idea of a team at Microsoft spending a lot of effort, using copious user input and "telemetry", and ending up with a dog's breakfast, is completely unsurprising when you consider the most important factor in that equation: Microsoft.

[tooki]

And yet lots of users hate it. For example, most commands require fewer clicks in the Ribbon UI than the old menus and toolbars, yet to many people they feel like they take more clicks.

I think a big part of it was the massive amount of space it took out of the screen real estate. Menus take just a line when you're not, ah, menuing whereas the ribbon takes a quarter of your page, seemingly. Also, when you're hunting and pecking for a command, a menu list is quickly perusable whereas with with the ribbon some command are hidden behind dropdowns. You need to know what part of the ribbon to look at, but many time you don't associate the command with the right category. So with the menu you can quickly trawl all menus and find the thing, but the ribbon does indeed take longer.

And that's without considering the icons. Icons are OK if there are few and you know what they mean (most are non-obvious, particularly when they are in a menu analog where there are several very similar ones). Having a lot of them is just graphical blur, so you end up enabling the text description too, and that takes up even more space.

Have you forgotten how many toolbars the old Office UI had?!? As big as it seems, the Ribbon uses less real estate than the default toolbars and menu bar of the old UI.

This blog post has a (staged of course) screenshot of what Word looked like with all its toolbars open, on the typical screen size of the early 2000s: https://blog.codinghorror.com/sometimes-a-word-is-worth-a-thousand-icons/

It also has at the very end this link to the Microsoft blog about the Ribbon’s development. It’s been years since I read it, but it’s a fascinating read for anyone interested in UX.

[james_s]

I've been living with the ribbon interface for how many years now, 14? I don't even remember when the place I worked switched to that version but I still haven't gotten used to it and hate it. The thing is, they could have very easily left the original menu in place and simply added the ribbon and made it a user selectable option avoiding all the controversy.

[rdl]

I don't think anybody that actually used Word would have needed all those toolbars. It's been 15 years or so since I used it, but for me one small single row was usually enough. The ribbon uses way more space than that at a minimum. And they added it to the file explorer where it does little except take up space. The original Explorer's interface was pretty simple after all.

[Ian.M]

OTOH it was pretty easy to add a custom toolbar to toggle other toolbars, so pre-Office 2007, power users would typically have at most three lines of toolbars open at any one time (and that's on a small screen), and most likely one or more of those toolbars would be heavily customised for their workflow, or to reduce the toolbar by excluding icons for commands with easy keyboard shortcuts to fit more toolbars on the same line.   The only problem was if you were temporarily standing in for that power user using the same logon and had to live with their customisations.

Still using Office 97 here - it does what I need with no need to relearn the UI every couple of years and no cloud crap whatsoever.  If/when a windows update finally breaks it irretrievably, I'll simply reinstall it under Wine on WSL! 

[SilverSolder]

OTOH it was pretty easy to add a custom toolbar to toggle other toolbars, so pre-Office 2007, power users would typically have at most three lines of toolbars open at any one time (and that's on a small screen), and most likely one or more of those toolbars would be heavily customised for their workflow, or to reduce the toolbar by excluding icons for commands with easy keyboard shortcuts to fit more toolbars on the same line.   The only problem was if you were temporarily standing in for that power user using the same logon and had to live with their customisations.

Still using Office 97 here - it does what I need with no need to relearn the UI every couple of years and no cloud crap whatsoever.  If/when a windows update finally breaks it irretrievably, I'll simply reinstall it under Wine on WSL! 

I thought I was bad, sticking with Office 2010!   -  I use the latest and greatest Office 365 at work.  It's amazing how little difference there actually is...   Other than the monthly payments!

[vk6zgo]

Using W10 on my ASUS laptop, I will be typing something to post on this, or some other forum, when suddenly the website disappears.

Yeah, Mozilla's default binding of backspace to "Go Back" is a pet peeve of mine. It makes no sense and is a constant source of annoyance if I'm using a machine I can't customize the keys on.

My problem is with Edge, & it seems to be connected to the "shift" key.
The fact that I can't make it do it when I really try to is what freaks me out.

[PlainName]

Have you forgotten how many toolbars the old Office UI had?!?

I never use toolbars - as I said, the icons are meaningless without text or very frequent use. But, in any case, one could enable or disable each toolbar, and the enabled ones could fit on one line. Even if you used a few, they take up less vertical space than the ribbon.

Edit: Icons... perversely, I really like the tiny icons in menus. Of course, they are still meaningless but they add something to the menu which I can't put my finger on. Perhaps it's just decoration that breaks up the menu text, or they act as an additional clue.

[james_s]

I don't find icons meaningless, good ones should imply what they are visually, and then it doesn't take long to learn what they are. Tooltips that display when you hover over an icon and say what it is are important too.

[Andrew_Debbie]

What other things are there?

People that idle in their cars for  20 minutes at Starbucks, McDonalds or other drive throughs when there is nobody in the store.     

Operating system bloat.  I'm sitting in front of a high-spec 2010 iMac that is not able to run any recent version of MacOS. On the latest version that it can run, it is hoplessly slow doing even the simplest tasks and too risky to use.

Same hardware with Ubuntu 22.10  works great for my electronics design work.   And the OS is in support

[PlainName]

I don't find icons meaningless, good ones should imply what they are visually, and then it doesn't take long to learn what they are. Tooltips that display when you hover over an icon and say what it is are important too.

See the example attached, which even has a tooltip that tells me nothing.

If you use a specific one a lot then it's easy to know what it is. I bet you go by the shape of it rather than thinking "yes, that means xxx", though. Hovering is just daft - you waste 2 seconds waiting for the text to come up. Might as well just show the text as well as the icon, and then you've more or less got a horizontal menu.

Right click context menu is great, but quickly tell me what the icons in the second lot mean.

[paulca]

I don't find icons meaningless, good ones should imply what they are visually, and then it doesn't take long to learn what they are. Tooltips that display when you hover over an icon and say what it is are important too.

The academic concept of "affordance".  Like a (good) door handle affords pushing, or pulling.  A good knob affords turning.

A "bad door" looks like it should be pulled ...  has, say, a grab handle but is actually pushed to open and if pulled does nothing.  This is not uncommon, but is a good example of "poor affordance".  People trying to turn protruding buttons in another.   Knobs that can be pushed or pulled are obviously a different ball game.

[paulca]

Affordance taken to the extreme is found in airliner cockpits.

[SiliconWizard]

I don't find icons meaningless, good ones should imply what they are visually, and then it doesn't take long to learn what they are. Tooltips that display when you hover over an icon and say what it is are important too.

Yep. Tooltips work well to remind you what a given icon does, if you use it frequently and the icon is not too badly designed, you'll quickly learn what it does.
For those that you don't use frequently and may thus not remember, then waiting for 1 s for the tooltip to appear is plenty fine.
And you can place toolbars where you want them, including floating if you prefer that.
That's a much better use of screen estate and respects users' preferences.

Of course, for people used to touchscreen interfaces and who now practically see the mouse as an annoyance, hovering is not even a concept.