Ignore the Code

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21431778

DonHopkins on Nov 3, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Evolution of the Scrollbar

Open Look scrollbars would be impossible to implement properly in the web browser without using the Pointer Lock API that let you "warp" the mouse cursor position, because when you click on the elevator or cable, the elevator cab actually pushes the cursor up and down with it.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_Lock_API

Here's a demo of Open Look scrollbars from Brad Myers' "All The Widgets" video, which he produced for the ACM CHI 1990 conference. It also has demos of many other kinds of scrollbars and other widgets. (Sun Microsystems, Inc. OPEN LOOK, 1988):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=12m57s

>All the Widgets (Fixed v2) - 1990: This was made in 1990, sponsored by the ACM CHI 1990 conference, to tell the history of widgets up until then. Previously published as: Brad A. Myers. All the Widgets. 2 hour, 15 min videotape. Technical Video Program of the SIGCHI'90 conference, Seattle, WA. April 1-4, 1990. SIGGRAPH Video Review, Issue 57. ISBN 0-89791-930-0.

When I was working on The NeWS Toolkit at Sun (an Open Look toolkit implemented in PostScript), Jonathan Payne implemented the Open Look scrollbars, and I thought they had such a cool interesting 3D shape with their elevator, cable, anchors, ridges and arrows, that I carved an 3D Open Look scrollbar for him out of soap as a birthday gift. (He also…

Not for people who were happily navigating with their keyboard. Not for people who were going to copy/paste anyway. Not for people who wanted to look at something in another tab before finishing your aggressively self-important webform. Not for people who will inevitably accidentally hit something in the dialog before even seeing it because they were typing too fast and it accepted their keyboard input. Not for people who will resent you on principle for stealing their focus to stop the proceedings with idiocy (google it). And certainly not for the people who are so tired of dialog boxes that they've given up on reading them altogether.

What you want: User reads your dialog box notifying them to double-check their email address.

What actually happens: User maybe looks at your dialog box just long enough to figure out what it is before clicking whatever they think will make it go away. A tiny proportion of anal-retentive users who would have never gotten it wrong in the first place actually do what you asked them to do.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2008/09/study-confirms-users-are-idiots/

> Follow-up questions revealed that the students seemed to find any dialog box a distraction from their assigned task; nearly half said that all they cared about was getting rid of these dialogs. The results suggest that a familiarity with Windows dialogs have bred a degree of contempt and that users simply don't care what the boxes say…

> I hated Skyrim, the world is big but empty. There is nothing particular about the landscape that makes me want to "go there". Most of the time, I discovered areas because I was going in straight lines.

I discovered the Elders Scrolls via Morrowind, then because I enjoyed it so much I was overjoyed about Oblivion coming out, and a little bit less about Skyrim.

... But these last two left me with that feeling of emptiness about the world. Oblivion had some redeeming qualities on specific quests (going into that painting was absolutely fantastic, although way too short), but felt like a drag overall. Skyrim felt like you never stop stumbling on something, encounters and quests felt evenly spaced and incredibly generic, succumbing to a Horror Vacui of sorts[0]. Also since everything dynamically adjusts in difficulty to your progress, everything is always as easy as it ever was. As a result there's no risk, no surprise, no tension.

Comparatively, Morrowind had many many flaws but I just kept on wanting to explore the world more, go past this ridge, reach to that spiky thing on the horizon, enter this weird tomb, walk down that windy road...

[0]: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2014/11/11/horror_vacui/

This how I feel about every version of Skype (for OS X) since version 2.8.x. The Skype UI had two windows - one for contacts and one for conversations. This made it easy to tuck Skype in a small corner of your screen. I think starting at version 5 they switched to one giant window and the community, pretty unanimously thought it was one of the worst UIs they had ever used (see this blog post: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/30/skype_5/). The change seemed completely unnecessary and made things very non intuitive. If I myself had trouble using it, I think it must have been even worse for people who do not use computers so often. Indeed many people reverted back to 2.8. I used 2.8 up until a few months ago when Skype finally decided to drop video support for it.

I think the newest version of Skype does let you break things into new windows, but to me it seems that it should be the default.

My main point is: the UI was already great, it didn't need any changes.

I limit my subs to mostly tech and feeds that post infrequently but well.

I go back and forth between enabling Hacker News and disabling it. It's too busy and distracting sometimes when I need to get things done and I don't want to get lost it some lengthy article somewhere.

Here are my current feeds sans HN

http://abstrusegoose.com

http://xkcd.com/

http://cmurphycode.posterous.com

http://acmel.wordpress.com

http://bsdpunk.blogspot.com/

http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/blog/

http://www.cpeterson.org

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/

http://blogs.iss.net

http://ignorethecode.net

http://blog.lastinfirstout.net/

http://linuxsysadminblog.com

http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com

http://planetsysadmin.com/

http://teddziuba.com/

http://toroid.org/ams/etc

Unfortunately there are still many features[1] that Android (and iOS) haven't stolen from webOS. The few features implemented have merely been copied poorly. I still multitask much more comfortably on a Pre 3.6" screen phone than on the 12.9" iPad Pro.

And while we're in the topic of AI assistants, I still think these voice-only interfaces on iOS/Android, don't match the simplicity of webOS' Just Type. You have to memorize the capabilities and/or syntax for Siri and Google Assistant whereas webOS would autocomplete/autosuggest as you 'Just Type'. That experience is still profound imo. (If any of Andy Rubin's Essential team is reading this, please add 'Just Type' as a core feature to your assistant)

[1] http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2012/02/21/steal_webos_features/