Hacker News Reader

Comment by pool | Hacker News Reader

For someone who follows HN somewhat, I really don't keep up on any current cool-and-hyped stuff. I'll just see websites become more and more useless with three-stripe icons for menus and then just random mysterious icons, and I'll tell myself that that no doubt these no-context meaningless icons must be derived from whatever iphones are doing this week.

View on HN

Today, I went to log into Evernote on the web. My password manager fills out the registration form, of course, but it won't submit because it wants an email address, not a username. So I go hunting for the "log in" option. Is it one of these attractive green buttons? oh, no, those are also sign up buttons. Is it in some weird corner like Tumblr for some reason? Nope. Maybe it's after this sales junk? Nope, just scrolly pictures and then some footer junk.

OH! I FOUND IT! it's a little small button under the register form!

I love how Evernote has managed to seamlessly combine the stupid web design tropes of 1) the hidden log-in form and 2) the incomprehensible hamburger. They've got a little something for everyone to hate. It's certainly not just them, though. My own employer's public website just hid all of its useful links behind a hamburger (I'm steering clear of the communications department for a while for their safety) and about every three days I start filling out the registration form on Github before realizing it's not the one I want.

"My password manager fills out the registration form, of course, but it won't submit because it wants an email address, not a username."

Big UI pain: sites that are not compatible with browser-stored login info.

My bank just broke compatibility with my password manager (could be the plugin's fault, I suppose) and another financial institution specifically told me that their site was not compatible with password managers. They have this 'nifty' feature which turns all but the last few chars of your username into stars on blur and I suspect they just didn't want to bother to do their js event handlers properly. Fortunately, it turns out I can make it work with the right sequence of clicking inside and outside the input boxes.

Even though the login behavior on a web app's home page can cause hiccups with password manager compatibility, the alternate login form on the "You are now logged out" page is usually barebones enough to be compatible.

Compare the login forms for Verizon Wireless:

Home page - https://www.verizonwireless.com (upper right corner)

Logged out page - https://login.vzw.com/cdsso/public/c/logout

Tweaking your password manager settings to log you in through a site's logged out page can often bypass the compatibility headaches.

Using 1Password's Chrome extension, this trick has worked for me so far, although your mileage may vary.

I used to use that method for the one that "didn't support password managers" before figuring out the click dance. Just tried with my main bank and they don't have a login form on the logout page.

I agree on the more and more useless progress of web interface design. The hamburger icon (three-strip icon as you call it) being particularly egregious, akin to the travesty that is the 'start' button on windows.

However, to be fair, Apple designers are very much against this trend as well (not to defend the recent downturn in Apple UX design).

I recommend this 2014 WWDC talk on UX[1]. The entire talk is worth watching even for non iOS UX design. but it goes into the problems with hamburger menus specifically at 32 minutes.

1: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2014-211/

Calling the start button a travesty is ridiculous. The start menu is a useful and appropriate menu where programs and other shortcuts are listed that nobody really has a problem with outside contrived complaints on the internet that were made for the sake of complaining. The real travesty was the abrasive and confusing replacement they made for it in Windows 8.

You weren't around for the release of Windows 95, I take it. The OS tried very hard to point out that you have to click the start button to, well, start doing things—but people usually just Didn't Get It anyway until someone guided them through the process.

Probably the best thing Microsoft could have done back then was make a little pseudo-video† walkthrough, showing people what's in the Start Menu and what happens when you click on a few of the items in there.

† What do you call a video stored as a sequence of automation triggers for software, rather than as pixels? Are you allowed to call it "machinima" if it's not a game?

The Start button may not be brilliant, but it came about through actual usability studies. Having just the one button drastically reduced the time it took people to find things.

But you only have to learn it once. Just like the hamburger.

Start button is where you go to start a program. Hamburger button is where you go when you've tried everything else.. I.e. It's a placeholder for random stuff which is why it's bad design.

> Start button is where you go to start a program.

Or to shut down the computer.

Start button is where you go to initiate an action.

I hate this joke.

> Or to shut down the computer.

That should be "Start to shut down the computer". (grin)

> Probably the best thing Microsoft could have done back then was make a little pseudo-video† walkthrough, showing people what's in the Start Menu and what happens when you click on a few of the items in there. They did that. Windows 95 came with a whole bunch of tutorials. IIRC they worked like you describe. There was also the notorious "Tip of the day" via the welcome.exe.

"Streaming is available in Safari, and through the WWDC app."

It's 2015! I didn't think 'Best Viewed with Internet Explorer' was a thing anymore.

It's a thing when they do any product launches as well, I end up having to paste the stream into VLC.

Don't own any Apple stuff but I like to watch what they are up to (often because I'll end up supporting their stuff at some point).

I always think "Am I turning into a stereotypical old person? Unable to use a computer?" I always feel like I'm just out of touch.

Rose colored glasses. Remember Win 3.1's inscrutable "staple" icon? What the hell does a "yellow" traffic light mean in the context of Window controls?

And don't forget: software was shit when we were younger. Win 9x, Mac pre-OS X. Buggy crap all of it. I can't remember the last time my desktop hardlocked, though Android and iOS these days are similarly shitty to how Windiws 9x was.

It was shit because it had to be, though.

Windows 3.1, for example. It had a very elegant Virtual Machine Manager with pre-emptive multitasking and true process isolation... and then GUI programs were all placed into a single cooperatively-multitasked event loop, because anything else would have killed performance. And the OS also had to continue to support IO device drivers written for DOS—that could disable interrupts system-wide and thus freeze the computer!—because otherwise your (horrible, un-QAed) scanner wouldn't work.

I fully believe that software hasn't gotten much better over the last 40 years. The hardware constraints have simply relaxed to the point that we're no longer forced to make as many Faustian bargains.

And Windows 95 had to run on 4 MB of RAM.

The DOS drivers and disabling interrupts applies to Windows 95 too.

I guess we gain perspective. We have the stereotype of old people being cranky and stupid (like I come from the era of cd-rom cupholder jokes, faxing images of floppies, etc.), but probably there were intelligent old people out there telling us about missing context and we didn't listen or by its nature what they had to say couldn't get press or something.

I think you're on to something huge and important.

Some years ago I was working for an educational software company. We sold directly to schools. As expected, we'd get a lot of feedback from teachers using the product. For a while, everyone from the execs on down would ignore this feedback with a laugh. The majority of teachers we dealt with were absolutely clueless about anything involving software. Their reports reflected this ineptness.

One day, I had an epiphany that maybe, just maybe, these people were worth listening to. We went over the written feedback, translated their ramblings into something approximating proper bug reports, and it turned out they were doing a wonderful job of pointing out many of the problems (especially UI) hiding in our blind spots.

We had dismissed them because of a perceived cluelessness, and probably because of some internalized ageism & sexism (most of these teachers were middle aged+ women and most of my team was not). And yet when we finally listened to them, we put out an update which led to several accolades, a sudden drop-off in complaints, and probably our best selling product.

Do you remember whether your epiphany seemed to stem from something, or just happened?

We were in a crunch to get version 2.0 out. Had the weekly progress meeting with the director. He had received some feedback from our remote sales team and he read one out loud that he thought was particularly funny. And it was, at least at first. Sounded like a old person flailing around with computers. But, then it hit me. This teacher was describing an edge case where a certain sequence of buttons would cause the whole program to lock up.

It was funny in part because the sequence wasn't something any of us would consider logical. So we had never tested for it. But I was able to duplicate the crash on my system and fixed it.

That was the epiphany. I convinced the director to push out the release date and we went through the backlog of ramblings and rants. Over half of them ended up being very useful.

CD-roms and disc media don't change for years, though. Popular apps change their interfaces every few months, it seems, and don't come with a manual. Learning the basics of a computer is more or less once-and-done, whereas keeping up with idiot designers is a constant task and a huge pain in the ass even when you're trying. And I say all this as a college student, which makes me one of the prime demographics for most of these apps.

> I'll just see websites become more and more useless with three-stripe icons for menus

Hilariously enough, this is now known to be a UX nightmare. HN has had multiple articles on why it is a UX nightmare, even when users know to click the hamburger menu (and everyone does by now), they don't engage or explore as much as they would with a layout that doesn't hide half (or more) of the user's choices.

I think the first sighting of the hamburger was actually from the flat/sans Google redesign of 2013. It popped up on Android first, then the web apps, then everywhere.

Should replace the hamburger icon with the letters "MENU". Problem solved.

No. Problem will be solved when you put UI in logical places so that you don't need the 'either try clicking here as a last resort or we probably don't have that feature' trash can of a menu.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com