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Unbiquiti FrontRow

frontrow.com

13 pointscaminocorner36 comments

WHY. WHY do web devs keep _insisting_ on taking over my scroll wheel? I don't want things to fly around on screen, and I certainly don't want to be rocketed halfway down the page if I so much as _nudge_ the scroll wheel on my mouse.

This might be a cool product, but the behaviors on that page are _extremely_ irritating.

Why is scrolling pixel-by-pixel rather than smoothly between sections inherently the right way to do it?

You don't know if I'm scrolling pixel by pixel. You should just not override how scroll works. It's not like it improves anything.

But the content here is paginated. It isn't a single continuous stream.

It is a continuous stream. When I disable the scroll handler, I can smoothly move up and down across the sections. And it's a much nicer experience. I don't lose my place, or accidentally skip ahead 2 or 3 "pages".

> And it's a much nicer experience.

Well apparently the designers disagree! I guess we've just got a difference of opinion!

However a user has configured their mouse settings is the right way to do it.

Don't meddle. My mouse, my OS, and my browser know just fine how to accommodate my scrolling.

Because some people scroll as they read.

Another reason is that it can mess with assistive technologies. People with motor disorders, for example, might have either special settings or special devices that this could cause problems with.

I'm not asserting that pixel-by-pixel scrolling (vs scrolling by section) is inherently better as an approach. It's entirely possible that the latter is better somehow!

However, the reality is that nearly the entire web is pretty consistent in how you can navigate a page - space bar will jump down a bit, pages usually respect my scroll speed settings, tabbing between elements works if the dev didn't fuck it up, etc.

I value consistency in how I interact with my computer. I would rather not use an app/buy a thing/etc if it works differently from other similar items purely for aesthetic reasons. If it works demonstrably better, maybe there's an argument to be made, but when it's strictly a matter of _opinion_, I'm inclined to say that consistency > doing some one-off behavior.

Imagine if the brake and gas pedal were reversed in one specific car, just because the person who designed/built it thought that it was more comfortable/looked better/etc. That would be an extremely dangerous car to drive (at least for me). I have a lot of years of muscle memory built up, and if I'm in some kind of dangerous situation on the road where I'd need to hit the brakes in a hurry, I want to be _damn_ sure that I'm pressing the correct pedal.

For websites, it's an inconvenience that can be explained away as a difference of opinion. For many, many other kinds of interaction, this approach is actively hazardous.

(and to be clear, I'm not saying that we shouldn't try new things or attempt to redesign things that people are used to, but I _am_ saying that a large business trying to sell a new thing is probably not the time nor place for it. Experiment with it on your portfolio or something and don't go out of your way to degrade my experience if you want me to buy something from you!)

Is it possible it's because a lot of people actually like it?

A lot of people = a lot of people who worked on the design of the website in question, perhaps

Nope, devs and PMs think it’s fun to build that shit though.

How can you say that for the entire world? I for one do like it; a better presentation that's dynamic and screen real-estate aware. And I'm not the one building such things.

Designers and PMs think it is fun to make devs build that shit.

The masses are asses.

None of arrow keys, page-down, space bar, middle click, or scroll bar are actually able to scroll this page at all on my machine.

Only the scroll wheel. And there's no visual indication that scrolling is expected to work at all.

It feels natural on mobile, so my guess is they did mobile first dev and ended up with something weird on desktop.

I'm not sure why this is on the front page now - this isn't new, I bought mine 4 years ago, I believe.

It's a fun little toy but as far as I know it is abandoned, and the app to get the content off the device is quite unreliable.

Ubiquiti reused the case of it for the "UniFi Access Reader Pro" - an NFC/bluetooth reader for physical security purposes.

https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-door-access/products/...

And the top thread on here is of Ubiquity network breach

It's time for CES, or whatever virtual thing is taking the place of CES.

Watch for a flurry of little IoT gizmos and whatzits, like this $3,000 pet door from Chamberlin:

https://www.theverge.com/22195916/chamberlain-myq-pet-portal...

Feels like a speedbump on the way to AR glasses, similar to a go pro with live upload ability today?

Makes me think of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_Video

A product that could only exist in-between a transition and then quickly becomes irrelevant.

I'm looking forward to AR glasses with a camera - lots of applications. Even just basic glasses cam would be nice, during covid I've wanted it to be able to walk people through things remotely and more easily see what they're seeing.

I had a flip and absolutely loved it. I honestly think they could have made a decent go at it if they hadn't been shut down.

So they came out before phones started having fantastic video cameras in them, but they also hit a reasonable price point. There was places I used mine that I wouldn't have been willing to risk a $1k smart phone.

GoPro is still an active and growing company, I think there was a lot of opportunity for Flip to compete in similar markets.

This is the first thing that came to my mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_Row_(software)

For $400, I'll get myself some Spectacles from Snap. I'm already getting a headache by imagining the video shake from FrontRow's camera.

https://www.spectacles.com/

I would really hope the capture software did some major shake/motion reduction. It's not even shown as secured to a person like a GoPro, so imagine a video on a swinging medallion...

I have one, and I don't think it does. It's mitigated by the fact that the camera is very wide angle, and the design of the strap attachment is quite wide which prevents it from rotating.

Glad I'm not the only one that thought of Front Row for Mac :)

It looks to me like they repurposed all the ones they did not sell into their door access line.

Formerly and regrettably used to receive a paycheck from UI, basically the case

Other way around. The FrontRow was first.

Hmhrhmm. Reminds me a little bit of the "Glassholes" from about a decade ago? The always recording anything people? First with selfmade equipment, then via google glasses?

I watched this and I keep thinking to myself what this does that a decent smartphone (or GoPro) can't.

Then I saw the price and asked who would pay that.

Which is 399$, which they hide until you actually put into your cart for some reason.

This does seem really...niche

Since this is just a lanyard, how do you prevent it from randomly flipping to the other side?

The attachment is quite wide - here's a photo of mine: https://i.imgur.com/NWAfZUJ.jpg

title typo: Ubiquiti, not Unbiquiti.

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