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Comment by akamaka | Hacker News Reader

Nice theory, but I think Dustin's conclusions are wrong.

I got to use this alternative design on my second Facebook account that I used for app development, while my personal account didn't have it enabled. I really disliked like the new sidebar design. The concept was similar to what GMail has done lately, with text links replaced by only graphical icons. I found it really difficult to remember what each icon linked to, and I'd have to go through and hover over each icon one by one.

My theory (which I think has as much evidence to back it up as Dustin's) is that if the feed performed better in this design, it was because the poorly designed menu made it more difficult to navigate the rest of the site!

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>text links replaced by only graphical icons

This is a terribly pernicious trend in all sorts of software, not just GMail. I really hope that the fad dies out soon, because it's preventing me form effectively using software that otherwise may have been great.

It's like they realize that reading English is kind of tough, so they give you a whole new language to learn, which doesn't help at all.

I think it's done to more easily deal with internationalization. Instead of making the design fit the translated text, just remove the text altogether and stick with just the icons.

Well "mystery mean navigation" refers to something specifically where there's little chance of understanding what the icons refer to without rolling over them, much like "mystery meat" in your fridge that you can't remember what it is without opening the tupperware.

For accessibility, they still need the text. So only hassle saved is the minor one of designing a bit larger to fit languages that need more pixels.

> fad

You realize that iconography predates all civilization, right?

True, but don't confuse iconography with brand marketing.

I think he's talking within the context of software, you know.

Even within this context, icons have been used for a long time in things like toolbars. But historically they've been quite descriptive of what they do, and often times have been accompanied by a textual description if there's any uncertainty as to their meaning.

Like the earlier commenter wrote, however, we've seen the use of icons really taken to a stupid extreme as of late. This is especially true when it comes to websites and web apps. The icons are often rather abstract, to the point of causing confusion and harming usability.

Even desktop apps have succumbed to this. Look at Chrome's menu icon. In the last version I used, it was a stack of three horizontal lines. At a glance, it's not clear at all what it represents. It's only after clicking it, and seeing the menu that opens, that the connection is made.

IE6 predates all of civilization too.

Of all the things that inhibit our use of programs, icons are surely the least because after you've pressed them a couple thousand times, I hope you still don't forget them. Text takes up a lot of space.

What you're saying about icons is true, but only if we're talking about desktop software that has major releases only every few years, or software that otherwise uses a very standardized and common set of icons.

That isn't what we see with most web apps these days, including the major ones. There's continual change, including the icons that are used, where they're positioned, and what happens when they're clicked on. If you discover what an icon means and does today, there's a very good chance it'll have changed by tomorrow, if it's even still around.

We're much better off losing a small amount of space, but getting an obvious and unambiguous description when text is used instead of icons.

Also the trend is wrong. Old mobile devices needed icons. But then you have a 1920x1080 screen on a new mobile device, you can read and distinguish truly tiny text quite easily (I'm finding a lot of websites are much better in desktop mode on my S4 these days, for example).

Text works just fine in most applications, because the shape of a particular word is itself iconography.

Nice selective quoting.

> fad [of replacing text links with icon-only buttons in software UI]

One of the first things I did when Gmail updated the design was to revert back to text links in the settings.

Where is the setting for that? I can't seem to find it.

Settings -> General -> Button labels. You can choose between "Icons" and "Text".

Thanks for this! I was not even aware the option existed. Done!

You might also like other advice from this article: http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-...

At least for me it made gmail bearable again.

But it's a trend that is extremely helpful to non-English speakers.

Only if the iconography is more obvious than the equivalent English text (or icon + text). If it's not, then you might as well be using Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Vincent Flanders called this mystery meat navigation [1] and has a whole site about webpages that suck.. (a bit dated)

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/mysterymeatnavigation.html

    Some people have asked, "Where are the sites?" Well, the 
    menu above should aim you in the right direction.

Too bad that Web Pages That Suck sucks.

wow that site's still going. I remember reading his book when I first started learning web design. Always thought the bad design on that site was done ironically though..

You should read the FAQ, http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/faq.html, the design is deliberate.

>I really hope that the fad dies out soon

I wouldn't hold my breath. I think a lot of the reasons we're moving to icons instead of text is because sometime in the next ten years, the majority of all internet traffic will originate on phones, and phones don't have nearly as much real estate to devote to labels as desktop screens do.

Using icons over text gets you some nice wins when it comes to i18n as well. I.e. you're fitting an icon, not variable width text.

Just decide which decade you are talking about. I hear this since the 90's.

Show me a "Save" icon that doesn't _still_ look like a floppy disk. Until then I'll take my text labels.

Modern apps don't have a save function. There's no need for it.

All the apps must have 'Manual Override'. Save is desirable in ethical scenarios.

What?

I don't comprehend what you mean by "manual override", nor how saving can have any ethical implications whatsoever.

I'm pretty sure it's a joke, probably a reference.

When Stack Overflow recently released the new top bar no one could figure out the Inbox icon. I guess office desks don't have inboxes anymore, either. I'm really curious what the next one to go will be. The standard trash can??

The stock save icon in Ubuntu hasn't been a floppy disk for years. Here it is:http://ubuntuhandbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/firefox...

Reminds me of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, where most people can't actually read and just follow animated icons. "Mediaglyphs" I think it was called.

The best kind are the ones that change the icons with every iteration (Ubuntu, I'm looking at you), so you can't even memorize the icons.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people (including myself) just need the feed. I personally preferred the clean approach because outside of Events, I never need the left navigation. Now it obnoxiously takes up a segment of the page and the main content in the center feels tight especially with the bigger typography.

On the contrary, I don't need the feed at all. I use just the messaging features. I never post on the feed and everything I share is in the private or group messages.

If you don't need the feed you don't even need the web browser since the message system is bog standard jabber.

I do my FB messaging through Messages on my Mac and the FB Messages app on my phone. Works great.

Bog standard Jabber except for the changes they make - group messaging, 'seen' notifications, in line attachments, 'stickers' are all proprietary stuff which a standard jabber client doesn't support, unfortunately.

Their Facebook Messenger for Windows client was discontinued earlier this month unfortuntaely, so I'm back using Trillian and boy do I miss the group messaging feature.

(genuine question, I don't use FB chat)

How is group messaging different from MUC[1]? The naming group messaging sounds alike, but I don't know the internals of FBs feature.

in line attachments is also possible[2] - I assume you mean sending files, embedding photos in messages and such?

As for seen and stickers I don't know of a XMPP equivalent, but I am curious as to why MUC wasn't used instead of proprietary group messaging.

[1]: XEP-0045, http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html

[2]: html and/or XEP-0231, http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0231.html

Recently I installed this "Kill the News Feed" Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-feed/hjo... Now I waste way less time.

Maybe you'll like it :-)

It wasn't stuck at just the icons, it let you expand to see words as well. It was much better in my opinion and I rarely had it at the collapsed state like his screenshot shows.

I haven't seen this UI, so I'm commenting out of ignorance for Facebook's particular revisions, but anything that requires the user to take an action before seeing the options is going to severely limit the number of users that take the options. In fact, many will never see those options.

Click-to-reveal and hover-to-reveal require manual dexterity, a curiosity to see what's behind a link, and time to discover and parse the new visual information. Making these cognitive demands, particularly on sites where users relax, is going to reduce engagement.

I already never leave my feed—and all they've done by streamlining it is make ads a full third of the screen. Ads for me, a 22 year old, to bulk up, grow my hair back, certain for any male over 55 to like.

If you want to be really depressed about what the future holds for us, try setting your age to 90. I tried that for a while and ended up with ads for 'discreet catheters' and funeral finance.

So your complaint is that the ads don't know more about you?

That's part of it. The other part is that the content is so obviously secondary to serving ads and trying to get you to interact in a valuable way (to them). It's a miserable experience.

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