Chrome added an annoying translation feature
user.wordpress.com
user.wordpress.com
With the new translate popup, you have to acknowledge it before you can continue typing. This means always having to press escape or cancel randomly when browsing the majority of webpages you visit.
Worse, the popup only shows after the page is fully loaded, so if you are browsing a page that is slow to load for whatever reason, you're sure to get interrupted in the middle of whatever you are doing, and if you were typing something, you aren't anymore because you just lost focus.
Now imagine this behavior on nearly every webpage.
My options are to disable the translate feature, which I use quite a bit, or to just put up with a crappy user experience, which is what I've been doing.
If you live in an English speaking country and only visit the occasional foreign website, you're likely never to notice this problem.
My own experience is that I often read pages in a couple of languages which I understand well (and don't want auto-translated, so I put those languages on the don't-translate list) and occasionally come across a page that seems interesting in a language what I don't understand (and then the offer to translate is helpful).
For example, say I have a workable command of French, but want the ability to translate French in the future in case I don't understand a particular paragraph. So I put up with the annoying dialog over and over because I'm afraid to not have it when I want it.
Always/never UI is almost always a design failure IMO.
Another example is the intent chooser in Android. I put up with the dialog that asks whether I want to use Gallery or G+ photos because I fear not being able to choose in the future when I have some other viewer I want to use, or when there is some particular feature of G+ that I learn about and want to use.
In many cases this isn't rational if you think it through. There is probably some UI to reset the intent option somewhere, and finding it then is probably less time overall than dealing with this dialog over and over. But you don't think that through in the moment, you get slightly frustrated, press "not now" again, and get on with whatever you were trying to do.
When it comes to UI issues, the existence of a solution with enough poking around is rarely a solution at all. The problem is that the UI is creating a conflict for the user at the beginning; being able to resolve a conflict is far worse than never creating the conflict at all.
I have heard this pithily articulated in human factors as "if the user can't find it, the function's not there".
Here's a simple example for you:
Bob lives in Norway, but doesn't know perfect Norwegian.
He likes that google chrome/translate helps him read Norwegian webpages.
Bob is always losing focus on his cursor because of the translate feature, it's even bothering him on websites in his native language due to all of the region based advertising.
You're telling Bob that he should disable the option to translate Norwegian web pages, even though he reads them daily, and doesn't speak the language.
Now do you see the problem?
To be perfectly clear, this was not a problem when the translate option showed at the top of the page, but is a problem with the new "pop-up" style they are using which steals focus from the user.
I'm Dutch myself, so I have English and Dutch never translated. And everytime I'm on a webpage with another language I like that I can ask Google to translate it for me and remember it for that language.
You never steal focus from the user, unless you're designing a system to purposefully interrupt someone.
Plus automatically translated texts are often pain to read. The translation is good enough to help you decipher meaning, but not good enough to make a real text.
(Most language pairs are much much worse than the high profile ones like german->english - try swedish->polish or something)
This is explained in the article.
Translate page button.
Chrome / Chromium have introduced a few non-optional changes recently that seem to have been implemented by North Americans / native English speakers / ex-or-current Microsoft windows users. Any or all of which are annoying for non-North Americans or people that don't use Microsoft Windows.
Two that spring to mind - clicking in the URL bar now selects the entire contents. It now has the dubious honour of being the only text entry box in any GNU/Linux application to work that way.
Similarly, dragging the scrollbar now has a snap-back feature if you move the mouse more than about 40px from the scrollbar 'region'. Again, the only application on any GNU/Linux DE that abuses the scrollbar in this fashion.
Requests by non-MS-Windows users to make these configurable settings, and/or respect OS defaults, are met with disdain.
The bug threads contain a predictable mix of well-reasoned, thoughtful explanations of the problem, polite requests for fixes, impolite and exasperated complaints, and developer responses ranging from 'you're wrong to want the earlier / native OS behaviour' to 'we won't fix it, for reasons'.
Snap-back bug 377191 [1] morphed into 377919 [2]. I'm pretty sure the non-intuitive 'snapback' name is an unfortunate and doubtless unintended example of making it harder for users to find, and report their preferences.
Looking at those two bug reports, there's at least another half dozen issue #'s that have been merged into these.
MS-Windows-like single-click to select the URL (rather than using the mouse as a pointer to position the cursor, as GNU/Linux users seem to be familiar with) bug reports date back a long time [3] with hints that not all the developers agree with the behaviour change (or the refusal to make it an option). Again, it's the kind of thing that people continue to identify and complain about elsewhere, for example on the Google product forums [4].
Just as with this one-time-offer-only, auto-translate pop-up bug -- I really dislike the allegedly modern behaviour of reducing configuration options inside software, while your shipped configuration annoys an ever-increasing section of your user base.
The alleged benefit of satisfying the handful of people who are easily bewildered by Settings dialogs is simply perverse.
</rant>
[1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=377191
[2] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=337919
[3] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=26140
[4] https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/AZt9L9...
Also, Google keeps translating my queries into my native language. If I search for some English term, odds are I want English pages back. But no, Google disagrees (even when I search for a definition).
As opposed to the author though, I believe yet another setting is not needed: the translation tool is readily available as an icon in the address bar, so if I want to use that nice translation tool, I can easily just click this icon.
Please accept my apologies for the trouble. We've been listening and are making the following changes:
1. we won't show the infobubble and rely on the omnibox icon if the focus is on an editable field. https://crbug.com/313100 (fixed in M36)
2. the infobubble will stop stealing the focus: you will be able to type, perform shortcuts, scroll the page and so on. https://crbug.com/378643
3. we are experimenting with the idea of never showing the infobubble again and solely rely on the omnibox icon as soon as we observe more than X negative actions within a given timeframe T (starting with X=2; T=24h) https://crbug.com/379035
4. A few other adjustments around the "translated" infobubble (e.g. will not be shown for automatic translation, will not show up if the "translating" infobubble has been dismissed). https://crbug.com/319628
I'm eager to hear additional feedback and would appreciate if you could play with the feature in Canary as we land the different changes.
I'll take a look at each comments and reply with specific answers where relevant.
Oh for the record, I'm French and my Japanese is better than my English ;) Merci d'avance!
Built-in Google Translate was added in Chrome 4.1 in 2010:
http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.de/2010/03/windows-beta...
Old UI: http://docs.oseems.com/_media/general/application/chrome/chr...
New UI: https://user.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/screenshot-6.png
In my opinion, new version is prettier, but more annoying as it partially obscures webpage content.
This report generation tool is displaying names of locations located in the Netherlands, so Chrome suggests translating the page from Dutch to English.
I addition, it displays a dialog box asking if there is a better translation of the label for the 'Download CSV' button.
Another annoying feature (new, I think) is auto zooming new tabs/windows I open if I had been zoomed in on the previous page. It doesn't seem like it can be turned off.
Also, asking permission to view in full screen is kind of annoying. But an immediately following popup with "www.youtube.com is now full screen" is just obnoxious. We also probably shouldn't begin desensitizing users to clicking "Allow" in non-security situations.
The full-screen popup is also very annoying. +1
I don't care where the option is on the screen as long as it's not randomly taking my cursor away from the webpage I'm trying to use.
[1] http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/education-and-language-gap-s...
I get it, Americans are fun to bash for numerous reasons, but it really annoys me when the bashing is not thought through enough to be valid.
But understanding the reasons doesn't make invalid. If anything, it makes it more valid, since the reason we all learn English as a second language is because the Americans pushed for it, from Hollywood to the Internet. It's not like English was the natural default; my mother was still taught French. It wasn't until a few decades ago that English became the only thing we must absolutely learn.
In any case, I meant only what I wrote; that Americans don't know second languages is a fact. Whether that's cause for bashing was not part of my post.
temporary glitch I imagine
If I ever want to use anything else than google.com to search, even though I am in another country, I know how to change it. So please don't ask me more than once - and let me dismiss it forever. STOP ASKING ME!
Desktop chrome. Settings \ advanced \ languages \ unchecked offer to translate
Edit: it's under the 'Options' button of the translate popup.
1. Never translate this language
2. When you want a page translated, click the Translation icon in the URL bar and choose to translate.
If an active suggestion (feature advertisement) is necessary, a single once-in-lifetime "hey, here's a way to translate the page - click this icon if you want to do so [ uh, okay, got it, now stop bugging me ]" (with clicking outside treated as "probably didn't read - remind later again") would be a much better approach.
I'm unsure what point you try to argue here. The author of that post explained what is wrong with the feature. You provided zero arguments against that. Saying 'Nope, you are wrong' is not really helpful.
For me this feature is highly annoying and utterly broken. I agree with the author and think his points were well made .
What I don't want is a popup slamming into my face on every single Japanese page visit (or even refresh). I'm not shy with my browser (huh), and I will surely ask for help when I want it.
The issue is, if I would click "never translate from Japanese" - the icon in address bar would never appear anymore - the feature will be lost. It wouldn't be an issue if there'd be at least an option "don't suggest to translate, but keep the opportunity".