Criticisms on UI

[Sur_real]

I didn't want to make this a bash on youtube solely so it's expanded to general criticism of user interfaces found anywhere, eg. web, software, etc

For me, youtube UI is pretty awful or maybe I'm just picky...

I don't mind the new homepage they got (with the black nav bar on the side which is consistent with the google homepage at least) I kinda like it actually but their take on the playlist UI is what drives me crazy.
I don't know if my being on a inferior browser (firefox ) and a inferior screen/res size (15.6 inch & 1366x768 laptop) is the problem (if it is, they could have at least made it responsive) but when you view a playlist, a playlist bar would pop up on the bottom that obscures part of the video and video controls unless you scroll down. They should at least have a way to remove the playlist bar if you only wanted to watch one video from your playlist
The watch later functionality would be great if it actually did what it's supposed to do. For me, once you add a video to watch later, you can't remove it. Ever. Not even after you watched the video (which I imagine would be the purpose of a "watch later" playlist)

Also, I'm getting the feeling that all the UI are haphazardly pasted together with no real sense of unity/consistence.
For ex, one glaring problem is the dual use of solid, gradient colours and rectangle, round buttons/tabs.


Also, if someone can find a solution to the watch later problem, please tell. This will probably make up for the other UI problems

[TokenHerbz]

did you know that when you open up say adobe in a link its like 66% or less of the full screen, and if you click it you want to SEE it, so why limit it so much,

Microsoft is useless, imo, mac is coming threw, but they need to become everything-compatable, and just let windows stuff run on their shit...

[Raknarg]

I think thats the only reason I hate mac, just because they arent compatible with everything.

And about the playlist bar, Im pretty sure theres a little arrow button on the side that lets you minimize it.

[Amarylis]

On the bright side, Eclipse is available for mac!

I was probably a lot happier than I should when I found that out

[Raknarg]

lool i didnt think it was that hidden XD

[Sur_real]

Raknarg @ Fri Mar 23, 2012 1:14 pm wrote:

I think thats the only reason I hate mac, just because they arent compatible with everything.

And about the playlist bar, Im pretty sure theres a little arrow button on the side that lets you minimize it.

Yeah I know,
the thing is, if you watch it using the large player, even with the bar minimized it'll block out the video controls (well at least on my machine it does) unless you scroll down

[mirhagk]

Pretty hard to read some of these posts (is it me or is compsci's grammar become worse and worse) but I agree with you guys about UI on the net sucking. But that's not really anyone's fault, the problem is that there are millions of different kinds of devices and programs and operating systems, so there is no way to determine that it works with every combination, and no good way to make something standard.

For instance if you use a liquid layout, it makes the web page fit properly on most resolutions, but then you sometimes loose aspect ratio, and the reverse is also true.

I am personally becoming a fan of the metro style UI because the UI doesn't detract from the information unlike curved buttons and all the other UI goodies that exist. I think apple is definitely better with UI in some circumstances, but again they get an advantage of choosing the hardware and the screen sizes and everything. They don't have to add support for different devices since there are only like 5 different models of phone/tablets, and the older ones aren't even supported.

I should also mention that the reason apple can do a better UI is because they don't offer compatibility. Android needs to offer compatibility, therefore the phones are sometimes lacking in UI and consistency, same with windows computers. If apple supported the amount of stuff windows has, or if windows developers supported mac, then apple would lose all the UI consistency they have.

https://mthruf.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/youtube.jpg?w=640 youtube is much better than it used to be lol.

[Insectoid]

I also dislike Youtube's UI.

And Metro. It's just dumb. It gets rid of the flashy garbage from Vista/7, but it still gets in the way.

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I am personally becoming a fan of the metro style UI because the UI doesn't detract from the information unlike curved buttons and all the other UI goodies that exist. I think apple is definitely better with UI in some circumstances, but again they get an advantage of choosing the hardware and the screen sizes and everything. They don't have to add support for different devices since there are only like 5 different models of phone/tablets, and the older ones aren't even supported.

You know you can plug any monitor with any aspect ratio you want into a Mac right?
Apple's UIs are built with functionality as the #1 concern. They do that, and then make it look nice.

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I should also mention that the reason apple can do a better UI is because they don't offer compatibility. Android needs to offer compatibility, therefore the phones are sometimes lacking in UI and consistency, same with windows computers.

The reason Apple can create a great UI is because they spend far, far more money on it. Android's UIs are messed up 'cause of stupid hardware manufacturers that want their own Android flavour but have no idea how to create a usable interface. Windows can also create a great UI. Their R&D just sucks. They took one idea (flat tiles!), decided it was good, and implemented it *everywhere*. Apple took the ideas that were proven to work (gestures, for example) and added it in logical places. Gestures started in the iPhone/Pod with swiping to scroll (or some basic gesture). It worked out well, and they added a few more, and those worked, and they added it to Macbook trackpads, and then it got so popular they saw fit to release a standalone trackpad to enable gestures on desktops, and now even Apple mice support gestures. Because they work. Unfortunately, now they're taking it too far and the gesture library is becoming bloated and unintuitive. The Dock is another UI feature that started as a simple idea that worked, and now it's got fantastic functionality.

Windows took everything that was working, and kinda just tossed it out the window to start win8 from scratch.

I don't want to be the Apple fanboy (I'm not a big fan of iDevices) but Apple is undeniably the king of UIs.

Back to Youtube, the shitty interface is entirely their fault. Web page display is massively cross-platform, with the exception of mobile devices (hence m.youtube.com). I'm a big fan of the 'less is more' ideology when it comes to interfaces, and Youtube breaks that (as do the latest OS X releases, unfortunately). Windows took it to the extreme, which also doesn't work.

[mirhagk]

Insectoid @ Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:25 pm wrote:

You know you can plug any monitor with any aspect ratio you want into a Mac right?
Apple's UIs are built with functionality as the #1 concern. They do that, and then make it look nice.

First, yes I do, I was talking about iOS which is the only place where their UI really shines (otherwise it's pretty much the same as a standard linux window manager).

Also they are not built with functionality as the #1 concern, that is a complete lie and you and I both know it. Not saying windows does either (they definitely don't but some of there more recent things have really gotten my attention). If functionality was #1 and making it look nice was 2nd, they'd have buttons that were a little bigger than circles with radius of 2 pixels, and they wouldn't have the animations for minimizing windows (which just wastes resources and time). Their iOS devices are definitely smoother to handle (assuming they are less than 2 years old, ever try using an older iPod touch or iPhone?) but the desktop UI is not special at all.

The dock is a good idea, however I severely dislike the idea that when a window is open, it's not on the dock, forcing me to minimize windows to get back to it, or use the window switcher. Also I'd expect a maximize button to make a window full screen on one monitor, but it doesn't always (firefox opens up vertically, but not horizontally). And I don't know if there is a mac equivalent to the windows key + arrow key hotkeys but I can't even survive without them anymore (tried using vista yesterday, I got so frustrated because I kept trying to open a 2nd window next to me current one by pressing windows+left alt+tab windows+right and it just did nothing).

Also I wish the web was massively cross platform. I can't even count the number of times I day I have to switch from firefox back to internet explorer to run a website, or to chrome because neither of those 2 work. Web programmers support 2 browsers, the one they developed on (usually firefox) and the one their customers mostly use (usually internet explorer). They usually don't even test multiple versions, and a lot of people browsing the internet are still using browsers like IE6 or IE7 (it frustrates me when people switch from IE6 to chrome and be like "yeah this is so much better then internet explorer". It might be, but in order to say that you need to actually use a modern browser)

[Insectoid]

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If functionality was #1 and making it look nice was 2nd, they'd have buttons that were a little bigger than circles with radius of 2 pixels, and they wouldn't have the animations for minimizing windows (which just wastes resources and time).

The buttons are plenty big enough; I actually prefer them to the monstrous screen-hogs on Windows (assuming you're talking about the close/minimize/maximize buttons). I've never had an issue trying to click on them. As for the minimie animation, it isn't intrusive, it can be disabled and takes minimal resources. Don't you dare complain about OS X taking up resources. It requires less than Windows and you know it (Need I remind you Vista requires 2GB RAM just to operate?). Once something works, it's okay to make it pretty.

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The dock is a good idea, however I severely dislike the idea that when a window is open, it's not on the dock, forcing me to minimize windows to get back to it, or use the window switcher.

This is 100% false. All open windows are on the Dock. Click & hold an app icon to reveal every window that app has open.

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Also I'd expect a maximize button to make a window full screen on one monitor, but it doesn't always (firefox opens up vertically, but not horizontally).

You're half-right on this one. Maximize sizes the window until it fills the screen or scroll bars are removed. On web pages this functionality often breaks 'cause a webpage can reformat itself to the new size. I can squeeze compsci.ca to half my screen width before I get a scroll bar.

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Also I wish the web was massively cross platform. I can't even count the number of times I day I have to switch from firefox back to internet explorer to run a website, or to chrome because neither of those 2 work.

This is the fault of website's developer. A massive site like Youtube has no excuse to not run on all major browsers.

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Lazy web programmers support 2 browsers, the one they developed on (usually firefox) and the one their customers mostly use (usually internet explorer).

Fixed that for you.

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First, yes I do, I was talking about iOS which is the only place where their UI really shines (otherwise it's pretty much the same as a standard linux window manager).

Sure, but OS X is a lot prettier out-of-the-box, and Linux doesn't even have a standard Window manager (Are you talking about Gnome? KDE? How about FVWM or Sawfish?). My Arch install didn't even come with X, let alone a desktop environment.

[mirhagk]

Gnome or KDE, both are similar. They are different, but are both based off the same ideas. Gnome is very much like the OS X UI. Also you can note that I said windows was very much at fault for not putting functionality first, however system resources are not what I'm talking about for functionality. Computers are cheap, your time isn't. I don't complain about the animations (on windows and os x) because they waste resources, but because they slow me down for an extra second every time I switch windows, which is a lot.

As for the dock, I guess my version of OS X is outdated or broken, because open windows aren't there unless they are minimized (or just naturally on the dock).

Also have you ever done any website testing insectoid? I have worked for 2 pretty big web based companies, the one only official supports IE (it's a research institute and the website is only used by staff and doctors, so they can get away with it), and the other, who developed web based technologies (for Open Text Content Server) had me testing, and I was told to test on the latest version of firefox and internet explorer. Do you know how long it takes to thorough test something? For commercial techonology it takes at least as long as it takes to development, longer if it's a bug. So what browsers do you support? Firefox? IE? Chrome? Safari? Opera? Maxthon? SeaMonkey? Konqueror? K-Melon?

Also IE has at least 4 major versions IE6-IE9, and the other browsers probably have similar distrubutions between which versions are used. So your testing time is now what? 100x the development time?

It's cheaper, which means less ads and/or a lower cost, to just support one or two, assume it will work on the rest, and wait for bug reports to fix issues. On that note, I'm sure if you reported the bug with the UI they would fix it (assuming that they can get around to it), but the combination has probably never been tested, and users don't usually report bugs, they just adapt, or quit.

[Euphoracle]

[quote="mirhagk @ Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:05 pm"]

Insectoid @ Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:25 pm wrote:

You know you can plug any monitor with any aspect ratio you want into a Mac right? Apple's UIs are built with functionality as the #1 concern. They do that, and then make it look nice. If functionality was #1 and making it look nice was 2nd, they'd have buttons that were a little bigger than circles with radius of 2 pixels, and they wouldn't have the animations for minimizing windows (which just wastes resources and time). Their iOS devices are definitely smoother to handle (assuming they are less than 2 years old, ever try using an older iPod touch or iPhone?) but the desktop UI is not special at all.

I'm not convinced: if you have ever seen a new mac user learn how to use the interface, you'd know this. You can watch them make the connection between the button they press (green minimize orb) and the action it takes (shoving it into the Dock). It's not a useless animation, it shows the user what effect the interaction they just did had on the system and they learn that mechanic really well. And before you say "minimizing windows isn't rocket science," it is rocket science to the people for which the phrase "minimize the window" means nothing.

edit: the bbcode editor broke the quote block