Ask Lemmy

If all you want is to read 5000 words of something you were looking for .... just display those 5000 words and nothing else.

We don't need graphics, pictures, images, blocking, ads, pop-ups, videos or any other suggestions .... just give us the content, it's all we want sometimes.

Workbench (Amiga GUI from 1985) is still unmatched in features 40 years later. And it ran off a floppy disk.

I don't know when macOS gained the ability to change the colour of the cursor. Windows got it in 10 recently, or 11, I'm not sure which exactly (I'm a Mac user but we use Windows at work). But in Workbench, you could open a VERY basic pixel art tool and completely customise the cursor. In 1985! I was fond of making crosshairs.

More than that, something the major OSes haven't done since, is two-stage icons. Folders were called drawers in Workbench, but otherwise, same thing. One click would select the drawer (invert the colours), then the second click would open the drawer, and spawn its contents in another window. Applications had it, too. WordPerfect was an Amiga 1000 computer with monitor, and its idle state was off. When active, it would be turned on and running WordPerfect. Yes, in the damn icon. It wasn't animated, but it showed the program on the monitor. Icons could also be larger, and would remember their position on the screen, which meant you could hide files by placing them in the corner of the screen and resizing the drawer window. Thus, you'd have to position the window a certain way and drag it out to see those files. (You could also just use dir in a command line.)

Anyway, I thought it was awesome. I guess most people didn't.

Your app / website is most likely not big enough to rely on icons instead of text for buttons. Same applies to most other unique UI choices.

applications should all look the same. no custom theming.

there should not be a way to skirt the window manager theming system. i decide what my windows look like and that should be what all windows look like. that way it's all uniform and easily parseable at a glance, not to mention a lot easier for accessibility tools to hook into. and for that matter, stop inventing new ways to present your application without doing a user study. we have years of user studies available showing what ui elements work well and what shapes they should be to be easily understood. just throwing something together because it looks cool and then shipping it like that should be a punishable offence.

Really big mouse cursor.

I don't have sight issues at all, but you spend more time tracking the mouse than you think. And after less than a day the real estate it takes up doesn't bother me.

Android's modern gesture navigation is awful. I like gesture navigation on ubuntu touch, sailfish, webos, just about everywhere I've used it except android, but I cannot stand android's. Why does swiping from both sides do the same thing? Why does swiping from the bottom do multiple different things depending on how you swipe? Why does swiping along the bottom to switch apps rearrange them so going back and forth is unpredictable? The old two button semi-gesture navigation was so much better.

Rounded corners everywhere. I mean, subtle rounded corners can look nice here and there, but they are not subtle and there are too much of them. Also, those capsule shaped buttons and text boxes. I hate them, they look so stupid.

• There's way too much "pop-up ui" infecting PC from mobile. I want a solid-state UI. Don't make me hover over anything to show a pop up, or swipe, or stupid shit like that.

• Stop making these shitty disappearing scrollbars that are way too thin! Scrollbars are the single most important UI element on the screen. They need to be LARGE and they need to STAY VISIBLE AT ALL TIMES

• WORDS. Stop using symbols. Use words.

• Remove all the little icons and give me a menu bar.

• Stop using CSS for desktop software. CSS belongs on the web.

• Windows 95 has the best UI. Just go back to that. It's better than everything that came after.

TUI is better than GUI

Stuff can be functional and not look like shit.

The Gnome UI is great, without any extensions. An absolute game changer for laptops.
You can navigate it quickly with just the meta key, arrow keys and a touchpad or scroll wheel.
No memorizing key combos or aiming for small icons with the mouse.
Everything is hidden when you don't need it and prominently visible when you do.

UI that isn't customizable is shit. I don't mean it needs to be Myspace level, but enough to make it comfortable to use.

Someone else said they hate infinite scroll. I love infinite scroll. Implement both.

I was interested in an open source fitness tracking app that didn't use a measurement system I'm familiar with. The dev basically said "fuck off" when someone asked about implementing it. Well, the dev has less exposure and their app has less users as a result.

• nordic theme is not a real dark theme
• fuck every curved edge
• the icons should never look the same, i dont care about your brandbuilding
• i hate minimalistic phones and launchers so much. how do you have the audicity to limit customisation? get out of my way, son.

I need keyboard shortcuts that actually work, and I hate large padding/whitespaces/circled borders that do nothing.. I like having grey-ish background instead of white. Seems like many people consider this "old fashioned" and hate it.

For desktop things should just fit well enough on 1280x1024. For mobile 720x1280 or some similar resolution.

I have a right to a page with all configurable options. A simplified interface is great but I shouldn't need to hunt for ages in a terminal or read source to find a config option.

Having to hold every interactable/menu item for a second as opposed to just tapping in videogames absolutely drives me up a wall. It's fine to me in situations where looting is delayed to create risk or something like that, but why in the hell do I need to hold a button just to start the game

Get rid of the tool bars. All of them. Menu, navigation, window decoration, cookie consent, status, tab and start.

They suck. We live in a 16:9-21:9 world, where it's bad enough in landscape. When it's in portrait, where half of the real estate is taken up by a keyboard, and that space really matters, it's almost worse. Letterboxing is dumb when it's black bars on a movie, I don't need its cluttered cousin on every application and webpage I'm on.

Vertical overlays or context menus can be enabled by default if you must, but give me shortcuts to do the even the most esoteric operation and I'll gladly learn them.

I don't know how this is an unpopular opinion after a half centuary of dealing with increasingly multileveled toolbars, but it must be because toolbars are not going anywhere.

If you have to have a toolbar, at least make it go away when you scroll.