Grumpy Website

nikitonsky: There are many ways to illustrate that things belong together or are related to each other. They are commonly known as “gestalt principles” (top)

What happens when you ignore them all? You get a UI that is absolutely undecipherable (bottom). Just one hot mess of everything with no indication what applies to what.

Sometimes minimalism can be too much.

#Gestalt #Minimalism #Sapling #Meta

nikitonsky: Another problem with hover states: buttons are invisible until you hover over them. People can’t click on buttons they can’t see!

For example, here, they put most-used actions directly over each email. Presumably that should help you sort your mail faster, processing some letters without even opening them.

The problem is these buttons are invisible. You see an email that you already know what to do with, but you don’t see the button to do it! First, you have to hover, then locate where the button appears, and only then move again to click it. So it doesn’t help as much as you’d think.

Is it worth the visual noise and flickering that it produces? For me—no.

#Gmail #Hover

nikitonsky: You know what? I’ve had enough. Interactions on hover are fucked up. Being afraid to move my mouse is fucked up. Blocking content with stuff nobody asked for is fucked up. LET ME MOVE MY MOUSE WITHOUT FEAR!

If I’d want to see something I’ll click on it.

#Hover #Tooltip #Popup

nikitonsky: This date of birth calendar let you choose dates multiple years in the future. Just in case

#Calendar #DateOfBirth

nikitonsky: Accessibility as a toggle? Just make it accessible! Always!

Thanks Tony Mottaz for the picture

#accessibility #a11y

nikitonsky: I bought a teapot. It’s not a function of a teapot to show time. This one does, though—it has a computer.

It also completely misunderstands how analog clocks work. In a normal clock, the hour hand moves continuously: it starts at the current hour mark, sits halfway between marks at :30, and nearly reaches the next one by the end. Normally, a clock like this would read 11:53.

But not here! The hour hand stays fixed and only jumps when the time rolls from :59 to :00. So the time displayed here is actually 12:53! Which confuses the hell out of me.

The teapot looks great, though.

#Clock #Watch #Fellow

nikitonsky: Microsoft Teams be like:

- A square with the arrow pointing to the top right

- A square with the arrow pointing to the top right

- A square with the arrow pointing to the top right

- Copilot

Thanks @yermishkina for the picture

#Microsoft #Teams #Icons

nikitonsky: What Siri does when you ask her to set alarm to 8am every day

Thanks @nzrff for the picture

#iOS #iPhone #Alarm #Siri #Apple

nikitonsky: The smaller the window, the more you can see!

Thanks @valery_kirichenko for the video

#Scaling

nikitonsky: No time to explain, just trust me on this one

#Spinner #Foundations #Loading #Progress

nikitonsky: Affordances are forgotten. Any control can look like any other control.

1 — button

2 — button

3 — text input 🤯

How are you supposed to tell?

Thanks @ilyabirman for the picture.

#Codex #VSCode #AI #LLM #Affordance

nikitonsky: Longest checkbox you’ll see

Thanks @NikitaKaramov for the pictures

#Github #Checkbox #CSSisHard

nikitonsky: The whole block could’ve been a single dropdown

#Apple #Dropdown #AppleStore

nikitonsky: Success is hard

Thanks Márton for the picture

#OneNote #Error

nikitonsky: Looks good?

#YouTube #Icons

nikitonsky: Where to hide date sorting? Well, in a paginator component, of course.

Thanks @Margolin for reporting this

#Google #Gmail #Dropdown #Sorting #Pagination