Grumpy Website

freetonik: So I added a bunch of images to an email and hit "Send". Gmail is still uploading them, but I do not and should not care: do what you gotta do and send the letter.

But instead Gmail gives me a non-choice: send the letter without attachments (why would I say yes?) or cancel sending altogether (why would I say yes?!).

In other words, I have to wait for the machine and click the button when the machine is done. The machine is being the user, and I am being the servant.

What makes things even worse is that there is no progress indication of any sort. If you have a bunch of images drag'n'dropped into the body, they just start uploading asynchronously in no particular order. You have to scroll up and down to see if it's done or not.

Of course, the only sane way to manage this use case is to give me at least one option that correspond with my intention: "send after upload is complete".

nikitonsky: Apple’s Swift blog is so advanced and their Swift code is so ahead of our time that our primitive RSS technology can’t even display it. Joking—they just don’t think that code is an important enough component in a blog dedicated solely to programming

nikitonsky: I doubt I’ll ever understand this. The question says “delete from your Mac” but the button says “Delete Everywhere”. Which one is it? Whom to trust?

nikitonsky: What I “like” about AirDrop (when it’s working) is that they’ve dedicated the whole Finder window to this discovery UI (which you sort of don’t even need on a receiving end), but the actual files that got sent, the actual content you care about, it’s nowhere to be seen.

The second complaint is for when it’s not working, there’s no button to click, no app to restart, no indication of what’s going on, and you’re sitting alone with this empty window, feeling stupid and lost and with no clue how to fix it or what else could you even try

dmitriid: Facebook Workplace is a mini-Facebook for corporate clients. The Workplace client really really insists that you install a companion app called Workplace Chat. And when you start it? Oh boy, you are in for a treat.

Step 1: Enable notifications!

- No

Step 2: Enable notifications!

- No

Step 3: Enable notifications!

- No

- Ok, but here is your permanent reminder in your settings that you must enable notifications.

This isn't even an illusion of giving the user a choice. It's reminding the user that no, they have no choice but.

nikitonsky: I’m on Twitter every day and I still haven’t figured out how to watch videos there. You see, when you scroll past a video in your feed, it starts playing automatically. Luckily, it does that without a sound. So if I’m interested, I enable sound, but the video is already at least couple of seconds ahead. Ok, annoying, but I can rewind to the beginning, right? Only when I do that, it opens the same video in a popup, starts autoplaying from the beginning, muted again. So I have to go through the same ritual once more. I don’t mind much, there’s rarely a video that I have to watch with a sound on, but I’m curious: what’s the expected scenario here? Does nobody at Twitter use their own platform to watch videos?

nikitonsky: I’m always puzzled by those two menus in Google Inbox. One has tags/assignments, other one forward/reply. If you think about it really hard for some time, it kind of makes sense (thread vs individual letter). But after a day or two you forget it again. The worst part is, you kind of need both and they are both absolutely identical

nikitonsky: Isn’t it ironic that in the era of UIs that are perfectly usable on 320px screens Google Docs is unable to render a short Material Design menu in a 960px wide window? Also puzzled why so much space is reserved for vertical dots (may I remind you that vertical dots icon was invented as a means to save space on small screens)

nikitonsky: Hangouts is, no doubt, a very unique piece of software. Here I am, just reset my phone, and Hangouts decided that it’s about time to show me notifications from 1 year ago (about the time I last used it). Those are not unread notifications or anything, it’s just happened a year back then and it decided that I probably need to know. What a motto: “a chat/call software that have no idea when and how to notify you about stuff that you use it for”

igrishaev: No doubt, when watching a movie in full-screen mode there cannot be anything more important than an "HP Support Assistance" window saying how you can get fresh updates and messages.

The funny fact, it was some kind of a presentation. The admin member went away so the audience had to watch the movie overlapped with the popup. That damned printer software spoiled the event.

All above that, look how ugly and complicated the dialog is. The form asks you to input a day and time. C'mon, the date and time, no time to think! And try to find and change those settings later then.

I cannot even imagine a person who would submit it properly rather then pressing a cross in the corner.