Original question text by @phantomwise@lemmy.ml
What are the modern design trends you hate most? Feel free to rant! Mine are:
- Physical buttons are out of fashion, now EVERYTHING must have a touch screen instead! Especially if it makes the appliance more inconvenient to use. Like having to press a flimsy touch screen ten times to scroll through a washing machine’s programs instead of just turning a physical knob and pressing a physical start button.
- Every website looks like it’s made for a phone and was vomited by the same app in slightly different flavors of vomit.
- Actually EVERYTHING looks like it’s made for a phone… Like what’s the deal with all those hamburger menus on DESKTOP apps? Please just put a regular menu and same me some pointless clicking, it’s not like you’re lacking screen space. I especially hate that those menus can’t be opened from the keyboard like regular menus.
Showing ”2 weeks ago” or ”1 month ago” instead of the actual date. ”1 month ago” can be anything between 30 days and 60 days ago.
We use gitlab and I knew my coworker commited something yesterday, I deployed a new version yesterday but I wasn’t sure if I deployed before or after his commit. Why do they just show yester instead of a normal timestamp. Do these developers think we can’t read?
I honestly think a lot of it is that they have to keep twiddling with shit to have something to do.
These pieces of garbage have come across my desk as “requirements” too because they get copied and pasted from other “best of breed” apps from the web.
Most of the designers I’ve encountered in my day to day work love nothing better than to copy from other apps rather than actually think for fifteen seconds about how to design something.
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This makes my blood just boil. I can do math, you fuckers. I am aware of dates. I wanna know when this shit went online.
* Sort by date *
* Sorts date alphabetically *
Looking at you Altium Designer
If all dates are ISO-8601 what’s the problem?
Because they’re not. Altium has them as DD.MM.YYYY mm.hh.ss.
Even worse: “last week/month/year” lumps everything together when you start the next week/month/year
The option is called “relative date” (as opposed to absolute date). On macos you can switch it off:
- open Finder, go to list view
- select very first item in hierarchy
- click on the little triangle next to the (folder-)icon to expand but press the option key wihle doing so
- hit “cmd” + “J” - a settings panel will open
- there is a tick box that says “relative date” that needs to be disabled (unticked)
- if you want to apply this settings as the new default setting for all finder windows, press the “apply as standard”-button at the bottom. All dates will show now the actual date instead of “today”, “yesterday” and such.
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Tthis setting is not intended to apply to websites. With this setting you can change whether the date is shown as absolute (dd.mm.yyyy) oder relative (today, yesterday,…) for your own files on your computer.
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I don’t disagree, but generally these have a hover property that gives the date.
It’s annoying when going through a list of multiple ”1 month ago” entries. Maybe I’m looking for an entry at a certain date. Aim with mouse, wait one second, repeat.
What I could easily visually identify in less than 1 second can take more than 10 seconds to find.
It also greatly increases the cognitive load of using the program. If there are many entries to look for, then it’s going to be difficult to keep all actual dates in memory.
”Where was the 14 April entry? I need to check again. Ah there it is! Now I need to compare it against the 30 April entry. Where was it again? It was just in front of me…”
Then mouse hover doesn’t work on mobile.
At least they usually show the real datetime on hover
A pair of buttons forcing you to choose Yes or Maybe later. The word is NO, assholes!
I want to find the marketing genius who started that shit and ask them, “do you want me to whomp you over the head with a rusty manure shovel? Yes or Maybe later?”
it’s pushed by CEO that don’t see a no as a no. Be it with customers or with people at the bar
Even yes or no infuriated me to start with… The words I would choose are “never ever”
It only accomplishes making me feel better, but it’s a side benefit I get from using the uBlock Origin extension’s “zapper mode” function: getting to one-click nuke these things and move on with my life like a normal person.
- No error messages, ever. Because apparently users hate information with all their heart and are at risk of burning down cities if they ever find out what the fuck went wrong with an application.
- Disappearing scroll bars
Users have somehow been trained to ignore and dismiss error messages. Probably from getting too many ad pop-ups.
Users are lazy AF and hate to read. No matter how instructive the error message, some people would rather open a helpdesk ticket because “the computer isn’t working again”.
It says right there your USB drive is full and suggests deleting some files to free up space, Karen! 🤨
Users have always hated computers but they now must use them and treat them as appliances.
When my parents needed a new computer, I told them “no hp ever, and don’t buy an anti-virus, it’s built-in now.” They obviously knew better than me and asked the salesman instead. They bought a hp computer with a McAffee subscription…
Worse than useless error messages are useless error messages that try to be cute/funny.
Uh oh! We made an oopsie 👉👈 sowwy we wost your data
Two buttons on the bottom of the window:
- “It’s okay fam!”
and
- “I’m a grumpy meanie who doesnt understand things happen!”
Disappearing scroll bars
Isn’t this triggable in most OSs? Unless we are talking about mobile, which I lean towards disappearing because of screen sizes.
Everything is a fucking service! NO, I don’t want to spend 2.99 every month on a app that reminds me to take a pill.
Even hardware products that basically are scrap metal if you don’t pay a monthly fee.
Oh I HATE that. It’s outrageous
My alarm app would like me to pay 9€/y and it’s discount…ridiculous
on the hardware products, I enjoy finding the early examples of them (where the manufacture stopped supporting) as project boxes.
Touch controls everywhere, I’ve got an induction cook top which is all touch, (temperature is a bar you can drag) guess what happens when you’ve got some spillage while cooking. Yeah, if you are lucky nothing happens, but I had it several times shutting itself down, or adjusting the temperature, which is fucking stupid and dangerous. You want to get rid of the water with a towel? Something will trigger. Really great.
Letting the computer decide what is best for you. There was/is this feature?! in windows 10, or 11 where it sets the color of your font on the desktop based on your wallpaper, and I did not find a way to change it. So what happens when you’ve got a wallpaper that is bright on top and darker on the bottom, like maybe a landscape image? Guess you are just not reading any of the text on the top half…
The installed appification of everything riddled with trackers when a web browser + site will do. Dead simple minimalistic UI that a toddler can figure out how to use. Every product is designed to account for the lowest common denominators of human intelligence which encourages ‘cant, wont, dont know how’ brain rot instead of making the tech illiterate feel pressured to actually apply themselves to learn. Now we have entire generations of idiots who feel entitled to the pleasant convince of advanced technology but unwilling to understand whats actually going on under the hood or accept responsibility to learn how to use it properly/ethically.
A society built entirely on dead simple convinence and instant gratification is one that fosters the destruction of individual critical thinking skills and mental robustness to troubleshoot/adapt when encountering a problem.
So many people are proud of it, thats the worst part for me. Legitately bragging about making it through life with the bare minimum of braincell rubbing. As if just being an unthinking half-sentient ape with a learned helplessness complex is an ideal state of being worthy of pride.
You hit it spot on. That lazy attitude pisses me off so much I will hardly help people with tech anymore. I know like maybe 1 person who actually has the want to learn, the rest are so lazy they wont even get off the couch to watch a DVD they already own so they stream it with ads instead. Infuriating. And the people using gibbity are 10000 times worse. Idiots. I think those of us who want to learn and enjoy it are going to be gone in 10 years. Replaced by total corpo idiocy.
Items are no longer made to last past their warranty.
They are made to last past the time you’re allowed to leave a review.
I’d like to leave a positive review of this comment, but the review period has expired.
Material design. Everything must be so flat that you cannot see if it’s a button or just something highlighted.
Exactly, I can’t believe we are still in this since years, can’t wait for the next trend hoping it won’t get worse…
“Have you tried our new layout?”
“Did you know you now can…?”
“We’ve hidden this from you, but don’t worry! Click here to see them”
“News: We’re launching a new product!”
“Looking for X? It is now here!”
“We upgraded you to the new view. Revert to the old view?”
“Enable integration with (our other product) for an enhanced experience”
“You may not have permission to view what used to be on this page”
“Take a tour”
“How are you liking the new settings screen?”
“You will be automatically moved to the new X, no need to do anything”I guess I’m too thick to see the complaint here.
It’s too chatty.
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This is basically every Discord label or button text ever.
Every new building looks the same. Fast food restaurants are indistinguishable except for the sign out front. All apartment buildings are identical. Office buildings are built to house cubicle farms. Nothing new is interesting or unique, because it’s not profitable to stand out; it’s all optimized for speed and cost. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V everywhere.
Same with cars. They’re all the same ugly-ass hideous blobs that hardly resemble cars anymore, and all of them are the same tiny grays, whites, blacks, and maybe red if you’re lucky. Gone are the days of colourful cars that actually had style.
I miss brightly coloured cars. A friend has an old, bright yellow car that probably won’t last for much longer, and they are sad that newer cars are much duller.
Convergent evolution through CAFE laws and UAW protectionist lobbying.
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Yes! And from the perspective of somebody who managed buildings: Any residential structure built in the last 10 years is subject to horrendous levels of breakdown and failure, due entirely to substandard materials and overall build quality.
Building sprinkler systems springing leaks behind major walled areas. AC systems failing to the point of needing seals and recharge in 3 years. Alarm systems in perpetual state of ground-fault due to improperly installed wiring or water leaking where it shouldn’t be. Water-hammer effect everywhere. Plumbing joints springing leaks left, right and center as a result. Doors falling off, every single knob in a 120-suite structure needing replacement after 3 years.
Its utterly disgraceful.
Water-hammer effect everywhere.
Those front loading washers everyone seems to adore almost universally require the installation of water hammer arrestors or it’s bye bye pipes.
This response reminds me of this article (which I found absolutely hilarious on first read): https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-44/the-intellectual-situation/why-is-everything-so-ugly/
Fast food restaurants looking generic is on purpose.
There’s value in owning a property. That value is a lot lower if it’s something like McDonald’s kid-theme restaurant, or the classic Pizza Hut building.
If you got a generic modern building, it can be used for anything and sold with ease.deleted by creator
I didn’t say “It’s not a bad decision because there’s a reason”.
I shared that because I found it interesting myself and thought that others might too.
I recognize this point every time I drive by one of the old, now-closed Sherri’s restaurants.
UI components that do things when you click on them but don’t appear until you hover the mouse over them. I’m mostly talking about stuff like little edit buttons with pencil icons or close/cancel buttons with little X’s. I want to select an item from a list or change tabs in my browser, but when I click, I find I am actually now editing the name of the thing or closing/muting a tab because a button that wasn’t there before has suddenly appeared beneath my click action. But it also applies to vanishing scrollbars others have complained about.
On that point, I want bigger scrollbars, not smaller ones. Browsers especially could benefit from the kind of minimap I get in a code editor.
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Highly recommend the When Phones were Fun series.
Fun videos; thanks for sharing
I’m an avid fan of Mr Fisher. Highly recommend his videos. and he looks like Riker, if anyone is reading this.
Why does every apartment I ever live in now never have laundry in unit, and requires you use a mobile app w/ an account to pay to do laundry. Why do I need to load a digital wallet that requires I pay a fee if I only want to add just the amount for one load? It’s absurd. Let me put quarters in.
starting to run into this in some hotels too. fucking stupid.
Sounds like an easier job for the landlord/owner, not having to manage coins and exchange.
Sure, but it makes it impossible for anyone that doesn’t have a smartphone with Bluetooth to use them, and makes me have another account I don’t want, among other issues. If the apartment’s WiFi has issues, the machines lose connection and you can’t use them, It’s a vastly worse experience then using quarters or even just a card reader.
Wouldn’t be surprised if the landlord/owner gets a percentage, as well.
Of course the landlord gets a percentage. They are essentially leasing the space to the company that manages the laundry equipment.
I have been a software tester for a long time and I really fuckin hate these JS frameworks that try to reinvent the wheel but worse.
Like why is a fucking table now a bunch of divs? Why is a drop down (select) list a bunch of divs? With disappearing html blocks when you close the list?
HTML worked fine, why are we reinventing basic HTML but worse?
Like why is a fucking table now a bunch of divs?
I feel like I was there at the genesis of this one. Originally, people used tables for layout because there was nothing else. Dreamweaver and similar wysiwyg editors that code-o-phobes used those days produced table hellish markup that looked reasonable to people on screens with fixed resolutions, but was absolutely abysmal as far as legibility and maintenance.
Then, over time, people righteously hated that and called it an anti-pattern. The original people that wanted semantic layouts and championed CSS in the early days had nuance, but the kiddos learning from them did not. So they thought it was “tables bad!” and they rushed off to please their senior devs by putting tabular data into complicated bullshit elements that were already semantically correct as tables.
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I recently installed NoScript, and it’s truly eye-opening the number of pages that “require” JS just to show me a page that has literally no reason to require JS. It’s abysmal.
Long-time NoScript user. I only allow scripts to run that actually need to run, and some I forever-block everywhere just on principle (looking at you Google). Except for sites like banking, if a site won’t run without garbage javascript it’s quite easy to just go elsewhere where the signal-to-noise ratio is smarter.
Oh yeah. I generally don’t touch it if a site is generally okay without it. I’ve just come across lots of sites that will only display an error message unless I allow JS.
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Tables and select boxes have been standard for ages across all browsers what are you on about.
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Endless scrolling over pagination
Your counciousness hates it, and your unconsciousness loves it
