The side swiping menus (like in Snapchat) are so confusing to me as an old guy. How the heck are we expected to know you can swipe left and right on a screen to reveal a completely new screen?!?

It's discovery/referral gating. Teens who get Snapchat upon hearing it from a friend can ask their friends on how to use it, and it stimulates conversation and feature discovery. If you don't have at least one existing friend who is experienced at using Snapchat, you're probably not in their target market (by design).

You see this social gatekeeping in how they distributed their spectacles, too.

There's no good way, and I really dislike this modern trend of un-discoverable UIs.

Slack's iOS app has like two side-swiping menus essentially stacked on top of each other. One of those menus (the first one) is NEVER what I want. The whole thing is so confusing, and I have to relearn it every time I actually need it.

>https://www.google.com/#q=snapchat+swipe+left

Just consult the nearest "X things you need to know/didn't know about Snapchat" article /s

Because you try it once or twice when exploring a new touch interface?

It takes all of < 1 second. I get it is obfuscated but we aren't talking about a crazy level of interface hiding.

People expect to be able to swipe on most interfaces these days.

It does take < 1 second. And then so does swiping right. And left. And up. And pressing. And long-pressing. And double-tapping. And two-finger tapping. And two-finger swiping (in all directions). For every element on the screen. For all screens.

See you in a few hours.

I can't stand how almost every mobile app use icons without labels, so I have to press them to find out what they do. If I'm lucky there's a tooltip available if I long press.

I've seen these complaints, slightly re-worded a number of places, and I remain confused. The changes aren't that big.

"File, Edit, View" etc model is condensed into 3 horizontal lines. The lines I suspect were modeled on the idea of a row, with one option per row after another. Click "View" in a random app, oh look, one after another. Don't like that notion? Think of it as a Start menu in ever app, and you still have to drill down. It's barely a change, since the idea has existed since Windows 95!

Small screens need less chrome to highlight content. It's about the user having the best view of their content, not peddling a catalog of "me to" features and pretty icons in people's faces. Turns out, people actually enjoy seeing more of their content on desktops too, rather than rows of default icons.

Scrollbars? People still stop what they're doing to look for the scrollbar? I stopped dealing with that once MS shipped the Intellimouse 20 years ago. Tap/drag on mobile. You know how to tell if you're at the bottom of a document? It won't scroll further.

"It's maddening. There's absolutely no way to discover how to use apps like this unless you already know how."

But you KNOW how to use them already. They're just slightly modified. And these things have existed long enough now, there's no excuse not to just swipe either side or tap the hamburger to see what's up? I mean, how am I going to know what the new app using classic "File, Edit, View" menus does? By using the input options I have, mouse, keyboard, to dig through them. That hasn't changed on these new desktop apps. On mobile, input options are fingers, tap and swipe about.

This falls into a category of "Personally, I don't want to rethink things ever." type arguments.