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Re:Scrollbar Blindness by baggy_trough on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:06PM (#24295043)
Even worse than undiscoverable features are land mine features, where some subtle gesture triggers a wild and unwanted mode change. Extra credit if the mode change is hard to get out of.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by Klathmon on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:30PM (#24295333)
There's a windows feature like this which I hate with a passion. If you grab a window and shake it side to side, it minimizes all open windows...

So sometimes I'll grab a window to move to my left monitor, decide instead I want it on the right one, and suddenly everything is gone and I now need to go open every single window one at a time. It even took me months to understand that the shaking was what caused it. I would just sometimes be working and suddenly everything is gone and I had no idea why.

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by eatingCake on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:43PM (#24295512)
That thing is the worst!

  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
set DisallowShaking dword to 1
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by ianlevesque on Thursday August 27, 2020 @02:30PM (#24296917)
This thread has come full circle. An undiscoverable registry key to disable an undesirable feature.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by voldacar on Thursday August 27, 2020 @02:47PM (#24297134)
Honest question: where do you discover registry stuff like this?
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by coldpie on Thursday August 27, 2020 @03:30PM (#24297663)
Google "Windows disable shaking".
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by SilasX on Thursday August 27, 2020 @03:49PM (#24297855)
lol, the pinnacle of feature discoverability...
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by CarbyAu on Thursday August 27, 2020 @06:43PM (#24299501)
Oh yeah. Google to:

- discover which registry key

- discover how to craft shit in a game

- to find where my Android setting is and what the searchterm/keyword for it is.

Without google/duckduckgo 80% of the options in my world would be undiscoverable or take waaaay too much time to figure out.

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by majewsky on Friday August 28, 2020 @10:12AM (#24305051)
> discover how to craft shit in a game

If you're refering to Minecraft, one of the reasons why Minecraft blew up that much was that it was around at the exact right time in history: when online gaming had become viable and let's-plays were just becoming a thing. Minecraft, as originally intended, is a communal experience where you learn from the friends you're playing with and from sources on the internet. If I had to describe Minecraft in one sentence, it would be "let me show you that cool thing I saw Pewdiepie do last week". The idea has become commonplace in video gaming at this point, but back then it was fairly new.

(That said, opaque game experiences have been successful before, like the original Legend of Zelda. I guess the schoolyard served a similar purpose back then.)

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by MetallicCloud on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:35PM (#24295410)
I also very much hate this feature, and trigger it often. However if you shake the window you have again, all the minimised windows should be restored.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by bobbob1921 on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:44PM (#24295526)
Agreed (re shake again to reverse), but not always - ie if you let off the mouse click , there is no option to shake again to undo the initial shake. Bottom line , I disableded this “feature”. I do think this is one of the best examples of the issues called out by this article/thread. (Or maybe how google docs has a button covering the scroll bar slider once you scroll to the very bottom of a docs file)
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by mdoms on Thursday August 27, 2020 @02:34PM (#24296964)
This isn't correct. Shaking the window again will restore the minimised windows, whether it's from the original mouse-down or a future mouse-down.

But I agree that it's a bad feature, and IMO it's a rare miss from the Windows UI team who if nothing else have developed excellent window management.

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by squiggleblaz on Friday August 28, 2020 @05:36AM (#24303022)
This isn't correct. There is something that happens which makes it forget which windows were open. I am not sure what it is. But is definitely the case that sometimes, I can shake again to put everything back the way I always wanted it, and sometimes I cannot.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by Geezus_42 on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:46PM (#24295551)
You can also disable it but if you want to keep snappy windows you have to do it through a regedit since the two features are not independent for some imo stupid reason.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by endless1234 on Friday August 28, 2020 @06:32AM (#24303318)
The most amazing thing about this feature is that no matter how much I try, I never seem to be able to re-shake the window in the proper way (which would bring all windows back up again). But nice that it's at least possible to disable it via a registry hack.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by appleflaxen on Thursday August 27, 2020 @01:26PM (#24296082)
OMG. you just solved a problem I've had for years and couldn't figure out wtf was happening, or even how to google for it. THANK YOU!
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by Anthony-G on Thursday August 27, 2020 @04:42PM (#24298408)
Upvoted because I never knew about this. As a user who prefers keyboard short-cuts, I usually press Windows key with D (alternatively, right-click on the task-bar and choose Show Desktop) if I want to minimise all windows.

Anyhow, I just tried shaking a window from my work laptop and discovered that this behaviour activates on the second change of the direction in rapid succession.

While I was experimenting, I also discovered that shaking the window again restores the other windows so you don't have to restore them individually if/when this happens accidentally.

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by acqq on Thursday August 27, 2020 @03:18PM (#24297529)
The one I'm unlucky to hit is the "icon resizing" that happens when a moving action on the thumbpad is performed in combination with the pressed ctrl key, which sometimes is not actually pressed but the OS believes it is (some "zombie" state). Happened to me on different notebooks and even on the desktop.

I don't think anybody needs that "quick" way to do that, and that nobody needs to change the icon sizes often. I have no idea if that misfeature could be blocked.

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by Negitivefrags on Friday August 28, 2020 @05:18AM (#24302914)
A lot of people don’t know that to undo text operations on IOS you shake the whole phone.

It’s insanity.

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by seemack on Thursday August 27, 2020 @01:41PM (#24296290)
I've been back on my windows machine recently for a new side project and, ironically, I've really enjoyed this feature.

It's akin to shaking my head before focusing on a specific task. I shake the task window and the other applications that I still want open but won't be using for a bit all hide away.

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by userbinator on Thursday August 27, 2020 @10:06PM (#24300713)
There's another "feature" which I rarely hit, and I don't even know how I did, what it's called or for, but when it happens, a draggable divider shows up in the middle of the screen, all my windows get "crushed" on the left side, and the right side is a dark blue/purple blank. I can drag the divider to restore the desktop, but it seriously angers me since none of my windows' original positions nor sizes get restored. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to disable it either. I believe it appeared starting with Win8, as I never saw it in earlier versions.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by Tossrock on Thursday August 27, 2020 @01:26PM (#24296086)
That sounds awful - glad I've never encountered it. FYI, you can use a lot of the built-in window management functions via keyboard shortcuts - Windows key + Shift + [Left|Right] arrow key moves a window between monitors.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by olyjohn on Thursday August 27, 2020 @01:27PM (#24296102)
That fucks with me all the time. I hate it so much... But I figured out how to deal with it.

Shake the window again, and they will all come back.

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by baggy_trough on Thursday August 27, 2020 @01:02PM (#24295747)
Horrific.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by narag on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:16PM (#24295173)
Windows keys started the nightmare for me decades ago. So nice hitting one of those while gaming full-screen!

This conversation happened a thousand times: "but you can hit them again and restore what you were doing"... no, I can't, specially if I have pressed a dozen keys since.

I used to buy IBM keyboards from more civilized times, but my dealer disappeared, maybe he was arrested?

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by Yizahi on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:35PM (#24295405)
My rather new HP laptop has scroll lock hidden on the unlabeled combination fn+C which is obviously right next to the daily used ctrl+C. It is trigger, and it doesn't LED or any OS indication that it's on or off. Good luck understanding why arrow keys are broken in Excel :)
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by makecheck on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:24PM (#24295261)
My favorite is when I use control-L to clear the screen on a terminal and hit Windows-L by accident to lock the entire laptop.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by chrisco255 on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:33PM (#24295378)
Get you a gaming keyboard with a Windows key lock.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by jasomill on Thursday August 27, 2020 @02:17PM (#24296751)
Better yet, use any keyboard you like, and remap (left) Windows to a different key code, ideally corresponding to some key that's not present on your current keyboard layout and that, unlike the Windows key, is fully remappable by AutoHotkey, in-game options, etc., using something like

https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by narag on Thursday August 27, 2020 @07:06PM (#24299673)
I don't play much lately, but I do have a Keyz Iridium. It was the cheapest mechanic keyboard I found, at least what feels more similar to mechanic. Don't get me wrong, the trippy colours are nice too. And... it has a combo to disable Windows keys!!

Thank you very much :)

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by ChuckNorris89 on Thursday August 27, 2020 @04:08PM (#24298065)
Doesn't windows 10 have a gaming mode that disables that key in full screen?
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by suresk on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:58PM (#24295692)
The one that always got me was the feature on OS X where if you move your mouse to another screen and move down, it moves the dock to that screen. It is possible to do without meaning to and it is fairly loose with how it determines that you've done that, and so the first year or so I had 2 monitors, I'd do it once or twice per month without realizing how it happened.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by baggy_trough on Thursday August 27, 2020 @01:02PM (#24295733)
Ugh, that kind of thing is the worst!
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by marssaxman on Thursday August 27, 2020 @02:02PM (#24296593)
Oh god. My phone has one of those - there's some sort of swipe gesture which puts it into a split-screen mode, which I have only ever invoked accidentally, and I have no idea how to get rid of it - none of my various guesses at possible anti-swipe actions have worked. When I pull my phone out of my pocket to discover that it has gotten into this state, I just reboot.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by brazzy on Thursday August 27, 2020 @05:15PM (#24298761)
> Oh god. My phone has one of those - there's some sort of swipe gesture which puts it into a split-screen mode, which I have only ever invoked accidentally

Somehow my 1 year old son can invoke it repeatably every time he gets his grubby little hands on my phone...

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by baggy_trough on Thursday August 27, 2020 @03:06PM (#24297370)
iPad multitasking modes are like that. Easy to trigger, impossible to get away from without a Google search.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by robocat on Thursday August 27, 2020 @03:40PM (#24297756)
You can disable it on the iPad from:

Settings | Home Screen & Dock | Multitasking | Allow Multiple Apps

No idea if the same setting exists on iPhone or if it disabled split screen through.

The whole feature is so badly designed on iPad. I was forever detaching a Safari page and ending up with two Safari apps. So tapping the Safari icon wouldn't take me back, it only takes you to the detached page, and you think you have "lost" all the other pages. You need to close the detached page (none of that would be obvious to a novice). Also getting a page to detach into a popup by mistake, and then not being able to get rid of it (I still don't know the correct swiping motions!)

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by baggy_trough on Thursday August 27, 2020 @06:44PM (#24299507)
It's one of the most baffling UI's I've seen. Like it's actively designed to thwart you.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by snypox on Thursday August 27, 2020 @04:54PM (#24298554)
Usually, I don’t even know how did I trigger it. It takes me a few seconds to get out of it..
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by lordnacho on Thursday August 27, 2020 @04:56PM (#24298570)
Plus that one time when you need two apps next to each other, once a year, you forget WTF the gesture was. It certainly isn't something logical.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by climb_stealth on Thursday August 27, 2020 @07:16PM (#24299754)
Try dragging the divider all the way to the top or bottom. This seems to work on my Android phone.
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by CarbyAu on Thursday August 27, 2020 @06:38PM (#24299474)
On older Android a press and hold on an SMS conversation brought up the context menu options, of which there was only one: SPAM - block this number.

So if you accidentally hold the press for a fraction too long you block that number.

And then you wonder why your friend(s) don't love you anymore...

To unblock it, you have to go to the Contacts and dig through options there, the SMS app showed nothing of help. It wasn't obvious that you had it blocked!

Re:Scrollbar Blindness by NegativeLatency on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:32PM (#24295365)
EX mode in vim
Re:Scrollbar Blindness by 0xcde4c3db on Friday August 28, 2020 @12:10AM (#24301281)
Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:

golem$ ed

?

help

?

?

?

quit

?

exit

?

bye

?

hello?

?

eat flaming death

?

^C

?

^C

?

^D

?

---

Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity. [1]

[1] https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html