News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Never-Ending Learning of User Interfaces by bobthepanda on Saturday August 26, 2023 @03:53PM (#37276249)
> For example, it is possible to guess if a UI element is "tappable" from a screenshot (i.e., based on visual signifiers) or from potentially unreliable metadata (e.g., a view hierarchy), but one way to know for certain is to programmatically tap the UI element and observe the effects.

Sigh.

If your site is accessible, this is pretty easy to semantically derive. The issue is that frontend barriers to entry are so low, and good teaching nonexistent, that we have an Eternal September of new web devs making divs instead of buttons and links.

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The draggability work is certainly more interesting. I suppose it's because it went out of fashion before the revival of new standards in CSS and JS but it's kind of crazy there still isn't a great, standardized way to do drag-and-drop on the web.

Re:Never-Ending Learning of User Interfaces by robotresearcher on Saturday August 26, 2023 @04:12PM (#37276430)
This paper is about App Store apps, not web sites.
Re:Never-Ending Learning of User Interfaces by bobthepanda on Saturday August 26, 2023 @04:41PM (#37276709)
Re:Never-Ending Learning of User Interfaces by andsoitis on Saturday August 26, 2023 @09:53PM (#37278731)
I am willing to bet $1m that fewer than 100 iOS or Android devs use generic views instead of buttons.
Re:Never-Ending Learning of User Interfaces by hulitu on Sunday August 27, 2023 @11:18AM (#37283486)
> Swift and Android also both have accessibility built in.

ROTFL. Like in iOS where menu names are truncated, because they won't fit on the screen, because i was shameless and used a biggest font because the default one was unreadable ?

Or like in Android where, in Messages, the Status message after a copy to clipboard operation, obscures the input field ?

Re:Never-Ending Learning of User Interfaces by elcritch on Saturday August 26, 2023 @06:39PM (#37277544)
Random web apps that aren't the worse offenders. Heck, half of web apps use bootstrap and at least make buttons buttons.

It's the big "professional" players like Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc which appear to think that turning random text into indiscriminate buttons is a good idea. It's the worst of fad driven trends.

For example everytime I open up Apple TV app I have to button left and right to figure out which show is highlighted because the highlight is so subtle and I'm not 20 anymore. All the other TV apps are just as bad, much less the phone apps.

Re:Never-Ending Learning of User Interfaces by nine_k on Sunday August 27, 2023 @05:59AM (#37281100)
The irony is that these abominations are created in the name of "cleanliness" and "clarity", purportedly to make it simpler for users to make sense of UIs.