Re:GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism
by anthonyb on Friday April 27, 2012 @08:07AM
(#3898674)
That's a very common UI mechanism on the web. The alternative is to have a bunch of handles and buttons plastered over everything.
Most desktop UIs are the same - there's all sorts of right click options on various UI elements, and have been for years. Drag and drop, drag to select, dragging stuff into your recycle bin or onto another folder to copy them.
How are you supposed to know that? By experimenting with your UI and learning how it works.
Re:GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism
by crazygringo on Friday April 27, 2012 @11:27AM
(#3899470)
But it's one thing to learn a UI for your whole OS. You learn it once, and you're done.
For websites, it shouldn't be necessary. I personally abhor the "hidden until hover" buttons that are becoming increasingly popular. I spent ten minutes trying to discover why GitHub had removed it's "edit issue" functionality until I realized that I had to hover over the issue text for the button to appear in the corner. It's horrible.
This is more bad (Easter-egg) UI: There's no visible control next to "chat" (or any of the other labels) until you've already rolled the cursor over it. Why would the user roll the cursor over there, if there are no visible controls?
It's incredible that we're LOSING common UI sense at such a rate.