Developers! These 3 weird tricks will make you a global hero

As you slide into the driver's seat of your century-old Cadillac Type 53 automobile you'll almost certainly miss something hugely significant: that model's major innovation. It is one that's with us still, which has made the lives of every post-war driver easier and safer, and it's a concept that modern software needs. Make it …

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but software's not going that way.

Apps these days are doing more and more things their own way. Please could people learn to leave the Windows built in stuff like minimise and maximise alone. That would be a start for making things easily accessible.

[Red Ted]

Re: Sorry but software's not going that way.

Today's Dilbert

Spooky or what?

[bombastic bob]

Re: Sorry but software's not going that way.

From the article: Agree with other damn developers where you're putting your damn accessibility settings

First thing that entered my mind was to use the desktop settings so that it's doing "accessibility" out of the box already. FreeDesktop does a walkthrough here:

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Accessibility/Walkthrough/

As for windows I _ think _ it is built-in (more or less).

There's also supposed to be an Accessibility API for 'droid. I haven't actually used it (yet) but was under the impression that such settings _usually_ show up automatically...

I thought this had been settled by the OSs but maybe not.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Sorry but software's not going that way.

Please could people learn to leave the Windows built in stuff like minimise and maximise alone.

Agreed. Personally I hate the MS Windows window-decoration controls; every time I accidentally hit the window-close, or accidentally double-click a titlebar and the window gets maximized, or something along those lines I curse Windows to Hell and back.

But I would never change them in any application I wrote, because I know other people depend on that positioning and behavior. Once in a while it's not all about me.

I pretty much never write user-facing software any more, but I support Rupert's proposal.

[AlanSh]

MS Windows started this

That was a huge benefit to the users running Windows (other window managers still exist). The "File" menu was in the same place. Cut and Paste worked the same over all apps. Etc.

Alan

[demon driver]

And also started deviating from it

And then developers started to think, well, why should we care anymore, either?

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: And also started deviating from it

They said,

"Hey Man! It will be so cool to mess around with where things are."

the partner said

"Brilliant. Pass me another spliff."

Just because developers could screw everything up for the users does not mean to say that they should.

It wrecks that little thing called 'Ease of Use'

MS has a lot to answer for. Adding loads of white space vertically into stuff made it harder to use. If you have to scroll (esp with 1366x768 laptop screens) up and down all the time then the user quickly becomes very pissed off with you and after a while just wants to kill you on the spot.

Please, please developers, make stuff easier to use. Don't hide important things (in the basement filing cabinet with a sign on the drawer 'there be tigers inside').

It is well known that our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Making things difficult only makes matters worse.

How many Developers even think about 'Ease of Use' these days? (answers on a pin-head please)

Those that don't can go [see Icon]

[KittenHuffer]

Re: And also started deviating from it

I'm sorry, but the tiger has been eaten by a leopard, so you'll need to update your sign!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And also started deviating from it

"How many Developers even think about 'Ease of Use' these days? (answers on a pin-head please)"

I do (I also try to encourage those around me to do so). You get a lot more job satisfaction from producing software people actually like and want to use (rather than "have to use"), and engaging in usability testing with end-users during development is actually interesting ...

[MOH]

Re: And also started deviating from it

The MS vertical space thing drives me mad. If I want to use pivot tables in Excel my work laptop, I have to collapse the ribbon, as otherwise I can only see a single field at a time in the pivot definitions. Yet while the ribbon is collapsed, clicking on a menu item shows it, but a compressed ribbon with much less whitespace. Which is actually the ideal compromise, but there's no obvious way of getting it.

Eventually discover I can simply change the ribbon layout by the obvious solution of selecting "customise the quick access toolbar", and ticking "Touch/Mouse mode", which then brings up a new menu with options for "Mouse" and "Touch", which control the amount of whitespace on the ribbon. Despite none of the relevant menu entries giving any indication they're related to the ribbon. How intuitive.

That's not to mention the number of times they've totally redesigned the ribbon since they first introduced it, moving stuff around between categories or to different tabs under different icons, necessitating a quick google rather than spend ten minutes hunting for infrequently used options.

If they can't be consistent about general settings, there's not much hope for accessibility.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And also started deviating from it

That Touch/Mouse mode thing is clearly specific to a device with a touch screen - having excitedly looked for it just now on my desktop, it's very much absent :(

[MOH]

Re: And also started deviating from it

That's weird, the laptop definitely isn't a touchscreen.

You might need to add the option to the toolbar?

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/office-2019-ribbon-icons-suddenly-appear-widely/c5f3fc96-7387-4ab5-9be1-5e5ff3262537

[J.G.Harston]

Re: And also started deviating from it

Good Glod, this. Screens have got wider and wider, so what do they do? Stuff more and more stuff uppy-downy. Some systems I end up with a content window close to one inch high and three feet across.

[Arbuthnot the Magnificent]

Re: And also started deviating from it

cf. the recent change in xfce 4.16 that moves the file chooser buttons to the titlebar. 20 years of muscle memory fighting you there every time you try to save something. (At least it's fairly simple to turn it back).

[Dan 55]

Re: MS Windows started this

I'd say Windows ended it, in the mid 90s it finally managed to copy other GUIs from about a decade earlier then when it was doing okay Windows 8 came along.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: MS Windows started this

Agreed. Windows has done a fine job of formatting user's expectations.

We all know how to copy/paste, we know that Help is one F1 key away, etc.

Before that, we had to learn the decisions made for each and every bit of software we used. Help could by anywhere from a function key, to a CTRL-combo, and you had to remember those particulars for everything.

Thank goodness there weren't as many applications available back in the day.

No, Windows has the merit of having brought a certain uniformity to the functions we require in every application we use, and that is a Good Thing (TM).

However, there is indeed a need for step further, and to make accessibility an integral part of the things we all know where to find and how to use.

Because being blind is shitty enough. If you have to fight your way into every software you need, it must be sheer frustration and utterly exhausting.

[Quando]

Re: MS Windows started this

> Help is one F1 key away

Or is it?

https://genius.com/Amateur-transplants-christmas-number-12-lyrics

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: We all know how to copy/paste

Left click and drag to select, middle click to paste.

This was the standard that predated Windows but Microsoft could not use it because Windows only understood two mouse buttons (and they could not copy the standard from Apple because Apple only supported one button).

[Nick Ryan]

Re: We all know how to copy/paste

...and utterly unusable without a mouse, i.e. no standard keyboard shortcuts. This is the kind of thing that accessibility is there for - standard and consistent actions using the most basic and reliable interface methods.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: MS Windows started this

It was IBM who specified those rules, in their Common User Access specification. And Apple were before that with their Human Interface Guidelines.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: MS Windows started this

No, MS Windows did not start this. IBM started this with Common User Access. That goes way back to character terminals. Mac S/W also used it.

[swm]

Re: MS Windows started this

Actually, Xerox had a better way to copy and paste.

1. Select the insertion point

2. With the shift key held down - select the text to paste (cntrl shift also deleted the source text)

One advantage was you could copy many things to the insertion point (even though it wasn't visible).

The copy/paste idiom requires scrolling back and forth and continually reselecting the insertion point.

This idiom was used for most development tools. They worked well. The STAR system was written for users and was very slow etc. because the development team never used the customer system.

Web site developers should also be required to debug on a slow internet connection etc.

[SImon Hobson]

Re: MS Windows started this

No, Microsoft did not start this, they did not even promote it, and they certainly don't practice it even 3 or 4 decades after it was "normal" in some places.

When the Mac came out, there were three volumes to the developer's guide - with one of them dedicated entirely to the user interface. it laid out if great detail how menus should work, what should be on them, how dialogs should work, etc, etc. I don't doubt that some of it was copied form others - a lot of the Mac UI came from Xerox PARC - but they did do a fair bit of their own research.

For example, they initially had "Cancel" and "Do It". Then they observed that people were cancelling at unexpected times. Turns out that they'd misread "Do It" as "Dolt" and didn't like the inference - for anyone who doesn't get it, calling someone a "dolt" in the US is quite an insult.

Because the standards were so clearly laid down, anyone ignoring them (such as MS when it ported Office) faced massive user complaints and fell into line.

But in the MS world, it's a different matter. MS can't even be consistent across it's own software. And BTW, it only adopted ctrl-C for copy etc after users got used to cmd-C etc on the Mac. I now have to use Windows on my work laptop and it's a completely flippin annoying mess of inconsistency. Ctrl-W closes windows (or tabs), some of the time. it doesn't in Outlook where it does something completely different. It doesn't in Explorer if it's displaying a PDF file. In explorer, closing the last tab closes the window, in Adobe PDF viewer, it leaves you with a list of recently viewed files.

THERE IS NOT A LOT OF CONSISTENCY in the Windows world. And I agree completely with the "lets redesign the UI again, people have got too used to the old one" approach MS seem to apply.

[bombastic bob]

Re: MS Windows started this

FYI - most of the standard menu arrangements and hotkey assignments were defined by Apple and IBM.

With the Windows 3.0 SDK came a dead-tree manual on IBM's user interface spec. It was designed for OS/2 but Windows also complied with it, more or less, at that time.

I might suggest a common hotkey for application accessibility settings... maybe ALT+A or similar... (apparently i-things have a configurable button for this).

This wikipedia article has a list of common keystrokes used by winders and gnome:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts#Accessibility

For touch screens, what would work best? Needs to be easy for people with finger muscle issues or voice-only interfaces.

a general comment - default user interface colors that are NOT light blue on bright white, especially if ANY visual accessibility feature has been enabled [just assume it please]. That specific color combination [I'm talking to YOU, Apple, Google] is EXCEPTIONALLY HARD on eyes over the age of 50.

(respecting desktop themes would ALSO help a LOT, if not being done already)

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we not allowed to comment on this:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/11/aws_parler_ban/

[Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?]

Because people can't be trusted and that is why we can't have nice things.

[Doctor Syntax]

Although it would be worth commenting that if they haven't tried a DR rehearsal setting it up on new servers is going to be a lot harder than they think. DR rehearsal? What's that?

[big_D]

Don't worry, a "researcher" has snaffled the whole kit-and-kaboodle and posted it online, including personal posts and deleted messages...

[Dan 55]

Even if posts were pre-modded it would be a time vampire.

[chivo243]

At nearly 300 comments on the Twitter ban for Trump, maybe this is El Reg's way to avoid becoming a political rag?

/s

[Anonymous Coward]

You want a comment? Here it is ... Truck Fump

[Warm Braw]

Even worse on the web

At least with native applications there's some consistency baked into the platform - you can pretty much guarantee the same shortcut will open the "File" menu, for example.

I don't have any disabilities that significantly affect my ability to interact with computers, but when I've tried to interact with websites using accessibility aids (like screen readers, for example), I'm struck by how laborious a process it is, particularly when there's no real semantic difference between the "commands" (links) and the regular text on the page. You often have to sit through a recital of most of the page's contents before you can find the link you want to follow.

There's an inbuilt tendency to put as much information on the page as possible as it's quite easy - for many people - visually to screen out what they're not interested in and it reduces the number of clicks needed to reach the target. But if you have to listen to the whole lot being read out (or have to scroll laboriously through it in large high-contrast letters reading every word) it's much quicker to have multi-level menus with fewer choices even given the extra navigation to move between them.

Of course, it would be good to get the basics right, but I think it would be helpful to offer different models of interaction for different users - with consistent mechanisms for invoking them.

[Dan 55]

Not the developer's fault

You need to speak to UXers who think Winamp's skins should be used everywhere and business analysts. We just put the pedals in.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: Not the developer's fault

It often is the developer's fault. For example, not having a clue about even the basic structure of HTML elements and how these should be used and ordered is far too common.

[stiine]

I bet you just /love/ firefox

They don't even bother with a dartboard any more.

[Rafael #872397]

Keep your damn "OK" and "Cancel" buttons way apart!

Let me be clear: in dialogs or web forms where we have to fill many many fields the "OK" button should be located WAY APART from the ones that will ignore the data we've just laboriously entered.

It is a pet peeve of mine since my hands shake because <del>I drink a lot on the job</del> they're tired from petting puppies and kittens.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Keep your damn "OK" and "Cancel" buttons way apart!

Or at least keep them in the same place! I think from memory it's Firefox, but one of the apps I use very regularly has a "save" dialogue box almost identical to the system one, but with the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons reversed. The number of times I've auto-clicked and then wondered why something hasn't saved...

M.

[SImon Hobson]

Re: Keep your damn "OK" and "Cancel" buttons way apart!

And can I add a special mention for the ****ing clueless ****ard who thought it a great idea to put a tiny little "x" into text fields - so you need to edit the text you've entered, then click at the end of the text to add more text ... and it's all just f***ed off.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Keep your damn "OK" and "Cancel" buttons way apart!

*HAVE* Ok and Cancel buttons.

Zoom rant again. I went into settings, selected something, then spent several minutes looking for the OK button to instruct it that that was what I wanted. There isn't one. So, a) how do I confirm that's what I want and b) how do I cancel what I've fiddled with.

The standard "can't find a button, chuck this away" would be to click the CLOSE button. But that sets the settings as you've selected. LISTEN! THE CLOSE BUTTON IS NOT THE ****ING OK BUTTON!!!! DO I NEED TO GET THE BASEBALL BAT????

[David Nash]

Re: Keep your damn "OK" and "Cancel" buttons way apart!

I agree, it seems increasingly common now for settings not to have any way to "confirm" or "save" your changes. Once they're done, they are done, apparently. So how do you cancel?

Do these people have no regard for 40 years of user interfaces?

[Dan 55]

Re: Keep your damn "OK" and "Cancel" buttons way apart!

It's something that's been brought across from the Mac perhaps because UXers all have expensive shiny.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Keep your damn "OK" and "Cancel" buttons way apart!

"Do these people have no regard for 40 years of user interfaces?"

I imagine that the average programmer is under 40 and largely self-taught, so no. They really have no regard for 40 years of user interfaces.

[ChrisElvidge]

Menu standardisation

Does no-one remember the early days of the menu system when company A (could have been Microsoft or Lotus) sued company B (could have been Lotus or Microsoft) for copying their menus system into a competing product?

[Dan 55]

Re: Menu standardisation

Then standardised GUIs took all that nonsense away, then MS made a ribbon for Office, then they made a ribbon library so everyone could use standardised ribbons, then developers used it, then MS brought all that nonsense back and sued Coral for using their ribbon library.

[ColinPa]

Saving the planet

Please can we have the scroll up arrow next to the scroll down arrow - not at different ends of the window - it uses less energy!

Could we have a measurements of gui's which tracks the energy spent doing a task? - it should cover distance moved, and number of clicks or scrolls.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Saving the planet

and RSI/less wear and tear on the fingers/hands/arms

[Martin an gof]

Re: Saving the planet

Please can we have the scroll up arrow next to the scroll down arrow - not at different ends of the window - it uses less energy!

Although scroll wheels have largely taken away that problem, RISC OS solved this one by using the third mouse button (named "adjust") to "invert" many of the actions of the first button (called "select"). Thus, left-clicking on the "down" arrow scrolled the window one way, right-clicking scrolled the window the opposite way. Left-grabbing the scroll bar allowed scrolling in one dimension (with the pointer locked to the bar - a pet peeve I have with other OSes is that you can "fall off" the slider if your mousing isn't precise enough) while right-grabbing the same scroll bar allowed scrolling in two dimensions.

It is said that before MS brought out Windows 95 their UK offices had a suite of Archimedes computers and that some items from the RISC OS desktop were copied - after a fashion - in W95 (the taskbar for example). Why didn't they copy the use of the mouse buttons too?

M.

[ThomH]

Re: Saving the planet

That was always almost the first setting I changed when acquiring a new Mac — I think NestStep always did it that way.

... that was before the banishment of scroll bars, anyway. Even if you turn them on permanently in modern macOS they don't come with up/down buttons.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

CUA

As I have ranted before, CUA Guidelines from the early '90s - all gone out of the window. And don't get me started on material design

[Martin an gof]

More of this please!

Just like to note here that I really enjoy this kind of rant. Please, more of the same! Once a week by Dabbsy isn't enough.

M.

[RockBurner]

Developers.... such bastards.

https://xkcd.com/927/

(obligatory XKCD)

[Version 1.0]

A few years ago, Friday, October 14 was World Standards Day. Or, at least, it was World Standards Day in *some* countries. However, in America, the celebrations were held on October 11th. In Finland, World Standards Day was marked on October 13th. Italy planned a separate conference on standards for October 18th.

- a sig from the Monastery about 20 years ago.

[RockBurner]

FWIW I've always tried to build in 'accessibility' improvements as I went, but senior manglement never saw the upside (even when developing for site requiring government approbation, and sites requiring good SEO - yes - accessibility aids SEO (or used to anyway)!), and often would bemoan the extra time taken.

[SImon Hobson]

At a previous job, I once had a little moan to the senior dev that the web based timekeeping system we used (written in house) only worked in IE6 - and as a Mac user, it was a PITA starting up a Win VM every day to do my timesheet. His answer was that the customers only use IE6, so he only builds to IE6, and it's my fault for being an awkward git.

How I chuckle at how he's had to change his tune since.

[Loyal Commenter]

Agile

If you're doing agile properly, then the developers shouldn't really be in charge of this stuff on-the-fly. You should have some user stories for it, and they should define what needs to be done.

It thus falls to being a BA job, and if your BA isn't considering such things, then a culture change is required there.

The underlying problem here is that accessibility isn't built-in by default into most software. Like security, and user access control, it is often bolted-on as an afterthought. It needs to be right up there in the requirements at the top, then we can start looking at a standardised way of implementing it.

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: Agile

To the downvoters on my previous post - do you actually know how software development works?

You do know that developers (in most case) don't get to set the requirements? Most software is built by teams of people, not by some neckbeard in his mum's basement making it up as he goes along.

If you start working on stuff that isn't in the requirements, questions are going to be asked. At the very least you'll end up in conflict with the person who set those requirements, trying to explain why you think you know more about what the person ultimately paying for the software has asked for, than them.

Courting that kind of conflict isn't going to make for a very pleasant, or productive working environment...

[J.G.Harston]

You hear that Zoom developers? When running on Windows use the damn Windows furniture dammit. Give me a bloody title bar, put the bloody close button in the correct place, dammit *HAVE* a close button, put window minimise and maximise buttons in the correct place with the correct interface functionality, respond to damn context menus, *DONT HIDE THINGS*. Let *ME* control *MY* computer, dammit.

[Version 1.0]

Zoom? I can't get it to run on Vista - I'm so happy, I think that's one of the features of Vista these days.

[thondwe]

MS breaking Windows

So phases when MS had multiple docs as "Sub Windows" - Excel IIRC but others (Word) had them as real Windows. Then they invented OneNote and moved things and THEN Teams - lets give up on Multiple Windows/Tabs or anything else - the number of times I've hit back while in File View and jumped out of the files view...

[Nugry Horace]

Guess what? If I want white text on black background, 16 point sans in one app, I want it in all.

A pity that modern versions of Windows have neutered the GetSysColor() API for no apparent reason.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

A pity that modern versions of Windows have neutered the GetSysColor() API for no apparent reason.

Anything to do with Windows 10? There are some "interesting" restrictions related to colour schemes - No surprises that Office seems appears to be able to override

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Silly fonts/colours/layout

lynx fixes a very large number of vile web design decisions.

[Blackjack]

Regulations, sometimes they make things worse

This has nothing to do with software but do you know how long it took my bank to get an accessibility ramp? This year. That's right, a century plus old bank, in 2020, didn't have a ramp.

Why? Because regulations around here state that a building that's 100 years old or older must keep their external looks, and over a century ago ramps were not a thing in banks.

How they eventually got around this? They made the ramp out of plastic and wood so it doesn't count as part of the external looks of the building.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Regulations, sometimes they make things worse

So a law intended to preserve appearances has resulted in a really shitty looking ramp front and centre. Classy!

(Well done to whoever found the loophole, btw.)

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: Regulations, sometimes they make things worse

To be fair, those accessibility regulations don't apply to historic buildings in the same way as modern ones, for the exact reason that you'd need some pretty serious structural alterations to some irreplaceable places. In buildings with plenty of space inside, you can often fit ramps in, but some old buildings are surprisingly cramped, and have things like steep spiral stairs that simply can't be adapted for wheelchair users or people with limited mobility. Places like cafés in Victorian shopping arcades spring to mind.

Your local rules about putting ramps on the outside of the building do sound pretty stupid though. I won't make any assumptions about the political tendencies of your local government officials, although I suspect they may be of the bluish hue.

What is more surprising here though, is that you still have a local bank in a historic building, and it wasn't turned into a wine bar 25 years ago.

[T. F. M. Reader]

Just you wait...

...till Apple start making cars more than a hundred years after Cadillac Type 53.

I predict they'll swap the positions of accelerator and brake pedals as their first "design decision". The clutch will be removed in favour of a contorting multi-finger gesture on a humongous touchpad that sits between you and the gear lever. But there will be interface guidelines: e.g., the steering wheel must not be on the right. Any problems - remember, you are driving on the leftwrong side of the road.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Just you wait...

Just "round[ed]" the corner...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hyundai-motor-apple/apple-hyundai-set-to-agree-electric-car-tie-up-says-korea-it-news-idUSKBN29F0C3

[Fruit and Nutcase]

What's the extra pedal for?

Asks a recently arrived left-pondian picking up a hire car at the airport.

you could get in an unfamiliar car and move off safely in moments. For controls that can kill you but you can't see, that's huge.

[Potemkine!]

Standardization

Another example: common shortcuts.

In any Windows text application, you put text in bold using Ctrl+B. Except in the French version of MS Office, where it's Ctrl+G. :doh:!

When there's something standard and common in most GUIs, don't break it. You won't revolutionize IT by doing the contrary, just pissing off your users, the ones you have to satisfy (and not your developer's ego!).

[TJ42]

This entire article seems to think that developers are the ones in control of what happens, when it happens and how it happens. That's rarely the case these days. There are entire departments designed to tell developers how to do their jobs, all staffed by incompetent people(usually). These are who you need to hold accountable.