Holy Hell, just how is an octogenarian supposed to function in this day and age?
Muggins here had to do some secretarial work (involved manual scanning of receipts and adjusting contrast so they show up etc. and making a PDF for attachment rather than their automated, multi-page PDF, sheet feed settings). My parents are used to having Adobe Reader and while it's not necessary anymore (Firefox can open and even fill out PDF forms nowadays) I don't want to interrupt their work flow, so .pdf is associated with Adobe Reader. I double click my PDF to make sure it's usable and I'm greeted with this horrible new UI. Myself, I couldn't even figure out how to zoom in and out, I'm drilling through menus looking for a zoom tool, looking for how to add one to tool areas in the program and I'm coming up short. I finally found a setting that DID help me, "Disable New Acrobat Reader" that took it back to the last horrible UI, but at least it had functional tool buttons like + and - for zoom.
OK, so my PDF is good, the receipts are legible at reasonable zoom settings. I go to type up the email and find that stupid fucking Thunderbird is double spacing lines now when hitting enter. Grrr... I go to Format and it's set to "Paragraph". I change it to "Body Text" but it's just for that line and reverts back to Paragraph, like some dumb assed Microsoft Word setting or something. So I go drilling through the program's global settings and find it under Composition, to use Paragraph instead of Body Text by default.
I'm surprised they haven't complained about those things. I don't think they noticed Adobe Reader yet, but I asked Dad about the email program and he said "yeah, I noticed that..."
More GUI traps
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Behave
Behave
Re: More GUI traps
I noticed that too, it came in with some update a while back. When typing all the way across only then will it give you single space but hit enter at the end of a sentence and you get double spacing.
Another thing that changed recently, the annoying sort by threaded got turned back on again, making messages seem to disappear because a reply I knew was there didn't appear at the bottom as the most recent email, instead it'll be buried in a message thread way up the list under wherever the original email was. I had to change the setting back to unthreaded, again.
Another thing that changed recently, the annoying sort by threaded got turned back on again, making messages seem to disappear because a reply I knew was there didn't appear at the bottom as the most recent email, instead it'll be buried in a message thread way up the list under wherever the original email was. I had to change the setting back to unthreaded, again.
Re: More GUI traps
Another GUI trap are the keyboard shortcuts in Firefox. I often hit them when fumbling with keys while typing. I can figure out what I did, but when my parents hit something like F11 it's waaambulance time. Sometimes the first thing I notice when I've done that is I can't get my panel up (similarly with Windows taskbar covered by full screen window)
I turned off threading a long time ago in their Thunderbird, that's a disconnect especially when they change the behaviour out from under foot.
I turned off threading a long time ago in their Thunderbird, that's a disconnect especially when they change the behaviour out from under foot.
Re: More GUI traps
I'm an equal opportunity opponent of bad GUI behaviour. Even in my most beloved applications and environments.
Desktop environments have their share of traps. Not only ways to break your UI subtly or not so, but enforced settings that override system or X11 defaults. Power managers that have to go. Display settings that override X11. etc.
XFCE is one of my favourite desktop environments, but it's got some of my least favourite overriding behaviour. I'll start with font configuration. You can't just leave that alone, because if you don't enable things like font antialiasing and subpixel rendering, it disables them. That pisses me off, because I have a better configuration with my symlinks in /etc/fonts/conf.d. KDE doesn't do that, if you uncheck its font rendering settings, it simply doesn't override that.
Keyboard configuration too. This is the one that caused me to say this. I was in there for some reason and was just looking at the settings. I was using my scroll wheel to scroll down to see the settings. I rolled over the sliders, this way and that way, and messed up my keyboard delays and rates and while I can certainly move the sliders to have usable behaviour, I can't seem to get it right. There's no way to just use X11 defaults (which I like, and I'm used to). So I have to go find the configuration file that's in and delete some XML stanzas. Nice.
Settings are instantly permanent, there's no more "Apply" buttons in most UI's anymore to back out of accidental scrambling of settings. That's the real trap in the annoyance above.
XFCE Power Manager. Die. Go Away. I don't install that module (or uninstall if it came from a distro meta). It has horrible overriding behaviour. Again, while KDE is annoying by default, "uncheck" means don't touch.
Something to be said for old school window managers that don't do anything unless you tell them to (and if you want to override X11 behaviour, you'll change X11 configuration settings
)
Desktop environments have their share of traps. Not only ways to break your UI subtly or not so, but enforced settings that override system or X11 defaults. Power managers that have to go. Display settings that override X11. etc.
XFCE is one of my favourite desktop environments, but it's got some of my least favourite overriding behaviour. I'll start with font configuration. You can't just leave that alone, because if you don't enable things like font antialiasing and subpixel rendering, it disables them. That pisses me off, because I have a better configuration with my symlinks in /etc/fonts/conf.d. KDE doesn't do that, if you uncheck its font rendering settings, it simply doesn't override that.
Keyboard configuration too. This is the one that caused me to say this. I was in there for some reason and was just looking at the settings. I was using my scroll wheel to scroll down to see the settings. I rolled over the sliders, this way and that way, and messed up my keyboard delays and rates and while I can certainly move the sliders to have usable behaviour, I can't seem to get it right. There's no way to just use X11 defaults (which I like, and I'm used to). So I have to go find the configuration file that's in and delete some XML stanzas. Nice.
Settings are instantly permanent, there's no more "Apply" buttons in most UI's anymore to back out of accidental scrambling of settings. That's the real trap in the annoyance above.
XFCE Power Manager. Die. Go Away. I don't install that module (or uninstall if it came from a distro meta). It has horrible overriding behaviour. Again, while KDE is annoying by default, "uncheck" means don't touch.
Something to be said for old school window managers that don't do anything unless you tell them to (and if you want to override X11 behaviour, you'll change X11 configuration settings
)Re: More GUI traps
MiiiCHAAAEL!
This time it was Microsoft Word. Mom was in a panic because she had to leave and couldn't find her document. Even I was confused when I first got there.
When you go to save a new file in MSOffice nowadays, it first pops up that big, dumbed down full screen interface that tries to direct you to OneDrive. It shows just about everything on it, except what you want. I'm all WTF, not realizing it was the Save As interface, not the File/Open fullscreen menu to choose a location. She never even got to save her file yet, that's why she couldn't find it. We're not logged in to Microsoft and she wouldn't even have a OneDrive (in fact I thought I removed it from Programs and Features, but it probably just reverts it back to default installations of it through other shit like Office)
I had to drill for "Documents" below the Recent list, and THEN it pops up a normal Save dialog where you put the filename in the field etc. and I saved her file. That's essentially a deliberately confusing step of nonsense, to try to lock people in to their services, to control their data.
Real user friendly changes in Microsoft Office over the years, eh?
This time it was Microsoft Word. Mom was in a panic because she had to leave and couldn't find her document. Even I was confused when I first got there.
When you go to save a new file in MSOffice nowadays, it first pops up that big, dumbed down full screen interface that tries to direct you to OneDrive. It shows just about everything on it, except what you want. I'm all WTF, not realizing it was the Save As interface, not the File/Open fullscreen menu to choose a location. She never even got to save her file yet, that's why she couldn't find it. We're not logged in to Microsoft and she wouldn't even have a OneDrive (in fact I thought I removed it from Programs and Features, but it probably just reverts it back to default installations of it through other shit like Office)
I had to drill for "Documents" below the Recent list, and THEN it pops up a normal Save dialog where you put the filename in the field etc. and I saved her file. That's essentially a deliberately confusing step of nonsense, to try to lock people in to their services, to control their data.
Real user friendly changes in Microsoft Office over the years, eh?
Re: More GUI traps
I have to use Office 365 and OneDrive at work everyday, I miss the simplicity and intuitiveness of old school office. Even though MS still sells a local Office suite they're trying to push their users to Office 365 and OneDrive. Maybe they're doing that to their local office suite, like making it difficult to save documents, to push users to their online services.
Re: More GUI traps
Yes, that's exactly what it is. You actually have to jump through hoops to NOT use a Microsoft account with even an owned ($400+) license. You can't use the Office integrator at all, banish that, it won't let you open any of the applications without signing in. You have to run word, excel, powerpoint, publisher etc. directly.
I had to buy Office Professional to get Publisher, because they have a lot of .pub files. I have no use for Outlook. Now they are discontinuing Publisher and anyone who uses that can go fuck themselves. This will certainly be the last Microsoft Office here, Publisher was the main reason they don't just use LibreOffice. Nobody here uses Publisher anymore, it'll just be old files that can't be opened anymore. Well, it's moot anyway, I see no reason why we wouldn't keep using the version of Office they have.
I had to buy Office Professional to get Publisher, because they have a lot of .pub files. I have no use for Outlook. Now they are discontinuing Publisher and anyone who uses that can go fuck themselves. This will certainly be the last Microsoft Office here, Publisher was the main reason they don't just use LibreOffice. Nobody here uses Publisher anymore, it'll just be old files that can't be opened anymore. Well, it's moot anyway, I see no reason why we wouldn't keep using the version of Office they have.