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The same happens with Thunderbird. The new UI is a mess I can't find anything now. I fear when the rename K9 mail for Android to Thunderbird they break the UI too.


It's (almost) every major software.

I mainly use Chrome, and in their newest M121 release they made not one, but three major UI changes and I hate every single one of them.

For the curious, they are (together with my rant):

1. the new "simplified" bookmark save flow which is more complicated than the old one;

2. loss of the ability to disable system notification (i.e. to use Chrome's built-in one, which I prefer);

3. loss of the ability to disable "copy to highlight" context menu option via a command line argument, which I never use and it just messes up my muscle memory for right click -> copy.*

* Seriously, why is it so tough for software in the CURRENT YEAR to just offer fully customizable context menus? How hard is that? Funnily enough, this used to be a staple feature in nearly all the popular freeware back in the 2000s and 2010s. It feels like the whole UI/UX scene has taken a nosedive lately.


Simon Schneegan's "Kandu" cross platform pie menus, as well as his older "Fly-Pie" and "Gnome-Pie" projects, let you create and edit your own pie menus with a WYSIWYG drag-and-drop direct manipulation interface.

Kando: The Cross-Platform Pie Menu (github.com/kando-menu)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39206966

https://github.com/kando-menu/kando

A first glimpse at Kando's Menu Editor!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLJ1-z9i3cI

Development Update for Kando's Menu Editor!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIF6k9OxQ80

Item labels in Fly-Pie!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yyl5nMPI1f0

Fly-Pie 10: A new Clipboard Menu, proper touch support & much more!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGXtckqhEIk

Fly-Pie 7: GNOME Shell 40+ and a new WYSIWYG Menu Editor!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRT3O9-H5Xs

Gnome-Pie

https://vimeo.com/30618179

Gnome-Pie 0.4 (12 years ago)

https://vimeo.com/35385121

https://schneegans.github.io/gnome-pie


If I had to guess why they might not let you customize it

- the people who make the software don't know or don't care about the other way you want it

- it adds a bit more complexity / sometimes code debt to let that thing be customized

- the design might be a specific way that they don't want to change


>fully customizable context menus? How hard is that?

It's not hard at all, Vivaldi does it. I consider Vivaldi the least worst browser.


I recently got fed up with Gmail and downloaded Thunderbird, which I haven't used in a looong time. I was wildly disappointed by the modern incarnation. The lack of checkboxes feels mind boggling... I still feel like I must be not grasping something. Sometimes one of my hands isn't on my mouse or keyboard, but the interface felt like it constantly demanded I use both together (e.g. shift+click) to get things done.

I ended up cleaning my inbox with the Gmail web interface. Despite my gripes, at the end of the day Gmail was just better and more efficient at it. Maybe it's nostalgia, but it legitimately feels like a 15 year old version of Outlook would run circles around Thunderbird's UI.

This is painting with a broad brush, but coming from a background that included design, I've honestly come to resent modern UX designers. There are great ones, but there are also ones who are more interested in the design than the user and who ignore or bend the user data to support their (sometimes wild) opinions.


Rule number #1 of interface design: don't change the interface!


On anonymous comments on the internet and in movies.


If you have access to control the touch interface or to type a message on the screen you already have full control to the device. Look at the video, the input is so random, it's a software bug.


I thought the same when I saw the video. I had the same problem with an Android phone, but the ghost touch was located in one zone of the screen because it was damaged. This looks like more like a software bug.


And Unicorns


I think unicorn's jobs are safe for now, but will see :)


That's terrifying and dystopian.


No it's not. Imagine turning on the television when you get home and it's a show all about you (think Breaking Bad, but you're Walter White). You flip to another channel and it's a pornographic movie where you sleep with all the world's most famous movie stars. Flip the channel again and it's all the home movies you wish you had but were never able to make.

This is a future we could once only dream of, and OpenAI is making it possible. Has anyone noticed how anti-progress HN has become lately?


I guess it depends on your definition of progress. None of those examples you listed sound particularly appealing to me. I've never watched a show and thought I'd get more enjoyment if I was at the center of that story. Porn and dating apps have created such unrealistic expectations of sex and relationships that we're already seeing the effects in younger generations. I can only imagine what on-demand fully generative porn will have on issues like porn addiction.

Not to say I don't have some level of excitement about the tech, but I don't think it's unwarranted pessimism to look at this stuff and worry about it's darker implications.


> You flip to another channel and it's a pornographic movie where you sleep with all the world's most famous movie stars.

This is not only dystopian, it's just sad. All these look taken from the first seasons of Black Mirror. I don't know what you think progress is but AI porno and ads are not.


I don't think any well adjusted person ever has actually wanted this


This might be more revealing of you than of people in general. Even when I play tabletop RPGs, a place I could _easily_ play a version of myself, I almost never do. There's nothing wrong with doing so, but most people don't.


That seems depressingly solipsistic. I think part of the appeal of art is that it's other humans trying to communicate with you, that you feel the personality of the creators shining through.

Also I've never interacted with any piece of art or entertainment and thought to myself "this is neat and all, but it would be much improved if this were entirely about me, with me as the protagonist." One watches Breaking Bad because Walter White is an interesting character; he's a man who falls into a life of crime initially for understandable reasons, but as the series goes on it becomes increasingly clear that he is lying to himself about his motivations and that his primary motivation for his escalating criminal life is his deep-seated frustration at the mediocrity of his life. More than anything else, he craves being important. The unraveling of his motivations and where they come from is the story, and that's something you can't really do when you're literally watching yourself shoehorned into a fictional setting.

You seem to regard it as self-evident that art or entertainment would be improved if (1) it's all about you personally and (2) involvement of other real humans is reduced to zero, but I cannot fathom why you would think that (with the exception of the porn example).


And you don't have to comment


Nitter has been abandoned by the developer and I don't have time to deal with Elon Musk's whims


They are rate limited faster than guess accounts and banned. It's over


Not if you setup your own instance and use your own account sparingly


I'm talking about public instances. Using nitter with your own account is not for what nitter was intended to.


I saw what you did there.


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