But despite all this chaos and temptation, operating system vendors knew better. To this day, they follow THE convention: checkboxes are square, radio buttons are round.
Maybe it was part of their internal training. Maybe they had experienced art directors. Maybe it was just luck. I don’t know — it doesn’t really matter — but — somehow — they managed to stick to the convention.
Until this day.
Apple is the first major operating system vendor who had abandoned a four-decades-long tradition. Their new visionOS — for the first time in the history of Apple — will have round checkboxes.
↫ Nikita Prokopov
Unsightly. A lack of taste always betrays itself.
You mean this?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
This article basically seems to be “(1) Apple are doing a stupid thing, (2) therefore all other OSes and all apps will do the same stupid thing,”
While I agree with the first point, I don’t see any reason to believe the second point. He even gives an example of when Apple briefly used rounded squares for radio buttons but later realized it was a dumb idea, maybe that will happen again.
I think what he’s saying, in the sub-text, is what Apple usually does in their OS/visual cues/etc, regardless of how good (or not!) it actually can be considered, the other OSes/UIs/etc will switch over in a year or two or three to look more like Apple.
*sigh*
I so much ******* ****** those slider boxes because it is never clear if the switch is set ON or OFF. I always end up with sliding it to see its real status.
Further I am not ok with all that rounding, especially when radius is far too big. To me corners and edges are sharp and precise signaling: we know what to do. Large radius rounding means soft lack of commitment and soy cafe late.
To make matters worse trend seems to go towards “disable theming” because none of those snowflakes ever needed to work under really stressful conditions (like equator 12 o’clock under bright sun light).
Some things went terribly wrong the last 2 decades.
Once again someone prioritizes aesthetics over discoverability and functionality. It’s sad all of this stupidity that began with flat design.
And here I am still mourning the loss of actual scroll bars.
In order to save previous 10 pixels off windows, I can no longer use scrollbars properly.
The mouse wheel usually works, of course. But the operating word is usually. When it does not, I have to fight it to register, sometimes clicking on the window helps, sometimes it does not. And don’t get me started on “horizontal” scroll.
This should have always been a system wide setting left to users. I have a 4K monitor, and enough pixels to “waste” some.
The sad irony of this is that it came about in a time when 1440p and higher res screens became the norm on the desktop, so the pixels never needed saving in the first place. It boggles the mind.
sukru,
+1
It’s created usability issues for myself as well.
Everyone became infatuated with form over function, removing visual indicators and context clues so we don’t have to see WIMP interfaces. Alas those actually served a real purpose and made GUIs consistent and predictable. I legit have a hard time with these nearly invisible hit boxes.
Morgan, Alfman,
I think two forces had worked against our favor.
One of them the mobile UIs. Over time phones became common, and with especially tablets that shared some applications with desktops the UI designers focused on minimalism.
Second,
I think the rise of the “user studies” were to blame.
If you show people two similar interfaces for the same document (say a web page), one with persistent scrollbars, and one with hidden, many could choose the prettier one. I know, since I would, without additional context.
But if you were to work for a long time with that UI, then it becomes apparent that the better looking interface is not necessarily the better functioning one.
And while the drive to “save pixels” destroys useful UI elements like scrollbars, at the same time you have vast expanses of whitespace being added for no apparent reason between or around elements.
While it’s hardly a paragon of UI design, an example here is MS Edge – shrinking/eliminating scrollbars in line with Fluent, at the same time as adding new sidebars (in the spirit of old IE) and adding a pointless curved border of whitespace around the content itself on all sides.
Good job Apple! No, really, this is a giant leap forward for user experience! So glad to see a company actually prioritizing things that matter! The future is going to be awesome.
I’m afraid this is a sign Apple is obsessed with dots, they been focussed on dots too long, and I expect if they can’t break the dot trance soon they may well be locked into their own dot forever.
Woah, woah, hang on. Chicago had diamond radio buttons at one point: http://toastytech.com/guis/c73.html
I demand justice for this erasure!
I just don’t get why people can’t see the obvious discrimination towards hexagons and octagons!