Please, UI designers

Modern UI designers don’t have a fucking clue.

You’d think the first principle would be “don’t break the existing fucking UI”, but no.

Infinite scroll. Windows without toolbars. Replacing context menu with useless site-specific one. Forcing links to open in new or same tab, depriving the user of choice. Blocking text select. Blocking copy, as if that’s somehow going to stop people from stealing your shitty content. Fucking with the browser history.

And then there’s the constant reinventing of the wheel. How many times do we need to implement a fucking checkbox?

No lie, I’ve actually had designers come to me with a concept for “a visual indicator that shows the user how they are progressing through the page”.

I have a deep hatred for modern designs. Especially Material and Adwaita. There's SO. FUCKING. MUCH. WASTED. SPACE. Early 2000s Winamp on my 1024x768 monitor had more concise and legible information than Tidal and Spotify do on 1440p fullscreen. It legitimately pisses me off.

When I am on a phone, let me zoom on whatever the fuck I want. Unconditionally. Period. I won’t purchase shit off of your shitty site if I can’t see it. And you obviously have no clue how shitty my vision has gotten over the years. And for the love of anything good in the world, don’t wait till I’m zoomed in to pop a fucking model asking me if I want to join your list for 10% off. If I buy something, you’re gonna put me on your list, whether I like it or not. And I can’t stop you if I actually want a receipt. So just give me the discount. Or don’t. I don’t even fucking care anymore. Just fuck off. Fuck.

Isn't it amazing when text is also not selectable? Like its rendered behind some other shit?

I fucking hate websites ❤️

I get unreasonably (okay, reasonably) upset when the simplest way to share an image is to take a screenshot of the image.

I use a system at work that is 100% web based. I have 2 4k monitors in my desk. Why are the apps formatted for viewing on a phone? I've gotten to the point of hacking the CSS on every page just to make things usable.

At the last version upgrade, the developers made some changes to the interface. They couldn't be bothered to change the existing CSS, so they just put !important on all the new stuff.

My absolute biggest gripe about the failings of proper UI design is icons with no text attached.

Floppy, okay surely the save button. Some book looking thing, no fucking clue. An eye in the middle of a square, what the fuck are you people doing???

Having to hover over a weird looking icon to MAYBE gleam some sort of information on it takes so much longer than just having the fucking text below the God damn icon. Sometimes they don’t even have hover text! Thats GREAT UI skills there, Junior! Maybe you’ll get there eventually!

Fucking idiots.

The irony of this post being an image which I can't select as I read 😢

UI designer/developer here. One who works on features that facilitate reading.

Based on their writing style and the text highlighting habit, this person is likely dyslexic. I've helped create functions that facilitate this behavior, which is better suited as a mode that can be enabled manually. There are browser extensions that can do this sort of thing for you. I've worked on a lot of assistive reading features.

If this was set as a default behavior, most users would fucking riot. Most of them are using text highlighting for what this person doesn't want to do.

Edit - I think I need to emphasize that this is based on real data. A shit ton of it. These decisions aren't made based on vibes. If the user base is performing a specific action repeatedly, we're going to facilitate it. We can see what you all are doing. UI's aren't built around a bunch of conflicting edge cases based on anecdotes. If something performs a certain way, at least major applications, it's usually because a lot of direct observations and metrics have strongly indicated that this is the preferred approach.

Admittedly, sometimes business goals get in the way of that. But if those business goals we have to push get in the way of conversions, they get abandoned pretty quickly.

The fact that I couldn't select text on this post because it's a completely unnecessary graphic kind of makes me hate you.

Come to Japan where they like to make everything images instead. Can't select it, can't copy it, can't translate it without a camera, can't preview the text of something, is bad for accessibility, etc.

This is what you sound like: Xkcd Workflow

I do this. It’s just a stimming thing while reading web articles and I hate being sent to Twitter or whatever for it.

Teams is the worst offender. It constantly wants me to call any number. Social? Phone? Whatever. I don't want to call anyone, and I sure as hell don't want to do it via Teams.

I have a protocol for this.

1. go to website
2. if UX is offensive exit website
3. add website to pihole blacklist and description of why
4. never visit website again

I know it doesn't mean much to them, but I refuse to accept a shitty online experience when a product team actively circumvents standard internet experiences like highlighting, copy/paste, or browser jacking (looking at you Microsoft).

Number one thing I hate is html/css/js used for anything that is not a website. Fucking stop it.

Nonsense. AI adds rich features like these that no one wanted so VCs can become rich. The only thing missing on modern computers is blindingly-bright nuclear explosion white LEDs that shine directly into your optic nerve, all the time.

skill issue

To anyone who does this, I've found browser extensions for both Chrome and Firefox called reading ruler or something like that, that will basically create a highlighted horizontal column wherever your mouse cursor is at, making it much easier to read text without having to manually select it

I do it, too. I rarely read any text without subconsciously marking the text while reading it. Might be a tool for me (ADHD) to make it easier not to lose track - I don't know.

But regardless of why people do it and while I agree that it's probably something very specific not a lot of users do, I refuse to believe that anyone actually uses those select->popup-> share features, ever. Often the little pop-up even blocks the text above it which is just insanely bad UX imo.

Sites should never mess with core functionality without asking (scrolling, selection, tab/keyboard navigation, hijacking common shortcuts/right click, clipboard, history, etc).

I believe someone came up with that idea a decade+ ago and people just want it on their site to add value without actually checking if anyone uses it.

We went from using no punctuation to using too much. I struggled while reading this.

It's very rare that holding alt while selecting text doesn't resolve this issue. Assuming you're on a computer. If you're not, good luck. Selecting text on phones and tables can be impossible in too many circumstances.

Hard agree. I'm not dyslexic, but I also occasionally mark text to keep progress, especially if it's a long piece. And if I really want to copy that text, I will, sometimes just out of spite that you're trying to outsmart me, and I'm more likely to leave your site sooner too.

Also, while we're at it, can you please leave scrolling behaviour alone and not override it? I have a nice mouse that lets me scroll as fast or as slow as I want to. In some rare cases with a fancy UI where one wheel notch scrolls a whole page I agree that overriding the behaviour is warranted. In all other cases just FUCKING LEAVE SCROLLING AS IS (as handled by the OS and the browser) and don't try to be fancy; if you try to be fancy for no particular reason, I'm more likely to leave your site ASAP rather than prefer it over other sites.

I hear you! It sounds like you want user-select: none on all text, because you want the site to feel more like a real newspaper, and having too many features like text selection is distracting you.

So true. Please hear us.

For PC, extra functions should be in the context menu in my opinion. For mobile, that's a little tougher, but maybe tapping on the selected text should bring up the options? Selecting on mobile is a tough thing anyway, and any solution is probably going to be a problem for someone else.

Actually, that's probably true for any UI design choices. There are some that are generally a good idea (like defining a reasonable navigation order for your elements or making design respond to viewport sizes to ensure that everything actually fits), but interaction options can get really muddy.

In linux land highlighting text can auto copy it and miuse wheel close ck auto pastes. Also i do love to highlight text for read ability

I select the whole text, then one word less from both ends, then one word less from both ends, then.... You get it... Until I'm down to the last 1 or 2 words.

I do this too, I'm the only one I know who doesn't think it's weird to do, I'm glad I'm not alone.

Hell yeah josef

Also: stop fucking redefining hotkeys, and place a toggler for pages where is makes sense (Figma etc., basically a whole complex programs in a webpage)