Posts by egbert

Re: Scrollbars?

Yes, I use them.

1. It's faster to scroll down a long page/document looking for something. Both the scroll wheel and trackpad gesture end up with you repeating the same action over an over. RSI is the result.

2. As you say, visible scroll bars tell you when there is something else to see, and how much of it there is. When first using the dreadful modern Windows "settings" abomination, I frequently could not find a control for what I wanted because I failed to notice the wafer-thin "scroll bar" on the right that indicated there was more off the bottom of the screen. I say "scroll bar" because it looks more like just the edge of the window. All this was not helped, of course, by the fact that all the controls were in new, unfamiliar places and many control were actually not there at al (and existed only in the legacy control panel items).

Now you can argue:

- There are other ways to find something in a long document. But why remove something that worked?

- You can move the mouse over to the right hand edge to expand the scroll bar so that it is visible. This only works if you suspect that there might be something there. The thin scroll bar leads you to think there isn't.

- The settings app has been accumulating more controls so that what you want is probably actually there. Great until they add more controls that you didn't know exist.

A theme/style selection can allow the user to force the bars to always appear just unbreaks a broken interface design.

Re: Back in the early 90's

My recollection was that they were always called windows. I worked with windows based interfaces on Apollo (remember them?), Mac and DOS plus TopView. They always called them windows.

Also, the XEROX Alto User Manual from September 1979 calls them windows.

I remember when MS came out with MS Windows 1.0 everyone thinking they had a real cheek calling it that.

Re: My favourite

Oh god yes. I completely gave up on using any kind of programmable remote because it was impossible to have a sequence that would get to a guaranteed state (e.g. TV and sound bar on).

As someone else has said they could at least have a code for power on, even if the bog standard remote only sends a toggle.

The latest Sky Q remotes have an equally annoying stupidity. The old (original and Sky+) remotes could control the TV as well as the Sky box using the "TV" button. So TV then Power would toggle the power state of the TV whereas Sky then Power would toggle the state of the Sky Box. OK, it was slightly annoying to have to press two buttons (since just pressing power would affect either the TV or Sky depending on what you last did), but at least you could get a guaranteed result each time.

The new Sky Q remotes don't have a "TV" button. Instead, if you want to toggle the Sky power state you just press the Power button but if you want to toggle the TV state you must press and hold the power button for a few seconds and it will eventually toggle the TV state. Leaving aside the fact that this action is non intuitive when you first see the remote (it was some time before I found out about it), it is really annoying even when you do know what it does.

The problem is how long do you have to push the button for? Too short and you will accidentally toggle the Sky state. To long and you stand there like an idiot getting cramp in your finger.

Part of the problem is that different TVs behave differently. Is the TV you are looking at one that has a stand by LED that goes out when it is powering on or is it one that has no LED when off and has one that comes lights up when powered on? I've got 4 TVs in my house and they all have different behaviour and I can never remember which is which. Sometimes you just have to sit there with your finger on the remote until the TV gets through its incredibly long power up sequence and shows a picture.

Of course, you might think that this saves both the space for and cost of a button on the remote. Only it doesn't. That funky "Sky" logo at the top of the remote? Yes, that's a button as well(*) and it has exactly the same effect as the "Home" button. The cost and space would have been better used on a dedicated TV button.

Do the designers of these things ever actually run their designs past real users?

(*) It was a *long* time before I realised that.

Man (well, school children) vs Machine

When I was a student working in London during summer holidays in the mid 70s, I used to hang out at the Science Museum quite a bit. By chance, I met a chap from whichever University the Science Museum terminal was attached to. It may have been Imperial College but I'm not sure.

He told me that that there was an arms race between the programmers and the visitors. As other have said, when the program got to its last node on the tree, it would ask, for example "is it a chimpanzee". If the user said (typed) "No" then the program would ask what it was and for a distiguishing question like "Does it have four legs".

Unfortunately, many visitors liked to put in animals with colourful adjectives, so that the final question would be "Is it a f*****g giraffe?".

The programmers put in a list of swear words that were banned but, of course, the visitors responded by interspersing the letters with spaces or * characters or by using foreign swear words or words that just sounded rude.

In the end they had just resorted to manually reviewing a list of newly added animals each day.

Re: Skie

Moved to Sky ten years ago. Old broadband (Wannadoo) got cut off, New Sky router wouldn't connect. Called support. Offshore call centre - crappy line quality. "Just be patient, it sometimes takes a while". 24 hours later, still no service. Call support again - made to go through the dreaded script - "Is the router plugged in to the mains?...". Still not working. Told to wait another 24 hours.

Downloaded hack from internet (by dialing up my work and using their broadband) that allowed me to see the PPP username/password (Sky hid it from users in those days) and used that to setup another router/modem. Still didn't work.

After about 4 days of this, phoned their sales team and told them I was cancelling unless they sorted it out immediately. They gave me a number to call.

Called the number. Scottish voice "Hello?". There then followed 30 seconds of brisk "Have you tried X, have you tried Y?,..." followed by "It's a line fault, I'll get an engineer out".

Service working next day.

Call centre following a script 0/10

Eventual person who actually knew what they were doing 10/10