What are common UI misconceptions and annoyances?

Question

I often use applications and electronic devices for which I think: "Why on earth did they engineer that thing as it is? They must have known that it is a pain in the neck to work with".

On the other hand I often observed that I created a (G)UI that I was convinced about, that it'd delight my customers and was a breeze to work with. Although my customers thought that too, it became obvious that it wasn't at all easy to work with in day-to-day work.

Because of that I believe that there are many developers and designers out there who are genuinely convinced that their product has the perfect user interface, but it hasn't!

That's why I wrote this question: To collect some of the common misconceptions developers have about user interfaces and to prevent other developers (including me) from making the same mistakes.

• What annoys you most in user interfaces of applications, web sites, electronic devices, etc but presumably was created for the benefit of the user?
• What was it that you were convinced would be a great idea—but in the end only annoyed your customers?

EDIT: Please write only one thing per answer so that readers who agree with a certain misconceptions can upvote it separatly from things they don't agree with. As with all soft facts there tend to be controversial opinions. If you put two or more things in a single answer, one might agree with one but not with the others. So please use a separate answer for every separate aspect.

EDIT 2: Please don't write answers about a single application which annoyed you but about concepts and patterns which can be found in many applications and/or devices.

EDIT 3: Thank you for all the feedback. I'll frequently visit this question whenever I think about some new UI feature :)

Answer 1

I think that speed or responsiveness is one of the most important UI concepts. I personally hate interfaces that are somehow notchy or rough (I don't know if these are the terms used in English, in German you'd say 'hakelig', which means 'not being smooth') - with Windows Mobile sometimes being a supreme example, or a satellite receiver's on-screen menu that takes half a second after each press of a button.

Answer 2

"Color gradients and lots of animations are cool and lead to a great user experience automatically."

Ehhh... no. Not really. And by no means automatically. A crappy interface without gradients/animations generally gets even crappier when these things are added!

Answer 3

Having to wait for DVD menus

On DVDs I don't like it when I have to wait for the menu to become active.

Sometimes the viewer has to wait 30 seconds of movie snippets, animations and sometimes even advertising until it is possible to go to the chapter selection menu.

It becomes especially annoying when it is a TV series DVD where you often watch small parts and often start and stop the player.

I guess the designers thought it would be entertaining to watch all that stuff, but after the first time it really annoyes me. After all I just want to watch a movie...

Answer 4

Popups with "This can't be done" on half of possible actions. Those actions are to just be disabled instead.

Answer 5

The first two nitpicks I thought of:

1. When UI designers think they know better than to follow the OS standard (and I'm bloody well looking at you, Microsoft Office 2007-developers!). Microsoft did a dandy job of forcing developers to follow the general windows API when constructing GUI...which actually is a stroke of genius. It's not that I love Microsoft's interface so much, but there is no ultimate interface. What I do expect is to be able to find common menu options (like save, or new) without having to context switch.

2. Login screens that attempt to log you in instead of pass the cursor to the password field when you press Enter. There is no reason why I'd want to attempt logging in without entering a password first, so why not just assume that I pressed Enter instead of Tab?

Answer 6

That users want "slick animations". http://designinginterfaces.com/Animated_Transition

Most of the time, what they really want is a reliable indication of system responsiveness, if not system progress. "Visual flair" just becomes a distraction after its initial "wow" factor wears off.

One example comes to mind: the thin pulsing orange bar in Outlook 2007 that runs across your email pane, whenever you click on a hyperlink. Most of the time, the URL loads in your browser within 2 seconds, and thus the animation is short-lived. But sometimes, there's a delay in the background interprocess messaging, and it takes ~30 seconds for the browser (already open) to begin loading the URL. During this time, you're still looking at the same pulsating orange bar, with no idea when your "request" will be completed. These are moments when I get most enraged at snazzy animations. All they communicate is that my computer hasn't completely frozen on me.

Also note that "slick animation" for indicating system progress should adhere to not abusing the notion of a progress bar: i.e. having the progress bar steadily advance from 0 to 99%, only to hang on the 99% for a good minute.

Answer 7

Currently my biggest gripe is with web applications that don't honour a browser's culture settings. I'm a native English speaker living and working in Germany, my German is OK but far from fluent. I have my browser's culture set to en-GB but sites (www.google.com to name but one) check my IP address and start serving me up information in German it amazes me that large companies that go to the trouble of creating multilingual sites / applications don't know how to detect a user's culture properly.

Answer 8

What annoys me the most is when an application show a progress bar and you have to deduce and make a guess what is the exact percentage of progress. No one actually bothered to render the numbers, but only the nice-featured bar.

Answer 9

Bad keyboard support

In UI's which are to be used for data input, it's really annoying that the user constantly has to switch between keyboard and mouse for input. A good UI will have all tab indexes set right and common keys (return, escape) mapped to the appropriate actions.

Answer 10

Disabled menu items without any indication of why they are disabled. To some degree, all operating systems and applications suffer from this.

Answer 11

A progress bar or a time estimate that changes in a seemingly random fashion (Windows Installer, IE file downloads, Windows' stock file copying box, etc.)

Answer 12

Splash screens

Every application, and especially a background service such as a backup application or antivirus software, must display a splash screen that can not be turned off in settings.

Answer 13

1. If an update is available for an app, display a modal notification proposing to upgrade.
2. When a user declines, show it again next time the app is run.
3. There should be no way to turn this behavior off.

(Acrobat Reader 5 and later and many other apps).

Answer 14

I hate it when windows flicker heavily when resized. And this is something that about 90% of Windows apps out there can't get right. It's especially visible when you resize using the left border - usually all the controls are jumping around. This was maybe acceptable in the last century, but now in the world of quad cores this is just ridiculous.

Answer 15

One of the biggest misconceptions is that people think a user interface can be designed by a single person. No matter how much you try to accommodate your users, you simply cannot foresee all situations, so it's important to test the usability of your product. Simply observing users interacting with your (prototype) product can reveal UI problems that you would have never thought of.

Answer 16

That dialog boxes are the best way to prompt a user for confirmation or input.

Special shout out to 99.999% of modal dialogs.

Answer 17

Using generic dialog box buttons (ie Yes / No ) instead of rephrasing what the buttons do (ie Save / Don't Save)

Even worse are applications which ask you a question requiring a Yes/No answer, and present you with OK/Cancel buttons.

---

Edit (from the comments below) :

Are you sure you want to cancel this process? [CANCEL] [OK]

Answer 18

Having a web site so crowded with banners and ads that you can hardly understand where the real content is. I like a clean design where visitors are respected and ads/banners are served in a way that minimally interferes with your browsing. Good examples are Google and Facebook (IMHO). Bad examples are everywhere...

Answer 19

User interfaces that consist of a list of 'things', each with a checkbox (e.g. to mark something for deletion) that don't provide a 'Select all' or 'Toggle button' at the top...

Roll on carpal tunnel syndrome.

Answer 20

Websites that provide a 'Search' ability for within their own site that doesn't work properly. When Google can search and provide better/more relevant results within your site than you can, there's something wrong (thinking of MSDN here).

Answer 21

Having sites where you have to register (Amazon, social networks, email providers, Stack Overflow...) that requires you to fill in way more information that is really required, and worst of all, they have a password policy that makes you go @#$@%@#!@#!@#!@@#!@. what on earth is wrong with a simple lenient password for my account? It's not the bank!!!! I just want to register to post in some forum....

Answer 22

It really annoys me websites that don't allow a link to be opened in a new tab

Answer 23

Not allowing white spaces into passwords, or limiting their length !

A custom English sentence is so much easier to remember and harder to guess than a single word password.

Regarding limiting the length of a password, I can't think of a good reason to do that since only hashed passwords (which are constant length) are physically stored ... or are they ?

Answer 24

Applications that attempt to cram so much UI into the main screen that you can't see what it's supposed to be presenting as it's main purpose.

Hello Lotus notes!

Answer 25

Don't change accelerators and basic UI (at least -- have a setting for backward compatibility).

Programs that change their interface, starring Office 2007 as worst (but not the only) example.

Being an MS Office power user in the past 10 years made me very fast and efficient.

But in each version I have to learn how to do the same things. Even worse, since every person got a different version installed, I have to remember all differences.

I don't want to accumulate useless bits of info, I want to use it.

More examples:

• In Windows, the control panel was in My computer, now it's not
• In Linux, every distribution got its own shortcut keys, file locations, interfaces
• Every Python IDE I've used has slightly different way of autocompletion
• The same Browser software in different language has different accelerator keys.

Answer 26

And another particular favourite - websites that don't double check their JavaScript, or that of their advertisers. Seeing as I have my machine set up to prompt me to debug JavaScript errors, this is particularly irritating...

Answer 27

Services that think they are applications and load at windows login. Even for users that didn't want them. And fill up the task bar.

Such as SKY and Channel4 Clients, Many virus checkers and spyware.

These should be loaded at system boot time and have an optional loadable UI.

Answer 28

Utilities that think they should look cool.

I do not need my VPN client to be skinnable and have animations.

It probably doesn't need any UI at all, apart from an on/off switch.

Answer 29

Progress bar that restarts from the beginning several times during a single operation, which immediately makes it useless. Microsoft Installer, I'm looking at you.

Answer 30

Applications with expressive 'skins'. Consumes memory and rarely provides better functionality. Requires getting familiar with the UI.

At least try to follow the OS' standard UI controls, including short cuts, keyboard use, copy/paste, Ctrl/Shift selection, hover/selection feedback, etc.

Good example: latest Windows Media Player. Bad example: previous Windows Media Players.

Answer 31

Stealing Focus

• Annoying update messages that pop up in the foreground and ask to be dismissed.

• Web pages that grab my cursor from halfway across the password box and stick it back into the username field.

• Web pages that grab my cursor from typing something in the URL field and stick it into the search box

• Minimized applications that decide they have something important to tell me.

Answer 32

Telling Me About Updates

• "DUDE!!! It's Java again! Great news! There's another incremental update for you to install! Wanna download it now??? (if not, I'll be sure to remind you again in a few minutes!)"

• "I know you probably started Firefox because you wanted to browse the web, but first, here are 6 obscure plugins that require your immediate attention. Oh, and we'll need to restart Firefox again before you can actually browse the web."

Answer 33

I really dislike "cool" Flash websites that don't give you the slightest idea how to navigate their site until you hover over some image/dot.

Yes, thanks guys - that's the phrase I was looking for: Mystery Meat Navigation - ugh!

Sorry, but Flash designers seem particularly shy of usability knowhow!

Answer 34

My favourite class of dialog:

"Are you sure you want to cancel this operation?"

                 "OK" "Cancel"

Answer 35

Hijacking Windows Startup

Look, Adobe. We all know that Acrobat takes 30 seconds to load before it can show us PDFs. It sucks, but we're fine with it.

What's not OK though, is trying to fool us into thinking your thing is fast by instead loading it every time I turn on my computer. It's still 30 seconds of my time you're taking up, but now you're taking it 4 times a day regardless of whether I use your thing.

Shame on you.

Answer 36

Windows that are small and have so much content that you have to scroll in them. While it's impossible to resize the window!

Many of the dialogs in Windows behave this way. Folder options for explorer as example.

Answer 37

Adding Tray Icons

It's great that you want to "Monitor" my QuickTime usage and all. I mean, you're right, it would be hard for me to determine on my own whether movies were playing or not. But really, couldn't you have asked me first whether this is high enough priority for me to require an icon in my tray 24/7?

If you plan to put useless garbage like this in my system tray, please ask first.

Answer 38

When the scroll wheel on your mouse is not supported and you have to rely back on old school scroll bars.

Answer 39

When you are typing a message in a text input and therefore you use your space bar. But suddenly a modal dialog pops up and takes your space bar keystroke as the default action for its dialog button. Causing unintended actions to perform.

Especially annoying if it's the restart dialog for Windows Update and automatically reboots your system and therefore you lose all your work, because the OS thought you intended so!

Answer 40

Assuming a linear workflow - A lot of web sites will remove any text from input fields when using the back button, especially forums. At that point, there's no way to recover the text.

Answer 41

HTML DIVs with a fixed size (in pixels) containing lots of text and no scroll bars. If you change the font size in the browser then some of the text will overflow and be hidden.

Answer 42

Buttons for sliders (scrolling, volume). Seriously, the iPod is the only device that gets this right at the moment - The click wheel combines speed and accuracy like no other device I've used.

Answer 43

Over-use of metaphors. For example, circular motion is simple with a single finger (iPod), but it's is pretty awkward with a mouse pointer. Just use a slider instead. Also, backgrounds that look like drawing boards or physical desktops usually have none of the desirable properties of the physical object (friction, elevation, containers, flexible lighting), but all of the drawbacks (distracting background, inflexible surface) and then some (limits screen usage, much smaller than the physical object).

Answer 44

The thing I find most annoying at the moment would be the add-on update feature in Firefox.

Of course, it doesn't start Firefox before starting the update process (thisI can understand), but I can't understand why, after updating:

1. it has to notify you that updating succeeded,
2. it keeps blocking Firefox until you click OK.

I just want to browse the web, I don't care about update processes, so please notify me only when unexpected things happen!

P.S. Unless I didn't search well enough and this behaviour is changeable, of course :)

Answer 45

Pixel-based designs. Screen resolution has changed drastically the last decade, and there's a wider range of resolutions in use now than ever before, from mobile phones to the latest gaming rig. Double scroll bars and tiny interface components are both annoying.

Answer 46

Unresponsive GUI thread

I hate it when the GUI thread freezes. "This application is not responding..."

Please, do your intensive calculation or I/O in another thread, and keep the UI responsive!

---

Some people scream at concurrent programming ("multithreading" in these strange days) and prefer unresponsive applications, fearing thread bugs.

But this is a false dichotomy - threading bugs are introduced by cretin threading models. Quoting Joe Armstrong, from The Role of Language Paradigms in Teaching Programming (.pdf):

... Unfortunately, concurrent programming has acquired a reputation of being "difficult" and something to be avoided if possible. I believe this is a side-effect of the problems of thread programming in conventional operating systems using languages like Java, C, or C++. In a concurrent language like Erlang, concurrent programming becomes "easy" and becomes the natural way of solving a large class of problems. ...

Answer 47

User interfaces that don't degrade nicely in the "Scrunch Test": that is, take the user interface, resize it as small or as large as possible and see what control layout really breaks.

It's amazing how many user interfaces just don't degrade nicely.

Answer 48

One thing that really annoys me.. A badly designed 'Options' window.

If you ever have to Google how to find a certain setting in an application's settings, the UI designer should be fired.. Visual Studio is a real pain for this, finding a certain option can take ages if you don't know where it is.

It can go too far the other way too, it can be even more irritating when an application gives you almost nothing to actually set.

Grrrr.

Answer 49

I think that the biggest misconception of many designers is the belief they are capable of creating an optimal UI without input from users.

Unless you are creating a UI that is minor variation on something that already exists (and is good) you'll need to involve users in some fashion, such as doing usability testing etc.

Answer 50

Websites that are overly concerned with promoting their own agenda at the expense of the user, i.e. too many popups, advertisements, etc. I especially hate sites that direct you to an advertisement and force you to look at it for x seconds. Further, they often make a token concession to the user by providing a tiny button somewhere that allows you to skip the advertisement ... if really want to help, make that button in a larger than 3 point font!

Answer 51

I really hate websites that are not cross-browser friendly or require you to use a specific browser for it to work. As a web developer I understand how painfully difficult this is but that's part of the challenge of being a web developer.

Answer 52

Answer 53

The thing that annoys and frustrates me the most:

• When the 'Ok' button is right next to the 'Cancel' button.

Please, these two buttons should always be far enough from each other that I can't mistakenly click 'Cancel' when I meant to 'Save'

The worst is when you try and close a word processor, and you get the following message:

Do you want to save the changes you made to xxxxxx?

[Yes] [No] [Cancel]

I hate it when I click 'No' instead of 'Yes'

Answer 54

Useless descriptions, or begging the question

I hate it when the name of some element in an application has the same value as its description, or something quite similar, e.g., a checkbox is called 'Special Whizbang' and its tooltip says only 'Toggle Special Whizbang'. This tells me nothing about what Special Whizbang is, why I might want it turned on, or why it is perhaps off by default.

Answer 55

Here is one that no one seemed to mention, which I've seen in many Windows programs. I am annoyed when I right-click on an option in a dialog box and see an option called "What's this?". Sometimes it gives some hint as to what the option does, but sometimes it gives the unhelpful message "No Help topic is associated with this item.".

Answer 56

Cancelling a browser load should NOT cause the page I'm currently on to blank. This is especially troublesome on the iPhone.

When I try to scroll down a page, sometimes it thinks I clicked on something. So, I immediately hit the Cancel button; which causes safari to clear the page. Lovely.

Answer 57

A big mistake is assuming that the design spec can be used to determine the frequency of use cases. This goes along with the oft-mentioned "You can't expect one person to get the design right without user feedback", but it specifically addresses the dilemma of flexibility vs. simplicity.

For example, do users need to be able to search records in a basic CRUD app? Do we assume that a simple text match will cover most cases and then provide a massive "Advanced Search" tab that provides custom matching for all fields? Do you include some of those advanced search options right along with the basic text box? It can be really surprising when users end up saying something like "Most of the time, we just need to narrow down by date or date and category. Narrowing down by phrases in the title or body might be helpful, too."

Sometimes I find it disappointing that I can't watch my users use my application, because often feature requests don't come in until after users have tried and fail to discover how to use an existing feature.

Answer 58

I find it irritating when programs swap the OK and Cancel buttons at the bottom of a window.

For app1 it's [OK] [Cancel]

For app2 it's [Cancel] [Ok]

I end up hitting the wrong button more often than not.

Answer 59

Meaningless help texts

Tooltip/help text like "Customer id: this is the id of the customer".

Answer 60

Not allowing the plus sign in email addresses.

Answer 61

Any application that looks/behaves radically different than the OS it is targeted for (this is usually a non-issue for the Macintosh folks).

Answer 62

That people read the text on modal dialog boxes.

Answer 63

I have a very simple approach nowadays. I give the site to my girlfriend and I tell her to have a go. She's not very Internet, or even computer, savvy. I basically just stand behind her and watch what she's doing.

I offer no advice and at times it's all I can do to just stand there and say nothing.

The upshot of the exercise is that I can see the holes in my design that I need to either plug or rewrite.

Answer 64

Text input fields that force the user to input the data the way the computer stores it, not allowing for the way humans conceptualize or see the data.

Enter your credit card number. NO SPACES OR DASHES!

It takes, what, one line of PHP/Python/ASP code to strip out all the non-digits?

Related: The English-centric view that every person has exactly one first name and one last name.

Answer 65

Running a maintenance task during system start-up.

I never re-start my computer unless I am already pissed off (it's a mac, it sleeps well). I certainly don't have time for disk scans, dialogue boxes, update dialogues etc.

If I re-start it twice in 5 minutes, that means I'm really really pissed off - do you think I welcome your application taking 30 seconds to do something I don't care about, and do it even if I remember to press shift (don't do normal startup maintenance)? What gives you the frakkin right?

Why don't you run them when you know I don't care, like just before automatic sleep, or at 4am in the morning?

Answer 66

Non-sizable dialog boxes. I can't stand trying to find a file in a dialog that is a few inches square and can not be re-sized. VSS has a lot of these.

Web pages that require me to re-enter data because some other entry validation failed (password, captcha).

Answer 67

Remote controls where the up, down, left and right arrows do not stand out from the other buttons and the button at the center of the arrows is not enter.

Answer 68

That people know the difference between an option and a preference.

Answer 69

When I was on Windows. Each time you install a new program it asks and prompts you to install their toolbar in Internet Explorer.

If I wanted their toolbar I would have added it myself. I hate browsers cluttered with crap they don't use. While I do have eBay companion on Firefox at least you can turn it off.

Answer 70

Restricting passwords to a MAXIMUM (not minimum!) length and to alphanumeric characters.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Answer 71

I cringe whenever I see an error message like this:

If you continue to experience difficulties with this application, please see your system administrator.

At that point I start shaking my fist at the computer and the unseen developer. "I am the system administrator and I have no <bleep>ing clue what's going on!"

Answer 72

JavaScript errors. Enough said.

Answer 73

Web sites that don't allow you to hit the back button.

Even worse, pop up a message with "Don't go!" as I'm about to leave your site.

Answer 74

Microsoft popup balloons (e.g. "Your system may be at risk"). Norton's worthless ads, installed by the manufacturer. Clippy. Worthless names for programs under KDE. How about an English translation of what your poorly named program actually does?

Answer 75

Any application that does not conserve the setting for load/saving files, and/or that does allow to define a default directory.

Answer 76

Inconsistency. Seriously, in the long run it doesn't matter if any meaningful operation takes eight mouse clicks or keystrokes. As long as these mouse clicks and key strokes follow a consistent pattern, a user will automatically memorise them.

One "feature" that egregiously violated this was Microsoft's idea of menus that would reorder themselves to show the most often-used ones at the top. It made it impossible to select "third menu from the left, first option" and know it was eg "Transflutinate Founts". You had to visually inspect the menu each time to make sure you selected the right option, breaking your concentration.

If you are serious about user interface design, I highly recommend Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface.

Answer 77

Nag screens telling the user when updates are available. Mac OS X handles this nicely by having a bobbing icon when updates are available - I wish applications like WinAmp and iTunes had a more subtle means of notifying me that updates are available instead of a pop up!.

Answer 78

Most users do not understand what the Apply button does. When users want to close a form that contains:

[  OK  ]  [Cancel]  [ Apply]

They always hit Apply, and then OK. Nobody seems to appreciate that:

• Apply: saves the stuff on the form
• OK: saves and closes the form

So, as a form designer: get rid of the Apply button. It only serves to confuse your users.

---

Unless: your software can actually react to Apply button, the user can see the effects, and hit Cancel if they don't like them. In which case Apply doesn't permananetly save changes, but is more of a preview. Since nobody writes code to handle this (not even me): take out the Apply button.

Answer 79

The tabs feature in Internet Explorer 8. It takes me a disgusting amount of time to figure out which tab is the active one. There should be clear differentiation between the active and unactive tabs.

Answer 80

Developers overestimating the skill set of their intended audience. I saw an accounting program at a business I once worked for that took the accountant a week to teach a qualified book-keeper how to use this specific program. While it wasn't really this hard. The program was very limited and not that easy to use.

Answer 81

That there should be only one way to do a given task.

It may take more design and testing effort, but having multiple UI paths for a single task:

1. Allows less-savvy users to operate without reading the manual while allowing power users to get work done efficiently

2. Provides alternatives when users can't figure out how to use a feature, or a feature breaks

Answer 82

My biggest gripe that hasn't been mentioned is the tiny-window infatuation many operating systems suffer from -- but Microsoft is definitely the worst.

For example, consider for instance most configuration screens under XP -- such as IE's internet settings / advanced tab. This window is small, contains a very long list, and is not resizable.

It is by no means the worst example, often people make the window unresizable and thinner than the table of data they present inside of it.

Don't make your windows unresizable if they contain a list. Don't make your windows small when they are important. (Sorry if that's two things).

Answer 83

Web pages that disable the browser's back button, because why would you ever need to see another site after visiting the ONE TRUE web-site with all the answers?

Answer 84

Using the standard dialog buttons from the MessageBox class instead of meaningful ones out of laziness.

What is your Gender?

Click Yes for Male, No for Female, Cancel for Unknown.

[Yes] [No] [Cancel]

Answer 85

I think the biggest is that a programmer EVER knows how to code a GUI. No single person really knows the best way to program every GUI.

A good GUI is a combination of a programmer who knows what can be done and a user who knows what they want to do. From there it's iterative.

I get really nervous when I hear someone say they are a "GUI Specialist" and can define some arbitrary GUI without additional input.

The best GUIs I've done have been in collaboration with either Customer Support or QA. Once they have taught me the entire process they go through, I can make it quite simple to do by thinking from their point of view.

I've even coded a GUI based on a manual. As the Support person described how the device worked to me, he kept referring to a group of abstract pictures in the manual. They had already spent a lot of time figuring out the best way to present the information, so I just took 10 near identical pictures and combined them into a single "Live" image that would mutate depending on options selected.

We got a contract to provide all the DSUs (like a modem for a T1 line) for Microsoft's MSN network because of that project.

Answer 86

Forcing the user to answer questions that they have no possible way of answering with any authority.

Saving Your Document...
Do you want to use Big-Endian byte ordering (Y/N)?
What Unicode variant do you want (UTF-8,UTF-16)

Adding Circle to drawing...
Use euclidean geometry to render the radical co-efficient?

Answer 87

Windows that don't close when you click the close button.

Yes, this even goes for you main windows out there. I don't care how tray-bound or utility-like your application is.

Answer 88

My biggest gripe is Websites and even some applications that completely ignore OS DPI settings. Sorry but that 8 pixel fixed font doesn't cut it on a 1920x1200 15" laptop screen.

The otherwise fine phpED program can't alter the size of menu and dialog fonts. What the ...? It seems whatever library/framework they've chosen has fixed that on OS DPI.

Even the otherwise good Chrome browser, which does have a Webpage zoom at least, can't set the default zoom level. You have to zoom on every page you open. It's annoying and stupid and the Web is full of threads complaining about it. It'd be so easy to fix too.

And no changing the default font size on a browser is not good enough. Most Websites can't handle that and if you're actually designing those pages you have to do it at default settings.

Answer 89

Opening a browser window after I uninstall a program.

"No, it was nothing personal, really - I just don't need this program anymore. If I don't want your program installed, I certainly don't want a browser window opened to load your web page asking me to fill in a survey."

Answer 90

Menus that only appear when you hover the mouse.

There's an increasingly common type of web interface where some of the actions only appear if you put your mouse in the right place and then they disappear if you don't keep your pointer within the walls of the element. It makes your UI into a test of hand-eye coordination.

Answer 91

Maybe it's just me, but I think checkboxes, OK/Cancel dialogs, or any other user yes/no type of thing should be phrased in the more affirmative way, if possible. Whenever I see "Suppress warnings about XYZ?" I think "No, I don't want to see warnings about XYZ," not "Yes, I would like to suppress those." I'd rather uncheck a "Show" box than check a "Hide" box.

Answer 92

One URL : Interface Hall of shame

Answer 93

Horizontal scrollbar

Answer 94

Every little application thinks it should be in the Quick launch bar and offers to infest it by default during installation. Same for the Desktop shortcuts.

Answer 95

When you press Shift+F10 or the Right Click Key on the keyboard it should make the application behave the same as if the mouse had been right clicked. Developers don't always set this up.

Answer 96

Not allowing users to use an email addresses as a username.

In a more general case, not allowing @s in usernames.

This leads to the unfortunate scenario of not only having to remember a suite of passwords, but to manage an equally large suite of usernames. Did I use jfrey or freyj or jeremyf to log into this site?

Answer 97

Password recovery / login services that ask you to supply answers to mutable questions, such as:

• "What is your favorite color?"
• "In what year was your car manufactured?"
• "What is your pet's name?"

As opposed to immutable questions, such as:

• "In what year did you graduate high school?"
• "In what city were you born?"
• "What was the name of your (graduating) high school mascot?"

Answer 98

An Google Reader example, where "shift-n" is a valid shortcut, but "N" is not. Such things.

Answer 99

Useless spinners, turned into simple animations

Applications that use spinners to entertain users while doing some time-demanding operation... but instead of updating the spinner only after each cycle of processing, so that the user know that something is happening, they turned spinners into simple, pretty useless animations.

Then, the time-demanding operation freezes for whatever reason, and you keep thinking that it is still processing, since the spinner is still spinning. To add insult to the injury, the application isn't smart enough to check that something is wrong, and interrupt/restart/do something about the hang.

This is so common that even Stack Overflow has this issue. Click to open the comments of a question or answer, and you see a spinner. If the server fails to respond, you just have a useless spinner on your screen that keeps giving you hope that the response will arrive, sometime... There is no timeout and no way for the user to cancel and restart the request (unless you reload the page).

Answer 100

Applications that allow too much configuration.

Options are great, they let you use the software the way you like. Problem is, a lot of software goes overboard with how much the user can customize it. This results in dozens of options that make minor interface changes in order to mimic every competing app, or just for show (e.g. colours or skins). Or allow you to choose 20 different orderings for a list, when alphabetical is more than adequate.

Or to get around bad design in the first place ("we shouldn't have done it this way; the new way is far better, but we'll add an option to use the old method in case users don't like it.")

I think this is mostly true of FOSS, where the path is something like:

• User 1: I love your application, but it would be even better with [minute feature A].
• User 2: No, horrible idea!
• Developer: OK, I'll make it an option.
• Everyone seems happy.
• Repeat ad nauseum until there are fifty million settings.

Answer 101

Popups, generally.

Answer 102

An annoyance with GIMP's slider bars:

• If you use the mouse scroll wheel on the slider, scrolling down makes the value go up (slider to the left) and vice-versa.
• If you use the wheel on the input box with the value number in, scrolling down makes the value go down (as expected).

Answer 103

Using special symbols to respresent keypresses without indicating to the user what the heck the symbol means. I'm particularly thinking of Mac shortcut keys. I've read through pages on which key the symbol corresponds to, but I end up having to guess most of the time.

Answer 104

Providing a way to do something with the mouse but not the keyboard.

This irks me about the Mac, too. You want to access your menubar from the keyboard? You have to press something like Command-Shift-F3 to turn keyboard access on, and then another keyboard chord to actually use the menu. Likewise, there are some things that can only be done via drag-and-drop with the mouse.

Answer 105

Requiring two hands to perform a simple operation.

In particular, why can't laptop makers put a second Fn key on the keyboard, on the right-hand side? When I'm holding a baby in the middle of the night and need to push the page-up key, I could do it with one hand, if one of the buttons wasn't clear across the keyboard!

Answer 106

Websites that use a background image or color, but do not define, and assume a black text color. This also includes text boxes and buttons on websites (and even some native applications). If you're a person who likes lighter colored text on a dark background, you have to install Firefox add-ons to fix the color of a lot of websites.

Answer 107

Forcing me as a user to check/uncheck a bunch of checkboxes/switches as the only configuration option.

I'd prefer the initial option to be more of a usage based thing, i.e.:

"Users using this application for this usually select these options."

Then I'd modify what I wanted inside those option sets.

Answer 108

Checkboxes that, when checked, do the negative thing. Examples of the wrong way to do checkboxes:

[ ] Hide details
[ ] Disable plug-ins
[ ] Don't check for updates

I especially hate dialogs that have mixed positive/negative checkbox selections. Checkboxes should indicate the affirmative when checked.

Answer 109

Uncancellable movies before game menus

In games sometimes when you have to watch short clips and screens of the developer, the publisher and each vendor who supplied some technology to the game until you get to the game menu.

That alone doesn't matter but it get's real annoying when long cancellable and short uncancellable views and/or separate loading screens alternate where you have to cancel each view separately.

That way you can't use the time to get a coffee, because the longer movies would still be playing when you come back and you can't just press escape several times because you have to sit throught the short ones and the loading screens.

Noteworthy exceptions are Doom 3 where you can already press the quickload key during the openings which immediately loads your game and Fallout 3 where the opening animations are actually a cover for some game initializations, which you can cancel as soon as the game is ready.

Answer 110

(Annoying) music and animations. Websites are the worst here: e.g. I'm looking to buy widgets. I know what a widget is, that's why I'm looking at your site. I do not need a Flash animation of a cutaway widget, with a cheezy soundtrack, all taking time to load - just tell me the models and prices of widgets you sell.

Answer 111

That looks and aesthetics don't matter.

Too many programmers think that as long as all the features are easily accessable and that all the controls make sense then everything is done. They don't care if things don't really line up, that the spacing between elements, sizes and fonts are inconsistent or that the colours are ugly and hard to look at.

Answer 112

Install wizards that don't tell you what they are going to install. OK, admittedly if I downloaded it on Monday and didn't bother to run it until Saturday, I should accept some of the blame, but honestly, if you run xyz_v3.exe, the installer should say something more informative than just "this will install xyz version 3 on your computer". I mean come on, tell me what XYZ is! Put a URL on that dialog! Something!

Answer 113

Animations and effects that can't be disabled. A lot of people like animations, but some don't. So just because the animation/effect settings of the latest version of Windows all default to ON, please don't hard-wire your application so that little notices come bubbling up from the screen edge, or dialogs fade in and out. (ahem reader) Please try to find out from the OS what the user preferences are in this area, or at least put some checkboxes on the preferences dialog?

Answer 114

Cargo cult

Sometimes applications immitate UIs of other applications without adding real value, just to make them look like the "big ones".

Typical examples:

• Ribbons where a simple menu or toolbar would suffice
• Quickstart buttons for long running execute-once-a-day applications
• Balloon messages with useless information
• Splash screens which obviously are there to show off an image and not to cover a long startup.

Especially for German programs:

• Adding a "Copyright (c)" statement. It was never necessary in Germany to do this, nor does a "copyright" exist in Germany. But every big US product has that notice, so...

Answer 115

That the installer knows better than I do where an application should go, without any option of changing it. My Program Files folder isn't on my C: drive... well, it wasn't supposed to be, anyway.

Answer 116

Automatic updates that aren't truly automatic, and more: Couldn’t agree more - automatic updates suck.

Answer 117

Disabling common interface and input paradigms, i.e. websites that turn off right click, or applications that use their own arcane shortcut scheme rather than control-C, V, Z like the rest of the world. If there's a good reason, i.e. vim seems to have pre-dated lot of that, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be updating to modern paradigms, particularly if this does not functionally change your program.

Answer 118

One thing that will drive users mad is when the order of fields on the data entry form does not match the natural order of entry (I saw one once where address was first before name) or the order the of the paper form they are doing data entry from. This is not only annoying, it generally causes massive data integrity problems as data is typed in the wrong place.

(On a side note, I notice that many of the answers on this question are things that would annoy programmers only but not users.)

Answer 119

Inconsistent "metaphor" usage.

Common examples are:

• Checkboxes that behave like radio buttons, where one and only one can be selected
• Scroll buttons rather than scroll bar
• Tabs that behave like command buttons, or command buttons that behave like tabs

Answer 120

Lack of thought when choosing a default value.

In applications where the same thing is done over and over again (ie. internal company applications), there should be thought put in to default values. If you have a default value for a select box / radio box, talk to the end users to find out which option -- if any -- will be correct the most often.

Answer 121

An often annoyance is that an application notifies of a potentially long running operation's success, which is in 99% of cases expected, with a focus-stealing modal message box.

Something in the lines of "Breaking news. Sun still sets on west (more or less)!".

Answer 122

Try some USABILITY!!

All the listed UI design failures in this question are due to failure to implement usability methods & context of use analysis.

The reason there are so many bad UI features mentioned just tells me that too many developers/designers know very little about or do not apply usability methods.

UI design is not usability. Usability guides/governs UI design along with many/all other aspects of the systems development. Remember, as much us developers think their system is so amazing, it is still just an interface between what the user wants/has to do & the results they require.

So my "UI" misconception: why do developers/designers need to be repeatedly be given justification for the importance of usability and usability engineering?

Every answer given here is your answer to that question. Now go read up on usability & become the answer.

Answer 123

Big thread so someone may have mentioned this, but I hate it when people don't use form labels correctly in HTML forms. You should be able to click the label for a check box to toggle it, but you can't if you just use some text next to it.

Some applications are like this too. You should always be able to click the label.

Answer 124

Although not specifically a design choice, putting random load times at inappropriate locations can lead to frustrations with using the GUI. In Visual Studio 2008 when I click on the "toolbar" side tab, it has to load the entire toolbox at that time. Leads me to think my application is frozen.

Answer 125

Inconsistent UI sections or relative screen locatons for common items such as for headers, hint areas, status messages, including positioning of common control such as Save, OK etc. They should ALWAYS be in the same relative location.

Answer 126

The 'Open, Save and Save As' model is the only way of accessing files

I'm frequently asked by not so computer literate friends: "How can I get all my work back, it seems to have gone?"

What's happened is that they've opened up a document, say "2008 financial accounts.spreadsheet", spent a few hours editing it to contain 2009 accounts, and then though, great, that's good. I'll save it. So, they press save. Then, later on they need some important information from their 2008 or 2009 accounts. Well, they can't find their 2009 accounts, because it's saved in a file called "2008 financial accounts.spreadsheet", and their 2008 accounts are lost because they've been overwritten.

There are a number of solutions:

• Computers have loads of hard disk space nowadays, so couldn't the OS keep old copies of the document?
• Get rid of save and save as. Files icons in the OS should be used more like real world files. This would get people into the correct mind-set. If they want to start editing a new version, they'd go to explorer and copy the file, and then open it to work on it. There would be no concept of save, because all changes would be automatically saved... just like when you start writing on a piece of paper (although, with computers we could still allow some undo). Also, there would be no open command, you'd open the file from explorer rather than from in the program that edits/views it.

I think the reason we ended up with the Open, Save and and Save As model for working is just for historical reasons. In older OS's that didn't have graphical user interfaces for manipulating files that were always available, they were seen as an OK solution to a technical problem.

Answer 127

When an application decides the language it will be installed as without asking the user.

Usually I have an English version of Windows but it makes sense for me to set up some regional settings to use Russian formats for currency etc. as well as default language for non-Unicode programs.

When I install Intel video drivers it reads one of the mentioned settings and decides that it should be installed with Russian UI and creates Russian menu items on desktop's context menu. It looks very inconsistent and ugly when you have menu items in different languages.

It is even worse when the application does not allow you to change its UI language or select one you want during install.

Answer 128

It's annoying when I can't check(/uncheck) checkboxes and radio-buttons by clicking on the corresponding text labels.

Answer 129

Uncancellable actions pretending to be cancelable

What an annoying "feature" of Eclipse and some other programs:
A long process is running in a separated thread. You see a Cancel button and a (senseless) progressbar. It takes long, too long.
You would like to cancel it.
You really would like to cancel it.
You WANT to cancel it.
YOU WANT TO MAKE IT STOP!!
YOU WANT TO SMACK UP THE KEYBOARD TO CANCEL.

But no, there's no response that would be a hint the program is stopping.

I really hate it. Eclipse is veeery good in this.

Answer 130

Menus/Control buttons crammed in so close that it requires effort to not hit the adjacent button, and perform some different action altogether

Answer 131

The use of the "Clear" "Reset" button for forms.

Have you accidentally clicked one of those?
Yes, I know, it's annoying.

You have to retype that sign-up form again.

Answer 132

Mandatory registration.

Why do I need to "log in" to read the New York Times? The BBC can manage without me filling out a form.

It is even worse for companies who want me to download their software. Mandatory, arbitrary, questions will make me look for your competitor's product.

Answer 133

Topmost splash screens, so that you can't multitask (i.e. go back to reading a document while a program takes a while to load, but hides your desktop with a big logo).

Answer 134

This will end your Windows session.

OMG, you don't seriously want to quit, do you?

Come on, really?

OK, fine, give me a few minutes to close.

Answer 135

Installing multiple applications as part of a product suite.

For example, why wouldn't Adobe provide one common environment from which you could launch their Photoshop, Illustrator or InDeisng editors. Why wouldn't Microsoft provide a common environment for launching Excel, Word, Power Point editors?

Answer 136

The most common UI misconception, by far, is that ease of learning and ease of use amount to the same thing. They don't.

A UI can score very well in one of these measures of goodness and lousy in the other.

Answer 137

Operating systems that haven't yet natively implemented tabbed file browsing in their file browser.

Answer 138

Unreadable color schemes.

It's more of an issue on the web, but I keep coming across websites where the designer decided that medium gray text on a light or white gray background looked "sophisticated". Sometimes the regular text is black but it's the link text that's medium gray, which makes it really hard to see what the links are labeled as.

That just makes me use a "zap colors" bookmarklet. If I visit the site more frequently, I set up a Stylish style.

Answer 139

• The use of a checkbox instead of button to confirm something (i.e. as soon as it's clicked a choice is made)
• Message boxes saying "please wait" and then an 'OK' button, AFTER which the application does what you were asked to wait for.
• Default usernames in fields like 'Username' which don't automatically clear or highlight when you click in the field. They make you delete the text first or accidentally log in as 'minibusernameluedragon'

Answer 140

When installing or updating software (especially having been prompted in the middle of the day with loads of apps open) You get the message that a reboot is required, however there is no option to delay this.

|--------------------------------------|
|     You must reboot your computer.   |
|                                      |
|              [   ok   ]              |
|--------------------------------------|

Answer 141

Opt-out instead of Opt-in

When installing many software, non-related features or completely separate software will be installed unless you opt-out by unchecking the option. Installing should be a one step thing or, at least, install only the featured software when answering yes to all the questions. Other features should be opt-in features only.

Answer 142

A common misconception is that users will automatically understand how to operate a UI if the logic behind the UI is internally consistent. For example, when one control determining whether another controls is disabled - sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. The internal logic doesn't always ensure that it does.

Answer 143

I really hate the UI which greets you using voice!

Sometimes it is even hard to find which window is produced the voice.

Answer 144

"Lotus Notes".

That is all!

Answer 145

Lack of support for Dual Monitor Setups

I have recently come across 2 separate applications (one which was SQL Developer and one custom piece that the place I'm currently working at uses) that do not work properly with a dual screen setup. I shouldn't be restricted as to which of my two screens I can display the application on, and I certainly shouldn't have to unplug my second monitor because otherwise the application doesn't display properly.

Answer 146

My answer speaks to a "higher" and more philosophical level.

The worst UI design mistake is made, in my opinion, when a UI design decision is made by someone who is not a trained, experienced, talented, informed, and sensitive UI design engineer.

When a product marketer makes a decision like: "we need a splash screen to increase branding impact", or when an accountant decides "we cant afford to pay what a real UI design engineer costs to design this product", or even the worst case (IMO), when a lawyer says; "we can't use that word on that button, because our competitor uses that word, and we'll be sued." - then what is really happening is, the UI design decisions are put in the hands of non-UI designers.

WORSE - the actual design, test, and build tools are not in the hands of those people.

Good engineering happens; in any discipline, when the engineer carefully follows established practices, documents his or her work, performs testing, gathers performance metrics (and in this case, we mean, ACTUAL USABILITY TESTING; and no, you probably cant afford to do it - ), and that information is allowed to flow back into the actual design of the product.

If that were allowed to actually happen, of course, cell phones would cost $1000, not $50.

In some ways, we, the cheap-ass customer, are the worst UI-designers of all.

Answer 147

Dialog boxes with errors where the error message is too long for the dialog box. That way you get an error that you can't read. Often the dialog box will not allow cut and paste. That way it is impossible to read it at all (I am thinking of Windows 7 right now!).

Dialog boxes without scroll bars and no way to realize them.

Answer 148

"Thank you for calling X. We have a new offer of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ... 2 min later... press 1 for..."

specially annoying when you are abroad and those two minutes of calling are money

Answer 149

Strongly session-based websites

HTTP is an inherently stateless protocol. Session is useful for some things (e.g. user credentials) but some sites store nearly everything in the session state which makes for a poor experience:

• User's browsing path is highly controlled
• Often forces user into starting page 'gateway' to establish session
• Difficult or impossible to bookmark pages
• Usually breaks forward/backwards buttons
• Doesn't allow working in multiple windows, as they interfere with each other through session state
• "Your session has expired" (user must start over from the beginning)

Answer 150

From a *nix point of view, the biggest sin is to create a program that is not inherently graphic and give it only a GUI. A GUI program casts off the panoply of *nix CLI tools and cannot be automated by any ordinary means.

Programs like Photoshop/GIMP are inherently graphic and get a pass, although ImageMagick shows that even graphical things can be done by command-line tools.

Answer 151

Re-using progress bars

I know that getting progress bars to be accurate is hard, and for one-shot operations on an unknown PC it's basically impossible -- this isn't about that.

The problem is when some program needs to do 17 different things (or some unknown-to-the-user number of things), and it shows each one with the same progress bar. So the bar is going across, gets done, resets to 0, and goes across again, gets done, resets to 0 again ... what possible use is this to anybody? The very best examples of this use about 50 progress bars, each of which takes 0.3 seconds to fill. Windows installers are prime examples of this, but I've seen it elsewhere.

If you can estimate progress, great, use one progress bar. If you have no idea how many operations something is going to take, then OK, just show a spinner or "indeterminate progress bar" instead. It's not that hard.

Answer 152

Websites that automatically play music or video

I've occasionally been listening to music and opened several dozen tabs in Firefox, and then a song starts playing in one of them. Which one? I don't know. I have to go through my open tabs one at a time until I can find which one is open so I can turn off the sound.

If you are going to have your website automatically play sound or a video:

1. There should be a way to disable auto-play for all videos, globally across the website. Thank you, MLB.com, for a good example of this.

2. There needs to be a mute button.

3. There needs to be a volume slider, because sometimes the sounds are too loud. Some people use headphones, and they should not have to have our machine's volume control window open at the same time as your website.

Better yet, don't even play the sound or videos unless the uses asks for it. And make sure the audio-visual effects on the website serve a purpose before putting them there.

Acknowledgements: MySpace page designs that allow several songs or videos to start playing in the same page at the same time.

Answer 153

Not allowing multi-select on search criteria that very logically fit together in groups

For example, if I am looking at job postings by location on one of the large job boards, I should be able to multi-select all of the specific locations that I want. I should not have to add every location separately using Country, State, and City drop-downs. And the worst interfaces are the ones where I can only search by one city at a time (resulting in multiple queries that are more demanding on the database, or the user just giving up) or have to include the whole state.

Similarly, there should be enough separate criteria on one of these interfaces to give the user what they want. If a user lives in Montana, it would be inappropriate to give them search results that are hundreds of miles away just because the state has a lower population than many other states and was divided into 2 or 3 very large regions. And if the user lives in New York City, it wouldn't be helpful to do a radius search that returned places that take several hours or more to get to in traffic. For reasons like these, I like being able to customize - very specifically - which places constitute acceptable commutes. And it's very helpful when I can select all of those easily in one go, using a control that is big enough to not require an obnoxious amount of scrolling.

Answer 154

Dialog boxes that block progress during long procedures.

Ever started something long, walked away, came back an hour later, and found it was stuck one minute from startup asking you something?

A dialog box at the very end works well. One immediately at the start can work, but I do mean immediately. If I'm in a hurry and click on starting something, I can't necessarily wait five seconds to see if any dialog boxes start up.

So, anything that will take a while should ideally check potential problems before the go button is hit, or at worst bring up dialogs immediately. Whatever it does should not include popping up a dialog requiring a response to continue during the process.

One example is syncing my iPhone on my Mac Mini. It likes to put up little dialog boxes like "Are you sure you want to modify more than 5% of your contacts/calendar items?" midway during the sync. (Note that, until you have over 20 contacts and calendar items, you will hit this with any single change. Note also that I've got two and a half years of calendar items in my phone now, so 5% of them is a much larger change that I'd expect to do, but this isn't related to my main point.)

Answer 155

Websites forgetting my search results when I click the Back button

... even when they don't let me use my browser's Back button and I click on theirs. I have to resubmit my search query and click through the results until I find the last one that I clicked on.

Related, and just as bad: Websites that allow me to order search results by specific criteria and then display them in a different or random order after I click Back.

Answer 156

One of my faves is the dialog in SQL Server Management Studio, the one that pops up to tell you that you just pressed the cancel button on another dialog ("User cancelled out of save dialog"). Really? Is that what I clicked? Tell you what, why don't you pop up some more so I'm really sure of what I just did...

There are two UI and usability principles I adhere to: That the user's mottos are "don't waste my time" and "don't make me think".

Answer 157

One thing that annoys me - and is the cause of many of the annoyances you'll see on this page - are organisations that think they can figure out out how their customers will use their product without actually getting their customers to use their product!

I'm amazed at the number of companies who still don't invest in quick, cheap guerilla usability testing. Spending half a day and getting a little feedback would save them a barrel full of pain later on.

Answer 158

My Top 10 Myths, Misconceptions and Actual Quotes I’ve Run Into Over The Years:

1. UI design is the graphics or aesthetic display of the interface.
2. All users read left to right so everything important should be on the left.
3. Everything in the application or website should be no more than 3 clicks ways.
4. Scrolling is bad.
5. The design should always fill the screen – at any resolution.
6. Drop down menus are bad.
7. Links within the content are bad.
8. Everyone knows the company logo always links home.
9. All web pages must be less than (a specific file size).
10. Users will not wait more than 5 seconds for a page to load.

Read more on my blog at: http://ux.fusionapps.com/2010/09/15/usability-myths-and-misconceptions/

Answer 159

It's a web app that looks and behaves like a desktop app! Right down to being a resource hog, breaking related processes into unnecessarily separate "windows," requiring a manual to use, and being slow as hell!

Answer 160

Requiring credit card numbers to be entered without spaces or dashes, e.g.

 1111113111313133

instead of

 1111-1131-1131-3133

(hint to site devs: can you say replace(/[- ]/g,'') ?)

Answer 161

Giving no indication of what rules are enforced for your password.

If you remind me it had to be at least eight characters with two numbers I'll know which one I used. If not, I'll have to use all the possible ones it could be until I finally get it right.

Answer 162

Providing a 'Reset' or 'Clear Form' button on your web form. These button's cause significantly more harm than good and their effect can be devastating to the user. When's the last time you filled out a 25 question form and decided to start over?

To make matters worse, web developers usually design these reset buttons to look strikingly similar to their submit button counterpart and will even position the two dangerously close.

Answer 163

Websites that doesn't allow to open a right click or even worse that doesnt allow to open a new tab in firefox with CTRL + T.

Answer 164

Google Instant Search

There is nothing more annoying then seeing results as I type. My usual query takes about ~2-3 seconds to compose, and 99.99999% of the time I know what I'm searching for.

Thank god you can turn it off.

Answer 165

Applications that keep asking stupid questions (to allow users to choose an alternative workflow that probably nobody has ever actually needed, wanted, or used).

Me: Copy these files over here
Windows: How about this one?
Me: Yes, copy them ALL
Windows: How about this one?
Me: Yes, copy them ALL
Windows: How about this one?
Me: Yes, copy them ALL
Windows: How about this one?
Me: Yes, copy them ALL
Windows: Sorry, I can't copy the 5th file, so you'll have to work out what you wanted to copy, work out which one I failed on, remove it from the selection, and then start the process all over again.

Arrrrrgh!

I've clicked "ALL". All means everything, which incidentally was heavily implied by my original request to copy the files I selected. JUST DO IT! Now I have to wait an hour for the copy to complete when I had hoped it would finish while I was away at lunch.

Answer 166

Hidden User Interface.

Whats wrong with a button looking like a button and inviting you to press it?

• I have a TomTom sat-nav system. It shows a map and some information on its touchscreen. How do you change the volume? Well, you tap on the bottom left corner of the screen of course. There is no indication that there is a hotspot there, and certainly nothing to suggest that the area relates to volume. And if you inadvertently tap there, you have to change the volume to make the UI go away again.

• Those awful point-and-click adventure games which consist of waving the mouse all over the screen to see if you can find a hotspot to advance the game. This technique now seems to be favoured by many websites, too.

• Even Microsoft (in Vista/Win7) has started using areas of text that only highlight and admit themselves to be clickable buttons if you hover the mouse over them. It took them 20 years to get around to reading the Apple UI design guide and start to understand the basics, and then in the very next OS release they throw away everything they learned. Gah!

It's great to hide "secondary" or "advanced" user interface (like a hotkey to save you using a menu item, or drag and drop to save havign to copy & paste), but hiding everything so you can't see how to use the device??!

Answer 167

having the minimize / restore down / close button (upper-right corner) not aligned with every other normal application.

example... i have a lot of windows open, minimizing a bunch in succession, I get to Chrome - oops... I just made the window smaller... annoying