Is "user-select: none" bad UX?
I was having a discussion today with a colleague. I showed her “user-select: none” – a CSS property that stops a user from selecting text.
To me, this property allowed a more app-like experience to be created on a page – ens…
Why is Windows registry so unfriendly?
Why does the Windows registry seem so opaque? I thought a good practice in CS was to give explicit names to variables and constants, but the registry has mysterious names and values.
For example, I tried to change the way w…
What’s the best way to display hierarchical tabular data (parent/child relationship) while allowing both pagination and search?
I’ve run into a brick wall while trying to come up with a suitable tabular user interface for showing hierarchical data in a table while at the same time including a search interface and pagination.
The basic structure of th…
In Google Maps, why did Google use back arrow icon instead of "X" close for search results list when its clearly a layer on top of the main interface?
I’ve been getting into Material design lately, and I really liked one of the material concepts, and thats to think of the UI in X,Y,Z axis. But noticed a discrepancy with what might be extremely trivial but its confusing me r…
Do Users Take Product Tours?
Product tours have become very popular in recent times. It’s also used here on StackExchange. I personally mostly skip the ‘Take a 2 min Tour’ notifications or link.
So I’m wondering; based on research/ statistics anyone kno…
Why does the fridge thermostat have an inverted scale?
In all fridges that I’ve ever encountered which had a manual thermostat, the scale on the thermostat was a scale of “inverse temperature”:
- 1 means keep the fridge hotter
- 5 means keep the fridge colder
Why is it like that?
Note that on the manual the producer “cheats”, specifying it’s a scale of power (5 => more power => colder), but of course the actual knob controls a thermostat.
(Of course, modern fridges don’t have a knob any more and they just set themselves to 3-4°C.)
Should I use a single or double space after a period?
In a paragraph of multiple sentences, should there be one or two spaces after each sentence’s period for readability?
The paragraph is typed in Arial font. It is size 11 font. The monitor it is being viewed on is Ultra 4k HD…
Should I use a single or double space after a period?
In a paragraph of multiple sentences, should there be one or two spaces after each sentence’s period for readability?
The paragraph is typed in Arial font. It is size 11 font. The monitor it is being viewed on is Ultra 4k HD…
What are the disadvantages of Material Design?
I’m generally a fan of Google’s Material Design UX framework. Its positive aspects have been well-covered by the press and Google’s own design group and evangelists.
But, the disadvantages of the system are much less docume…
In-content tabs and nesting
My intention is to present installation instructions for a software to the user. The document has 3 versions, the second of which has 5 sub-versions:
- Binary installation (default for windows and OSX, possible only there)
-
Source installation (default for linux, possible everywhere)
- Ubuntu/Debian
- Arch
- …
-
Development installation (possible everywhere)
And I want it so that only one consistent and relevant version of the document document is seen (and can be linked to) at once, e.g. “Binary installation” or “Source installation for Arch”
Here is what I have now (It’s cropped so ignore the wonky purple header,a nd i already fixed the indentation in the second code sample):
I like it except that (a) I should switch the long-form description (“Installing from source (…)”) to text instead of a header, and (b) it’s not clear that switching between the binary/source/development tabs replaces everything until “Running the notebook”.
Questions:
- Is there better UX that more clearly shows that you can switch out the whole “Installation” section? Putting a frame/shadow around it (like in the nested tab area) would fix it but look bad imho.
- I don’t think that nested tabs in general are a bad idea, but some people seen to think so. I think this is a valid use case for them, except for the shortcoming mentioned in the first question. Do you agree?