RM: Bug me not
This is unbelievable...although I'm sure you know all about it. But now in OSX, when you save a file, you only have the Apple-approved 9 locations. So if you want to save to a folder that's sitting on your desktop...or any other specific location--well, you're SOL!! What an incredible leap backwards in usability!Just to be sure, I called Apple's tech support...the guy I talked to understood, and logged me for a callback. But really now, WTF?!!
<- snipped ->
Jedd
My inbox has been amusing lately. Right now it's full of bugs, but on the rare occasion it's something like the above, which isn't a bug, but still ends up confusing users for some reason. In Jed's case, he's saving a file, and sees something like this...
You can see the field to name the file, and then the "Where:" drop-down menu, which contains a list of default directories, like the Desktop and Documents folders as well as ones you've recently accessed. You'll also notice that little blue triangle deally by the "Save As:" field, which when clicked gives you something like...
I know, I know, remedial stuff, and normally I'd chock this up to a designer who was using OS9 fleeing New Orleans and being forcibly upgraded to 10.4.2 and finding themselves dazed and confused, but a few things stuck out at me in this message.
- Jedd isn't the first time I've seen a user get confused by this, not by a longshot -- in fact many "casual" users seem to get tripped up by it. My brain is too well lubricated to really dig into this, but my guess would be it has to do with:
- The placement of the clicky-triangle thingy throws people off. Proximity creates groupings, and since its next to the file name, they're not cluing in that it has to do with where they can save the file but rather associating it with the file name, not seeing how it applies, and blurring it from their vision as eye candy.
- There are two distinct types of users: Those who go in and click everything to see where it takes them and what it does, and those who are afraid of clicking anything at all for fear of getting into something they won't understand or screwing up what they'd set out to do. In the first case, the user will have clicked the triangle and seen that they'll get a larger panel, but the latter group may never even know it exists.
- I fear the fact that tech support didn't catch this in 2 seconds, as passing this off to someone higher up who has to then call back (And who will hopefully at least get a laugh from it) seems pretty wasteful.
I could rant for ages on the Save dialogs (Which are better than they were, but... gyar) and tech support in general, but it's not really fair to single Apple out much when it comes to tech support. Once a company reaches a certain size, it just makes financial sense to string out support fodder with a list of things on a sheet to check off, and then kick up whatever they don't understand to someone with a clue.
When I'm King of the World, all upper management of any company over a certain size will get around via Jet Blue until everyone on the front lines of support could recode a new Save dialog if it came down to it. Of course, the easiest way to turn someone into a jaded alcoholic primed to go postal is to heavily train them and then throw them into the front lines of support -- it's pretty brutal as there really are people who don't get current computers at all yet buy them -- so I'd have that on my conscience and it's probably neither realistic nor a good idea, but neither is making me KotW.
Oh, and since we're in KotW mode: Vegans would be deported to a colony somewhere. They and the Atkins and South Beach people are all screwing up the restaurant menus, but the vegans are the worst -- vegans and Normals just can't date successfully.
You can't even eat out together without one of them being disappointed at the offerings -- Always fun to hear that resigned "Um, I'll have the steamed vegetables." It would be tolerable if they recognized they were total freaks, as I actually kinda dig total freaks, but instead they think they're cool, and everyone knows cool girls swallow.
Posted by drunkenbatmanOctober 09, 2005, at 03:43 AM
Comments (38)
Posted by: Uli Kusterer at October 9, 2005 04:14 AM
Do you read Matthew Thomas' usability articles? Ages ago he wrote a piece on crufty user interfaces, and effectively postulated that we should simply get rid of open panels. I agree. Just offer a standardized "file drop location", and fix the Finder, and you don't need open panels anymore. Save panels can be solved similarly.
Oh, and was it an African or a European swallow?
Posted by: Carl at October 9, 2005 04:51 AM
I second the elimination of "Open" panels… …just as soon as the Finder stops sucking.
Seriously, it's a good goal, and I'd like to see it implemented. I just don't want to rush to get rid of open boxes before the Finder is reformed.
Posted by: John Evans at October 9, 2005 06:26 AM
If they just added an entry to the "common places" drop down that said somthing like "else where..." or "Choose a specific location" that then made the dialogue grow it would fix it just fine.
I dont quite get the argument against open dialogues btw, I use a combination of drag and drop, quicksilver, open recent and just plain open. But its differnt strokes for differnt folks, and some people dont realise you can drag and drop anything!
Posted by: Richard Fairhurst at October 9, 2005 07:04 AM
IMX it's generally dyed-in-the-wool Windows folk who don't get drag-and-drop. Whenever I do something simple like (say) drag an image from a web browser into TextEdit, they double-take and say "You can do that?".
Posted by: Skorp at October 9, 2005 07:57 AM
Loved the Vegan Bug. They should be re-coded from scratch.
Posted by: simplisticton at October 9, 2005 08:04 AM
The GNOME interface neatly gets around this problem. It has the same type of two-state Save dialog, but instead of a confusing and ultimately incorrect use of a drop-down triangle beside the file name, there's a right-facing triangle with the text "Browse for more folders" beside it. When you click on the right-facing triangle, it turns into a down-facing triangle and the standard save dialog items expand into view.
Posted by: Edmund at October 9, 2005 08:43 AM
Also, one of Apple's Neat Things That They Hide is that if you enter either ~ or /, a small panel will appear that lets you enter an arbitrary path.
Posted by: ducboy59 at October 9, 2005 08:57 AM
"My" drop-down menu contains all the items also in my sidebar, and that is quite a lot and handy.
Once clicked on the blue triangle, the application remembers this. I find this also a nice touch.
Posted by: Sören Kuklau at October 9, 2005 09:01 AM
Uli:
Actually, Thomas's (where the hell is he these days? ;-P ) point was that the Finder should be responsible for picking locations for opening and saving, not that there should be a default location to drop files off to. The only reason, he argues, that we have open/save panels is the lack of proper multitasking before System 7: only the frontmost app could actually be actively used, thus, it had to provide means to pick a file on its own. With a multitasking-capable system, on the other hand, the Finder is much more suited for the purpose of picking files (it naturally is currently unsuited to /save/ files, but then again, Thomas argues that we have so much disk space and resources these days that modern applications shouldn't require you to manually save anyways).
Posted by: Kevin Ballard at October 9, 2005 10:05 AM
Edmund - that also happens if you type cmd-shift-G (the Finder's menuitem for Go To Folder...). I never knew that typing ~ or / would bring it up as well, though. Interesting...
Posted by: Squozen at October 9, 2005 10:11 AM
Weird how meat eaters seem to have more problems with me than I do with them... :P
Posted by: Jon R. at October 9, 2005 10:23 AM
You know you're just ripping on vegans because you have ex-girlfriend issues. :-P
Not that I'm any Windows fan, but the default Save Dialog in WinXP looks not-at-all-unlike the second dialog pictured (open panel), without the first one.
Posted by: at October 9, 2005 10:24 AM
I don't know if it's an anti-vegan rant or joke, but it sucks anyway.
I'm not a vegan, btw.
Posted by: Evil twin at October 9, 2005 10:50 AM
You vegans would be more tolerable if you didn't suffocate everybody with your airs of I'm-so-much-better-than-you. No, you're not, you're actually quite lame, and thus you need to make up for it by inventing yourself a better image.
Posted by: G at October 9, 2005 10:51 AM
Same goes for evangelicals.
Posted by: Drunken Submariner at October 9, 2005 11:00 AM
I have to admit that this confused the hell out of me when I first started using OS X.
It seems like replacing the triangle with a folder or disk icon would solve the problem. What the hell is the affordance of a triangle in this context? What where the UI designers thinking? Adding a "Elsewhere" item to the dropdown, as John Evans suggests, would also be good. Why not both?
Posted by: Jacob at October 9, 2005 01:16 PM
I think they should just ditch the "small" version altogether. Every windows user who I've ever watched use OS X couldn't figure this one out. Of course, after a few weeks or months most eventually "get it", but the save dialog doesn't take up so much extra space when expanded, and the small version really does confuse people.
Posted by: Pontus Ilbring at October 9, 2005 01:25 PM
It seems like replacing the triangle with a folder or disk icon would solve the problem. What the hell is the affordance of a triangle in this context? What where the UI designers thinking?
It is called a disclosure triangle and is a standard UI element, and something people just have to learn to recognize. Kind of like the fact that pressing the return key will have the same effect as clicking the currently pulsing button. It is better to have one UI element, the disclosure triangle, that acts the same in all applications, that is, reveals advanced settings, instead of making up a new element for each of them.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how helpful it is to hide the folder hierarchy in save dialogs in the first place. People will be exposed to it in open dialogs anyway, and having the twin dialogs look that different is probably even more confusing to the novice user.
Posted by: Chris at October 9, 2005 01:43 PM
No self respecting developer type would sit as the filter on a help desk unless they were in a bad spot db ;) What you propose would be the end of software that was as good as we have it now.
Posted by: Stripes at October 9, 2005 02:09 PM
No self respecting developer type would sit as the filter on a help desk unless they were in a bad spot db ;) What you propose would be the end of software that was as good as we have it now.
About 20 years ago I worked for a company that had QA and phone support in the same department. The QA team is responsible for finding bugs in pre-release software and verifying fixes. The company had a policy of moving a lot of it's QA people onto the phones after a new release. This had some real advantages, for one the QA people had used the new release. Another more subtle one is the QA people knowing they would be on the phone for a while had a real incentive to make sure there were few bugs that people would run into, that would upset people, or would just plan confuse them.
I left that job when I left high school, but have always remembered how well that worked.
Posted by: Kay at October 9, 2005 02:14 PM
Ever noticed that you cannot add folders to your sidebar in
open/save panels?
This always makes me look like an idiot when I try to explain
things to my girlfriend:
Me: "Yeah, you can put things in your sidebar, that thing here on the left, to go to that folder quickly."
Her: "But, it doesn't work..."
Me: "Yeah, you know it really should, but...ahem...they're just a bunch of idiots, really..."
Her: "So you say it doesn't work?"
Me: "No, not here...but in the Finder it does..."
Her: "So it's pretty useless..."
Me: "Well, not as *such*...but anyway...look.."
And so it goes. IMHO it's really the little things that spoil user
interfaces...
Posted by: Muriac at October 9, 2005 04:48 PM
No, here's fucking what: the disclosure triangle should be on the goddamn line where the thing it discloses appears.
Posted by: Wes McGee at October 9, 2005 05:09 PM
...but then again, Thomas argues that we have so much disk space and resources these days that modern applications shouldn't require you to manually save anyways).
And this is where I typically disagree with MPT (last seen here) --not to imply that you were endorsing his opinion, Sören Kuklau. High technology has a remarkable ability to consume without bound space, memory and speed that we would have thought was abundant.
Anyway, I do not want iPhoto or Photoshop committing to disk every change I make to an image, because most of those changes I make in the course of working on a picture wrecks it. And his solution -- infinite undo -- would simply balloon a 20 MB image into something like a 2GB monstrosity. And because of that, we'd need some sort of Export/Save mechanism to create small, presentation only images without the infinite version history. And think of the hell we'd bring if I replaced all of the above with HD video (Wasn't this supposed to be the year of high-definition?)
Digital info will consume the universe.
Posted by: Colin Barrett at October 9, 2005 05:18 PM
Making developers/QA responsible for some of the support tasks is actually a good idea, as Stripes said above. It's worked pretty well on Adium. We get a good feel for what actually confuses people and what people just like to whine about when they don't know any better ;) "The user is always right?" Pfahh! If they knew what they wanted, they'd be a developer ;)
Posted by: foresmac at October 9, 2005 06:29 PM
I used to be vegan... for something like 3 or 4 years. Goddamn you, parmesan cheese! If it wasn't for you I could sit around pretending to be better than everyone else. Or I could just sit around and be an asshole and tell everyone they are an asshole for not thinking like me. Yeah, that's what I should do (Evil twin I'm looking at you).
BTW, db, try the Chicago Diner sometime. Or Soul Vegetarian East. Both vegan, and my meat-eating girlfriend loved both of them.
Posted by: sjk at October 10, 2005 04:17 AM
Anyone finding it useful to select a Smart Folder in open/save dialogs?
Posted by: Chris at October 10, 2005 03:34 PM
Wow - that's one of the weirder posts you've made, well done!
Regarding the UI issues of the dialog, the user quoted is correct: it's ass. Moving that trianlge down beside the "Where:" field would give it some context and changing the icon to a folder or something not an obtuse arrow would help.
As for what the cool girls do... yay for the cool girls!
Posted by: Peter da Silva at October 10, 2005 03:57 PM
"It is called a disclosure triangle and is a standard UI element, and something people just have to learn to recognize."
No, what you see in that dialog is *NOT* a standard disclosure triangle, it's something some crack-addled engineer at Apple came up with because they hated Apple's customers.
Open up a finder window on a folder containing subfolders. Select the list view. See the little *sideways* pointing triangle next to the folder, indicating you can click on it and open it up... whereupon it rotates 90 degrees and points down. Sideways, closed. Down, open. That's how disclosure triangles work.
Apple started using these new buttons that point down when they're closed and up when they're open. It really threw me, because when you're used to standard disclosure triangles it looks like they are ALREADY OPEN. I still get caught by this, thinking I've already got everything on some window open, because I haven't fully internalised the new "Right-or-down-with-blue-jelly-around-it closed, Down-or-up-with-blue-jelly-around-it opened" standard, which is SO much more obvious and clear than the old one.
Posted by: Gareth Potter at October 10, 2005 04:25 PM
As a seasoned user of a few years now, I can confess that it took me about 4 or 5 months to work out how to make the fucking open and save dialogue boxes "expand" in to the full size thing we all know and...er...love. It's hideously unintuitive (like you say, probably something to do with the precise positioning of the down arrow) and something oddly poor for a company which so prides itself on usability.
Posted by: Gareth Potter at October 10, 2005 04:33 PM
...and, er, sad as I am, I can't help noting that you ranted about vegans before.
A sore point, perhaps...? :P
Posted by: aaron at October 10, 2005 05:11 PM
I firmly believe that DB's issues with vegans are merely a displacement of his issues with ham
Posted by: Ed Finkler at October 10, 2005 07:33 PM
BEST POST ENDING EVAR
Posted by: Jay Laney at October 11, 2005 12:48 PM
... vegans and Normals just can't date successfully.
What about Vegans and Siracusas?
Posted by: gizo at October 11, 2005 10:51 PM
you talk about vegans like Windows users talk about Mac users.
Posted by: Peter da Silva at October 12, 2005 04:41 PM
I just want the NeXT file manager back. I don't care if Finder has to be microsurgically removed with a cricket bat and red hot tweezers first, I'm sick of having to live in the Carbonics Netherhell.
Come on, Steve, OS 9 is dead, let it go...
Posted by: just a joke at October 14, 2005 05:57 PM
ObJoke:
How do you know someone is Vegan?
They tell you.
Posted by: Ciphex at October 25, 2005 02:03 AM
They say stress shortens your life...
I have enough stress choosing what I want to eat without a menu less animals getting in my way.
So I wonder... do vegans gain more years for health (or moral purity) than they lose from the stress of such a lackluster and frustrating lifestyle?
I love me some cow... cured on the couch or the rack.
Medium rare, warm pink center, and don't talk while I'm workin on it.
"It would be tolerable if they recognized they were total freaks, as I actually kinda dig total freaks, but instead they think they're cool, and everyone knows cool girls swallow."
(covering mouth) Wow. I don't know how you started with save dialogs and ended with that, but the defintion of a vegan says: "A vegan is a person who avoids the ingestion or use of animal products. An animal product in this context refers to the body parts of an animal, or any substance derived from an animal without that animal's informed consent. "
I never understood the formal consent clause because I don't know how a Cow can say you can milk it, but now it makes sense. :-) I know you were joking, but you should put a smiley by the sentence...