Ask Lemmy

single page apps. I fucking HATE all these apps that straight refuse to allow you to open multiple tabs.

the links are JS action hooked to redirect you instead of just linking you to the page.

it's fucking bullshit.

also, fuck webp.

Some apps will have the search icon at the bottom of the screen. Then the search bar pops up at the top. Then you tap that for the keyboard to come up at the bottom. I think a search button should automatically pop up a keyboard.

Chrome peaked when it was all angular. Why does everything have to all rounded now?

Overriding browser functionality because of designer preferences or shitty implementation of tracking or whatever.

Don't fuck with my scrolling.

Don't fuck with my ctrl clicking to open links in a new tab.

Don't capture window keyboard events unless you have a really excellent reason to and even then think about it really hard and decide not to.

And learn how to support basic keyboard navigation, damn it. It's just about marking up your html properly, no scripting required.

I think all of these opinions are popular on the user side.

Since this thread is really about complaining about UI, I'll add that when the developer arbitrarily limits input ranges because "Why would anyone what that?"

I've come across this several times, but the one instance that pops to mind is a desktop background changer being limited to no less than one minute between changes. I wanted to use it to show a stop-motion animation slide show and set it to one second, not the intended use, but still viable IF I could set the rate to one second. I wrote the developer, and they admitted it could be allowed, but "Why would anyone want it to be that fast?" I get that there are technical reasons why this might not be ideal, and maybe it would somehow tax the system for "just a background changer", etc. But, assuming a value wouldn't crash the application, or somehow physically destroy the computer, I think the input should be allowed. If prudent, put some warning about the less-than-catastrophic consequences, and let the user confirm before continuing.

Any button that's grayed out should say why it's grayed out when you hover the cursor over it, or attempt to tap it.

Don't put the Recompute Base Encryption Key Hash next to the apply button

I don't have unpopular UI opinions, but I do have opinions that I don't see people echo much, yet.

One of the worst things about UI in 2025 is that almost everything most people use on a computer relies on it, more than ever, and yet it's also at its worst point since the days before mouse driven interfaces. Companies used to be much stricter about their interfaces, how they worked and looked. Now there are tons of bespoke interfaces where everyone decides for themselves how they work, and assumptions made by one program work the opposite way in a different one.

Switches have become way to obvious to what "on" and "off" is. Even when they state something like an option is enabled or not in text, it often isn't clear whether it's saying this is what the state is now, or this is what it will be when clicked.

Icons have become way too vague and arbitrary as to what they mean. The Hamburger menu was bad enough, but some of the icons have gotten way too abstract. At least the floppy disk for saving was a convention.

Web pages likewise could use a lot more consistency and visibility. The new Digg, for instance, hides its user block function behind a light-gray three-dots button on a white background. The only options on that menu are to Report or Block that user! Why is it three dots, and why is it so hard to see?

Microsoft's "Ribbon" interface remains a terrible idea. At least with menu bars you know all the functions are there, somewhere, all represented by text. With the Ribbon, everything's a toolbar button, and with many of them being different sizes it's harder to scan through them to find the option you're looking for.

Unpopular? Well it's more of a design fundamental that has been completely shit upon by the new crop of people who think they're designers. I say it over and again and people hate me for it thus I think it qualifies:

If a visual design doesn't work in 1 bit it doesn't work. I don't care if MS or Goog or some other popular thing has gradients in their design; it's wrong.

People don't think enough of contrast and colour choices.

For example, icons.

I kept launching the wrong popular streaming video app. One was red and white, the other was white and red.

I have pinned some app icons but I really need to squint sometimes. So many blue icons.

Modern UI trend in graphics apps is to use monochrome hieroglyphs for tool icons. Fuck that, give me colour icons. Can't tell the tools apart. It's not even visually appealing. What.

Games use really creative colour schemes. Then in the first dialog they show in the game, they have two choices, and I guess I just have to guess which button is which because it's impossible to tell which is the "active" colour.

Ooh, fancy scroll bar you have there. Really blends to the background. Can barely see it.

A lot of lectures and presentations are silly when people show a web page and I can barely make out the domain because the rest of the URL is grey mush. And I'm sitting in the front. (I can barely make sense of it the address bars on my monitor. Firefox at least lets you disable this nonsense)

Another big beef I have with modern UIs, especially mobile ones: If you put something on the screen, would it be possible to not randomly move the stuff around? (For example: I tried to click the latest conversation in Signal desktop. In the time between my decision and the mouse click, Signal noticed that it has been several femtoseconds since the last software update, and popped an update notice right where the top of the conversation list is. Guess what I clicked.)

Another thing: Overreliance on scroll wheel. In case you haven't noticed, scroll wheels aren't very reliable. They get gunky and are hard to clean. Give me the bloody scrollbar. In games, let me rebind zoom.

A lot of so called "dark mode" should be called "medium mode" or "gray mode". In my opinion "dark mode" is where the main colour of backgrounds looks more black than gray. Also all borders should be high-contrast, preferably brightly coloured lines, or medium-contrast for low-importance borders, but never low-contrast borders or borders without a line where it's just a change in background colours.

Scroll bars are way too fucking thin now. When I have an app on one monitor, and try to scroll it, I’m battling the move to the next monitor with the teensy tiny scrollbar.

I’m even someone that knows how to use the mouse wheel and page down keys. It still has its place and so many refuse to acknowledge that. Sometimes I can’t even tell where on the page I am because the scrollbar activated its Octocamo.

UIs should strive to always be as customizable as possible.

Colors should be able to all be manually set by the user if they want to, rounded corners should be configurable, and the user should be able to overwrite icons and some UI elements if possible, but it shouldn't have to be on a per-app basis.

Instead, apps should ready system settings configured by the user and apply their theming unless the app is configured to do otherwise, again, by the user. Consistency by default unless you don't want it.

I can see why this opinion would be unpopular (maybe designers want to make their UI a very specific way idk)... but I like theming!!

Also, there should be a mode between dark and light mode that has black text but doesn't have a blindingly white background.

I like chunkier scrollbars. Fuck the tiny disappearing scrollbars where you need to mouse over... somewhere.. to maybe be graced with its presence, only for it to be 1px wide for some reason.
Also fuck the endless scroll, especially when you already know what you're looking for is on page 4 because you had to reload the page for some reason but the infinite scroll didn't save your position and you have to go down (without an actual scrollbar) only to "load more" 3 times until you're (maybe) on page 4.

Setup wizards that let you configure some settings easily but not telling you where to change them later.

I don't know how unpopular this is - I've never asked anybody:

Phone-optimised UIs suck, even on phones. One of the first things I do on setting up a new phone is tick 'request desktop website' in the browser.

Unpopular because most people don't notice at all, not because they disagree:

Bring back ellipsis to signal a new dialog instead of a complete action. E.g., a button "Save..." opens a dialog where you want to save, whereas a button "Save" saves it immediately

I absolutely hate those scrolling number pickers, like on alarm apps. Just pop up the numpad and I can enter a time in 2-4 taps, not 2-3 coarse scrolls of minutes, a fine scroll to the minute I actually want, then repeat that process on the hours.

• Stop removing the underline styling for links. It's not cool or sleek that you made things unintuitive to navigate by having the only indication be a slightly different text color, or a hover effect.
• I don't like emoji in text interface output. I don't need cute little sparkle graphics and yellow smiley faces and lightning bolts and rocket ships to tell me the operation was successful, to say nothing of environments where emoji aren't supported and it's just broken.
• Please stop trying to be cute or hip with your basic interface messaging. "We got you, we'll find those results you need. Just hang tight, OK?" "Oops, our bad, there was a little hiccup in the process..." It's unnecessary padding just like all the rounded corners everywhere. Exception if the entire app/site/whatever is specifically designed around being cute and friendly, but I see this all the time where it just feels out of place, disingenuous, and obnoxious.
• Custom fonts and nonstandard characters in usernames are an abomination. Show your personality and creativity in your graphical avatar and your profile, I'm happy to see it there!

For every UI app that runs commands in the background, Instead of a "Doing XYZ. Please Wait", I want the logs of the commands being run. Not just the commands themselves, but their verbose outputs too. I want it ALL on display.

I want to know what the software I am using is doing to my computer. I dont want black box software on my PC.

The modern trend for "flat" UIs absolutely sucks. There is no separation between element layers, so you can't tell where one windows starts and another begins when they are overlapping.

Colorblind people exist and should be able to use the site. At least, based on my real experience, this must be an unpopular opinion amongst UI folks glares

Brimg back double-clicking on the top left corner of a program to close it. Actually, bring back the top bar and the file menu while you're at it. And for software that opens tabs, allow the user to position the tabs bar on the bottom or side of the screen.

Every modern design trend sucks. Overly minimalistic/simplistic UI harms usability and actively makes users dumber and helpless.

I don't want rounded corners, transparency, shadows, animations, modern icons etc...

Give me boring panels with clear boundaries between conceptual sections, explicit text on buttons, and no theming. I don't care if it's a fugly Win95 grey, I'd rather it be usable than flashy.

Stuff can be functional and not look like shit.

Having ambiguous toggle labels should cause you to lose your job

Don't have a window named something like "Disable Features" and then the options be a toggle for "Cookies" or "Carry weight"

Does turning the toggle ON turn the feature OFF? Or do I need to turn the toggle to OFF to turn the feature OFF? Even worse when some are already in the off position.

Mobile phones have caused a dark age of UI design