My pet peeve in this area is when I see a clickable rectangle with some text in it, and the text changes when I click it. I can never tell whether this rectangle is:
informational, telling me the current status, and it will change if I click it, or
it is a button telling me what the status will change TO
Contrast that with Microsoft’s very intuitive buttons for formatting text in bold or italic: The label on the button never changes, but it is very clear when the button is pushed in (signifying “on”), and when it is not pushed in.
I miss certain features from Windows 3.1. The buttons had borders, and if you clicked on something, you could watch the button being depressed, so you know you did something. Nowadays, if I click a button and nothing happens, there’s no way to know whether I clicked it incorrectly, or the system is just slow, or some other thing.
The chief culprits for me as of late are mute/unmute toggling functions on web meeting platforms. At one point, I was routinely using two platforms with contrasting approaches. One showed the mute icon if you were currently muted (status). The other showed what would happen if you were to click it (action).
I think the confusion comes down to this: is the mental model that you grab the “knife” at the end of the number, such that sliding it left decreases the number of digits; or do you grab the number and slide it under the knife, such that sliding it right decreases the number of digits?
These icons aren’t too bad if you also keep in mind that they read from the top down (like most things, excepting street markings), so that if the bottom line has more digits, that corresponds to an increase. But the arrow is fairly confusing.
I’m not sure what “knife” you’re referring to. The first icon says “go from .0 to .00”, while the second icon says “go from .00 to .0”. How could that possibly be clearer?
I used to struggle with those two Excel icons too. I kept taking the arrows as the “direction” the last place digit would go (e.g., the arrow pointing left indicates it’ll go from the thousandths place to the hundredths place… so fewer digits).
Having gotten fed up with frequently getting this wrong, I finally scrutinized the icons a little more closely and their meaning became apparent to me.
The knife cuts off the unwanted digits at the end. To cut off more digits, do you move the knife left, or the number right?
The digits only help if you specifically read them as the top line being the current state and the bottom line being the state that you want to move toward. That’s not completely obvious, especially since the colored arrow isn’t even on the same line in both cases.
I know which buttons you people are referring to, and I certainly see how those pictures can be confusing.
But if you would just let your mouse sit on the button for a few milliseconds, these descriptions will appear: “Show more decimal places for a more precise value” / “Show fewer decimal places”.
But we also read arrows, and the arrows seem to be indicating the decimals go in the other direction.
I use Excel every working day. Mostly, i just know where on the bar the “reduce decimals” icon is. (I use it much more than “increase decimals”.) But even so, i often mess up when i look at the icons.
I the whole concept of files and folders will become less entrenched as time goes on. Mobile operating systems do a good job of hiding filesystems from the user, to the extent that if you only used a smartphone or tablet you wouldn’t really think in those terms.
Weird thing is, I’m actually somewhat interested in calligraphy — has a set when I was a teenager — but I’ve never had a calligraphy video show up in my FB or YouTube or any other feeds. That may just be targeted towards you.
The closest I’ve seen to that is a guy who does ambigram videos, and he uses a flat tipped marker, not a fountain pen with a calligraphy nib.
I haven’t been in the market for one, but I’d guess you can still buy fountain pens at, I dunno, maybe Michael’s and Blikk? In the early 2000s I remember just buying them at some regular drug store or Target.
That is strange then. I’ve never looked up calligraphy on my computer but I’ll get a video in my feed once or twice a year. Maybe something to do with my friend’s interests?
But yeah, AFAIK, all the chain arts and crafts stores will have calligraphy supplies near the painting section.