Comment On Classic WTF - Enter the Matrix

Seems pretty intuitive. :)

O.O

The user has poor taste in music!

This UI comes from a guy who had worked in the aerospace industry before, designing the cockpits of airplanes and space shuttles.

The goggles... they do nothing!

After all that work and I can't get a decent music visualization for the media player.  *sigh*



It's like an emacs wannabe for file management.

Just as bad as the UI!

another wtf: when you hit enter the site searchers.. result of ASP.NET's crap form handling

Jake Vinson:

Agent "G. Nickerson" was kind enough to send in a link to this UI where "simplicity" and "ease of use" seem to have gone the way of the telegraph.

This is exactly why I'm a command line person - that's all the functionality I get from my shell, but with a confusing graphical front-end on it...

Anonymous:

Just as bad as the UI!

another wtf: when you hit enter the site searchers.. result of ASP.NET's crap form handling

of course it should've quoted the post about the bad music style

This thing is outrageous.  I don't see anything that will allow you to list all of the computer's active tasks and let you kill, set priority, or assign to a certain processor!

And where's the email list?  If I can't see how many emails I have waiting to be read, how am I supposed to know?

This thing is totally unusable until the feature list is complete.

I took the time to track down the UI in its intended usage, and to be fair, it isn't anywhere near so scary. It looks like the user has turned on every single option, widget, toolbar, gadget and plug-in. Not suprising it looks trash - but more the fault of the user than the system.

If I turn on every option in Word or something similar, then I will end up working in a postage stamp - but that's my fault, not Word's.

IMO...

(although don't get me wrong: I don't really like the intended screenshots; they just don't seem WTF-worthy).

Marc

Oh. My. God.

Eyes hurt!

This actually seems like a really powerful program.  It may take like a year to master the dashboard, but once you do, you can become quite productive. 

For such a sophisticated program, this user has a pretty un-sophisticated taste in music.

Anonymous:

After all that work and I can't get a decent music visualization for the media player.  *sigh*



It's like an emacs wannabe for file management.

No , Emacs gives you a list of files and directories.  Sorted.  Much more user-freindly.  It also gives you a dialog with tab-completion.  Also, way more user-friendly.

This was originally posted a few years ago on "UI Hall of Shame".

This is what an operating system looks like from the inside-out.

I'd love to leave a longer comment but my head just exploded.

Anonymous:

This was originally posted a few years ago on "UI Hall of Shame".

omg are you serious? read "Alex is out of town today, so let's revisit a classic! " from the original post

Jake Vinson:

Alex is out of town today, so let's revisit a classic!  FileMatrix is an example of the exact opposite of Apple's typical UI design.  Whereas Apple will create a development environment that operates entirely from one blinky, rainbow-colored button on the screen (which you click one way to enter text, another way to compile, etc.), today's example is a piece of software that really empowers the user.

The Matrix!  No, not the the uburbulous deprodication errebelously conceived by "The Architect". I'm talking about the other matrix - The FileMatrix. Agent "G. Nickerson" was kind enough to send in a link to this UI where "simplicity" and "ease of use" seem to have gone the way of the telegraph. Take a gander for yourself:

I wonder what the manual looks like.  The theme should be 'Around the UI in 80 days'

Hux:

O.O

The user has poor taste in music!

I don't know - I kind of like Berlin's "Take my breath away"

this UI where "simplicity" and "ease of use" seem to have gone the way of the telegraph.

Ok, but does it read e-mail?  No?  Then it's not finished yet!

Anonymous:

The goggles... they do nothing!

Why is it that when a wtf is accompanied with a screenshot someone always has to say this?

Alex should implement a voting system like digg so these comments would be hidden after being demoted below the threshold.

Anonymous:

Anonymous:

This was originally posted a few years ago on "UI Hall of Shame".

omg are you serious? read "Alex is out of town today, so let's revisit a classic! " from the original post

There is always a representative from that group that failed reading comprehension...  the sad thing is that it probably won't be the last post.

CAPTCHA = hacker

I don't know what is worse... the app or the fact that this user likes the Backstreet Boys *AND* Celine Dion.

reagan83:

Anonymous:

The goggles... they do nothing!

Why is it that when a wtf is accompanied with a screenshot someone always has to say this?

Alex should implement a voting system like digg so these comments would be hidden after being demoted below the threshold.

::thumbs down::

You obviously don't understand the reason for wearing goggles.  And haven't read enough comments on WTFs without screen shots.

Anonymous:

Anonymous:

This was originally posted a few years ago on "UI Hall of Shame".

omg are you serious? read "Alex is out of town today, so let's revisit a classic! " from the original post

Oh, come on!  Who actually reads the original post before jumping in with a comment?

Just for the record - slashdot had comments like that years before Digg.

Anonymous:

this UI where "simplicity" and "ease of use" seem to have gone the way of the telegraph.

Ok, but does it read e-mail?  No?  Then it's not finished yet!

And here was me thinking it was sending e-mail that was the hard part...

I think I know where this came from. There used to be a hugely popular file manager on the Amiga which worked like this, with two differences. First, it didn't have rounded buttons because on the Amiga the height of chic was flat rectangles. And second, it had far fewer buttons - I assume that with more resolution comes the freedom to cram in as many buttons as you possibly can. Also (our THREE weapons are...) I don't think there was live preview of files.

But this is classic Amiga UI - just throw everything together on the page. And given long enough you'll learn where everything is.

I know why you're here, Neo. I know what you've been doing... why you
hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by
your computer. You're looking for the FileMatrix. I know because I was once
looking for the same thing. And I found it, he told me I wasn't
really looking for the UI. I was looking for an answer. It's the question
that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here. You know
the question, just as I did.

It's just like emacs! it can do so many things you forget what it's for.

C'mon guys, this was obviously designed by a 13 year old girl. I mean, 2 CrapStreet Boys, 1 Celine Dion and 3 Britney Smears "songs" (I use the term loosely) give it away. She did the best she could!

>BiggBru

This rounded buttons look strange. Almost like a smaltalk gui, or the
Oberon Component Pascal OS. Or maybe something custom made. Or maybe is
a X window that run FVWM (that round buttons reminds me xman)



This strangeness make the app look dificult to understand. And maybe
the toolkit adds limite so the workarounds where 50% of the WTF we see
here.



So maybe the real WTF whas the use of this unknom and ugly toolkit:

 - buttonds dont look like buttons

 - folders dont look like folders

 - application background color is white, that make text hard to read. Sould be the OS standard or gray.

 - unlabeled text-areas.

 - textual buttons for simple task, sould be text+icon or
icon.(again, maybe because this strange toolkit not able icons on
buttons)

 - too much combos made a nonsense.



Maybe a clever java coder have create his own graphic toolkit, with
everything extending from "lamebutton", so everything look almost like
a lame button, even textareas.



<sarcasm>I will bote 2 points out of 10, because have rounded edges and that is always cool :D </sarcasm>



--Tei

No application is complete without the current date along with the current date in julien date format in the title bar.  Hope everyone has a happy 185 this year. 

Anonymous:

Just as bad as the UI!

another wtf: when you hit enter the site searchers.. result of ASP.NET's crap form handling

No, just crap programming of default button behavior.

Harsh:

I know why you're here, Neo. I know what you've been doing... why you
hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by
your computer. You're looking for the FileMatrix. I know because I was once
looking for the same thing. And I found it, he told me I wasn't
really looking for the UI. I was looking for an answer. It's the question
that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here. You know
the question, just as I did.

Neo:  "WTF? is the FileMatrix."

So much for ergonomics

I bet it's "Powered by Community Server 2.0". Oh wait.

CAPTCHA = captcha

Anonymous:

I think I know where this came from. There used to be a hugely popular file manager on the Amiga which worked like this, with two differences. First, it didn't have rounded buttons because on the Amiga the height of chic was flat rectangles. And second, it had far fewer buttons - I assume that with more resolution comes the freedom to cram in as many buttons as you possibly can. Also (our THREE weapons are...) I don't think there was live preview of files.

But this is classic Amiga UI - just throw everything together on the page. And given long enough you'll learn where everything is.

The name that comes to mind is "Directory Opus." At least I think it looked like this in its earlier incarnations. I used 1 or 2 of the shareware "work-alikes." There were typically 2 panes, representing different volumes and/or directories, and about a 1000 buttons below, as you said. These buttons would rename files, copy files, listen to files, view files... But this wasn't the Amiga's fault! It was these one man development houses that were graduating from their Atari 800s and C64s. The native Amiga interface (even in V1.3) was a model of elegance and simplicity - to a fault, maybe.

One of the very poor decisions in the Amiga desktop, IMO, was that the icon was a separate file with a .info extension. (Support for 'generic icons' was introduced in V2.0 or so.) This meant if you were copying outside of the GUI, you had to make sure to copy MyFile and MyFile.info, or you would lose the icon.

WHOA!

twks:

This actually seems like a really powerful
program.  It may take like a year to master the dashboard, but
once you do, you can become quite productive. 

This reminds me one article... Do you know why stealth bombers have
more complicated user interface than tricycles? Because they can fly! This program should skyrocket.

Anonymous:

Anonymous:

Anonymous:

This was originally posted a few years ago on "UI Hall of Shame".

omg are you serious? read "Alex is out of town today, so let's revisit a classic! " from the original post

Oh, come on!  Who actually reads the original post before jumping in with a comment?

RTFP?

Would anyone like to bid on a pair of eyes?  I just ripped mine out so I will never have to see anything like this again.

I'm still trying to figure out what problem was presented for the author to think something like this needed to be created. WTF man. So like, was this someone who saw Norton Commander and thought that Windows should have something like that, but with tons of more features not related to the application's intensions (including an embeded MP3 player that only plays bad techno, tennie-bopper music, and not-so-hits of the 80's)? I want to see the code behind this monstrosity, and I'd also like to play with it (break it). Something tells me that this wouldn't be the hardest application to break ;-P

The true WTF: that logo!!!!! It looks like it COULD POSSIBLY be a fractal of SOME KIND, but I've never seen it, so it pretty much just looks like a rainbow color female reproduction organ.

The UI designer has clearly taken too many red pills.

Digitalbath:

No application is complete without the current date along with the current date in julien date format in the title bar.  Hope everyone has a happy 185 this year. 

It's not really a Julian Date, that would be 03185, or 3185, since its 185 its just the day number of the current day in the year.

 

GoatCheez:

I'm still trying to figure out what problem was
presented for the author to think something like this needed to be
created. WTF man. So like, was this someone who saw Norton Commander
and thought that Windows should have something like that, but with tons
of more features not related to the application's intensions (including
an embeded MP3 player that only plays bad techno, tennie-bopper music,
and not-so-hits of the 80's)? I want to see the code behind this
monstrosity, and I'd also like to play with it (break it). Something
tells me that this wouldn't be the hardest application to break ;-P

The
true WTF: that logo!!!!! It looks like it COULD POSSIBLY be a fractal
of SOME KIND, but I've never seen it, so it pretty much just looks like
a rainbow color female reproduction organ.

Chances are they didn't give it any thought.



I've encountered all kinds of horrific UIs in commercial
development.  (If only they weren't company proprietary, I would
have shared them here or with the UI Hall of Shame.)  In every
case, and probably in this case too, the author didn't think about it
at all.



Programmers are usually interested in just the fun of getting a set of
instructions to compile and run.  Very very few give any thought
whatsoever to a usable UI.  Also, that attitude has propagated up
to managers, who aren't even aware of the idea of planning for a good
UI.



In summary, most of the world considers any mess in a window which has
all the necessary functions crammed in to be acceptable software. 
The quality of the UI isn't even an issue;  only the raw presence
of the functions matters.



Refer to Hanlon's Razor.

History of dailywtf:

(Attempt to send email by remotely calling outlook) - This must be the work of Unix programmers!

(Massive Rube Goldberg script-driven webapp) - Damn those Unix bastards! When will their tyranny end!

(hideous gui) - Unix is so much simpler :''( *sniff*

Ahh my eyes!! my eyes!!! Ahhhh.... I    Can't    See........

Jake Vinson:

No, not the the uburbulous deprodication errebelously conceived by "The Architect".

I looked up those words.  They don't even exist!  Are you sure they're cromulent?

Anonymous:

The UI designer has clearly taken too many red pills.

Or, more likely, forgot to take his prescription medication!