Arbitrary abbreviations in phobos considered ridiculous

[Nick Sabalausky]

"James Miller" <james at aatch.net> wrote in message 
news:mailman.581.1331607750.4860.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On 13 March 2012 15:48, Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a> wrote:
>> "James Miller" <james at aatch.net> wrote in message
>> news:mailman.576.1331604546.4860.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
>>>
>>>The phrase in web development is "Progressive enhancement" that used
>>>to be all the rage at one point. I miss those days...
>>
>> Heh. :) So true...
>>
>> I miss the days when having animations on a page was actually considered
>> *bad* style. And when the big thing in web dev was minimizing "page load
>> (and render) time". Then flash and advanced JS came around and that
>> conventional wisdom silently flipped around (like a boiled frog), and has
>> stayed that way ever since.
>>
>>
>
> If its any consolation, I still think in terms of page load times and
> UX in terms of loading. I don't think animations in and of themselves
> are a bad thing, I think the problem was GIF's and tacky animations
> for the sake of it. Slide-up and slide-down animations for removal of
> items and the similar are more subtle, but make things look much nicer
> that sudden popping. Popping is bad UX in general, even high-graphics
> games know that now, going more for mosaic fade-ins on the textures
> instead.
>

Yea, I do mostly agree, actually. But there is still a lot of needless 
animation (often in the form of Flash), although that does seem to be on a 
[long slow] decline. Adverts are a *big* probelm with animation (and even 
sound), though. I never actually used to mind the old banner ads, but when 
they started animating I had to install an adblocker literally just so I 
could be *capable* of reading the main content. Maybe that's just me, but 
still, accessiblity is important. Or at least *should* be considered 
important - and not just the subset of accessibility mandated by government.

As far as the typical UI animations, I think that's a much more complicated 
issue: First of all, I do agree that it *can* be good design. However, 
there's a few problems:

1. Such animations need to be *FAST*. We're talking roughly 250ms max 
(probably even less, but I'd have to play around with it to refresh my 
memory). Most UI animations are slower than this (particularly on the web - 
although many DVDs are *FAR* worse), and while it's good for first-time 
users, for everyone else it just gets in the way of getting work done and 
makes the experience feel sluggish.

2. On the web, animation means JS. But not everyone is using a browser with 
that V8 engine or whatever it's called (the one that Chrome uses). And not 
everyone is using a quad-core system with 64-bit software and 16GB or 
whatever RAM, etc. like the well-supplied web developers are likely using. 
So frequently this means very choppy, sluggish animations. And that's a much 
worse UX than popping. This also gets in the way of being able to properly 
handle #1 above, *fast* animations.

3. People have also reported that such UI animations can convey a subtle (or 
even not-so-subtle) sense of being patronized. Especially if it's a slower 
animation. I can definitely relate to this.

(Of course, if people just make real applications instead of web apps, then 
those problems would be trivially solvable.)