Computer related pet peeves
Watched my coworker move her cursor to the right edge of her right-hand monitor to get it to over to the left side of her left-hand monitor. When I offered to show her how to adjust her display settings, she said she was used to it and didn't want to change it. I don't think I can walk by her desk while she's working ever again.
What have you got?
When a page or UI loads half a second before you click so you end up clicking on something else
Ughh I fucking hate when this happens.
I get that you can't load everything at once, but put some placeholder stuff there so the link I'm about to click doesn't shift halfway down the page a millisecond before I click.
I remember hearing a lot about "responsive design" right around the time it started becoming impossible to click things. Never wanted to learn more about it, but i think that's the culprit.
I loved the internet when all html was made in notepad. It was just so pleasant.
Happens to me excruciatingly frequently on the youtube homepage.
The mobile YouTube apps are the worst for this. Especially because the "back" button is really an "escape" button, so trying to just swipe back to where you were is impossible
People who watch videos with the cursor hovering over the progress bar/playback controls so they never disappear.
It drives me crazy
People who type "Google" into the bar at the top of the browser, then type the site name into the search box.
Default search engine: Google
Text in address bar: site:google.com google
My co-worker does this, and it never fails to astonish me
moving mouse targets. Like let's say you have two pinned items on the start menu, Firefox and steam. You click Firefox and it starts to open. You go to click steam, but Firefox finishes opening and the icon gets bigger. Steam's icon then moves to the right, so you click where it was but instead just hit Firefox again. It's stupid.
Note how Firefox has solved this with tabs. Open a bunch of browser tabs. Enough so they shrink a little. Then rapidly close some, starting from the left. Notice how they don't change size until you're done closing tabs.
Mouse tunnels. Like you click the "File" menu, and then mouse over "New" and a long sub menu opens. Longer than the original File menu. If you mouse directly from the top of File to the bottom of New, your cursor will briefly be outside either menu. This often will cause the entire menu to close. Mouse tunnel. Have to keep the cursor in the tunnel. Annoying.
Had an old job that insisted this was fine and refused to let me or anyone change the interface to fix it (on a website)
Focus stealing. Like you're typing, and some other application pops up and takes focus. The absolute worst is when it pops up and puts focus on a dialogue box, and you just happened to hit "enter". Instead of adding a new line to your document, you just accepted something. Awful.
I have a coworker that has two monitors on a free-moving desk stand and he has monitors as far apart as possible. The monitors are pretty small (24") and there is over two monitor widths between them. He has to whip his head around like he is trying trying to dodge a fly all day to do his work.
He complains about back and neck pain all the time.
Quick tip for anyone in this situation.
Start by using search to clear everything in your inbox from a particular sender you know wont have sent anything important.
Don't catch up by going one mail at a time, catch up going one sender at a time. You'll be done within a day.
I've done this, can confirm it works. Unsubscribe from the senders you don't need while you're at it, and the problem will be significantly easier to manage in the future as well!
Don't know why I never thought of this before. Just sorted by sender and was able to crank through a ton of emails.
I'm absolutely guilty of what OP describes as being annoying. My coping mechanisms meant ratcheting down the frequency of monitoring those feeds. No email alerts, ever. Check and respond to email twice daily. Respond to IMs (Teams) hourly. Otherwise, pay attention to the meeting I'm in or the work I'm doing. So if I get sent an email I may not get to it for a while, sometimes not before the meeting I'm being called out on.
But in my role I spend 90% of my day in meetings or joint working sessions. Others with different working profiles would have different strategies and expectations, as does the OP, I suspect.
People who type with one to three fingers at a software development company.
Why am I the unemployed one?
IT deploying the shit hole GlobalProtect instead of a “real” macOS .mobileconfig that can run as an actual service and be on 24/7. Also IT not black holing IPv6 on the VPN (since they don’t want to support it) causing all the traffic to leak outside the tunnel.
…at a software development company.
For real?
We had a guy at the place I worked a few jobs ago who did nothing but slowly single-finger peck out regexes all day. His job title was “SEO Guru”.
I do this. I'm not sorry.
People who don’t understand windows or the minimize, maximize, and close buttons. So they constantly close the window and then relaunch the program to get back to the main screen or switch tasks.
And on macOS people not understanding that just because all the windows of an application are closed it doesn’t mean it’s not running.
I actually love this design because there’s no need for a window to be there while playing music for example.
any normal music player works/can work that way on windows and linux
i die inside a little everytime i see my mom doin this
As a web developer it’s when people want me to code ridiculous things because they don’t know how to use files, their OS or their web browser.
Recently someone complained to me that they’d like a dropdown to be sorted a very specific way (rather than alphabetical) because it’s “too hard” to scroll through the undesired options. They don’t realize that by doing that you would no longer be able to correctly tab into the field then type the first few letters of the desired option.
Or another user who reported that emailing documents wasn’t working because he could no longer email them to himself through the website. He could’ve simply downloaded the document using another link (right next to the email sending link) but refused to do so because he doesn’t know how to handle the file after downloading.
tab
Your unreasonable expectations have a name, and it is tab.
When you want to click the fullscreen button, and the seekbar jumps to the end of the video, so you click the start of the seekbar, and now the volume control opens, so you click the video but the volume slider stays open, so you move the volume slider up and down, but now the video already reached the end so now it switches to the next video, and you have to wait for that page to load before you can go back to the previous video which will have to load and buffer all over again(and play an ad if you are on someone elses device)
JUST MAKE THE UI ELEMENTS HITBOXES MATCH THEIR LOOKS AND NOT OVERLAP. A SEEKBAR CAN BE AT THE TOP I DON'T GIVE A CRAP JUST DON'T DO THAT AARRGGGHH
When I get five levels deep in a cascade of UI errors I terminate the mission and mark it as failed.
Icons where there should be labels.
There's 12 random shapes in the interface. Clicking 1 of them might delete or block this contact, or it might allow you to send an attachment. How can you find out? You can't, cause there are no mouse-over labels either, and if you had the option to enable them, it would be hidden behind one of the 12 shapes that may cause more unknown trouble. So you can't feel safe to experiment either.
People who take a photo of their monitor instead of a screenshot.
I'm guilty of this for texting or other phone-specific communications.
Sure, I could take a screenshot on the computer, email it to myself, download it to my phone, then add it to a text... Or, I have a camera right there. There has to be a good reason to not take the easy route.
Someone who asks for help with their laptop, then opens it to reveal what appears to be several years worth of snacks smashed into the keyboard and on the screen. No, Doug, I don't want to drive.
Back when I’d fix people’s Windows machines the first thing I usually did was run a standalone VNC server and put that shit on Ethernet. I don’t want to touch your nasty Cheetos keys.
People who use Caps Lock for one letter
Speed Typing King Sean Wrona on Not Using Shift Key
Sean Wrona who currently holds a bunch of speed typing records uses it to type all capital letters. Instead of hitting Shift+letter he finds it is more efficient to hit CapsLock+letter+CapsLock in quick succession.
To have a title such as Speed Typing King sound like a psycho /s
A tangent, so that explains one of the colemak mods having the caps lock as a layer key and shift as the caps lock, but it'll revert to lower case after a letter.
Wow, I would have never thought of that
Yeah, I hate it when people don't use the simple shortcut Win+Ctrl+Shift+Alt+L to open LinkedIn!
To be fair, I'll use the more convenient shortcuts (cut/copy/paste, select all, save) that are genuinely easier to do with one hand. But Alt+F4? It either requires two hands or else your hand needs to qualify for Cirque de Soleil to hit it properly. Some of the "standard" keybinds are often more trouble than moving the pointer.
cmd+Q on macOS is great.
I really hate it when people save everything on Desktop
Just hide desktop icons
Full agree. My personal desktop is clean. My company-issued is littered with shortcuts I can't get rid of because they don't give general users that permission. I hate it so much.
If I don't get to put stuff on my Desktop, why do I have a Desktop at all?? I really dislike this part about Gnome. Or any other OS that treats a Desktop like Slideshow Window. When working through a bunch of files I find it easier to have them on the desktop and move them from one stack to the other. It allows me to keep the stack order. Often when revisiting more complex workflows at work, that becomes super handy.
Thousands of unread emails in an inbox.
Using a downloads folder as your entire filesystem.
Anything that has a popup telling me about a new feature that 1) has existed for a long time and 2) I already knew about (basically office 365)
Features and button I can't remove (basically office 365 and copilot)
When something changes its name to become less descriptive. (Basically microsoft office to office 365 to windows 365 to 365 to 3)
Basically office 365
Bonus: How do onedrive? With local file system? Where is my even? Fuck
Oh also those assholes who "hAvE aN aPp IdEa". Less so when it's a shittier version of something that already exists and you can ruin their dreams of become the next zuck or gates. (But also, if it was actually a good idea, why wouldn't I just steal it?)
When people learn you can program and they think you can program everything. (See previous comment)
People who call it "coding" instead of "programming". I am writing a program as in what you read to know what is occuring at an event? Like a play? Something with scenes and acts. There is progression from beginning to end. What I am doing is creating a routine for an actor. I'm not writing hieroglyphics, and if you are too stupid to realize that, you shouldn't get to name the fucking thing.
People who ask for help and are upset when you tell them you fixed the problem before, taught them how to do it themselves, and procede to tell them they are wasting your time, don't listen, or are an imbicile.
Using other people's keyboards. At all.
When IT treats you like the rest of the unwashed masses. When IT gets in your way or confiscates something. When people think you are literal IT (Why the fuck would I be able to reset your workday password?)
I'm going to stop before the vein in my forehead explodes. Again. But I'll probably add more later.
You're tripping on the "coding" thing. Two different things, coding is all encompassing to scripting AND programming, whereas programming would consist of programming languages only. I'd rather someone call it "coding" instead of "programming" if they don't know. Not like the average non-IT person walking by should be expected to know you're using e.g. C++, not bash.
There's no firm delineation between scripting or programming. In many cases it boils down to "scripting is when you program in a language I deem lesser" which is just rude.
Coding is just the old timey word for encoding. I.E. basically doing what an assembler would do automatically these days. Any programming language in common use involves much more than that and deserves to be called programming.
It's an opinion
With Word, people using section breaks when most of the time they should have used the simpler page break.
Section breaks are supposed to be used if you want to have a change in the document layout in the middle of the document. This change could be with the margins, the orientation, the contents of the header or footer, the numbering (eg switch from roman numerals to arabic numerals), etc.
But if you just want the line to move to the next page, use a page break. Section breaks increase the chance of unintended layout and page numbering inconsistencies.
Microsoft should rename section break to "layout break" maybe.
Also, related topic, I really hate it when people just input a bunch of line breaks to get the cursor to the next page, instead of a page break.
People breaking lines manually by pressing Enter and indenting the paragraph by inserting spaces at the beginning of the line.
Office on macOS in general. Shit looks horrible, it doesn’t respect the OS it’s running on:
Happy I don’t need to swap .docx files anymore, I do everything in Numbers and Pages these days.
I use office on macOS. Points 1 and 2 work for me only if the document is saved locally and not on OneDrive.
When a document of fixed length and short paragraphs, like a resume or letter, has a paragraph split at the bottom and continued on the next page
When people who press caps lock to capitalize a single letter, like at the start of a sentence.
There is at least one exception in my opinion where this is acceptable: when writing special characters with diacritics etc. (for example é, à), caps-lock can help capitalizing these letters since they often already require shift to be pressed. I'm aware that there are other ways (i.E. type the diacritic first, then the letter), but the caps-lock way seems easier to me.
Yeah, people doing that is my fault.
My bad.
I've noticed Chinese people doing this often. I assume that it's to do with Chinese keyboard layouts.
Whenever I need to all caps a word, I have this habit of pressing and holding the shift key with my pinkie finger and pressing the letter keys 1 letter at a time.
People who touch your screen when pointing something out.
People who open and close their laptop lids by holding the sides and not the top.
People who drag their laptop across the table to move it instead of lifting it.
People who lift their laptop by their screen
Oooo this one hurts me.
Other than MacBook Airs. They don’t give a fuck
What's wrong with opening the lid from the side?
I forgot to mention - specifically opening the lid with one hand on the side and the other hand holding the base. You can potentially damage the hinges on your laptop due to the uneven force being applied on the lid.
When I know for a fact I clicked something for it to function and it just doesn't, requiring multiple clicks.
I still cannot use special characters in filenames, 40 years of Windows OSes in.
The primary reason to this day as to why I have two monitors, isn't just because to separate things from one monitor to the other. It is because Windows task manager never is strong enough to take primary focus by being on top of programs or other things that take up the entire screen. It just sits in the background and I don't have access to it. Even when keystrokes don't work. I could feasibly use one monitor, granted if it's big enough, if it weren't for that.
This is program specific, but fucking AIMP, I love it as my audio player of choice. But it acts weird. Sometimes it'll prefer to stick to the top of my screen, sometimes it won't show, prompting me to find it and other random annoying things about it. And I hate it too when it goes to the next song and this banner slowly fades in at the top of my screen to tell me what song it is and it also just pauses everything for a moment just for that. There's other ways I can tell what you're playing, I don't need that.
And my final but above-all peeve is when the focus is taken away from my cursor. Like when things just take the function of my cursor when I'm doing something else, when I'm not expecting it to. Like when I install things, I know something will pop up to distract me, I expect that in cases of installing drivers or a prompt window telling me something is done. I just hate it when random non-virus related events take over my cursor when I'm doing something. I wish there comes a day, when you have the option to have a click-free way to prioritize what windows or programs you want to focus on, than something else hogging the attention.
I still cannot use special characters in filenames, 40 years of Windows OSes in.
That's a good thing IMO. The benefits of using special characters in this specific case are slim, but the repercussions for every single programming language that ever touches file or folder names (i.e. basically all of them) are pretty big.
Like seriously, I'd wager that entire companies might crawl to a stop because Bernice in accounting put a "/" into some important excel file name.
And I hate it too when it goes to the next song and this banner slowly fades in at the top of my screen to tell me what song it is and it also just pauses everything for a moment just for that. There's other ways I can tell what you're playing, I don't need that.
you can turn that off in the settings. Actually I was pretty happy that it works on linux through wine. but if you can't find the option, let me know, I have managed to find it recently I think
When I know for a fact I clicked something for it to function and it just doesn't, requiring multiple clicks.
This, but when the UI also reacts and does it's 'button pressed' animation.
I know I pressed the button, you obviously know I pressed the button; why are you not doing the thing???
I can understand this sort of thing among the elderly but I've met ablebodied engineers who don't understand how to computer. The awesome thing is that they don't take advice, they just Dunning Kruger their way through.
There's a (really good) song on youtube called "clean the fan". It says it all. Stuff is just designed so poorly
Can she also move between them the normal way too? Because screen wrap for the cursor is a thing.
No screen wrap, just in need of a quick display settings adjustment.
searching for google in google
people having no idea what to do when the instructions are literally on the screen, in front of them. Not "how" (that can be understandable), but "what".
"HEY POLLY, QUIT SQWACKING!"