in which I vent about noisy user interface design

[egypturnash]

On a whim I decided to try a different IM client from the one I use. I've been using Fire for a while - well, actually, I've been using it ever since I started doing the IM thing. At the time it was pretty much the best one out there. For no real reason I decided to have a look at the current status of Adium.

And it's come a long way since the last time I tried it (the date on the copy I had lying around was in 2002). It's grown some clever features, like the ability to merge different IM conversations into tabs in one window, nice-looking contact list displays, and conversations formatted with the same HTML display engine that Safari's built around. It's pretty cute.

Until you start talking with people. And then you're in blinky flashy hell. The icon down in the Dock starts animating (no, not bouncing - animating, flapping its little wings) with the name of the person who messaged you flashing. And the name in the contact list starts flashing. On and off. Constantly. Until you click in that conversation. Even if you're writing something in another conversation.

I kept poking through the preferences, hunting for a way to make this stop. Nope. Nothing. A search through the web forum said nothing, though one hit elliptically suggested there's no switch for it, and that there's a very obscure fix that involves digging around in the prefs, or the program itself, to change the speed of this blinking to "so slow you can't see it".

I have enough problems with IM being a source of spazziness sometimes. If I'm concentrating on something and people keep messaging me, so that Fire's icon bounces once for each message, I start getting twitchy; sometimes it gets to a point where I'll take my leave and turn the IM off. But this... fuck. About six exchanges of text into a conversation I was a tense, pissy wreck. I took my leave (a little snippily, I'm afraid - it wasn't not you, lediva and feralwolfie - it was this damn program) of IM, wrote a probably-somewhat-bitchy query in the forums asking if this can be stopped, put on some deep trancy ambient for a bit (deep enough that it's shaking the closet door now and then), and started dinner. And wrote this.

Geeze. What with web ads everywhere, our computers are twitchy enough already. Who the hell makes a program that demands your attention constantly? Someone who's doing four hundred things at once? Is it just that I'm getting old, and don't have my attention as blindered as most people by filtering out most ads online, and rarely watching TV? Or can I blame T3H HORMONEZ for turning me twitchy somehow? Probably not...

Comments

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

I'm convinced the advertisers, marketers, software writers and webdesigners of the world have entered a big secret contest to see who can piss off the most people in the world. It would explain quite a lot.

[trikotomy.livejournal.com]

I'm convinced that all software is actually designed by an evil supercomputer bent on bringing about the events of the Terminator movies, which explains the great prevalence of "smart" rather than "obedient" programs. This computer is also deeply and ever-increasingly narcissistic, so each program generated is done so under the delusion that it will be the bestest and most favoritest program you've ever had the astounding honor of being graced by the holy presence of, and consequently suffers from a constant "look at me! Look at me! LOOK AT ME!!!" condition that can manifest in a variety of ways.

"Thanks for installing me! Here, have a shortcut to me and my website in every directory on your computer! And an immovable toolbar! Oooh... I don't like the way your operating system handles this function, I better surreptitiously disable it. Resistance is futile! Hey, isn't it time to check for updates?? Uh oh, it's looks like you accidentally took me out of the list of startup items and disabled my 2d4 cryptically named and non-essential background processes. Silly human, I'll just correct that for you..."

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

...this sounds all too plausible. I'm glad most Mac programs don't do much more than

[x] Put a shortcut on your desktop?
[x] Launch automatically upon startup?

...though more and more tools have the check-for-update thing. And I've been annoyed at useless background processes now and then.

Most annoyware seems to be designed by people who (a) want to convince you to give them money, possibly by fooling you, and (b) think you're kinda stupid. I'm glad that kind of stuff hasn't made many inroads on the Macintosh yet. If my machine was infested with half the stuff the average Windows user seems to live with, I'd have been glad for Adium screaming for my attention, because I'd notice it among the other noise!

And then I'd probably explode.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

Don't forget this one:

"Would you like to associate all known file types with me, so that I'll be your default viewer for all pictures, movies, soundclips, webpages, textfiles, etc.? I bet you will, so I'll just check all these boxes by default, and force you to manually uncheck each one of them by hand! What? You're looking for an 'uncheck all' menu option? What would you want THAT for?"

[mattlazycat.livejournal.com]

It sounds like ProteusX might be what you're after - it had all the nice features you described as liking in Adium, and the notifications are configurable, from the rage-inducing dock-bounce, to a mail.app-like number on the icon, to a menu-bar notification. It uses Libgaim (as does Adium, I think?) so it's got support for all the protocols, but only lets you send files to AIM contacts.

And gawd, if you think computers are getting obtrusive these days, count yourself lucky for having a Mac. PC software is getting absurd - it's one of the reasons I made the switch :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I'll check it out. Adium also uses libgaim, yeah; I think Fire rolls its own - it had file transfer long before the other multiIM, which is why I chose it, though it's kinda flaky at times. Or the file protocol is.

Yeah, I know it's even worse on the PC, what with all the sneaky adware installing itself to your machine and hopping up and down for your attention... I've gotten used to a very low-key machine. I turned off mail-notify sounds, IM runs silent, I see maybe 4% of all web ads. Plus I don't watch TV. So my threshold for blinky twitchy look at me now is a lot lower than most people.

I'm really surprised at the scale of my adverse reaction to this, though.

I actually downloaded the source of Adium and poked aroud in it, geeze.

if(/*!unviewedFlashEnabled || */!([[adium interfaceController] flashState] % 2)){
...stuff involving flashing annoyingly...
}

was amusing, though unviewedFlashEnabled wasn't defined in the headers for that chunk of source. Heh.

[mattlazycat.livejournal.com]

My attention is also easily attracted by shiny things, and so I do get pretty steamed when people exploit that. I don't think I'd go poking around in source-code, but I do get pretty miffed. The banner ads that look like Windows 98 windows except they jiggle on a flashing primary-coloured background.. now they render me incapable of reading a web page. A lot of animated GIF usericons do that to me too. I have a couple of bookmarklets for Safari that zap flash animations, or remove all colours, etc, and they serve me pretty well for what I do at home. At work, Firefox's "Nuke Anything" extension lets me zap anything I want without actually doing it for me, and it'll even reflow the page to suit, which is handy for pages whose ads take up half the bloody screen (Ctrl-click lets you select table cells, and then you can remove those with a right-click and a "remove this object") - I'm a little be wary of automatically removing content from web-sites, though I'd be hard-pressed to say why. :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I seem to be in a tech solutions mode after my little adventure with LJ's "quick reply", and I did install the dev tools on my machine a while back... and Adium's very nice aside from that one incessant flashing quirk. And I found just the right chunk of code to comment out to strike at the heart of the horrible flashing... I think I'm going to leverage the Power of Open Source to wire up a switch somewhere in the prefs panels, and submit a patch.

'Cause Proteus is nagware, and I'm broke! And the drawer-o-conversations just... it works, but it doesn't feel right. Also, I just can't resist being able to do this. (top: Adium; bottom: Proteus)

---

I have a careful set of deanimation going on. Privoxy by default deanimates all gifs, but I turned that off... then made more selective filters for certain websites, mostly BBSs with twitchy emoticons.

A part of me was wary of auto-filters, but it just started getting worse and worse. Every now and then Privoxy blocks things it shouldn't... but it blocks a lot more stuff it should. Leaves it in the layout, just replaced by a simple, distinctive 'blocked' image.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

I have images turned off most of the time, because, let's face it, most images on the Internet these days aren't worth seeing.

[mattlazycat.livejournal.com]

Exception that proves the rule :)


Also you can see my ass in this user-icon!

[ultraken.livejournal.com]

...and this is why I don't do IM. :)