It’s another day in the pixel mines and more things have annoyed me. Since that counts as actually writing and not hiding from my blogging duties, you get to enjoy some free-floating hostility.
Error messages with mixed messages
Let’s start with this beautiful example of a totally useless error message. The scenario: you have one item on auto-reorder. You view your auto-reorder, click the trash can to remove that one item, and down in the bottom right corner you see:
“Unprocessable Entity”. Is this good? Is this bad? It has a checkmark next to it so it seems to be successful, but it’s on a pink background so that seems to be unsuccessful.
It certainly didn’t help me figure out what I actually needed to do. Instead of deleting the item in the auto-reorder to delete the auto-reorder, I had to delete the auto-reorder itself which automatically deleted all the items.
Go figure.
Say that again?
Ah, English. The last time I slipped on butter was during a particularly stressful Thanksgiving and I got a “told you to wear shoes in the kitchen” from my father for my efforts.
People don’t wear butter — generally — your kink is not my kink and that’s ok — so it’s not a thing a woman would say she’s going to slip on. I’ll slip on a jacket, I’ll slip on something more comfortable if the mood is right, but if I slip on butter I’m going to hit the floor. That’s just how it works.
Ever spot a design and immediately know what the original problem was?
I’m willing to bet that people struggled to figure out how to apply the filters on this page. Dunno why, maybe it’s just the giant black and red APPLY button in the middle of the screen, screaming its head off. Just a hunch.
Unseen in the image, the page also featured sort controls. The default sort was “position”. I did not inquire further.
OK!
Y’all already know I hate black links with no underline with a passion but this dialog box takes it to a hilarious result. Do you own this website? it asks. The only answer you can provide is OK. It’s like a really badly written open world RPG out here.
What happens if I pick two?
Look, any time that I see checkboxes that actually do allow you to check multiple items I thank the universe that someone understands the difference between checkboxes and radio buttons. This is especially true on a DoorDash menu because I don’t expect the people making my food to be web experts just like (I hope) they don’t expect me to be able to cook.
But there is a time and place for radio buttons and I think choosing a spice level for my noodles is one of them. What happens if I choose Not Spicy and Extra Spicy? Do I get Medium Spice? And how long did the writer struggle over whether to call it Medium Spicy, Medium, or Medium Spice?
And finally…
This is a man who is vacuuming a rug that is on fire, and if you hang around long enough to see the whole thing you’ll discover he does actually make progress.
Welcome to web design, sir. You only get a hotel cube these days because we’re hybrid but at least you get free lunches when you come in.
