The Google Contacts UI sucks

[andrewducker]

I just spent half an hour tidying my Google contacts, and gettng the list down from 370-odd people to 259, by deleting a bunch of not-actually-people and people-I'm-never-going-to-email-again, and merging together a bunch of contacts.

This process reminded me how much I hate Web UIs. There's always a lag between clicking on something and it opening up, keyboard support is minimal, and frankly the whole process is just less pleasant than using a proper UI.

Which is why I shudder whenever someone tells me that the future of applications is the web. Brrrrr.

Comments

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Can't you delete them on your phone then sync it back? That's what I do as its far quicker.

[andrewducker]

Deleting is faster on the phone - but merging is still faster on the web, sadly.

[nwhyte]

Another thing I hate about Google Contacts is that it automatically adds anyone you've had contact with by Gmail; you may well find those addresses you thought you had deleted creeping back in again. I keep my "real" contacts list synchronised between Plaxo and my work Outlook, and go to considerable lengths to avert it being contaminated from Gmail.

[andrewducker]

I'll keep an eye out for that. I do have Thunderbird set up to store any addresses that I send emails to, which will pick up ones I'm not going to use twice, and that will probably cause issues.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Nice userpic.

[steer.livejournal.com]

God yes... Web UIs are completely annoying. We have one for our finance system at work. It used to be "type into spreadsheet" and now it's "type into web form" -- it saves time at their end (because believe it or not the spreadsheets were then to be printed out and posted and then someone at the other end inputs it) but more than doubles it on mine.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

We've recently had a fun encounter with the joys of toy web UIs as part of an audit exercise at my work (for those who care, it was a mock REF). The web system built to do it had ... issues.


The flurry of email about it was hilarious (if you had the right frame of mind):

Some people are experiencing problems but these are being addressed.
You must use it like this.
You have to physically be on campus, not VPNed or any of the satellite campuses. You have to use a PC. It has to be a standard work PC. You have to use Firefox or Chrome, Internet Explorer doesn't work. Honestly, who uses IE? It's crap.
Oh. Yes. We do know that standard work PCs only have IE installed. And we do know that some other work systems require IE, not Firefox or Chrome. But just humour us and install Firefox or Chrome for this one.
Oh. Yes. We know not everyone has permissions to install software, and not everyone has a standard work PC. If this is a problem for you try using a colleague's.
Oh. If you are using a colleague's PC, don't use it while they are logged in. You have to log out, then log in as you, wait for it to boot, then restart, then log in as you again.
Oh. Some people are still having problems with data going missing. Try hitting reload frequently when entering the data.
Actually, only hit reload on this page, not the other page, if you do that it'll throw it all away.
Oh. When we said 'page' we meant 'popup', sorry.
Look. Honestly, you should have done all the work in something else first, like Word, and saved it, then copy-and-pasted it in. You can't expect a web form to save what you type in it.
Oh. There is an issue with accented characters. Please use only standard ASCII characters. What is wrong with you people?
Oh. Users with accents in their names or in the details they need to submit should email [address redacted].
Oh. Please do not send feedback on the audit tool to [address redacted], they are overwhelmed.
Oh. There is an issue with copy-and-pasted data. Please type directly in to the forms and do not use copy-and-paste.

(This is only slightly sexed up.)

By the (extended) deadline, of about 40 people in my department who filled it in, only 7 actually succeeded, in the sense of their data appearing in the collated information. I have no idea whether I was one of them or not.

A simple web form would've done the job in half the developer time and a tenth of the user time. It was all ultra-clever AJAXy magic stuff, which looked kinda cool but lacked UI cues like 'Save' or 'Submit' or 'Post' buttons. When you're as bulletproof as Google you can maybe get away with it, but this was ... not.

[andrewducker]

Oh Dear Lord.

I've been trying, in my head, to puzzle through how to do version 2 of my web app, and it will _definitely_ not be using AJAX, because I cannot be bothered writing two versions and I don't want to cut out the people who don't have a modern browser (for either work limitations of accessibility).

[daveon.livejournal.com]

No, cut them out, and let modern JS and CSS deal with the problems. We just took that decision on the web UI for our application manager and we haven't regretted it.

But yes, mostly a lot of web UIs and apps are designed by people who never used a high latency interweb connection.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Is there anything that properly written AJAX would cut out? I mean no javascript and half the web is broken.

[andrewducker]

I worry about people in corporate environments stuck using IE6 until XP EOLs.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Christ, I thought XP was EOL but April 8, 2014 for "extended support".

But would IE6 be a problem? Has JS5.6 -- or are you worried that particularly brain damaged corporates switch it off?

[andrewducker]

I was basically assuming that most modern AJAX techniques wouldn't work with IE. I should really test that.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I have not tested it myself but I was assuming the opposite... that unless it's a hideous kludge it should be OK. But genuinely I don't know.

Does well written AJAX require anything but CSS support and Javascript?

When I google AJAX + IE6 I get lots of "doesn't work on IE6" pages but I get the same for googling AJAX + IE7 and to some extent AJAX + IE8.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Oh god... that's actually worse than ours -- we have a "must login from campus" thing but fortunately we have Windows Terminal Server" so that counts as campus.

There's just no excuse in this day and age for "Does not work on all browsers" unless it's a showcase for a particular tech (e.g. html5).