The worst.
June 9, 2017 5:15 PM   Subscribe

 
Not nearly as bad as some actual production widgets I've encountered ...
posted by oheso at 5:19 PM on June 9, 2017 [5 favorites]


I have to say, the tank wars one in the "Launcher" widget could actually be pretty fun in the right contexts.
posted by bonehead at 5:20 PM on June 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


Those are amazing.
posted by bongo_x at 5:22 PM on June 9, 2017 [7 favorites]


Some of the Imgur embeds seem to be broken; here are some working versions:

Horizontal slider in vertical bar

Guitar Hero

Laptop lid
posted by Rhaomi at 5:23 PM on June 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


Further reading.
posted by jeffamaphone at 5:27 PM on June 9, 2017


volume cannon is amazing and should be part of android or something
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:28 PM on June 9, 2017 [13 favorites]


Oh god the curling.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:33 PM on June 9, 2017 [24 favorites]


Yep these are all in the range of "ha ok can deal with that" rather than "please god don't let me run into the dweeb that made this I don't want to go to prison".
posted by sammyo at 5:33 PM on June 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


Ahh... "fun". That wears out quick.
posted by Artw at 5:36 PM on June 9, 2017


I think I would lose days to the curling one.
posted by ghost phoneme at 5:36 PM on June 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


On an amusing note, my internet addiction loop of Reddit, Metafilter, and DesignerNews has merged all into one post.
posted by weewooweewoo at 5:39 PM on June 9, 2017 [16 favorites]


Before clicking the link, I honestly thought "worst volume sliders" would be about things like this.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:04 PM on June 9, 2017 [7 favorites]


And I thought we had thoroughly explored this ground with CD-ROM interfaces in the 90s.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:10 PM on June 9, 2017 [10 favorites]


See also: please enter your phone number.
posted by Nelson at 6:11 PM on June 9, 2017 [13 favorites]


Yes, Alonzo, I was ready to deal with Arby's Pizza Slider.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:13 PM on June 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


I actually like the one with the 100 radio buttons.
posted by Mitheral at 7:26 PM on June 9, 2017 [7 favorites]


I recently got a cheap mp3 player because I tend to buy the kind of cheap phones where once you install Candy Crush your storage is full. The review said something like "The controls are not that intuitive, but other than that it's a great player for the price," but I thought, how bad could they be?

This bad:
The volume up/volume down buttons are the same as the next track/previous track buttons.

If you want to put the volume up or down, first you have to hit VOL, then you have to wait for the interface to respond, then you hit the up/down buttons.

Except that the down button turns the volume up and the up button turns the volume down.

I laughed when I saw these. I thought, "Ha, that is a combination of cluelessness and sadism that would not actually make it into a finished product."

How wrong I was.
posted by Jeanne at 7:51 PM on June 9, 2017 [17 favorites]


I actually like the one with the 100 radio buttons.

Yeah, me too. I laughed when I saw it but quickly realized it might actually be better than a slider.
posted by Redstart at 8:11 PM on June 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


I don't know why I enjoyed these so much.
posted by greermahoney at 8:51 PM on June 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


Volume sliders aren't so bad, but I HATE (with the undying passion of a million young suns) sliders for precision positioning in video streams.
posted by Samizdata at 9:28 PM on June 9, 2017 [9 favorites]


Video streams usually do not position accurately to the GUI because they're buffered in a finite number of segments and blocks of a certain size. Clicking at any arbitrary point on the transport slider means it just loads the nearest chunk. Sometimes this is forward from the clicked position, sometimes it's backwards.
posted by loquacious at 10:25 PM on June 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


This made me laugh way too hard, thanks.
posted by salvia at 10:38 PM on June 9, 2017


The one with the radio buttons should have randomized the order.
posted by jimw at 10:49 PM on June 9, 2017 [15 favorites]


Microsoft is frantically making notes for the next XBox and car entertainment systems.
posted by bongo_x at 12:29 AM on June 10, 2017 [2 favorites]


All of these are 100% better than the inline volume controls on your typical set of headphones. My third set in four years just failed. Pro tip: If you think "I'll just cut that bit out and directly solder the two ends together, you have not seen the tiny, tiny wires inside..

I liked the laptop lid; but to be more infuriating, it should get louder as it closes.
posted by maxwelton at 1:12 AM on June 10, 2017 [3 favorites]


The radio button one could be improved if they had it randomly skip some integers and maybe throw a few fractional values in
posted by ckape at 1:17 AM on June 10, 2017


i got a few rich hearty lols from these which is the first time I've been able to say that about a parody UI element, let me tell you
posted by Sebmojo at 2:11 AM on June 10, 2017 [2 favorites]


The latitude one slid my volume to 11!

We have automatically adjusted your volume (44%) based on your Latitude (43.5° S). To change your volume, simply move your device to a new location bwith the Latitude as your desired volume.
posted by fairmettle at 3:28 AM on June 10, 2017 [1 favorite]


Ahaha, these are awesome. There was much cackling.
posted by obfuscation at 4:25 AM on June 10, 2017


Not nearly as bad as some actual production widgets I've encountered ...

Some of my company's old in-house stuff simply didn't do anything, at least these respond.
posted by tommasz at 5:04 AM on June 10, 2017 [1 favorite]


It is missing the old classic seen in countless freeware players in the past:
0-75, 76, 77,78,79 and 80-100.
posted by lmfsilva at 5:36 AM on June 10, 2017


See also: please enter your phone number.

The last image on that page brings to mind some of the stressful CAPTCHA challenges where you have to type the obfuscated numbers displayed into the answer box, all the while knowing that a timer is counting down.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 7:36 AM on June 10, 2017 [1 favorite]


It is far, far too late for me to get any favourites for pointing out that the radio buttons interface actually existed in a milestone product that serious people sold for actual money (and too much of it). It's Apple's Lisa computer, where value slider and drop-down menu UI controls just didn't exist.

So, for virtually every preference option that took a continuous value, they used radio buttons instead.
posted by tss at 12:00 PM on June 10, 2017 [9 favorites]


None of these come even remotely close to the bizarre comical pain of attempting to use SIRI to adjust the volume of an iPhone with a pair of AirPods.
posted by duplux at 9:55 AM on June 11, 2017


See also: please enter your phone number.

I love the one where you have to enter the prime factorization of your phone number. Although in my case it would take a bit of scrolling, as the largest prime factor of my ten-digit phone number is a seven-digit prime. Never thought to factor my phone number before.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:01 AM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


« Older Bread in space   |   Never had one of my Russian clients ever say to me... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments