Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by blkhp19 2413 days ago
It blows my mind, and makes me nervous about my own future, that old people do this kind of thing.

Are they actually incapable of learning the right way to do things? Is neuroplasticity playing a role here? Do they not care that their images look terrible when zoomed in on? I guess they grew up in an era when photos frequently had time and date stamps, and if their eyesight is going... I guess that explains both points.

4 comments

"Old people"? Half the reposted Twitter memes on imgur have a cellphone title bar in them.
What's the "right way" to do things anyway? I know quite well how to tap the share icon, then wait for the drawer to appear, then scroll down a bit, then tap the save icon, then wait for the next drawer to appear, then tap "To photos" or whatever.

Or I can just hit two physical buttons on my phone and grab the image in the form of a screenshot. Because I don't care about the image fidelity, I usually just want to share the thing on Discord or Slack or wherever.

Don't be so arrogant as to assume that people doing things differently than you must be too stupid or old or blind to do it "the right way".

If you are going to become an app developer, you shot stop blaming users for not learning your made up UI language, and start making your app work in their language.

I thought some apps and iOS had already responded to this workflow by doing smart things when users try to create screenshots. If they haven't yet, they should. There's no need in the common case for "screenshot" and "share main image" to have different UI entry points. Just pop up a menu asking the user that they want when they push the button.

What do you mean, three-finger-anticlockwise-spiral-while-shaking-the-phone-horizontally isn't intuitive?
You "start making your app work in their language" by hijacking default OS functionality?

No.

Pretty sure many apps don't even allow you to save pictures at all. Maybe Facebook is one of them, not sure. That + the button to save pictures not being at the same place on all apps makes screenshots easier and reliable. They simply work.