[LeoPanthera]

When did we stop making buttons that actually look like a button?

The bas-relief era of UI design now feels like a golden era, and the early "Aqua" versions of Mac OS X the ultimate evolution.

Everything since then feels like we're regressing.

The "add comment" button for this comment is literally a solid blue roundrect. It's not even obvious that it's clickable.

[rhet0rica]

The "when" isn't a mystery or gradual in the slightest—we have concrete dates.

The death of the button occurred on October 21, 2010, when Microsoft released Windows Phone 7 to the international market, beginning the Metro UI era.

Apple wouldn't catch up until September 17, 2014, when they unveiled iOS 7, ditching Steve Jobs's beloved skeuomorphism in favor of Jony Ive's signature flat style.

Google followed up on November 12, 2014, with Android 5.0 Lollipop's introduction of Material Design—arguably the least flat of the three, though it wouldn't stay that way forever.

[hedora]

Windows Phone 8 was pretty much only buttons in a grid, or lists of relevant information (with support for clearly marked hyperlinks). It was glorious.

They got rid of the button shadows, had them cycle through previews sometimes, and called them 'tiles', but they acted as buttons.

[mat_jack1]

I agree! I remember that we used to joke that at last we didn't need designers to do designs anymore. Colored rectangles were enough for everything!

Which I think was the reason that Microsoft did it that way and Apple tried to resist a bit. But the developer push was substantial.

[m463]

ios7 started a bunch of other nonsense, like hidden buttons, and un-link-like-links

[dan_linder]

And producing them was very easy even in the pre-CSS days.

At the very worst (which is what I did), make up a simple image in Adobe with a 3D effect, save it as a black-and-white bitmap, change the white to the color of the button. The make a second version in the same manner, but this time the shading of the button reversed.

Nexty setup the HTML so the on-press for the link pulled up the alternate button image. The reversed shading (when done properly) then looked like it was depressed.

Is that so much harder than adding the JavaScript and other code around it to make the simple animation some sites have? (At least with the on-press option, it didn’t require having JavaScript active just to animate some buttons.)

[tokioyoyo]

I’ve done webdev in 2000s as well, and everything you described is so much more longer and times-taking than what we’re doing now.

I understand that a lot of people hate JS ecosystem and etc., but we’ve moved on from that a while ago.

Although I’m more on infrastructure side of things nowadays, I don’t miss the early days’ of handwritten HTML.

[userbinator]

It's all because of "UX designers" who have to justify their continued existence by constantly finding new things to change (break). If computers several decades ago had more than enough power to render button-looking buttons, there's no other excuse for the sad state of UI today.

[aaroninsf]

If there is a real rejoinder to this, I have yet to encounter it.

This depressing observation is regularly voiced (or thought) every time UX aesthetics come up... and I've yet to see so much as a sniffy defense.

My assumption this is because it's simply true; the only reason for churn is "fashion" requiring orbiting around a small space of viable options, strange-attractor style, and the vested interest an industry has in fueling the very modest pleasure that comes from tiny or bold steps from what is familiar to what is "fresh."

[dredmorbius]

Buttonshedding.

(By analogy: <https://effectiviology.com/bikeshedding-law-of-triviality/>.)

[hedora]

Then indeed I succeeded in opening it, but when I did so seemed only to be confronted by a greater and more closely locked barrier. For what could be the meaning of the queer clay bas-relief and the disjointed jottings, ramblings, and cuttings which I found? Had my uncle, in his latter years, become credulous of the most superficial impostures? I resolved to search out the eccentric sculptor responsible for this apparent disturbance of an old man’s peace of mind.

The bas-relief was a rough rectangle less than an inch thick and about five by six inches in area; obviously of modern origin. Its designs, however, were far from modern in atmosphere and suggestion; for although the vagaries of cubism and futurism are many and wild, they do not often reproduce that cryptic regularity which lurks in prehistoric writing. And writing of some kind the bulk of these designs seemed certainly to be; though my memory, despite much familiarity with the papers and collections of my uncle, failed in any way to identify this particular species, or even to hint at its remotest affiliations.

Above these apparent hieroglyphics was a figure of evidently pictorial intent, though its impressionistic execution forbade a very clear idea of its nature. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive.

- The Call of Cthulhu, Ch 1. The Horror in Clay

[jerf]

Even better, how about those capacitive buttons that look like computer buttons in the real world, only even less visually distinct, and have absolutely no force feedback, depressing motion, or any other feedback whatsoever that you've pressed an actual button?

In other news, though, I believe the HN button is just an HTML button, with a touch of font styling on it from HN. Linux on a Chrome-descended browser I'm just getting a grey box with a black outline, no 3D styling. It's not styled that way by HN. Everything else in the CSS properties for me is showing as "user agent stylesheet", e.g., the defaults.

[sodapopcan]

Was it that Apple dude? Ives or whatever? Made a lot of money with his "revolutionary poor design" and we're still paying for it. I could be wrong.

[BobbyTables2]

It certainly would have been easier to imagine UI design trends going in reverse - toward explicit designs with a standardized interface (menus, etc).

[dymk]

What a button look like to you? Blue roundrect sure says button to me.

[hollowturtle]

Because you never saw a button in your life

[fian]

That could be a real experience for children in the not too distant future.

We are seeing more and more appliances coming out with less buttons and a mobile app to access advanced features. Also cars (annoyingly) are coming out with more physical controls replaced by touchscreen interfaces. It's not hard to imagine a world without physical buttons becoming a reality.

The days of digital buttons might also be numbered. Apps designed for touched enabled interfaces, particularly on mobiles, support swipes and gestures to perform different actions. There is no obvious indication you can perform an action with a swipe or gesture. Having grown up pre-internet with physical buttons, dials, sliders etc I automatically look for the digital equivalent for interaction, I don't assume I can swipe or gesture to do something. I have to resort to searching for "how do I do x with y" to find out.

Children on the other hand spend a lot of time playing with new things. they are far more likely to discover swipe or gesture through play. As an adult I am much more task oriented, I'm not looking to play I'm looking to get the thing done.

As children grow up in a world without physical buttons, they may not see the relevance of digital equivalents and lean towards swipe, gesture, voice control etc. Digital buttons may disappear.

An example of an similar technological shift happened for many pre-Boomers with the introduction of Video Cassette Recorders (VCRs). My father grew up with analog clocks and watches. Time was told by two or three hands on a clock face. When VCRs became more affordable in the 80s they came with digital clocks. He could read the time off the digital display but couldn't make the leap to setting a recording time by putting it into program mode then using buttons to set a record start time and duration. To him, time was set by moving the clock hands or twisting a watch dial.

The introduction of flat-UI bothered me in it threw away a visual indication that this "thing" is a clickable button. I obviously not fully adapted to swipes and gestures. I feel like a few steps down the path for whatever the future equivalent of "can't program the VCR" is. I hope the advent of LLMs will make it easy enough for application developers to produce multiple UIs for different classes of user button users, swipe users, whatever the next thing is (brain wave control??).

[hollowturtle]

> We are seeing more and more appliances coming out with less buttons and a mobile app to access advanced features. Also cars (annoyingly) are coming out with more physical controls replaced by touchscreen interfaces. It's not hard to imagine a world without physical buttons becoming a reality.

And thay is a regression and a mistake. Putting touch screens on cars was a big mistake, children will struggle to drive and turn on/off something as we do, you can't have reliable touch during vehicle movement. It's just stupid. I won't be surprised when regulators will requires some, not all, appliances to have hard buttons. Espacially cars. My car touch screen sometimes suffer a 1 second delay between touches, that's just bad product development, no children will adapt to that, only if braindead