Why Google's bookmark manager and Docs have purposefully bad UI (opens in new tab)

This comment is not the way to win that culture war.

Agree that using phones while driving is generally bad, but implying that it is irresponsible to use turn-by-turn (and suggesting the alternative of just knowing where you are) is just more likely to make people ignore the problem all together.

Not sure why this was downvoted. It is my responsibility as a driver to not be distracted. If I am, I just stop at the next possibility - what's stopping me (pun intended)?

I'd rather not be responsible for any accident related to google maps, because ultimately, it'd be my fault, and I'd not feel relieved just because google changed its layout.

This is not about excusing the bad pattern of modernizing UI just for the sake of it, just about not relieving myself out of responsibility.

> it's been long acknowledged that "accident" is a problematic word to describe vehicle crashes because it minimizes the agency of a driver and intentional decision making processes that lead up to a crash

I seem to recall that this was intentional, to improve acceptance of motor vehicles in the early days.

Certainly the way laws are written, there is quite a high bar before an "accident" brings the kinds of criminal charges that any other reason for a similar action would trigger. For example, if you kill someone through inattention, that is often charged as involuntary manslaughter, unless you did it with a car and were following traffic laws, in which case it is rarely charged.

As a society we have traditionally come to accept that driving kills lots of people, often but not always at random, and we don't want to be handing out random prison sentences for those with merely bad luck. (Or, at least, without provable blame.)

I suspect there will be backlash, your post is one example.

> It's my fault for using the phone, but it very nearly caused 2 accidents for me this weekend

I was gonna put this comment deep down the chain but Ill just leave it top level for everyone who is worked up about me using the normal phrase "car accident" to describe an incident where I would have been 100% at fault for using my phone.

I agree that I as the driver would have been at fault in an accident. Car accident is a really common thing to call it even when the person naming the incident is 100% at fault and knows it. I would have been 100% at fault and I know that.

Still, it's hard not to get frustrated when previously safe activities become unsafe because of a UI update that was ostensibly made to increase safety.

When I was 16, my driver's ed teacher would correct us anytime somebody used the word accident. He insisted on using the word collision instead.

And two of the streets on the screen are named!

My favorite is during navigation when my current location is placed 3/4 of the way across the screen, that is 3/4 of the screen is used to display the route I've already driven.

Google Maps is Apple Maps Bad!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVq1wgIN62E&ab_channel=Dames...

Do you have some basis for these assertions? Personally I agree with the GP but it's personal anecdata only. I would never consider using tags (or a sock drawer) and in my experience working with others with collaboration tools that use tags, there might be one person who is keen in them but they are never widely used. I think this backs up the GPs point that yes, some may find it useful, but it's not necessarily a "must have" that the majority are looking for, or even would use if it was splashed in their faces.

Bookmarks are shit for a variety of reasons. Far better to archive pages with images or PDFs. Link rot is so pervasive that just maintaining bookmarks is a waste of time. Tagging, sorting, and annotating files on storage you control is far more reliable.

Google is just trying to help users realize that the web is a bad source for organized information. Google sells expensive clicks to personal injury lawyers off of titanic spam plantations of SEO content —- their mission is orthogonal to the organization of information.

Except Bookmarks and Docs have folders already so the question isn't "no organization" vs "organization" but "tags" vs "folders." This book for example cites data that the majority of users prefer hierarchical organization: https://books.google.com/books?id=EO91DQAAQBAJ&pg=PA137&lpg=...

Adding tags has a chance of causing user confusion, UI congestion and impact on existing tools (in the case of Google Drive) so it's not a free thing to do.

The benefit of tags is that a single item can have multiple tags, so you're no longer constrained by having to decide on a specific folder hierarchy to organize them in. You can replace "folders" with tags entirely and still use tags as folders if you want, with the option of storing an item "in multiple folders" (give it multiple tags). Gmail has worked like this for a while: the inbox is just a filter which displays emails tagged with "inbox", which makes it even more confusing and inconsistent that Google's bookmarks and documents don't support this.

> if I bookmark a site I probably know enough about it that I wouldn't benefit from a tag.

The gulf between this and my own use of bookmarks is so, so vast.

I bookmark because I want to have something as a reference, or come back to it later (especially "bookmark all tabs").

I often think "Maybe I bookmarked this thing that I remember a few details of... hope those details are in the title, or that I happen to recognize the title!"

I often find that I've bookmarked the same site or page multiple times, because when I ran across it, I couldn't easily notice that I already had it saved.

> I probably have over 1000 bookmarks myself, but I can't think of why I would want to "tag" a bookmark.

I have 8000+ bookmarks.

https://pinboard.in/u:eitland/

I can mostly find anything I want within a few minutes. Oh, and I pay for archiving so there's a chance I can read it even if the link rots.

The belief in the 2010s was that UX design was these pastel-coloured care bears that care deeply about the emotional well-being of people clicking things. And the golden rule was to reduce complexity, while weirdly also hobbling control over what the business logic slurped up.

> Google’s core business is now ads, not search.

It has been for over 20 years now, since October 2000.

Works on desktops, thanks! Think I was confused because on tablets you still have to pass twice to get the virtual keyboard to come up.

> it doesn't seem to have gotten an update in years (if ever since launch)

That's probably why it doesn't suck as badly as most other Google products.

> you can't change the ordering etc.

Of notes? Of checkbox items? In both cases: you most definitely can. I just did that, both in the browser and in the app.

Guess I'm happy with the minimal features :-) basic notes, syncs across devices, I use a Google account anyway and my notes appear in Google takeout for backup/export purposes.

My biggest complaint about Google Maps is the UI. Street names are difficult to read, the scale of how-far-away an upcoming turn is always off. Contrast could use improvements too.

There is also a lot of clutter.

These are traits that have all gotten worse over the years. I'd prefer the UI of the first-gen Google Maps then what we have today.

I have no complaints about the actual navigation, there has been quirks over the years but nothing that stands out in my mind.

The parent wants a map, which Google Maps currently isn't much of.

I like Waze too, but just wanted to point out that they are also owned by Ggogle.

Have you seen Google's latest icons? They aren't exactly known for doing what is competent, sane, or useful.

It took them years and years to finally make the "Ignore Toll Roads" on Google maps not reset after you close the app, even after tons of bug reports with hundreds of responses.

Sheets has gone through massive improvements in features.

It's no Excel, especially for bigger sheets or complex functions, but it's been a good way to provide my website users with a web spreadsheet. I'm reminded this every 4 years when I need to install Excel.

Smart Canvas are an amazing update coming later this year. Took years in the making, but well-worth it.

Working with dozens of people through Docs and Sheets, I love their evergreen-ness. Sure, I wish there were more features but it's amazing to keep software simple, especially when it is used so widely.

I think you have that backwards. It takes a strong stomach to claim Google isn't facing competition on Google Sheets and threatening their market share would cause them to start caring. The more likely scenario is they have given up on winning any market share as serious users refuse to switch from Excel and non serious users have pads of paper and pencil, leaving Google just a tiny slice of the pie between those two groups to even fight for.

I would guess it has to do with what I have heard is the promotion path at Google. It seems you need to ship, and ship new things, if you want to be a serious contender. That leaves few engineers willing to take a look at Google Sheets issues and put together a PR to fix these things.

> one of these is that you may not remember exact wording

that’s exactly the reason to have a good search, I usually always remember a word or at least the general idea of what the thing I’m trying to find was about, a good enough search like Google understand meaning, even if I don’t use the exact words

> please tell how am I supposed to search for bookmarks I made in japanese section of xvideos?

I don’t know, how does xvideos or YouTube does it? You do the same, but with a very limited corpus of just your bookmarks it will be way easier

LOL. I have a possible solution.

I basically add tags when bookmarking and categorize distinct 'tastes' by adding typed keywords into the bookmark text.

Though that's an argument that standard search alone isn't enough.

The search on MacOS is unusable for me. It always surfaces wrong/irrelevant things and defaults to searching in the oddest places.

I wrote my own local .html file, in a local unpackaged extension for Chrome to accept it. It was just four columns of links with favicons and multiple headings per column, and inline inputs to quickly search different sites, and modifier-less keyboard shortcuts like “h” so that you could hit Ctrl-T H to go to HN. The trick, if you can call it that, was that the layout was clear enough that you could pick between 30-50 options in a second or two once you’re used to it.

I considered polishing it for publication, but I think that what made it so good for me is I made it specific to my needs. Besides, I’m off Chrome now, and they fixed the bug I was using to steal focus from the URL bar to make shortcuts work.

I want a personal search engine that considers images, docs, and websites I've been to. "Shit, I was reading something about write ahead logs; where was that..." or "there was a funny picture of a guy with a bar of soap I saw 6mo ago that I want to share now."