I just accidentally clicked the “clear all” on the browser URL and wished that it was a bit harder to click but was still there. If it took three clicks to make happen, its still useful in most circumstances but would drastically drop the mistaken clicks
Anyway, what are your unpopular UI opinions?
Workbench (Amiga GUI from 1985) is still unmatched in features 40 years later. And it ran off a floppy disk.
I don’t know when macOS gained the ability to change the colour of the cursor. Windows got it in 10 recently, or 11, I’m not sure which exactly (I’m a Mac user but we use Windows at work). But in Workbench, you could open a VERY basic pixel art tool and completely customise the cursor. In 1985! I was fond of making crosshairs.
More than that, something the major OSes haven’t done since, is two-stage icons. Folders were called drawers in Workbench, but otherwise, same thing. One click would select the drawer (invert the colours), then the second click would open the drawer, and spawn its contents in another window. Applications had it, too. WordPerfect was an Amiga 1000 computer with monitor, and its idle state was off. When active, it would be turned on and running WordPerfect. Yes, in the damn icon. It wasn’t animated, but it showed the program on the monitor. Icons could also be larger, and would remember their position on the screen, which meant you could hide files by placing them in the corner of the screen and resizing the drawer window. Thus, you’d have to position the window a certain way and drag it out to see those files. (You could also just use dir in a command line.)
Anyway, I thought it was awesome. I guess most people didn’t.
windows 3.1 supported coloured cursors
source: am old. used coloured cursors on 3.1
The problem with customisable selected state icons, is the inconsistency in the select state. Means it isn’t always immediately obvious whether something is selected or not. WB 2.04+ added borders around the icons to resolve this. Most of the time you don’t need them though, especially if people stick to the more modern GlowIcons style.
But otherwise, Workbench/Intuition did nearly everything right in terms of UI design. Close gadget nowhere near anything else you’re going to click on, menus at the top (pointer constrained by the screen, makes it easier to get to the menus), windows that don’t come to the front as soon as you look at them (makes it easier to rearrange windows the way you want them). If you want something full screen it can go on its own screen, and if something is multi window they can all be grouped together on their own screen.