Gravis McElroy

amber-screen library computer in 1998: type in two words and hit F3. search results appear instantly.

now: type in two words, wait for an AJAX popup. get a throbber for five seconds. oops you pressed a key, your results are erased

one of the things that makes me steaming mad is how the entire field of web apps ignores 100% of learned lessons from desktop apps

data in webpages in 2017 is distressingly fragile. go to google maps and try and find an action that *doesn't* erase what you're doing

drag the map even a pixel? it erases all your results and closes the infobox you were looking at.

you have a list of interesting locations on the screen but you want to figure out how far they are from the center of town? you can't.

you can open a new tab, do the search there, then flip back and forth manually in the browser. there's no other way.

that is to say, once the data's up on the screen, you *can't add to it*. which is one of the core functions of computers, generally.

one of the primary reasons computers were *created* was to cross reference data. that is nearly impossible in most software now.

maps are a particularly hot item for this. christ, what about looking at a map ISN'T about cross ref'ing data? it's the WHOLE POINT

you have a start and a finish and need to integrate that with geography and roads. and gmaps, bing, etc. are all the worst choice for this.

you are, literally, better off taking a screenshot of the map, dropping it in ms paint and manually plotting there.

gmaps wildly thrashes the map around every time you do anything. Any time you search, almost any time you click on anything

it's a bewildering whirl of colors and shapes that has gotten worse every six months for 15 years

and in doing so it has made humans worse and worse and worse at doing things that computers were created to replace and improve

in 1998 if you were planning a trip you might have gotten out a paper road map and put marks on it for interesting locations along the way

with online maps you CAN do that, but the entire process is built assuming you already know everywhere you're going

It APPEARS to be what you want - you can keep putting in locations and it'll keep plotting them - but in truth it's not at all

The process you WANT: pick your start and end. now start searching for places in between. Your start and end are saved.

When you find someplace interesting, add it to your list. Keep doing that, keep searching and adding.

Search far and wide. Search for cities and then click around inside them. Read reviews. Do street view.

When you're all done, you go back to your plotted trip and start laying out the chosen locations and optimizing your path.

You can do this with a paper map. You can't do this with gmaps. So you just don't do it.

You do something halfass and unsatisfying instead, using multiple tabs or a text file you save addresses in or some shit

You don't even realize why the process is frustrating because it's just The Way It Is.

And everything on computers is like this. It's just How It Is now. You can't fail quickly and iterate.

On the library computer in 1998 I could retry searches over and over and over until I found what I was looking for because it was quick

Now I have to wait for a huge page to load, wait while the page elements shift all over, GOD FORBID i click on anything while its loading

how many times have i typed in a search box, seen what i wanted pop up as i was typing, go to click on it, then have it disappear

I make no secret of hating the mouse. I think it's a crime. I think it's stifling humanitys progress, a gimmick we can't get over.