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Discussion on: Will you sacrifice minimalist UI for features?

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Ben Sinclair

Most apps that claim to have a minimalist UI don't, they just copy some of the visual styles that Apple use and call it "minimal".

That screenshot you have up there isn't minimal, it's cluttered and confused:

  • Is everything flat or are we into gradient effects?
  • Should icons line up vertically or be like the filter icon and whatever the big O icon means is?)
  • What exactly is the O under the filter for?
  • Come to that, what are the other icons? There's a plus sign and next to it there's another plus sign but with something liney in the background. What's that about? I can't guess. On the right side, I can't figure out the second icon at all, and the others I'm only faily certain about.
  • The eye icon (presumably a view count) is also presumably read-only, where the others are actions. It's also much heavier than the other icons, but I don't know whether this is because it's denser or whether it's supposed to be showing me an active state.
  • if it is showing an active state, it's inaccessible.
  • Shouldn't an "overview" be the first thing in a menu?
  • The folder tree's twisties open at 45 degrees. The sitebar's open at 90. I don't know what the one in the right hand pane does, but I bet it's different again.
  • At the top, there looks like a left-arrow to close the sidebar, but it's in a different style again.
  • Why don't we care about accessibility at all? Everything's so low-contrast (and small)!

What I'm saying is, apps like this are a mess, adding features to them won't change that. They're not using anything people could legitimately call minimalist design and so there's nothing to lose by bolting things on.