It's 2023 and smartphones can't even properly upload files in background.

When an upload is running in background while I watch YouTube or use other apps, the upload just stops at some point. The speed indicator in the top bar goes down to a few KB/s and I know immediately the upload has stopped well before it could have finished.

When re-opening the tab, I see a blank page and a loading bar. This means the tab has unloaded. Now I will have to re-select all those files again, which comes with its own troubles ( https://devrant.com/rants/9879401/... ).

Mobile browsers need to have a "protect this tab from unloading" option. Samsung already introduced a "keep open" option in the task switcher to protect individual apps from unloading in background. Why not do this on tab level?

Once the user locks their screen, this alone might interrupt the uploading process. On laptops and desktop computers, the upload keeps running in background.

Come on, this should be as easy as childs' play for billion-dollar corporations. Aren't smartphones "smart" enough to detect that a page is currently uploading files so its tab is not unloaded?

If smartphones can not accomplish this simple task that desktop computers and laptops can easily handle since the 2000s, it is a sad and embarrassing state.

> "A flat design UI reduces cognitive load!"

Oh really, Google? If that is your aim, then how come you increase cognitive load by making pull-to-refresh mandatory on your mobile web browser, which constantly has to be avoided by the user?

> "Just use power saving mode, bro! It will extend the life of your non-replaceable battery!"

Of course I bought a smartphone with powerful processors just to limit their performance for the sake of delaying the expiry of its non-replaceable battery.

> "You don't need to film in 4K if you don't have a 4K screen!"

Besides the obvious fact that one might own a 4K screen in future, 4K (2160p) looks better than Full HD (1080p) on a 1600×900 "HD+" screen! It looks pure and clear thanks to higher bitrate and chroma subsampling.

What? You didn't know almost all consumer video cameras, including smartphones, record with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, meaning 1080p video only has 540p of colour information? It has 1080p of luminance, but not 1080p of colour.

120fps and 240fps filming isn't just for slow motion playback, but recent smartphones have 120 Hz screens so those videos can finally be watched as ultra-smooth motion with audio.

If only all smartphones encoded high-framerate videos in real-time with the same framerate recorded from the image sensor instead of stupidly slowing down when encoding.

Granted, this is a thing Apple has always done right: they encoded their "slow motion" videos in real-time and let the user select the slowed-down portions during playback!

Let the user set their preferred playback speed in the video editor, don't dictate that 1× playback speed is 1/4 of real-life speed. 1× playback speed must be 1× real-life speed to clear up all confusion.

Besides, laptops with 120 Hz screens existed as early as 2011 (Samsung 700G7A)!.

I am sick of misrotated videos.

Sometimes, the phone camera software saves a video vertically because the user hits "record" before the software has detected that the user is holding the smartphone horizontally, because the software stupidly launches in vertical orientation by default.

So the software wants the user to wait until it has finally detected horizontal orientation, which causes the user to miss out on a moment.

How about the camera software actually saves the video in the orientation it was recorded in for the most time, rather than only the beginning of the video?

If I can think of this idea, billion-dollar companies surely can.

In the meantime, misrotated videos can be fixed using this ffmpeg command on Linux or Windows:

ffmpeg -i input_file.mp4 -metadata:s:v rotate="0" -c copy output_file.mp4

And if the phone was held with the home button to the left side:

ffmpeg -i input_file.mp4 -metadata:s:v rotate="180" -c copy output_file.mp4

This solution is superior compared to using -vf (video filters) because it only touches the metadata of the video. No re-encoding. This means no quality loss and no CPU/GPU power needed to process the video again. It just passes through.

Is Google trying to win a "who can create the shittiest file picker" award?

The file picker of Android OS can not even remember the last selected sorting options, and its default sorting is alphabetical. Does anyone really use alphabetical sorting? Sorting by the last modified time or by size is far more useful than alphabetical sorting can ever hope being.

The only use for alphabetical sorting is sorting files with incorrect time stamp attribute but a correct time stamp or number in the file name.

The file picker of Android OS also features pull-to-refresh. As already said, pull-to-refresh is not a helpful shortcut but a useless anti-feature. ( https://devrant.com/rants/9831669/... ) Why would anyone need to refresh in a file picker? How likely is a file to not exist before opening the file picker and then appear while browsing for the file? All pull-to-refresh does here is draining the phone battery by reloading the thumbnails.

The file search feature of the Google file picker can only search the entire storage. A search can not be limited to the currently viewed directory. Even the file picker of Windows Vista from 2007 could search only the viewed directory.

Obviously, it lacks any kind of range selection. No A-to-B selection that is like shift-click selection on desktop, and not even the inferior drag-to-select that Samsung has implemented, which would still be better than annoying individual selection.

Microsoft could build a better file picker at a time some of us were in primary school than Google can build today. Come on, Google, just scrap your garbage software and go copycat Microsoft. Useful plagiarized software is better than useless self-made garbage.

At least the Google file picker does one thing right: It remembers the last directory the user picked a file from and opens it next time.

Smartphone users in 2012: "Non-replaceable batteries need to be outlawed."

Politicians in 2027: "Were… were starting to think about it. Have some patience."

Politics in a nutshell.

It's 2023 and smartphone vendors' pre-installed file managers are slooooooowly beginning to catch up with the functionality that the third-party ES File Explorer already had in 2012.

Samsung's latest file manager "My Files" finally has a draggable scroll bar, background file transfer (one can browse files while a transfer is running), drag-to-select (which is still not nearly as fast as the instant A-to-B range selection of ES File Explorer which simulates shift+click selection on desktop), and even staying in the current directory after tapping on "Copy" or "Move" rather than going to the starting directory!

And finally, when copying or moving files to a MicroSD card or a USB-OTG device, files' date and time attributes are not discarded and reset to now, but the original date and time of the files are retained! ES File Explorer could do that with root access.

Dear Samsung, couldn't you have thought of these simple things a decade ago and saved your users lots of headaches?

Imagine a billion-dollar company fails to think of putting a simple "jump to page number" feature in their PDF reader.

Google Drive PDF reader for Android.

Pull-to-refresh is useless.

If you are a mobile app developer, please get rid of pull-to-refresh. Your users will thank you.

I have the impression that mobile app developers choose to implement the pull-to-refresh gimmick just in order to make their app comply with a design trend. It seems like a desperate attempt to appear "modern" and "fancy", not because of the actual usefulness of the gesture.

Pull-to-refresh is one of those things that are well-intended but backfire. It appears helpful on first sight, but turns out to be a burden.

It takes effort and cognitive strain to avoid triggering a pull-to-refresh. The user can't use the app relaxed but has to walk on eggshells.

Every unwanted refresh wastes battery power, mobile data (if it is an Internet-connected app), and can lead to the loss of form data.

To avoid pull-to-refresh, the user has to resort to finger gymnastics like a shorter swipe for scrolling up or swiping slightly up before down. Pull-to-refresh could even be triggered while pinch-zooming in or out near the top of a page, if the touchscreen does not recognize one of the two fingers.

Pull-to-refresh also interferes with the double-tap-swipe zoom gesture. If one of the two taps are not recognized, a swipe-down to zoom in can trigger a pull-to-refresh instead.

To argue "if you don't like pull-to-refresh, just don't use it" is like blaming a person who stepped on a mine, since the person moved and the mine was stationary.

A refresh button can be half a second away in the menu bar, URL bar, or a submenu, where it is unlikely to be pressed accidentally. There is no need for a gesture that does more harm than good.

Using a mobile app with pull-to-refresh feels like having Windows StickyKeys forcibly enabled at all times. The refresh circle animation sticks to the finger.

If the user actually wants to refresh, pull-to-refresh is slower than a refresh button in a menu if the page is not at the top, meaning pull-to-refresh is useless as a shortcut anyway if the page is in any other position than the top.

An alternative to pull-to-refresh is pull-for-details. Samsung did it in some of their apps. Pulling down against the top reveals additional information such as the count and total size of selected items.

If you own a website, add this CSS to make browsing your website on the pre-installed Android web browser not a headache:

html,body { overscroll-behavior: none; }

Why is this necessary? In 2019, Google took the ability to deactivate the pull-to-refresh gesture on their Chrome browser for Android OS away from users. On Chrome for Android, pull-to-refresh can only be disabled on the server side, not the user side. The avalanche of complaints? Neglected.

Good thing several third-party browsers let the user turn off this severe headache.

If modern computers have more memory but websites demand more memory, doesn't that defeat the benefit?

For example, let's assume YouTube's HTML-based user interface from 2014 needed 100 MB of RAM per tab. Now, computers might have 4 times the RAM on average, but YouTube's polymer JS-based user interface (UI) might need 400 MB per tab, a proportional increase. In fact, the browser needs to walk through a heavy 10 MB pile of JavaScript before being able to show anything on modern YouTube.

It seems like the higher demands nullify the performance benefit from the increased specifications of modern hardware. Computers get stronger but demands and workloads rise too, so performance isn't improved because some website operators feel the need to show off their "fancy" JavaScript.

An underestimated security threat are developers who betray their users by making software less useful with updates, discouraging users from installing updates again.

https://chromestory.com/2019/07/...

It is increasingly difficult to believe that Google CAPTCHAs are not deliberately made unsolvable.

Everyone hates CAPTCHA, that is nothing new. As most people know, CAPTCHA frequently whines "please try again" after the user provides the correct answer. Sometimes it shows "Please select all matching images." when no new images with the named subject exist. However, now Google is taking it to a new level.

After clicking, the pictures take five seconds to fade to white and the new pictures take another five seconds to fade in. And CAPTCHA challenges have an expiry duration of two minutes. This causes CAPTCHAs to expire before it is possible to solve them.

Does Google think I am not a human because I don't have the time to waste whack-a-moling random StreetView pictures?

I have a feeling that Google is laughing at us for wasting efforts solving CAPTCHAs that are not meant to be solved.

Smartphone camera applications need to show this notification whenever a user records a video vertically.
Otherwise, many smartphone users will never learn to drop the vertical filming habit and to film horizontally.
This is a major benefit of dedicated cameras and camcorders: their user interface is aligned for being held horizontally, so people do so habitually. This is not the case with mobile phones.

What kind of scrollbar design is that?

This is why those "smart" scrollbars that "save space by only showing when needed" are a foolish idea.

Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) starter pack

2005 called. It wants its numbered file names back.

While I am mostly satisfied with "celluloid" as a worthy successor to xplayer, the first major disappointment I stumbled upon is `celluloid-shot0001.jpg`. Are we in 2005?

Just like xplayer, Celluloid, the new default media player of Linux Mint, should use proper, i.e. time-stamped names such as `celluloid-2023-04-10T00-47-42.jpg` or `celluloid-video_file_name-2023-04-10T00-47-42.jpg` for screenshots taken from videos, to eliminate the possibility of file name conflicts if files are moved into other directories, to make screenshots searchable by video file name, and to retain the date and time information if the files are moved to a device that does not support date and time stamp retention such as MTP (Media Transfer Protocol), and to allow for date range selection using wildcards in the terminal (e.g. `celluloid-2023-04*` for all screenshots from April 2023). Besides, PNG screenshots should be supported too, but that's out of scope here.

As a reference, the gnome and mate screenshot tools also pre-fill time stamps into the file name field.

Numbered file names were useful in an era when there was no VFAT and file names needed to have 8.3 file names that could impossibly fit a date and a time, and compact cameras used such names, but those times are long over. Just like the useless and annoying pull-to-refresh gesture on mobile apps and the Media Transfer Protocol, numbered file names belong to the technological graveyard.

If numbers are really desirable, at least `celluloid-shot0001.2023-04-10T00-47-42.jpg` should be used, to include both a number and a date. The command to get this date format is `date +"%Y-%m-%dT%H-%M-%S"`. For compatibility across operating systems, dashes instead of colons have to be used to separate hours and minutes and seconds.

Numbered file names are a thing of the past. Use time stamps.

"Help" messages that are only shown once are not so helphul.

Some software and websites have help pop-ups and tooltips that are only displayed on the first use and then never again. There is no option to show it again.

That is a terrible idea, because the user might want to see it again as a reminder.

Showing something to the user only once means expecting the user to memorize it all at once.

Please don't use shake animations to signify errors, dear user interface designers.

The shake animation is a bad idea introduced to the UX (user experience) world by Apple in 2013 with iOS 7 and Mac OS, and is popularly used by FilePond in response to a failed upload. At some point, this animation was added to the Cinnamon desktop environment login screen in response to a wrong password.

The shake animation is not helpful at all. If anything, it is irritating and provocative.

The red "incorrect password" or "failed upload" text clarifies it well enough. There is no need for a shake animation to rub it into the user's face.

With the billions of dollars Google has, they can't even build a proper file manager for their Android operating system.

The pre-installed file manager on Android OS, codenamed "DocumentsUI", is functionally crippled and lacks the most basic functionality.

First of all, there is no range selection or A-to-B selection of items. If many items need to be selected, each item has to be tapped individually. Meanwhile, ES File Manager had A-to-B selection since at least 2012, back when Android OS was an operating system of freedom, before Android OS got cucked.

As any low-tier mobile app, the file manager by Google also lacks a draggable scroll bar, so long lists have to be scrolled through manually. Even the file manager of Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional has a draggable scroll bar! And Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional was released in 2009! Samsung "My Files" had a draggable scroll bar in 2013 but it was later unexplainably removed.

Its search feature can only search the entire storage, not an individual folder, and lacks filters such as date and file type.

Obviously, as in any terrible Android file manager, after items are selected for copying and moving, tapping "Copy to..." or "Move to..." navigates back to the initial directory rather than staying in the current directory. The user is forced to navigate all the way to the folder with the selected files if the intention was moving files to a sub folder. Any Android file manager that does this automatically qualifies as a low-tier file manager.

The file manager by Google even lacks a "details" feature which shows information such as the exact file size and name and the total size and file count of a folder. Some file managers such as the one by MediaTek are unable to show the details for multiple selected items, which is somewhat forgivable, but the Google file manager does not have a "details" feature to begin with.

Files are always sorted alphabetically after each start. The Google file manager does not memorize if the user selects sorting "by size" or "by last modified". As one might expect, it indeed lacks reverse sorting.

Of course, there is no "open with" feature where the application can be selected manually, and there is no ability to create new blank files, and it lacks tabbed browsing, and does not show the number of files inside folders in list view. ES File Manager (before it became adware in ~2016) has all of these features.

Last but not least, there has been a bug where cancelling a file move operation deletes the source folder without it having been transferred. Presumably it has been patched by now, however, a bug where tapping "cancel" leads to data loss is inexcuseable. It shows the app has not even been properly tested, let alone properly created.

http://archive.today/2020.10.27-160...

Google could have hired a college student who could have built something better than the scrapyard-worthy "file manager" they have built.

But granted, at least Google's ever-so-terrible file manager does not limit file names to fifty (50) characters like Samsung's TouchWiz file manager, also known as "My Files", did until at least 2016. There is no way to know what went through the head of the programmer who implemented this pointless limitation. Google's file manager also correctly handles file name conflicts by renaming the new files.

Microsoft built a better file manager for their operating system decades earlier than what Google threw together. Microsoft spent more of their money building a proper file manager.

Never launch on the front camera!

There is not a single reason for a mobile phone camera software to launch on the front camera. Programmers of the software might believe it is "smart to memorize the last used camera", but in actuality, launching on the front camera is a common reason for not being able to capture events fast ehough.

Did the developers really think users will say "oh thank you, dear camera app, for not forgetting the last camera I used!" ?

Or, likelier than not, will they end up taking a selfie while the moment passes by behind the phone?

Many smartphone cameras lack the ability to turn off burst shot mode.

The burst shot feature on smartphone camera software is almost always not helpful, only annoying. All it does is spam the storage with useless near-duplicate photos.

"Then simply don't hold the camera shutter button!"

Sometimes, this happens by accident. Or the phone has an I/O lag in the moment of releasing the shutter button, so the release of the shutter button is not registered and burst mode is initiated after the I/O lag.

The only purpose of burst shot seems to be making many low light photos to find one that is not shaken. Even then, there must be an option to turn it off.

Also, the point-and-shoot intuition of holding the camera shutter button to set focus and exposure, and releasing to capture a photo is far more convenient. On newer phones, that has been replaced with highly annoying burst shots.

"Then use a third-party app that does allow turning off burst mode."

The problem with third-party applications is that they are awfully slow, since they can not be optimized for a specific device like pre-installed camera applications are. This slowness, as one might expect, leads to missed moments.
On some smartphones, third-party applications can not even access all camera features, such as 2160p video recording. Some phones use a proprietary API that can only be accessed with the pre-installed camera app.

How politics work in 2023:

99% of smartphone users: "Non-replaceable batteries should be illegal."

Legality of non-replaceable batteries: true

The gnome-screenshot tool has a white flashing effect. Every single pixel of the screen is at the brightest colour for the fraction of a second.

Did the developers of gnome-screenshot really think users want a camera flash in their face whenever they hit the "print screen" button?

That flashing effect hurts users' eyes, especially if a white flash appears on a dark-theme user interface.

Formerly, gnome-screenshot had a short black-out, which was tolerable. Thankfully, mate-screenshot has no shutter effect at all. These flashing effects are not helpful in the slightest, just purely annoying.

Moving files is emotionally easier than copying and deleting files, and moving eliminates the risk of selecting the wrong files at the deletion part.

I have read that it is safer to manually copy and manually delete files rather than to move it, but copying and deleting has a hidden risk that was not mentioned: selecting the wrong files for deletion.

Moving files feels like moving an obstacle from one room to another. The deletion part of copying and deleting feels like destroying something, which is an added emotional barrier.

Technically, copying and deleting is safer, since there is no risk of source files being deleted without having been transferred as a result of a device disconnecting or the buggy media transfer protocol (MTP) failing to load the entire file list. However, on mass storage devices, this pretty much never happened to me, and on MTP, data loss can be avoided by not moving folders but opening the source folders and selecting all files and moving those out. This prevents a parent folder with incompletely loaded file listing from being deleted.

However, something that is not considered about copying and deleting is that the risk of selecting the wrong files in the deletion step exists. One might end up selecting files that were never copied.

Not only is moving straightforward and time-saving, but it has no emotional barrier and the risk of selecting the wrong files to delete from the source is eliminated, since a proper file manager like Nemo or Windows Explorer (mass storage only, not MTP) only deletes a moved file from the source after it has been properly transferred. The user does not need to pay attention to select the correct files to delete, since the file manager already did it.

It needs to be outright illegal for laptops to have fewer than four USB ports.

If the purpose of law is to improve the quality of life, why not outlaw the time-consuming annoyance of laptops with few USB ports?

The purpose of laptops is portable computing. Depending on a USB hub makes it less portable.

If it was legally mandatory for laptops to have at least four USB ports, there would be no more competitive disadvantage for laptop vendors sacrificing unimportant slimness for important practicality.

And to the very few people who consider slim design more important than USB ports and who are going to whine online about the extra 3 millimetres of thickness: Sorry, life is unfair. Your preferences don't matter. Practicality is the purpose of computers. You are the reason laptops are ruined for the rest of us. Get lost.

If you have clumsy people around you, your belongings are never safe.

I left the laptop on the table for just a few hours, and this is what I returned to. Someone carelessly moved the laptop to the right without paying attention to the USB stick, so it bent from the table to the right with a higher position.

Indeed, lack of protrusion is the main reason SD cards are better than USB sticks, and why laptops should have full-sized SD card slots, and why external SD card readers are no valid replacement for built-in SD card slots. Relying on an external SD card reader outright defeats the primary benefit of SD cards, lack of protrusion.

One can be careful with ones belongings every day and have them last a long time, but then someone else comes and ruins it for you. Years of effort with being careful have been wasted. Clumsy people will certainly find new creative ways to break your stuff.

Dear web developers, please think of the boot disk users.

Users might have to boot their computer from external bootable media such as a live USB stick, SSD, or live CD/DVD, after their operating system caught a problem that prevents it from booting.

Emergency boot media usually has earlier versions of web browsers because they are not frequently used, much less updated. Sadly, the developers of many websites have a habit of breaking compatibility for older web browsers. For example, the new audio player used by the Internet Archive (Archive.org) does not even support Firefox 57, a version that was released as recently as November 2017!

Therefore, websites should retain support for old web browsers. If not all features can be made to work, at least the essential features should work on older browser versions. Websites should not let down people who are stuck due to a computer problem. Those users should still be able to browse the Internet for help, and perhaps enjoy basic entertainment such as watching videos (YouTube, Dailymotion) and listenening to music or audio books (SoundCloud, Internet Archive) while at it.

The attached screenshot shows something no internet user wants to be "greeted" with.

Keep the Internet accessible.

Samsung apparently thinks they are doing us users a favour with their "genius" TV block feature.

Let the following be clear: I will never get a television which can be remotely disabled by ANY one, even if allegedly for my benefit.

In fact, I'd be happier with 768p "HD ready" garbage from 2005 that at least works reliably than a shiny "QLED+" Samsung TV that can fail without warning at the press of a button at some giant corporation's headquarters.

Remember the May 2019 Firefox incident?

"We can remotely disable your TV, but it's just for your protec...." Get lost.