Just read an article¹ lamenting the uniformity of user-interfaces

> Where’d the variety go?!

I've lived through the variety. The Kai's Power Tools that didn't follow any of the user-interface guidelines for a platform. The Adobe Flash days where UI controls failed to behave like system ones (oh, you expect the scroll-wheel to work in this scrolled Flash control?). Software using non-standard controls that accessibility tools couldn't manipulate.

For a brief glimmer, the web offered that. You put a <button> element in there and it looked like every other button your OS showed you. You used a drop-down, it behaved exactly like every other drop-down in the operating system. It worked in dozens of different browsers from command-line lynx/links/w3m, to DOS graphical browsers like Arachne, to outdated browsers like Netscape and IE, to lightweight graphical browsers like Dillo, to the most modern web-browser engines. Sites respected the preferences for font-face, font-size, text color, etc that I set in my browser's configuration.

But then the Variety folks got hold of it. They wanted custom buttons that looked nothing like system buttons. They used links as buttons. They broke keyboard searching of drop-downs. They overrode how things scrolled. They changed how menus presented and behaved.

To which I say no.

I **want** uniformity. I **want** to apply all the knowledge I have regarding how other things work to know how this new thing works.

So please give me #uniformity, not cognitive load.

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¹ https://jordanreger.com/blog/ui-conformity/

#uniformity : resemblance to itself at all times

- German: die Einförmigkeit

- Italian: uniformità

- Portuguese: uniformidade

- Spanish: uniformidad

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