
Buttons in UI Design: The Evolution of Style and Best Practices - babich
https://uxplanet.org/buttons-in-ui-design-the-evolution-of-style-and-best-practices-56536dc5386e#.qri65umvj
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Animats
Other button trends:

1\. Hidden buttons that only appear when you mouse over them. These are used
for options that reduce revenue, such as opting out of ads. Facebook does
this.

2\. Dialogs where the only button options are "Yes, monetize me" and a much
smaller "Close dialog". Google's "Switch your search engine to Google" popup
does this.

It used to be that such obnoxiousness was confined to scam sites. Now it's
mainstream.

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richardwhiuk
The inevitability of AB testing for particular metrics will lead companies to
create dark patterns.

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Silhouette
Although creating dark patterns is quite different to deciding to actually
keep and use them. Tricking users is no less scummy just because it's Google
or Facebook (or Microsoft or Amazon, to name two other recent repeat
offenders) doing it.

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mhd
I'm not sure whether I'd call most of that "evolution", as it's not like the
most fit styles survive. It's mostly about fashion. Candy buttons today, flat
non-entities tomorrow. Rarely is there something that truly _improves_ upon
predictability/usability, it's mostly just bell-bottom pants and crinolines.

~~~
pcurve
I'm guilty of jumping on the flat button band wagon a few years ago. I manage
an internal application ui team at a pretty big company and despite their
having less affordance than before, there hasn't been complaints.

Regardless, for our new version of UI patterns, I'm bringing back the rounded
corners. Guess what? Pages are already looking more usable, and frankly easier
to design.

It takes a very talented designer to create a beautiful looking page using
flat, minimal motifs. And truth be told, most non-designers don't share the
same aesthetics.

But if you throw in rounded corners and very subtle gradients and shadows...
and all of a sudden, designing a good looking page is much easier.

And frankly, that's what I need in pressure cooker enterprise environment.

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dudus
Missing the classic gel pills from web 2.0 days

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Mikhail_Edoshin
Missing the classic Mac OS buttons to begin with. It's really strange to read
about "early days" and see a dull Windows 95 button.

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richardwhiuk
The real 'ghost' button in iOS 7 was unframed, and was just blue text on a
white background, normally slightly larger. That's where most of the 'how do I
know what's a button' complaints came from AIUI.

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yalooze
I always considered ghost buttons to be ok, provided they are used as a
secondary button in conjunction with a primary button. I'm not sure what the
alternatives would be to indicate button hierarchy.

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kevincox
Yeah, you can definitely have your buttons look less like buttons if they are
in places that people expect to see buttons.

For example at the bottom of dialog two short bold text items are move
acceptable then text-only buttons in other places.

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stronglikedan
> Rectangular shaped buttons have been introduced into the digital world a
> long time ago and users are familiar with them. Some research suggests that
> rounded corners enhance information processing and draw our eyes to the
> center of the element.

I found this bit pretty interesting, and anecdotally correct. It took me a
while to figure out how to compose an email in Android's Gmail client when
they made that button a circle. I still find myself looking for it a bit too
long sometimes.

