Arbitraty limitations imposed on GUI, such as opening things in modal windows.
I'd like to see some additional examples of this arbitrary limitation in the GUI. It seems to me that many design choices can be classified as limitations. If the user doesn't understand the reasons behind the design choices, then the user might mistake them as being arbitrary.
Fixed-width columns. They drive me up the wall; I've got a 1920x1080 screen because I like fitting lots of text on the screen, not because I want 75% of my screen to be white margins.
Links/buttons that open on middle-click. I middle-clicked because I wanted to open in a new tab, this page should stay where it is.
Sites that don't work at a DPI that isn't 72.
Those are the most immediate things that annoy me.
Maybe a better solution would be to progressively add more columns as the screen resolution allows, keeping each column at a fixed width. Doing this would be more challenging, though, than just using a single fixed width column that supports most of your users.
I have a problem with some of Google's web apps, where they don't let me middle-click a link to a separate document. I use the heck out of tabs and I can't stand when they mess with that ability.
I CAN middle-click the following Google link types:
Same functionality as right-clicking and choosing New Tab. This limitation occurs when there is either no href value for a link or some other element being used as a clickable element, in both cases the action can only occur with a javascript onclick event. This is something that in most cases could be taken into account by always starting with an anchor tag and then adding styles and javascript events.
>This is something that in most cases could be taken into account by always starting with an anchor tag and then adding styles and javascript events. //
Would that really take it into account? Surely you'd be loading a new link without the state that the client has created, you'd need to push the state to the server and construct the links based on that - at which point it seems you're duplicating effort at the server and client.
I'd like to see some additional examples of this arbitrary limitation in the GUI. It seems to me that many design choices can be classified as limitations. If the user doesn't understand the reasons behind the design choices, then the user might mistake them as being arbitrary.