and loving memory of square
checkbox this is a checkbox yeah yeah it
is it's Square it has a check mark
inside and its distinguishing feature is
that you can select any number of them
at the same time Fair me myself and I
different operating systems render them
differently during their evolution oh
the Mac OS checkboxes and how they've
changed over time God I hated the
leopard ones how they were like the flat
cut on the top and not great these ones
look great though that's cool cuz I was
meant to be more
brutalist o we're going deep
1994 this is before I was born so I've
never actually used an operating system
with these checkboxes curious if any of
y'all have but that's foreign to me then
we have the windows ones oh God the
windows 11 ones are weird you even see
here the aliasing around it is a little
strange where it just Grays on the edges
in a strange way like it almost looks
like the blue was overlaid on
top the windows8 ones were are fine not
great not like certainly no syoma or
Mavericks but they're they're
tolerable Windows 7 ones were awful
anybody defending these should be
questioned Window XP ones were fine it's
it looked not great because it was like
so low res but you could get the
idea I'm realizing the humor of what
they're putting in some of these like
blood test done drug tests is this is
like the only example you could find of
the Windows 2000 oh boy Windows 95 these
are different why did separate these
these are the
same and then windows for work groups
311 was the X just the standard for a
while cuz that's
weird as you can see even the check mark
wasn't always there one thing remained
constant check boxes were Square why
Square because that's how you can tell
them from radio buttons where you can
only have one selected their
distinguishing feature is a single
choice if you select one everything else
is deselected I'm not sure when the
distinction between square and round was
introduced but it seemed to already
exist in the 9s it's interesting in this
'90s turbo Pascal setup you had the
parentheses for selecting one or the
other and then you had the checkboxes in
the brackets as the the square never had
thought of like like who came up with
that the history of this is very
interesting here's Norton Commander from
93 following the same pattern very very
interesting guess where xsus now in
markdown what a comeback yeah I it's
funny this is what I associate with like
a checkbox being checked because I write
so much markdown that this is just how
you mark things is
complete and since then every major
operating system has followed this
tradition from Windows 311 back in '93
through 95 to Windows 11 today for Mac
OS 4 till now with
somoma there was a brief confusion up
until 1986 when Apple used rounded
rectangles instead of circles
considering the design language we've
just learned I could see why this would
be confusing but it was quickly resolved
the point is every major OS vendor has
been adhering to the convention that
checkboxes are square in radio buttons
around then the web came in and when I
say web I mean CSS when I say CSS I mean
Flash and then
JavaScript that's a
sentence you see people on the web think
conventions are boring I don't know if
he means this positively or negatively
but it is correct conventions are boring
that regular controls need to be
reinvented and redesigned they don't
need to be but it is kind of fun they
don't believe there are norms there are
norms I believe there are norms I just
think it's fun to challenge them
sometimes and that's why it's common to
see radio buttons containing check
marks Twitter yeah radio buttons having
check marks is cursed or Square radio
buttons yeah that's much more
cursed following the web's example
native apps introduce us to round
checkboxes
O sometimes people don't make
distinctions anymore for example here in
the first group is single choice where
the second one is multiple choice that's
actually awful having no UI indication
difference between something you can
only only select one of and something
you can select multiple of like there
should be some indication here that
hurts or here one of the poll is a
single answer another is multiple answer
who me myself I y That's one there can
be only one God that's awful you like
don't know in telegram web if you're
allowed to select more than one option
or not yeah I I don't know which of
these behaves which way as soon as I
look at it I definitely agree that
having different types of checkboxes for
different behaviors Mak sense and it
seems like telegram is a recurring
offender here
anyways how are you supposed to know
that you can click multiple options or
that if you're going to click an option
it will change something else you've
selected before weird and I love this is
a great
meme despite all the chaos and
Temptation operating system vendors knew
better to this day they follow the
convention checkboxes are square radio
buttons are round maybe it was part of
their internal training maybe they had
experienced art directors maybe it was
just luck I don't know doesn't really
matter but somehow they managed to stick
to Convention until this day I did not
expect this to be a vision OS thing why
why does my headset haunt me Apple's the
first major operating system vendor who
has abandoned a four decade long
tradition their new vision OS for the
first time in the history of Apple will
have rounded checkboxes that is kind of
funny there's a thing called a check box
but it's not a box it's actually round
the only box here is the thing
containing them all very interesting
also am I blind or is there no
difference between the left and the
right
here this one's slightly Bluer Than That
but there's no difference between these
right
yeah anyways how should we even call
these radio checks check buttons anyway
with Apple's betrayal I think it's fair
to say there's no hope for this
tradition to continue I therefore
officially announce 2024 to be the year
when the square checkbox has finally
died it's a 40-year run cuz these days
we'll use the toggle
anyway Fair points this author lists a
bunch of credits they are awesome as
soon as I scrolled through their blog
Aros I had to do a bunch of videos about
their stuff because they're really
really cool so shout out to Tonky for
this honestly I'm going to support you
on patreon because of how good your blog
posts are I also just found an
incredible blog post from one of my
favorite designers Andy Works he has a
series of apps called the not boring
apps that are really really impressive
this blog post is interesting enough
that it honestly deserves a video of its
own but I just want to showcase some of
the really cool checkboxes that they
have done look at the 3D animations on
these things when you click
them h that's so good and when you
complete things they
explode they also focus a lot on the
sound design and things too it's such a
far difference when you compare this to
a simple
checkbox also noticed this checkbox is
in a box it's not even a circle it's a
sphere you get the idea maybe the future
isn't even a radio button or a radio
toggle maybe it's something 3D wild to
think it also kind of contrasts with the
bit at the beginning about the web you
see people on the web think conventions
are boring well not just the web because
Andy is the furthest thing from a web
dev he's in Mobile and iOS Dev and he's
building crazy 3D interactive
environments ignoring these same rules
so as much as it is cool to blame the
web for things there are people who are
pushing these limits all over the place
too and I almost think these mindsets
are both opposite but also important
where they're both arguing for good user
experience but they're doing it from
different sides huge shout out to both
Andy for so much cool stuff as well as
Nikki this whole blog is incredible he
also made F code which is a great font
dope dude incredible stuff I'll be
reading many more of his blog posts in
the future so keep an eye out for those
so give him a follow great dude
incredible work as always appreciate yon
see you in the next one peace nerds