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State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

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Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#11

Post by trnglina »

vsskanth wrote: post #9

How is MacOS able to maintain such a consistent UI even with massive changes in their design language ? Is Windows UI not a separate layer or something that they can update ? Or is it that the UI elements somehow get baked into the program at the time you build it, so if you didn't update you are just stuck with that particular version of UI you built the program ?

Built-in Windows controls, like buttons, scroll bars, etc. are updated with each system release. However, they are relatively inflexible, and no one uses WinApi anyway, so most frameworks and apps build their own components, with varying dedication to emulating the "native" style. Built-in controls also don't perform much in the way of layout (I believe the only way to position child HWNDs remains manual absolute positions?) so while your button might look native, your collection of two buttons won't.

My guess is MacOS's consistency comes from some combination of developer incentives, and UI toolkit design.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#13

Post by aasasd »

ToFab123 wrote: post #2

Win 3.1 File Open Dialog can be found in Windows 11 https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/o12no7/still_rocki...

Afaik the Win3 file dialog gets called up by some old apps that use old APIs. I think I even ran into it in Wine.

The analog in Unix apps are GTK's file dialogs, which always look jarring and out-of-place anywhere other than Gnome (and maybe XFCE and KDE, dunno)—making me feel like I stepped into 90s Unix with those Motif-derived concrete slabs. Plus they're un-integrated with non-Linux OSes, missing features. And the dialogs keep being dragged around by GTK apps—open Gimp on Mac or Windows and there you go: GTK dialogs.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#14

Post by curiousmindz »

This issue is way overblown here on HN.

In day-to-day usage, I have rarely been annoyed by these "inconsistencies".

The best example to illustrate this article is: Installing a driver with the Windows XP layer. That's probably something that will only happen to people installing very old hardware with drivers from over 10 years ago. I consider that a backward compatibility win: It is great that it even works in Windows 10.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#15

Post by kitsunesoba »

vsskanth wrote: post #9

How is MacOS able to maintain such a consistent UI even with massive changes in their design language ? Is Windows UI not a separate layer or something that they can update ? Or is it that the UI elements somehow get baked into the program at the time you build it, so if you didn't update you are just stuck with that particular version of UI you built the program ?

The biggest thing is that a much larger percentage of Mac apps are written using the native UI toolkits, which receive most of the aesthetic changes for "free" (even in lieu of updates/recompiles). There's also stronger expectation from users for apps to fit in, so even devs who write in foreign toolkits (e.g. electron) are more likely to put in the effort to mimic the native toolkit, because failure to do so makes their app look crusty and outdated relative to the rest of the system and other apps.

Under Windows, the rule has been that basically anything goes, and that's been true for upwards of two decades. Anybody who used Windows 98/2K/XP can probably name several apps they remember using totally custom UI off the top of their heads. That never really changed. Custom UI has become a lot less wild looking, but it's still custom (which means no "free" updates), and on top of that there's no incentive for developers to update their apps to match the latest look.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#17

Post by causality0 »

I don't think Microsoft has been truly interested in improving the Windows experience in a long time. I mean, surely if they cared about us you'd be able to right-click on any Notification icon and hit "always show icon and notifications" without having to open two menus to get to that option. It's been a pain in my ass for twenty years.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#19

Post by Santosh83 »

dstaley wrote: post #8

I honestly don't envy Microsoft. On one hand, you have the people who don't want Microsoft to break backwards compatibility. They want Microsoft to retain the ability to run programs written a quarter of a century[1] ago. This is why all this legacy stuff sticks around in Windows. Then, you have those who want Microsoft to radically reinvent Windows, either by embracing WinUI 3 fully (what most people mean when they…

> They want Microsoft to retain the ability to run programs written a quarter of a decade ago.

Enterprises expect to run programs developed a quarter century ago... if a quarter decade was all that was required, MS could have abandoned a lot more cruft.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#20

Post by jolux »

curiousmindz wrote: post #14

This issue is way overblown here on HN. In day-to-day usage, I have rarely been annoyed by these "inconsistencies". The best example to illustrate this article is: Installing a driver with the Windows XP layer. That's probably something that will only happen to people installing very old hardware with drivers from over 10 years ago. I consider that a backward compatibility win: It is great that it even works in Windo…

As a primary macOS user who has also done professional Windows development, I am simultaneously blown away by the quality of the development environments and tools (PowerShell! C#! .NET! Visual Studio!) available on Windows and more or less disgusted with the inconsistency in using the operating system itself. It doesn’t feel like Microsoft has had a consistent vision for how their UI is supposed to work for longer than five years at a time, if that. Sure, it’s only an annoyance, but why the hell is it a problem in the first place? I can only conclude either that they do not see it as a problem, or that they are incapable of fixing it.

I was a Windows user until 2014. Every time I think about switching back (mostly because WSL is so good) I have to think about putting up with the terrible UI.

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