111–120 of 335 posts
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Wow! There really are programs which plug into dialogs in this way? Well, that's a new level of compatibility hell. Thanks for the answer.
Look at Autohotkey for a starter down the rabbit hole of "we don't need APIs, we have a GUI!" and the fallout of people desperately working around it.
- Pressing alt (don't release)
- Pressing altgr
- Releasing altgr
- Pressing tab
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…
The worst offender is network settings. After years of at least weekly needing to change some setting for a virtual adapter, VPN etc, I find myself stumbling trying to get to the right screen.
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…
The worst offender is network settings. After years of at least weekly needing to change some setting for a virtual adapter, VPN etc, I find myself stumbling trying to get to the right screen.
The wifi and hotspots are in metro ui setting app.
Interfaces are in its own standalone app. (win7 style)
However... The firewall are in a xp style standalone app.
Can't they combine them into one app or at least make a folder that contains link to them?
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I work on the core OS. This is the answer. Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice is not worth the squeeze and there are more important things to focus on (such as making the OS work/build in such a way that there won’t be inconsistencies in the future).
> Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice is not worth the squeeze and there are more important things to focus on You state that as fact, but I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. It’s not just the way things look, but uniformly communicate a single experience. Microsoft used to be very integrated and had…
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 ?
Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but not on Windows (and I deal with a SaaS at MSFT). I am a FreeBSD committer and help maintain FreeBSD's GNOME packages and (very recently) the graphics drivers. The reason why Windows is full of UI inconsistencies is (largely) because of one thing: backwards compatibility. While backwards compatibility has it's perks, it also means having lots of old code in Windows that can't be to…
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Why has there been such a push to nerf UIs? Is it just trying to ape mobile? Mobile UIs are more basic because the screen is so damn small and the use case is more casual.
Most use cases for Windows are casual. I don't want to hazard a guess but I'd say easily more than 70% of Windows users may be basic? The type to not go particularly deep into the options and explore these menus and instead leave it up to the experts or get systems configured for them For all these people, the new UI is actually pretty good. My parents find the settings they need easily enough. Most business people I…
Whereas for me, person who has to give phone support, every version of Windows has made important settings harder to get too, which means I can't muscle memory train casual users about what setting they need to review if the problem recurs.
The new UIs are all attempted flash over substance, and idiom breaking - buttons and interactive controls are not clearly highlighted and information density is low.
Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but not on Windows (and I deal with a SaaS at MSFT). I am a FreeBSD committer and help maintain FreeBSD's GNOME packages and (very recently) the graphics drivers. The reason why Windows is full of UI inconsistencies is (largely) because of one thing: backwards compatibility. While backwards compatibility has it's perks, it also means having lots of old code in Windows that can't be to…
Completely unrelated and a shot in the dark, but if you’re both a Microsoftie and a FreeBSD user/committer, the FreeBSD .NET port is stumbling/regressing somewhat and could definitely use a little help:
https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/14537
(Better start at the end of that thread, rather than the start)
Anything you could do to help (if only pushing the right buttons/people internally), I’m sure would be greatly appreciated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work on the core OS. This is the answer. Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice is not worth the squeeze and there are more important things to focus on (such as making the OS work/build in such a way that there won’t be inconsistencies in the future).
Is this also the reason why there are no tabs in windows explorer?