Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

ntdotdev.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 335 posts

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

#121

Post by chakkepolja »

azinman2 wrote: post #106
meowkit wrote: post #45

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).

> 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…

For the first half I thought it was sarcasm.

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

#122

Post by albanread »

If Microsoft were a person; they would be a rich, lucky, lazy, easily distracted person who takes zero pride in their work, content to leave inconsistent garbage littering a product used by hundreds of millions because they are just too bored by the whole thing to bother fixing it.

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

#123

Post by muterad_murilax »

EdSchouten wrote: post #90

I know that Windows Vista still had some Windows 3.x UI elements included. For example, the file picker dialog you’d get when installing a font would be a pretty ancient one. Is that still the case, or has it been updated in the meantime? Screenshot found online (from XP): https://cdncms.fonts.net/images/35b17bed9c542383/faq_xp_winz...

> Is that still the case, or has it been updated in the meantime?

It's been updated. See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27553728

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

#124

Post by refactor_master »

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #107
neelc wrote: post #36

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…

Why can't old code remain underneath but UI elements replaced?

UI and logic are probably not as decoupled as we’d like to think.

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

#125

Post by parheric »

edoceo wrote: post #21
Santosh83 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

2.5 years?! Who wants stability that short?

...android security/version updates??

yes, I understand - bring on the downvotes

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

#126

Post by pjmlp »

paavohtl wrote: post #97
cutchin wrote: post #7

I've been primarily a linux user for some time, so I've gotten pretty desensitized to various applications looking vastly different on the same system. But in the last several years that's mostly gone away - Gnome knows how to change the theme for QT apps and KDE can configure GTK themes so things are actually remarkably uniform. But then when I fire up Windows, it is just this bizarre mix of all these different UI f…

As far as I know Project Reunion is not really a UI framework - it's more about refactoring Windows APIs into individual libraries which can be used across different OS versions. This should enable apps targeting all versions of Windows 10 to use the latest stuff, in a similar fashion to polyfills in browsers. This is probably to encourage developers to build software using the new Windows 10 APIs. Which is something…

It is a bit more than that, and I bet with Windows 11 announcement we will get a more clear picture on it.

It is also a way to bring into Win32 side most of the API that really matter on the UWP side of the fence, most likely (although they are yet to confirm this) as migration path to UWP developers.

.NET Native, C++/CX are pretty much dead, and C++/WinRT keeps missing many of the tooling available on C++/CX for XAML applications.

So I expect them to migrate the APIs into an OS version independent layer, and then give the mercy shot on UWP apps.

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

#128

Post by pjmlp »

can16358p wrote: post #34
siproprio wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about me? I don't care about backwards compatibility - but I don't want "UWP" because it's impossible to make great apps following the guidelines.

I'm on the same boat, and would like to see proper design instead of supporting 200-years-old programs. But apparently we are minority and not the best interest of Microsoft. (Which is okay, BTW)

UNIX is older than Windows, and most people still expect to run their UNIX CLI applications on APIs that exist since UNIX V6.

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

#129

Post by rocqua »

andi999 wrote: post #115
azinman2 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What market share is left there to gain? Ok 17% Mac OS, maybe 5% would switch to Windows?

I think this inconsistent experience is what is opening the door for competitors like Apple and Linux.

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

#130

Post by signal11 »

andi999 wrote: post #115
azinman2 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What market share is left there to gain? Ok 17% Mac OS, maybe 5% would switch to Windows?

Strategically, worrying about the low end “worse” competitor is more worthwhile than the higher end competitor. Eg IBM were not undone by a better mainframe.

In Windows’s case the “worse” competitor is ChromeOS and Chromebook, and Microsoft’s basically thrown in the towel when it comes to native apps, so with time everyone who doesn’t need pro Photoshop or AutoCAD could just use a Chromebook.

Note that you can run Word for Android on Chromebooks full-screen already.

Post reply on HN