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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?

#211

Post by rvba »

akersten wrote: post #6

I like the Run dialog and the folder properties menu and others that have been untouched since the early days. Their utility has been proven and so much muscle memory has been built up. I can not possibly imagine a revision that could be done to them that would have more benefits than simply leaving them be. All of the Fluent/Metro designs have made things markedly worse. For example, check out the Metro control pane…

For some reason when you search for files and folders now, this menu does not return the folder path, but some strange search path

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

#212

Post by matwood »

robertlagrant wrote: post #155
vladvasiliu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, macOS jumping on the "huge UI elements with tons of empty space" bandwagon was the proverbial straw for me that moved my beloved MBP from daily workhorse to random idle browsing machine. I'd say it's still not as bad as Windows, in that at least it's not pure white that burns your eyes, but I still hate how half of my laptop screen is taken up by useless UI elements.

Is this a thing with Big Sur? I haven't moved to it yet, but reading here [1] it doesn't seem like bad changes? [1] https://www.macworld.com/article/234382/macos-big-sur-learn-...

As a Mac user, I find us (other Mac users) to be much more critical of UIs. Lots of people went crazy about the extra space in the menu bars with BS, but tbh it's not a big (pun? :D) deal.

After using BS for a year+ now (since the early betas), the biggest UI/UX issue IMO is around notifications. After making other UI elements larger and 'touch friendly', clearing notifications require hitting a tiny X or a hover over to clear all. I'm not on the Monterey beta yet, but hopefully it is addressed.

While macOS has consistency issues (why can't I resize the preference pane?!), and windowing problems (when plugging in an external monitor sometimes my windows don't go to the right spots), they are nothing compared to the inconsistencies in Windows. I'm sure Windows users would love to mainly complain about the size of a close button vs. wondering why they still see dialogs from the 3.11 days.

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

#213

Post by gorjusborg »

rocqua wrote: post #129
andi999 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

what? people are going to switch to linux for a more consistent UI?

UI consistency just isn't that important to most people.

See: electron applications.

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

#214

Post by kavalg »

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…

All this, plus the fact that Win10 has become increasingly unstable for me in the last 6 months (random restarts, nasty performance problems with WSL2 etc.) that it simply isn't worth the money anymore, unless you have some apps that only run on widows (e.g. games :))

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

#215

Post by bruce343434 »

bitL wrote: post #142

I absolutely hate that if I open control panel, I can only focus on a single thing instead of having multiple windows open. My 64-core PC is not a smartphone, thank you very much!

yes! modern UI feels so "trapped".

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

#216

Post by bmn__ »

tveyben wrote: post #145
rbanffy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tabs are great for saving screen real estate. Finder windows are relatively small and, with large screens, the need to cram two or more folders into the same window ceases to exist. It’s easier to remember the window to the right is my docs folder and the one to the left is the downloads one.

I stopped using Windows file explorer more than a decade ago when I learned about spatial file managers. I have been in love with - and 10x more productive using - TotalCommander! The ability to >98% of the file related tasks from the keyboard is very addictive!!!

You have confused terminology. TC is an example of orthodox file manager. Explorer is an example of spatial file manager.

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

#217

Post by [deleted] »

jiggawatts wrote: post #195
simion314 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Stating that the UI consistency issues are due to backwards compatibility is stretching the truth to the point of outright deception. I am not familiar with Windows APIs but I can see this be the truth if MS made it possible for developers to plug inside this dialogs, like a printer driver would plug soem GUI changes in the panels , changing this would break a lot of devices.

Sure, and hence the logical thing to do is to create the new GUI side-by-side with the old one. That doesn't explain the non-extensible GUIs being left behind, or why the new uplifts are so piecemeal, or why they randomly leave out critical features.

[deleted]

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

#218

Post by MikusR »

audunw wrote: post #158
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…

> In day-to-day usage, I have rarely been annoyed by these "inconsistencies". Don't you ever have to change sound settings? Because I have to deal with that every week, and have to dig through 3 different style of UIs and several different windows/dialogs to get to what I need. Everything related to control panel / settings is a giant mess, and it's often really hard to find the settings you want, especially if you d…

Can you explain what sound settings are you changing?

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

#219

Post by bmn__ »

for_xyz wrote: post #98
gogopuppygogo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you ever see Microsoft dropping the registry? My probably unpopular opinion is that the registry is the worst feature in Windows. It’s bloat directly impacts the speed of the operating system. Seems like such a waste for so many advancements in Windows but the registry sticks around like a bad hangover.

If you drop something, then you need some kind of replacement for that. I don't see any alternative on where entire OS could be configured other than registry.

KDE and all its applications and a majority of other Linux desktop application use the configuration laid out in https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/>.

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

#220

Post by tgtweak »

I kind of hate how far down the rabbit hole you have to go to find a familiar management ui in windows today. I find myself using run commands to bring up these UIs more and more.

It would be an acceptable tradeoff if these new interfaces added more functionality or visibility but it seems they're just trying to move to the new settings ux and not thinking about adding better function.

Try adding a new local user account to latest windows, compare the functionality in new the network interface settings page vs the legacy adapter properties prompt.

Seems most of the "this just works" stuff that I respect is from windows 2000 and the NT team.

Wish Microsoft would head back that way with a nod to modern usability instead of dumbing things down and worse: changing it every release.

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