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

221–230 of 335 posts

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

#221

Post by PaulHoule »

tgtweak wrote: post #220

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 acc…

Windows has been on this road for a long time.

I did some work on Windows servers in the XP era and it was a continuous hassle that the menus were always different in NT 4, Win 2k, Xp, Vista, and all the different versions of Windows server.

Contrast that to command-line admin on Linux that stays the same or the perpetually busted Linux admin GUIs that should just be taken behind the woodshed and shot.

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

#222

Post by tgtweak »

formerly_proven wrote: post #183
stephc_int13 wrote: post #169

The sad part is that old win32 UI from the win95 era, rendered with a modern style, are the most useable and nicer looking, in my opinion.

Metro/fluent apps always look "broken" to me. Like someone forgot to add styling and that's why a bunch of stuff ends up with some kind of default 3px solid black border. Transient popups (e.g. drop-downs) have some kind of shadow but it just looks weird and broken. Clicking on "cards" (I believe that's what they're called, e.g. a program in the new software manager) animates them but it just looks completely broken…

If did not age well, but it came out a long time ago.

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

#223

Post by PaulHoule »

The inconsistency doesn’t bother me so much as a lack of immediate responsiveness when I start a program.

Sometimes I can wait 30 seconds after clicking on the menu before there is visual indication that the program is really loading. In that time I don’t know if I should click again, reboot the computer, walk away for 5 minutes for the services to settle, or start diagnosing the problem and take remedial action.

Part of a ‘computer users bill of rights’ is getting rid of all hourglasses and spinners and always having clear visual indication that progress is being made.

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

#224

Post by jimmydorry »

mcny wrote: post #176
HellDunkel wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot about PC gaming. Kid growing up with Windows is a huge advantage. I think it cannot be overstated and Mircosoft played this game well.

I know stadia is so poorly managed that it is not even a worthy competitor but the concept is sound and nVidia’s GeForce Now and Microsoft’s x cloud will eventually work well enough on Google Chrome that between that and Proton, Windows’ gaming advantage should become a little diminished over time? I haven’t used android games on chrome os but things like candy crush should work just fine in chrome os by now?

The problem is the massive gulf between "works well enough" and "pleasant experience". Console users would still balk at the terrible performance of Stadia... let alone PC users that are used to being first class citizens in terms of experience and responsiveness.

Assuming you have a really low latency to a Google datacentre, the Stadia experience is not particularly compelling enough to ditch running the game on bare metal.

All of the above is moot though if you are not within a few ms latency of a Google datacentre though... which for most of the world is absolutely the case.

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

#225

Post by agumonkey »

PaulHoule wrote: post #223

The inconsistency doesn’t bother me so much as a lack of immediate responsiveness when I start a program. Sometimes I can wait 30 seconds after clicking on the menu before there is visual indication that the program is really loading. In that time I don’t know if I should click again, reboot the computer, walk away for 5 minutes for the services to settle, or start diagnosing the problem and take remedial action. Par…

That bill has never been passed it seems, in the mainstream that is. I've been wondering how to design a system that would focus more on this aspect. Opportunities here.

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

#226

Post by bkallus »

bennysomething wrote: post #191
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. I'm having a hard time believing that. While some Mac users who are used to a more integrated user experience might be deterred, I'm not sure that the os's ui esthetics really affect windows adoption. My feeling is that most people who use Windows do so because they're either (a) told to use it or (b) they choose to use it because it…

I use it because it supports any bit of hardware thrown at it, with little fuss. I tried to go all Linux many times, gave up, I just wanted something that works.

The exception to this is older hardware. My ATI Radeons are still useful as 1080p graphics adapters under Linux, but they are totally unsupported by Windows. My laser printer is in a similar situation.

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

#227

Post by PaulHoule »

I think the tray and notification system is cruel.

When I was a kid I saw other kids torment a horse by holding a hand up, getting the horse to turn away, then slapping the horse with the other hand.

The tray is always popping up notifications that tell me to click on them but clicking on them does nothing. The notification often covers the UI elements that I need to respond to the notification. There is no way to clear the notification except to wait for the notification to be cleared.

It’s cruel, and even more cruel that if the notification isn’t just actively in the way of your work and acting on the notification but the notification frequently disappears before you can act on it and you can’t count on scrolling back and looking at it later.

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

#228

Post by indymike »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #161
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…

> I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. I'm having a hard time believing that. While some Mac users who are used to a more integrated user experience might be deterred, I'm not sure that the os's ui esthetics really affect windows adoption. My feeling is that most people who use Windows do so because they're either (a) told to use it or (b) they choose to use it because it…

> I'm sure Microsoft know this and understand the tradeoffs very well

Microsoft understands keeping their customers. That is why backwards compatibility is king with Ms.

Windows is not growing in adoption. It is under attack by Google (Android killed Windows on phones and Chromebooks are eating away the education market), Apple, and on the server, Linux.

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

#229

Post by PaulHoule »

agumonkey wrote: post #225
PaulHoule wrote: post #223

The inconsistency doesn’t bother me so much as a lack of immediate responsiveness when I start a program. Sometimes I can wait 30 seconds after clicking on the menu before there is visual indication that the program is really loading. In that time I don’t know if I should click again, reboot the computer, walk away for 5 minutes for the services to settle, or start diagnosing the problem and take remedial action. Par…

That bill has never been passed it seems, in the mainstream that is. I've been wondering how to design a system that would focus more on this aspect. Opportunities here.

Look at how you get correct progress bars for free with Hadoop. If it is that easy to do for a huge distributed cluster with 100+ machines imagine how easy it could be to do on a small scale.

What if web browsers told the user outright which third party services were responsible for the world wide wait?

One pet peeve of mine is the CDN distributed JavaScript in which people download 20 files of which they only need 2, have 8 in the cache, the rest loading efficiently, but the last DNS lookup hangs and causes a 30 sec timeout.

If customers knew who the blame then the brand destruction would progress that much quicker; and I wouldn’t be facing the sisphyian journey of proving over and over to sheeple that that the javascript CDN slightly improves median latency at the cost of vastly worse tail latency.

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

#230

Post by andrew_ »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #161
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…

> I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. I'm having a hard time believing that. While some Mac users who are used to a more integrated user experience might be deterred, I'm not sure that the os's ui esthetics really affect windows adoption. My feeling is that most people who use Windows do so because they're either (a) told to use it or (b) they choose to use it because it…

Windows user from 3.1 to Win 7 here. Once I saw the MacOS experience in 2012, I never looked back. an engineer might say the juice isn't worth the squeeze, but to a consumer, and a power user, the swath of UI and UX inconsistencies is what keeps me away from Windows.
Post reply on HN