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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?

#251
post #208
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may explain why Microsoft have created so many email clients and none of them 100% work. * Microsoft Mail * Windows Messaging * Outlook Express * Microsoft Outlook * Windows Mail * Windows Live Mail * Mail.app There are also Microsoft Entourage for Mac OS, few different apps for mobile, and at least two web clients, Hotmail and Outlook.com. Did I miss any?

Why Outlook does not work?

Tried it a year ago again and if I remember correctly it has tons of options but little customization and somewhat bloated mess. I like minimalism and I don’t like cruft, things like how does the list of mails work when viewing 100+ and navigating at high speed with the keyboard and applying actions work. Most email client fails this btw.

I think also I was annoyed over how one email list item was drawn, too big, thus reduces the number I can see at one time. Can’t remember if I found anyway to customize that.

I ended my Office subscription because I didn’t really like the feeling of the applications. It feels like they have put lipstick on a pig. Yes, there is a minimal writing mode in Word, but beneath it is the same old steaming pile that seeps thru.

But I’m somewhat harsh when evaluating software so maybe I’m missing something here.

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

#252
post #203
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Right click on the volume icon > Sounds - goes straight to the old XPish UI, which offers most if not all settings.

Because this exists, I've never understood why they made another one, but missing half the options

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

#253
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking the obvious question: why aren't the UIs in newer Windows versions not "just" different themes over Win32 widgets? Instead the UI theme seems to be tied to UI frameworks which seem to be created and discarded annually at Microsoft, so each time some genius decides to overhaul the UI, a completely new sediment layer is created instead of letting some UI designers tinker with a theme editor. I don't get it. Func…

This was historically the case, it's why despite the article calling out winver, folder properties, the run dialog as being from the win9x -> win2k period, they didn't look remotely as out of place in win7 as win10. Of course there are limits. iirc Windows 7 RTM had an obviously 3.1 derived file picker make it into the add fonts dialog until it was replaced in SP1 if my memory has the timing right. Despite using win3…

FWIW: I consider fixes like the improved environment variable editor in the "old" system control panel in Win10 much more important than the entire new settings panel mess. The same type of improvements would make a lot more sense for the rest of the builtin UIs instead of creating entirely new "construction sites" all the time, which will be left incomplete and outdated in a few years time as the current people are replaced with new people.

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

#254
post #214

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…

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 :))

Honestly, it sounds like you have faulty HW.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For the price of the absolute cheapest MacOS running computer (Mac Mini, with a monitor) one can get basically 2 entire Windows computers. For the cost of the average computer running MacOS, one could buy a TV, a console, a desktop Windows computer, and a laptop. Or whatever it may be. ($1500 on an iMac could be $400 console, $500 TV, $500 computer. Or whatever your break down is. For the lower middle class and worki…

I don't understand how your views on cost-value are related to my views on the user interface and experience.

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

#256
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I use Apple because their OS is a Unix AND their hardware is nicely built and well integrated with the OS. I use Linux because it’s a way to run a good Unix-like OS on non-Apple hardware. The overwhelming majority of people who use Windows (or macOS) is because their computer came with it. As long as it mostly works, people don’t care about which OS they are using.

The overwhelming majority of people on Windows are there because Microsoft bent over backwards to give businesses what they needed so that they could beat out Apple and IBM to win the desktop wars of the 80s and 90s. If businesses had never used Windows, nobody else would have and computers wouldn't come pre-installed with it. Personally, I use all of them for different purposes.

I like Windows because it's more compatible than other OSes with any hardware that I can throw at it. It's also more stable than any other OS. My Macs have been broken multiple times throughout their life by simply upgrading to the next version of macOS, but Windows has always just kept on trucking along year after year. Another reason I love Windows is that it's got a high degree of flexibility. While Apple hides APIs and does everything they can to prevent you from doing things that they don't approve of, Microsoft does the exact opposite and publishes APIs to help you get it done. Mostly though, I just love the Windows UI and the Windows way of doing things. I find it to be very simple and obvious. The things I don't like are largely unseen, like the forced telemetry and updates.

I use my Mac when I need to build or test something for iOS or macOS. Outside of that, I just can't stand the way they do anything. I find the UI and the UX of macOS to be absolutely hideous. The fact that you have to install third party stuff just to get basic features like "decent window management" is simply beyond the pale to me.

For work, I started using a Linux desktop a few years ago because Windows was annoyingly slow when doing anything with npm/yarn/node_modules or Docker and I was doing more and more work with NodeJS and less with .NET/SQL Server/etc. So, I installed Manjaro with XFCE and that's when I found out that XFCE does a minimalist Windows style desktop better than Microsoft does. They have all the Windows features that I want, like Window snapping and none of the Windows features that I don't want. They even have a feature that I usually installed 7+ taskbar tweaker to get: They let you middle-click taskbar items to close the window (also you can drag/drop them), similar to how Chrome treats browser tabs. I've had Manjaro installed on multiple systems (desktops and laptops) for years now and I haven't seen any of the issues that people complain about here, like having to fiddle with their system to get it to work. Everything just worked for me since day one.

Now I just use Windows for entertainment - I've got a NUC style PC at every TV and I have one gaming PC.

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS isn't afraid to deprecate or completely remove things even if that means old things won't work. Windows demands 16 bit apps from the 90s should have a very decent shot at running on Windows 11. That level of "it'll always be there" means for the vast majority of old UI it has no technology pressure to be redone, only pressure of what most average users will see day to day. E.g. nobody at Windows is going to dum…

> Windows demands 16 bit apps from the 90s should have a very decent shot at running on Windows 11. 16 bit applications never worked on any 64 bit Windows.

32/64 bit is a compile time option not a separate codebase and unlike macOS they haven't discontinued 32 bit even in the latest versions.

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as canonical “win32 widgets.” There have always been several different UI libraries even for win32. The original win32 styling you get with CreateWindow doesn’t support modern font rendering, high DPI, doesn’t work well with touch, is only software rendering, doesn’t support latest accessibility features, etc. The newer stuff sits on top of DirectX. The latest UI framework (XAML/WinUI) sits on…

There's no reason why the old Win32 window and widget foundation couldn't have been lifted on top of a modern rendering architecture though, there was certainly enough time to achieve this. This would also reduce the need for creating entirely new UI frameworks every year (or even better, higher level UI frameworks could be built on top of a modernized but backward compatible Win32 widget foundation instead of doing…

If you listed out all the requirements a modern UI framework needs you would find that the original Win32 UI API’s are not viable. Especially if you want to support more than just C and C++.

So much code is required to do things we now take for granted that the resulting patterns became new frameworks.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For the price of the absolute cheapest MacOS running computer (Mac Mini, with a monitor) one can get basically 2 entire Windows computers. For the cost of the average computer running MacOS, one could buy a TV, a console, a desktop Windows computer, and a laptop. Or whatever it may be. ($1500 on an iMac could be $400 console, $500 TV, $500 computer. Or whatever your break down is. For the lower middle class and worki…

Cost is not the same as value. Apple hardware routinely runs better, lasts longer, and has longer software support. This is reflected in the incredible demand and higher resale values.

This actually helps makes new devices more affordable as the cost is amortized over a longer and more useful lifespan, while the secondary market serves others very well.

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

#260
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may explain why Microsoft have created so many email clients and none of them 100% work. * Microsoft Mail * Windows Messaging * Outlook Express * Microsoft Outlook * Windows Mail * Windows Live Mail * Mail.app There are also Microsoft Entourage for Mac OS, few different apps for mobile, and at least two web clients, Hotmail and Outlook.com. Did I miss any?

Microsoft Mail is a product from the early 90s for DOS/Classic Mac OS. Microsoft Internet Mail was a logical upgrade, then added support for newsgroups. Eventually, after the success of Outlook in the MS Office world, it rebranded to Outlook Express. You could still see echoes of Microsoft Internet Mail and News if you looked hard at Outlook Express, its executable was called msimn.exe. Windows Live Mail and Windows…

Nice write up.

Mail.app is what I call the new "modern" app shipped with Windows 10. Mostly garbage. Spends most of its time and your CPU to resynchronize your mails.

My experience with these programs is that the predecessor can have feature X but the successor doesn’t but has feature Y, similar what OP described.

I’m always harsh when reviewing software. No need to be gentle about things that doesn’t work well.

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