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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?

#261

Post by thu2111 »

fassssst wrote: post #258
flohofwoe wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Apple APIs date back to NeXTStep at the end of the 80s, yet they managed to mostly keep them fresh.

Win32 is old and unviable because Microsoft hasn't bothered making comprehensive upgrades for it and never laid out a gap-free plan for how to move off it. They could have upgraded it more smoothly but never did.

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

#262

Post by numpad0 »

Closi wrote: post #94
numpad0 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it interesting that the inconsistency arguments mostly surfaces around software configuration, like “_Settings_ app is stupid” “I still use XP style _driver installation_ screen” etc? It makes sense why it’s not much of an issue on other GUI environments: in GNU/Linux and macOS, only what’s available on GUI is available on GUI, and the rest goes to the unified scary black screen with very task specific procedur…

It's a good point - I wonder if the actual user really sees an old-looking GUI screen as worse than an arcane terminal configuration.

At least people don’t have much issues being told syntax for sendmail. cf and apache.conf and ~/.xinitrc are completely different from one another.

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

#263

Post by eric__cartman »

tomaszs wrote: post #83

Funnily as a design developer, i switch off all UI enhancements because they slow down the system. So my system looks almost like Windows 95 confusing people. I think the inconsistency is the price of having a system with so many features. I rather have them than have consistent Windows. Moreover, sometimes updating UI does not go as planned. A regular calculator started like a breeze. After redesigning it in Windows…

I remember doing this with my Intel Atom netbook because it had the processing power of a baked potato, but with any modern system (something made in the last 8 years) with GPU acceleration, does it matter? I haven't noticed much of a difference in my Thinkpad with a fourth generation i5. Which is the oldest machine I have Windows installed on.

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

#264

Post by cprecioso »

I feel you could a whole post also with just the inconsistencies in context menus. I remember a few releases of Windows 10 where already in the first screen right out of OOBE, you would get differently-styled context menus depending on where you clicked.

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

#265

Post by kavalg »

pix64 wrote: post #254
kavalg wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It could be. I only use it on my Lenovo idea pad S540 AMD / Ryzen 5. However, the overall user experience with Win10 just doesn't click with me, compared to e.g. Ubuntu Desktop. The thing feels slow, bloated and unstable. Not to mention the tendency to always stay connected and report telemetry of many kinds (you notice this when you are on a slow / intermittent connection).

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

#266

Post by azalemeth »

0-_-0 wrote: post #131
johnwalkr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe the Windows God Mode "cheat" would help. It has all Windows settings in one place. You can create a direct shortcut to any of them from there. Activate it be creating a new folder and naming it "GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}".

I still can't believe this works. People criticise MacOS or linux for hiding configuration information across a thousand different files (and that ignores the whole dconf thing!), but a random hex magic folder does indeed take the biscuit.

Also -- it looks great! Why isn't that an option somewhere in Control Panels?

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

#267

Post by worble »

PaulHoule wrote: post #227

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 cl…

If you're using a non-home version of Windows, open the Policy Editor, go to User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> All Settings, find "Remove Notifications and Action Center", enable it, and poof! Annoying distractions begone.

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

#268

Post by c7DJTLrn »

meowkit wrote: post #45
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…

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).

This is exactly what unit tests are for. Besides, the business logic should be already fairly separated from the presentation logic.

As for preventing inconsistencies in future, try getting your QA team back.

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

#269

Post by Const-me »

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…

> And that means many old UI elements may stay, that's a side effect.

They should stay on disk to be used by programs compiled 20 years ago.

They should not be used by OS components, nor visible to end user unless they run these old applications.

The OS already has multiple good ways to achieve that.

1. New programs can opt in to new stuff with a manifest. That’s how you get high DPI support in WinAPI: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/hidpi/setting...

2. New programs can call some API functions to enable new stuff. That’s how you get modern versions of Win32 common controls: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/commctrl/...

3. The OS has a lightweight virtualization layer for file system and registry, that’s how 32-bit apps view things differently: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winprog64/fil... Microsoft could have used that thing not just for 32-bit apps, for backward compatibility too, i.e. old apps could use special compatibility view of the environment.

4. Finally, the kernel supports multiple user-mode environments, Win32 is just one of them. The initial good version of WSL (I still use it every day, too bad they have killed the awesome product moving to virtual machines in WSL 2) runs Linux binaries directly on top of Windows 10 kernel, the subsystem is implemented in lxss.sys and lxcore.sys. Microsoft could have embedded couple popular Windows versions, such as 7 and XP, as different subsystems used for running old apps.

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

#270

Post by Const-me »

overgard wrote: post #29

The only consistency issue that really has bothered me is the constant mauling of the control panel. Windows 95 basically got it right, and every major release they just hide things further and further. And now the competing "Settings" thing is just an embarrassment. So now we have two competing ways of configuring the system, except the new one sucks and is incomplete, and the old one is kinda unmaintained.

I mostly agree, but if you use US English GUI locale there’s a shortcut — both new settings, and old control panel, have built-in search.

Very often I don’t bother opening either of them, instead using start menu search. For instance, to open the old “network and sharing center” GUI I press Win key, type “netw”, and press enter.

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