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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?

#301

Post by jolux »

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…

This is part of the explanation but it's clearly not the whole explanation. The other part is why Windows has gone through half a dozen different UI toolkits while macOS is recognizably the same with some re-skins since 2001. There's no backwards compatibility to be broken if you get the UI right the first time, and there's no excuse for introducing a whole new UI model with every release. It makes the whole OS feel like a gigantic pile of technical debt, and gives the appearance that engineering simply moves on and greenfields a new UI system when the old one becomes unmaintainable.

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

#302

Post by mekster »

Why wouldn't MS just start a new OS like they ditched IE?

They can't get rid of backward compatibilities and pretending to be moving forward with the pace of walking in snow and everything is just half way done for the past 10+ years.

Just port the drivers, add some compatibility layers so that half apps work, ask big software vendors to port their apps to the new platform and let Windows fade out slowly so that finally they can create a fully vertically controlling software/hardware based on ARM and compete with Apple.

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

#303

Post by uhryks »

emsy wrote: post #248
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).

The juice is absolutely worth the squeeze. Everybody and their grandmas think Windows is a mess, yet theres no real alternative for most people, so there’s no real incentive for MS to make it better (or for a start, stop making it worse with telemetry, forced restarts and adware).

From MS' point of view I doubt it is worth thr squeeze. You have to consider that the average user and their grandma make very little revenue for them. They buy a license with their computer and that's mostly it. Pro users, companies are a big part of the Windows revenue and for them, backwards-compatibilty is the biggest sales point. I agree this is super bad and confusing for many users, but the majority of them probably never go past the latest design Win10 screens.

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

#304

Post by deltron3030 »

machello13 wrote: post #242
deltron3030 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it relates to how their internal structure is set up and their brand positioning. Apple has only one design team and design system I think, and only caters to folks who prefer simplicity over power features. I suspect that Windows is more like compilation of what different teams produce at MS, each with their own design opinions and target audience. I can only imagine how challenging it is to serve beginners…

> macOS only caters to folks who prefer simplicity over power features This is said quite often, almost as a given, but I never thought it reflected reality. macOS has an abundance of useful features for power users — system services, automator, AppleScript, tons of productivity touches like titlebar proxy icons and universal drag-and-drop support... not to mention it's all built on Unix so a terminal is right there…

Sorry I meant the UI, not the "hidden" stuff.

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

#305

Post by mixmastamyk »

paavohtl wrote: post #232
flohofwoe wrote: post #165

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…

I guess one challenge with this is that old school Win32 doesn't really support anything resembling automatic / responsive layout. All controls are of a fixed size in a fixed pixel location. This means you can't for example change the default font, add margin or padding or do any other significant changes without essentially breaking all existing applications.

We had layout managers in the 90s, perhaps not in the 80s.

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

#306

Post by my123 »

qball wrote: post #152
cheschire wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't RT just windows 8 with an ARM build target and win32 stuff removed so they could sell cheaper tablets? So if you wanted an "unlocked" windows RT, couldn't you just have run windows 8?

>win32 stuff removed Win32 was not removed from Windows RT, but your access to it (if your name wasn't "Microsoft"; because that low-level access was reportedly how they got Office on it) was. And because of Secure Boot, which (unlike x86, for now) is mandated enabled for Windows on ARM systems, you had to wait for an unpatchable security hole in the booting process (which, while it exists, wasn't relevant until past…

It's not mandated on for the newer Windows on Arm64 systems, but is configurable there.

Windows RT was just Windows 8 with a locked code signing policy, yup. And yes, Office on Windows RT was Win32, as were File Explorer, MMC, ... it's just recompiled Win8 after all.

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

#307

Post by darren_ »

alisonkisk wrote: post #289
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A $900 MacBook Air would probably have lasted far longer and needed less time troubleshooting than a $500 computer made with subpar components. I've never seen a more-true statement on this site. Years ago, my wife was using a $500 Acer laptop, which was a cheap plastic POS, which broke after a couple of years. I bit the bullet, and bought a pre-owned Air for $900. She is still using it, 11 years later. I used to h…

That 11 year old Air can't run a recent OS that supports modern web browsers including security patches.

Assuming it's 11 years old (late 2010 model), it can run up to High Sierra, which both the most recent Chrome and Firefox will support.

If it's the Mid-2009 model (the next older model), it can still run El Capitan and therefore the newest Chrome.

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

#308

Post by PaulHoule »

cududa wrote: post #283
PaulHoule wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

…that’s because you have a set job with constraints and machines dedicated to that sole task in a controlled environment. Personal computing, third party drivers, background tasks, etc all impact this.

Partially so.

Hadoop’s progress bar is possible because it breaks a task up into small units; you know it was broken into 1000 units and that 50 are done so the job is roughly 5% done.

GUI programs really shouldn’t be able to use a thread for long at all. If they have to do 2 s worth of work they should break it up in 20 chunks of 0.1s and if they go a millisecond over the App Store should refund your purchase price and kick them out permanently.

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

#309

Post by agumonkey »

PaulHoule wrote: post #308
cududa wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…that’s because you have a set job with constraints and machines dedicated to that sole task in a controlled environment. Personal computing, third party drivers, background tasks, etc all impact this.

Partially so. Hadoop’s progress bar is possible because it breaks a task up into small units; you know it was broken into 1000 units and that 50 are done so the job is roughly 5% done. GUI programs really shouldn’t be able to use a thread for long at all. If they have to do 2 s worth of work they should break it up in 20 chunks of 0.1s and if they go a millisecond over the App Store should refund your purchase price…

And they have no uncertainty at any layers ? I assume most OS UI issues are due to too many 'maybes' and they bail out on meaning and precision.

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

#310

Post by machello13 »

deltron3030 wrote: post #304
machello13 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> macOS only caters to folks who prefer simplicity over power features This is said quite often, almost as a given, but I never thought it reflected reality. macOS has an abundance of useful features for power users — system services, automator, AppleScript, tons of productivity touches like titlebar proxy icons and universal drag-and-drop support... not to mention it's all built on Unix so a terminal is right there…

Sorry I meant the UI, not the "hidden" stuff.

Right, but everything I mentioned exists in the UI. Just not the very last part.
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