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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?

#311

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…

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…

> The latest UI framework (XAML/WinUI) sits on top of a better rendering architecture (compositor) that itself wraps DirectX tech.

WinUI/UWP still uses CreateWindowEx and good old WndProc for event loop message handling at the top level on Windows 10.

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

#312

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.

> I guess one challenge with this is that old school Win32 doesn't really support anything resembling automatic / responsive layout.

It gives you all the building blocks to implement it yourself.

Remember that Win32 is not UI framework but OS API which allow you to build yourself one (wxWidgets, QT, SWT).

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

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the cold hard facts of living in the western world is that most people would need to spend irresponsibly to use MacOS regularly. A $900 MacBook Air would probably have lasted far longer and needed less time troubleshooting than a $500 computer made with subpar components. The amortized costs are far lower with Apple products (or other products using higher quality components) compared to buying the cheapest devices…

> 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…

To be fair, every single Acer device I've ever had contact with other than my display was conspicuously unreliable, and their support/service has not been that great, either.

I have good experience with Asus laptops, though, I still have an EeePC from 2008, and it's still working fine. Slow as a snail, of course, but still working. ThinkPads, too, although they can be a bit pricey.

There's the software side, of course, macOS is much more pleasant to use than Windows. But I found after using a Mac Mini for about three years that I actually prefer GNU/Linux on my desktop.

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

#314
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and home users only got the ability to pass through a subset of consumer-level nVidia GPUs (which IIRC doesn't apply to laptops, so you're still stuck there) That's not quite correct any longer. Nvidia now supports passthrough on all consumer GPUs that work with their current driver. This also includes laptops with Nvidia chips and they've been actively fixing bugs and compatibility problems in every driver release…

Perhaps, but the standard VFIO-style passthrough methods (if you can call anything about that "standard") is still a terrible solution; it requires more than one GPU to use both systems at once, requires navigating horrifically underdocumented driver systems that brick the system when experimented with (just like everything in Linux does, for that matter), and requires at the very least switching inputs between the h…

In my experience the whole VFIO subsystem is quite stable and at least Nvidia hardware can be detached and attached to a different driver without any difficulty. Intel GPUs have trouble being reattached to the host because of driver issues and AMD needs workarounds because of hardware level bugs. Also, if you have a laptop, or a desktop Intel, you already have a perfectly usable GPU that the host can use included in the CPU!

It's true that setting up everything can take some time to get it working, but it depends very much on the hardware. In most cases on a desktop system all you need to do is select the right PCI device in libvirt's GUI and it should work. On laptops you need to hack together a custom OVMF UEFI firmware imagine with the VBIOS included, but there are ways to auto-generate it [1].

Input can be handled in multiple ways, which makes most sense depends on if you want to use dedicated output, or if you want to stream the output back to the host using something like Looking Glass. I just have a virtual qxl GPU in the VM which lets me use the qemu window for input and that works fine.

For audio there is scream[2], which gives me super-low latency 7.1 audio. According to pulseaudio latency is under 2ms in addition to whatever latency Windows itself has. I use a -ck kernel with MuQSS scheduler, the default scheduler won't be able to go that low.

I mean it can be tricky to set up, but if the hardware is capable it shouldn't be more than a weekend project. Once set up it's rock solid stability wise and compatibility is the same as bare metal. Caveat is some online games consider running in a VM cheating, but that doesn't affect me. It's not for everyone, but neither is Linux as a desktop OS

Overall I consider this the holy grail for those that want to primarily run Linux but don't want to give up games or deal with wine/proton issues. Actual dual booting is completely obsolete with GPU passthrough in my opinion. YMMV, depending on what you play and your exact hardware.

[1]: https://github.com/bitthief/ovmf-with-vbios-patch [2]: https://github.com/duncanthrax/scream

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

#315
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

News about Mac are frequently separate from criticism about Mac. Perhaps because they arrive earlier. You might want to look specifically for reviews, opinions, and summaries of critical reaction. Maybe watch reviews on Youtube to get a feel. Personally I'm thinking of trying BS in a virtual machine to see if I'm ok with it or will stay away until apps that I want drop support for Mojave (likely Brew will begin to co…

Fair enough. It feels a bit like the bits of MacOS I care about are nowhere near this sort of stuff, but then I was also baffled by the Facebook UI riots :-)

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

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ove…

Thanks, that's good feedback. The program I get the most notifications from is Teams, and you can't do the nice swipe it away to the right you can with all the other MacOS notifications, so I'm used to pain there already!

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

#317
Although the Mac OS X “Blue Box” was ugly for a time, the virtualization approach worked and it also created a clear incentive for app developers to get their software updated to run better outside of that constraint.

If this “backwards compatibility” is important, fine: provide that compatibility on an older OS running in a layer. Free up the main OS to finally evolve.

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

#318
post #251
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, thu…

I agree that some features in Outlook feel like bloat and that it too has legacy UI.

I do however find it to be the best (on Windows; unsure about on Mac).

I would so much like Microsoft to sell it outside of "Office Pro" as I would like to use it at home too but do not otherwise need "Office Pro" at home.

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

#319
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).

Stating that the UI consistency issues are due to backwards compatibility is stretching the truth to the point of outright deception. Backwards compatibility is not what stops Microsoft from updating the GUIs for their own components. It is not the reason that the components that have been updated failed to carry forward 100% of the features of the components they're replacing, necessitating the ongoing use of the le…

Additionally, this is all the more reason why Microsoft should think through before they release a new UI frameworks and instead of releazing and then shortly moving on to a new one. I do not really understand why this cannot be thought through to make it long-lasting without running into alleged backward compatibility issues.

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

#320
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the backwards compatibility case for APIs, but not for OS dialogs. Is there a compatibility reason why the folder properties dialog is crufty (unresizable, etc)? I always just assumed there was no engineering appetite or business case to work on it.

If any program tweaks a dialog, say by floating a title-barless window with a new control on top of some empty space (possibly after slightly resizing the window or a control in the window to make space), you can’t resize any window control, can’t change tab order, can’t add controls, can’t change background color, etc. Detecting whether that is being done is challenging. Typical workaround is that, if any callback i…

> If any program tweaks a dialog, say ...

Yes. They should not have allowed this at all in hindsight. Well, too late. :-)

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