The windows 98 one brought back some serious memories! That was when I first started to really dig into computers and started to want to control and change everything I could.
Design evolution of the Windows control panel
21–30 of 112 posts
Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel
#22Left off Windows 11. The new one is the most logical one yet. Don't like that much about Windows 11, but the control panel is improved.
Are there still two separate ones? A "modern" one and a "classic" one? What frustrates me about Windows 10 is that each one has settings which are exclusive to it, so you always need both, and never know where to look.
Windows 11 still leaves a few things in the legacy Control Panel, but there's less that's only accessible there than there was in Windows 10, and every recent dev channel build has moved more things into the modern Settings app.
More importantly, they've gotten pretty good about linking into legacy Control Panel applets from the modern settings app-- so, even if a setting hasn't been migrated yet, you should be able to find a link to it in a logical place from the new Settings app. That's not new in Windows 11 (Windows 10 is pretty good about it too, for the most part), but the Settings reorganization in Windows 11 helped this along a bit.
Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel
#23Hey, my son and I run this site. Cool to see it here. Thanks for stopping by!
Thanks for your work! Just uncovered a gem.
Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel
#24I know people sometimes take Windows XP as a peak of Windows design, but damn, I always hated the "simplified" control panel view.
It was never what to do there.
Still better than the stupid dog when trying to search files.
Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel
#25Windows 2000 was clearly the peak in this article, and (as a whole system) it did feel like it at the time. (I do wish it had included ClearType though...)
Totally agree (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28346076). Computing is coming to an end with these new dumb interfaces.
Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel
#26This could be much more interesting if it included shots of the various windows listed in the panel, and perhaps also the ‘advanced’ interfaces available since Win2000 (iirc)—opened via ‘properties’ on the ‘My computer’ icon, though I think it's also in the panel somewhere. For me, the control panel is the litmus test of the OS interface—partly because usually it's where the OS has the most of its interface, while the rest is a bunch of bars and menus. Compare e.g. Gnome's panel to KDE's panel, at least around KDE 4 (last I've tried it): Gnome's is an example of austerity lifted from OSX, while KDE went full-in on tree-lists of dozens of pages of settings.
So: in Windows 7's control panel I've counted ten different kinds of windows—with ten somewhat different approaches to their design. Some of the widgets in there aren't used anywhere else in the OS. This only includes MS' own built-in settings windows—no third-party stuff, which frequently also has custom one-off looks and widgets.
And apparently, things became even worse in Win 8 or 10, with half-assed attempts at a redesign.
Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree, Id also argue virtually every posters opinion on HN about design of the Windows CP is useless. Most of us are power users and it we are not power users we are incredibly opinionated about some UX stuff.
please exclude me from your generalisations
Why? You certainly fit his profile.
Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel
#28Am I the only one who actually liked what M$ was doing with Windows 8?
At least they were trying and had some vision.
Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel
#29Am I the only one who actually liked what M$ was doing with Windows 8?
Nah, I liked it to. Having a hybrid tablet (Asus Transformer) helped, I think.
Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel
#30Left off Windows 11. The new one is the most logical one yet. Don't like that much about Windows 11, but the control panel is improved.
I dislike windows 11 UIs, while it is pretty it ruins super fast drilling down of information