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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
Imho, it's better to observe the generalizations we each fall under, and use it to learn more about ourselves.
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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.
If there wasn't a search function, I'd absolutely never figure out where anything is in there in Windows 10. It's an absolute mess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Windows 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...)
Especially all the network configuration variants went from bad to worse over the time.
There was just no care for actually improving user experience, everything was shoehorned into the modern ui mainly as a push for ARM windows devices which were so slow they just never took off. MS wanted to force an enclosed ecosystem like apple iOS, but just didn’t have the hardware to make it happen.
I remember one story asking why it was so difficult to manage switching to Bluetooth speakers for the surface which was still somewhat secret at MS at the time only to be told that they did follow up with my question and only 0.005% of users ever used Bluetooth speakers with windows and it wasn’t a priority. (Obviously the number is t right, but it was something utterly tiny)
Windows 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...)
I think all the icons looked great, with minor changes, until Win10's new "Settings" --- in which it looks like they just decided to throw away decades of careful design and replace them with dumbed-down flat and bland ones. All the more infuriating that new Settings is noticeably less responsive and at the same time less functional.
The proper solution would have been to refresh the old one. Make a full-featured control panel that uses just slightly more modern UI paradigms and technologies. And with zero weird extension points for third parties.
But no, instead we get half the controlpanel made into a usless minimalist web design look, and the other half is still the original.
I don't know what parts of the control panel must remain for backwards compatibility (with what!?) or why someone even thought it was a good idea to have extensibility points that become a nightmare of compatibility of maintenance. Or why it's apparently more work to rewrite a single control panel page than it is to ship a whole major release of Office. But more importantly, I don't care.
I was involved in part with the Windows 8 control panel refresh. What a nightmare it was working with that team. There was just no care for actually improving user experience, everything was shoehorned into the modern ui mainly as a push for ARM windows devices which were so slow they just never took off. MS wanted to force an enclosed ecosystem like apple iOS, but just didn’t have the hardware to make it happen. I r…
successfully? How many tried? This can btw. be an issue with telemetry: if people don't manage to do something, maybe you will never know.
Classic view with classic icon arrangement is still the easiest to find things. Mostly, I guess, because the organisation of things doesn't change every other version, or goes to hide under a different vaguely named subsection every so often. The fact that Updates are under Security, and not under Apps does say something about Windows, though...
Eh, updates and security go hand-in-hand. I'd say it would be best to completely split it out. Updates should just contain security update and be mandatory. Some other thing (call them upgrades) should contain new features and be optional.