Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft's ex-UI chief is shocked about the Windows 11 start menu

borncity.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 151 posts

Re: Microsoft's ex-UI chief is shocked about the Windows 11 start menu

#101

Post by encryptluks2 »

devmor wrote: post #65
encryptluks2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't notice much difference between experience in Windows 7 and Windows 11, aside from needing to manage more policies to prevent their cloud based services. Windows 11 isn't bad if you disable the adware portion. The terminal app is pretty good now and WSL works, albeit not as pleasant as something more native like Linux or even macOS terminal, but the adware is what cripples it IMO.

The terminal app and functional WSL are both available in Windows 10, though. 11 didn't add either of those.

Windows 11 adds other features that are useful though. I agree, Windows 10 is sufficient but if you know what policies to use then Windows 11 feels pretty much like Windows 10 with some new features.

Re: Microsoft's ex-UI chief is shocked about the Windows 11 start menu

#103

Post by 8293048883 »

hooby wrote: post #79

I only updated my gaming machine to Windows 11 about two weeks ago (running Mint on my work device) - and it immediately felt rather incomplete/unfinished to me. For example, I am using 7zip for compression. In file explorer I right click a file/directory I want to compress, but the option to compress with 7zip is missing from the context menu. So I choose "more options" at the bottom of the menu, and what I get is t…

> For example, I am using 7zip for compression

Nanazip is a "7-Zip derivative intended for the modern Windows experience" available on store/winget with the right hooks in place for Win11 context menus.

Old menu is also available with Shift+Rightclick, or reverted entirely via registry tweak

Re: Microsoft's ex-UI chief is shocked about the Windows 11 start menu

#104

Post by tinco »

unwind wrote: post #100
tinco wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 spaces and tab not being perfectly aligned sounds like a feature, not a bug to me. In what scenario would you want them to be aligned? Surely any scenario would be improper use? 100% agree with the rest of course, it's always been a shock to me how little love the essential tooling gets in Windows. You'd think with all the budgets and the fat salaries they'd simply have a competent engineer or two on every (categor…

I think that in when using a fixed-width font in a text-only editing program, the assumption is that a tab is "made" (visually) of a number of spaces. That number is a frequent ... debatable setting, in software development teams, but at least it's a number of spaces. Not being able to visually line up indents made out of spaces vs tabs (in any mix) breaks a very basic usability/interaction pattern, and is really rat…

What usability/interaction pattern is that?

The number of spaces in tabs is not a debate, that's just personal preference in your editor. The debate is if tabs should be used at all.

That tabs are not a multiple of the character width in a fixed width font is insane of course. But if any character should have that property as a feature, it would be the tab.

Re: Microsoft's ex-UI chief is shocked about the Windows 11 start menu

#105

Post by OrderlyTiamat »

> "the Start menu is Microsoft's flagship user experience. It should represent the very best UI design the company is capable of."

That is a joke, right? I have for years and years had problems to get the start menu search to work properly. It doesn't know about new programs until the following day, it doesn't remember frequently used programs, it can't find basic settings which it used to find fine, and worst of all is that it is _incredibly_ precise with it's recommedation. Typing "tea" gets you teams, "team" gets you steam. The next day (or hour, or 15 min) it is the other way around. It doesn't auto clear expired shortcuts, instead opting to ask about it when searching. Windows store apps sometimes don't appear, and if they do, the right click menu doesn't let you see it's path ( sometimes, I believe I had that working once?)

"Flagship user experience". And now the problem is that he can't find chrome in it? Seriously, that is a suprise? Never mind the fact that indexing takes an extremely long time perhaps he has chrome installed and forgot about it- windows has, too.

Contrast this with the apple experience with spotlight, and its night and day. Ateast with powertoys you get a spotlight esque replacement, but that's the irony of it: to get basic shit to work in windows, you have to install third party programs anyway and sometimes even work with regedit.

Re: Microsoft's ex-UI chief is shocked about the Windows 11 start menu

#106

Post by sph »

tinco wrote: post #104
unwind wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that in when using a fixed-width font in a text-only editing program, the assumption is that a tab is "made" (visually) of a number of spaces. That number is a frequent ... debatable setting, in software development teams, but at least it's a number of spaces. Not being able to visually line up indents made out of spaces vs tabs (in any mix) breaks a very basic usability/interaction pattern, and is really rat…

What usability/interaction pattern is that? The number of spaces in tabs is not a debate, that's just personal preference in your editor. The debate is if tabs should be used at all. That tabs are not a multiple of the character width in a fixed width font is insane of course. But if any character should have that property as a feature, it would be the tab.

Each line starts at the same place, right?

Each pipe character is the same width, right?

Monospace characters are unaffected by their surrounding characters, right? Unless they're ligatures, in that case their width is a multiple of the single character width.

The only possible way for "\t|" on consecutive lines to be misaligned is either for tab not to have a constant width, or any of the axioms above to be wrong.

I don't get how is this defensible. You don't have to be Steve Jobs to see this and ask "what is this crap?"

Re: Microsoft's ex-UI chief is shocked about the Windows 11 start menu

#107

Post by hooby »

I want to use an OS on my own terms, for my own ends. I want an OS that respects the boundaries I set for it. This includes respecting my time, my attention, my privacy and above all my consent. I should be the user, it should be the tool, not the other way around.

Every new version of windows seems to provide less of this than the previous version. More ads, more being forced into things, more telemetry, more updates reverting settings I made, less respect for my express commands, less useful feedback on what the OS is actually doing and why.

Re: Microsoft's ex-UI chief is shocked about the Windows 11 start menu

#108

Post by rrobukef »

OrderlyTiamat wrote: post #105

> "the Start menu is Microsoft's flagship user experience. It should represent the very best UI design the company is capable of." That is a joke, right? I have for years and years had problems to get the start menu search to work properly. It doesn't know about new programs until the following day, it doesn't remember frequently used programs, it can't find basic settings which it used to find fine, and worst of all…

I press Start and type and the menu drops letters. After it has popped up. Most of the times only the first letters. Sometimes it gets the first one or two and drops the third and fourth.

As Tom Lehrer said: 'Я иду туда, куда сам царь идёт пешком - It stinks.'

Re: Microsoft's ex-UI chief is shocked about the Windows 11 start menu

#109

Post by [deleted] »

svnpenn wrote: post #40
anaisbetts wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article and see what he was complaining about? He typed the word "Chrome" and the top hit was a web search with a bunch of ads on the right-hand sidebar. His complaints were 100% justified and imho correct, and the immediate jump to ad-hominem attacks rather than debating the content of the article seems uncalled for.

sorry, but this is one of the few cases where its justified. Anyone whos developed on Windows since 7 or before (raises hand) knows how awful Window UI has been since 8. You wouldn't want Richard Nixon (if he was alive) commenting on Obama's term would you? Even if Harris is 100% right, its just tone deaf and in bad taste. No one want to hear his opinion on Microsoft products. Hes done enough already.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft's ex-UI chief is shocked about the Windows 11 start menu

#110

Post by npteljes »

OrderlyTiamat wrote: post #105

> "the Start menu is Microsoft's flagship user experience. It should represent the very best UI design the company is capable of." That is a joke, right? I have for years and years had problems to get the start menu search to work properly. It doesn't know about new programs until the following day, it doesn't remember frequently used programs, it can't find basic settings which it used to find fine, and worst of all…

> "the Start menu is Microsoft's flagship user experience. It should represent the very best UI design the company is capable of."

Naive take, at best. Why would a desktop OS monopoly like Microsoft look at user experience as a top priority? All they need to do is not make something that's so atrocious, that users leave in droves. And they got that position, so, other priorities have taken over, and I'm sure the start menu serves those purpuses well.

Post reply on HN