If they're going to block off ~20-30 pixels on the top of the screen I'd really prefer to have the option to put something more useful than weather and an omnipresent search field there. I know they're not to everyone's taste but it wouldn't hurt to have an option to replace those with a global menubar for example, because I don't need to know the weather that often and a hotkeyed search ala Spotlight, Alfred, or Mic…
Microsoft's obsession with the current weather feels like someone resorted to desperate measures fill their "wasted space" quota.
"We want it to look like MacOS, but without any consistency and keeping some system components that were written for Windows XP, but we haven't bothered to update yet." "It will require the lastest processors and 32 GB of RAM because OEMs need to sell computers and all of the windows components are using Electron (or similar memory-hungry web UIs)." "Teams and Loop will be fully integrated to enable maximum synergy f…
You write it as a joke, but I recently got myself a PC with Win11Pro. First glance: brand new UI. Until you open some specific settings, or choose "more options" from a context menu, then it's Windows 10. Then you need to tweak something else, and it's suddenly it's Windows XP. And when you go to something in the device/hardware area, you're confronted with a dialog that hasn't changed since NT.
And, fun fact, these old(er) dialogs are still often better/easier to understand than the new ones.
This may be partially nostalgia speaking but I really dislike the new settings and would like to have kept Windows 7 style control panel with some improvements (e.g. resizable, layout managed dialogs). But it is what it is, on the Mac side it also started going downhill after catalina.
"We want it to look like MacOS, but without any consistency and keeping some system components that were written for Windows XP, but we haven't bothered to update yet." "It will require the lastest processors and 32 GB of RAM because OEMs need to sell computers and all of the windows components are using Electron (or similar memory-hungry web UIs)." "Teams and Loop will be fully integrated to enable maximum synergy f…
You write it as a joke, but I recently got myself a PC with Win11Pro. First glance: brand new UI. Until you open some specific settings, or choose "more options" from a context menu, then it's Windows 10. Then you need to tweak something else, and it's suddenly it's Windows XP. And when you go to something in the device/hardware area, you're confronted with a dialog that hasn't changed since NT.
Meanwhile, KDE Plasma is getting better with each version.
They can change it to whatever as long as it's fully consistent and doesn't have menus from Windows 95. At this point I don't even know if it's possible.
I installed Windows 95 in a VM for fun and nostalgia recently and it struck me how consistent it was. Sure the colors and styles aged but wherever you were, buttons were buttons, settings boxes were setting boxes, windows were windows, task bar was a task bar, toolbars were toolbars … Frankly, I’d argue that changing most settings is easier in windows 95. It wasn’t perfect but it was a solid UX base with a lot of log…
This ^. Its remarkable how well thought out and consistent the UI was.
Been here since Win3.0 and the Win95/NT4/Win2k UI, more or less up to Windows 7 is really good even if certainly some things could be improved.
Starting with 8 its just an utter mess old man yelling.
I thought Windows 95 menu bar was quite functional once you got used to it. https://regmedia.co.uk/2015/08/24/win95start_648.jpg
Until you accidentally overshot by a single pixel and your entire foldout of menus disappeared, forcing you to spend time going through the whole tree again (unless my memory is failing me).
Yes, mouse navigation of deeply nested menus has that exact problem. It's like playing that old Flash jump-scare maze game where you had to be very precise with the mouse.
Keyboard navigation of menus does not have that problem.
In Windows Vista/7/later versions of 10 the solution Microsoft used was to make the tree clickable like the tree in Explorer.
In 8/early 10/11 the solution used is to forbid nesting.
"We want it to look like MacOS, but without any consistency and keeping some system components that were written for Windows XP, but we haven't bothered to update yet." "It will require the lastest processors and 32 GB of RAM because OEMs need to sell computers and all of the windows components are using Electron (or similar memory-hungry web UIs)." "Teams and Loop will be fully integrated to enable maximum synergy f…
You write it as a joke, but I recently got myself a PC with Win11Pro. First glance: brand new UI. Until you open some specific settings, or choose "more options" from a context menu, then it's Windows 10. Then you need to tweak something else, and it's suddenly it's Windows XP. And when you go to something in the device/hardware area, you're confronted with a dialog that hasn't changed since NT.
The more option menu is just a joke, they really couldn't bother to just fully migrate it?
For all its failures, the linux desktop has one of the best if not the best design consistency out there
This appears to be a mirror of OSX with the floating taskbar at the bottom with center aligned app icons, this is exactly how OSX has the dock configured. Also the system info in the top right. I wonder if the team over at Microsoft is trying to match the look and feel of OSX in order to shorten the gap between the two operating systems and reduce friction of switching between the two.
Rather than copying macOS, phone UIs come to mind. Your bar at the top with info, dock at the bottom of the homescreen with shortcuts. It's felt like phones were taking over for a while. You could perhaps argue that iOS and Android UI design was influenced by older Mac OS versions originally, I guess.
My thoughts exactly. Scale the whole thing down and you have a tablet friendly UI forced upon desktop users. Yuck!
Why, oh why, must MS invent a new UI for every version? They all turn out half-baked, and are never around long enough to get completely debugged and polished.
I think about how great the UI could be if they just kept iterating the original instead of coming up with new shit every time and it makes me mad. It's been a lost decade in UI design for Windows and it's only become worse.
Yeah, it looks like a pandemic. Someone comes with a terrible UI (Google's material design) and next you look everybody takes it as the future.
Why, oh why, must MS invent a new UI for every version? They all turn out half-baked, and are never around long enough to get completely debugged and polished.
I think about how great the UI could be if they just kept iterating the original instead of coming up with new shit every time and it makes me mad. It's been a lost decade in UI design for Windows and it's only become worse.
Which is a bit of a shame IMO. I'm a bit of an apologist for windows 8.1 and the 'Start Screen', even if the Store and WinUI apps were kinda gross.
Sure, the start screen was a whole screen rather than a bar. But it was easy enough to organize into something useful, as opposed to the Win10 start menu which just feels too busy with a bunch of small tiles littering the screen.