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How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

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Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#11

Post by wadd1e »

I have a bit of a perfectionistic tendency to 'start over' things over and over and do them again as perfectly as possible; the Windows side of MS feels like a corporate embodiment of this habit.

They've done this sort of thing with app installers(setup.exe, click once, appv, msi, msix) and UI frameworks(win32, mfc, wpf, winui 2, winui 3). It's like the teams responsible for their respective product keep starting over with a shiny new way of doing things every couple of years to achieve the 'perfect' installer/ui framework or anything else for that matter. Infact W11 felt like a way of 'restarting' W10 without building a whole new OS.

Atleast with W11 they're actively updating old things rather than introducing new ones, I did not have a lot of hope when it first came out, but they have gotten my hopes up since the release for sure. I just hope they stick with winui 3 and see it through.

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#12

Post by black_puppydog »

See the problem with operating systems which don't have strict design guidelines and review like iOS is that they don't have a consistent design language which clearly prevents adoption. That's one of the prime reason why Linux on the desktop will never take off. /s

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#13

Post by tgv »

I wrote a similar comment here recently, but this is much more detailed, and it's worse than I thought. Nice to see practically all versions addressed in some detail. Looks like Microsoft does have some kind of UWP (he wrote, not at all resenting the loss of his Windows phone).

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#14

Post by agilob »

sylens wrote: post #5

This is a really great documentation of how far back various pieces of the UI go. If you’ve been using Windows for a long time, you remember when different pieces of the UI got introduced or changed and then frozen in amber until today. Crazy to think they are still recovering from Windows 8 and the pivot to Metro UI.

Pretty sure some of these screenshots show Windows Vista design.

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#15

Post by simion314 »

I would prefer for feature to exist and work and don't care if the buttons look the same. I am super salty because I tried to run some old 32 bits qt4 and gtk2 python apps on latest Kubuntu LTS (I am 100% only Linux for years )and I just wasted hours without any satisfaction, at least on Windows 10 year old programs will still work most of the time(probably some old games could fail but might be a driver issue and not a Microsoft stuff).

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#17

Post by muststopmyths »

As a 25+ year user of windows none of this stuff bothers me. What ticks me off is just the abysmal quality of windows 11 compared to the past. It’s like no one working on it has any pride in their job

Example:

- hate the new notification area. The action center was so much better

- dumb stuff like a window update notification that shows a c# class name instead of windows update

- clicking said notification does not bring up the windows update settings as it used to.

- searching for windows update in the start menu does not show the setting as a result. Even when you select setting.

- every few edge updates, th browser is able to put itself in a state that it takes 5 minutes to start up. In that time most other apps will not launch either.

I could go on and on, but these are just a few of the daily problems that irritate me.

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#18

Post by eCa »

mihaaly wrote: post #3

I am still looking forward for the option to ungroup task bar buttons, preferably with titles. Again! Something that was there before, worked, and was useful. But some designer decided we don't need that, to the bin with it!

One of the first things I installed recently on my first Win11 computer was StartAllBack[1]. It’s not perfect but the standard taskbar is so bad that I had to fix it somehow.

[1] https://www.startallback.com/

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#20

Post by vasqw »

eCa wrote: post #18
mihaaly wrote: post #3

I am still looking forward for the option to ungroup task bar buttons, preferably with titles. Again! Something that was there before, worked, and was useful. But some designer decided we don't need that, to the bin with it!

One of the first things I installed recently on my first Win11 computer was StartAllBack[1]. It’s not perfect but the standard taskbar is so bad that I had to fix it somehow. [1] https://www.startallback.com/

Costs money.
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