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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?

#251

Post by codethief »

masklinn wrote: post #167
Someone1234 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I do want to point out that some of these "not updated" things are still heavily used and offer a bad user experience. For example the Services (or any mmc based) UI with no filter/search integrated is absurd. Heck they just "redesigned" Task Manager and none of the tabs have filter/search functionality which is annoying to say the least. I suppose you can start typing with the inner tab having focus, an…

> I agree, but I do want to point out that some of these "not updated" things are still heavily used and offer a bad user experience. I still remember the day I found out the envvar configuration screen had been updated, and finally: * could be resized so you could see more than 4 envvars at a time, and had a scrollbar taller than 5mm to scroll through the list * could be resized so you could actually see the entire…

I haven't used Windows in almost 13 years and I still remember that shitty env var config screen. Wow, this is bringing back memories.

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

#252

Post by bitwize »

gizmo385 wrote: post #248
flohofwoe wrote: post #190

Funny how the more the screenshots go back in history, the more 'useful' the UI looks like (even though they no longer adhere to the current fashion fad - which should actually be handled through a user-accessible themeing engine, no need to pay some UI designers big bucks to come up with rounded corners). For instance right in the first Task Manager screenshot, I have no clue what those tab icons on the left side ac…

> o need to pay some UI designers big bucks to come up with rounded corners). It’s really unfortunate how dismissive of the entire ui design profession so much of HN is. Not a great look IMO

I've met some great UI designers and they could take a libXaw application and have it present information cleanly and offer available actions and context transitions that make sense.

But these people are not rewarded in today's industry. The criteria for good UI design these days is all about "lOoKs mOdErN". Plus the field seems increasingly tied to HTML/CSS/JS. Development teams as a whole are not incentivized to do UI design with an emphasis on making the user's work easier... they're incentivized by engagement KPIs and the like. So there's a trendline towards more sizzle and less steak.

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

#253

Post by whydid »

digdigdag wrote: post #90

The codebase goes back to nearly 40 years. It would be more shocking if it there weren't legacy code hanging around. Windows is one of the most impressive pieces of software I have ever seen. No other platform boasts the kind of backwards compatibility that is seen in this operating system. There are shim layers on top of shim layers and the developers seem to have gone through great pains to keep the operating syste…

GTK and Gnome are almost 25 years old, and they're nowhere as messy as the Windows

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk

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

#255

Post by whydid »

layer8 wrote: post #66
Dalewyn wrote: post #35

>The ability to choose icons that are more than 30 years old is still here, with the inclusion of the very important and absolutely critical to the good function of the OS moricons.dll I will happily bet there are programs out there that would crash and burn horrifically without moricons.dll.

Also, it doesn’t hurt anyone to keep it around.

Yes it does "hurt" because it creates an inconsistent visual style. Windows is a mess because of the refusal to deprecate old APIs.

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

#256

Post by npteljes »

kemayo wrote: post #221

The single most "oh, Microsoft " moment I had when updating to Windows 11 is actually glossed over in this article without comment. Context menus are restyled, and also now have a "show more options" entry[1] -- if you press it, what happens? The pre-Windows-11 context menu appears. That's right. There's archeological layers of UI design in context menus now. [1] https://ntdotdev.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/image-4.p…

I feel so angry about that new context menu. It's also visibly slower than the previous one (which, in turn, is slower than the Win XP version was). The second WTF was the centered start menu, killing my decade old reflex of going to the bottom left with the pointer and clicking. This at least has a toggle.

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

#257

Post by silon42 »

jabbany wrote: post #54
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!

This! So much this! What's the point of having a taskbar that only groups by app...This has been one of the major pain points of me using Mac OS and it is immensely sad that Windows 11 has also taken this approach. At least some Linux DEs still let me keep my app windows ungrouped...

Exactly, ungrouped taskbar is the next essential thing after properly working Alt+Tab.

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

#258

Post by josephcsible »

gizmo385 wrote: post #248
flohofwoe wrote: post #190

Funny how the more the screenshots go back in history, the more 'useful' the UI looks like (even though they no longer adhere to the current fashion fad - which should actually be handled through a user-accessible themeing engine, no need to pay some UI designers big bucks to come up with rounded corners). For instance right in the first Task Manager screenshot, I have no clue what those tab icons on the left side ac…

> o need to pay some UI designers big bucks to come up with rounded corners). It’s really unfortunate how dismissive of the entire ui design profession so much of HN is. Not a great look IMO

Microsoft's UI designers used to be useful. The Windows UI design got better by leaps and bounds at first, was at its peak between Windows 95 and Windows 2000, and has been getting worse ever since. The problem is now that the field has matured, there's a lot less that needs to be changed, so they've started to change things that were fine the way they were to justify not being downsized.

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

#259

Post by crispyambulance »

boomskats wrote: post #134
SpacePortKnight wrote: post #126

My biggest issue with Windows 11 UI is the existence of both the control panel and the settings app. Often I don't know which setting takes precedence, for example I can create power plans from control panel and also use different power modes from the settings app.

My biggest issue with Windows 11 UI is the fact that the taskbar sometimes doesn't load the clock/icon tray, sometimes loads two taskbars one over the other (both which respond to the windows key being pressed and neither with a clock/icon tray), and frequently shows a taskbar over a maximised application window (without the maximised window knowing about it and so drawing its contents behind said taskbar, like Chrom…

One thing that I find incomprehensible is the fact that you CANNOT place the taskbar vertical to either side of the monitor.

It's so infuriating. Such a small thing, but that capability was present since at least windows XP.

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

#260

Post by TeMPOraL »

hajile wrote: post #181
sylens wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh they definitely do. And even some XP ones. But all the time that could’ve been spent updating those to a more modern UI style, they instead reinvented the wheel with Windows 8 and then had to roll it back, wasting about 5 years

They were on Vista/7 for years, but couldn't be bothered to upgrade the ancient Windows 3.x stuff. The problem seems much bigger than metro.

I imagine the things that they thought were the most important to update in Vista were also the most important to update in Win7, Win8, Win10 and Win11, always for the same reason.
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