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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?

#271

Post by djur »

josephcsible wrote: post #258
gizmo385 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I've been working on a project recently that involves running Win95 in a VM and it's almost shocking how nice the UX feels compared to the Win11 host surrounding it. Consistent, clean, legible - nothing hidden, very little extraneous animation or visual flash. Even the battleship gray is nicer than I remember. Nostalgia goggles for sure, but...

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

#272

Post by EMM_386 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #74
oblak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the mindless vitriol I had in mind. Flow A: hit a button, a menu with text input and pictures shows up Flow B: hit a button, a full screen with text input and pictures shows up A is perfect, and B is "practically unusable".

Note how one flow literally erases everything else on the screen, disrupting whatever it was you were doing and disorienting any lesser-skilled users. On a desktop computer. More than likely with (a) monitor(s) big enough to occupy an entire desk. The Start Screen was fucking horrible all around, and its horribleness was proven with the immediate resurrection of the Start Menu and demise of the Start Screen in Window…

> Metro also met a similar demise because it forced a black-and-white, no delimiter UI upon desktop computers.

I recall when they did this to Visual Studio.

They completely removed all colors from all of the icons, making it impossible to pick out one from another and making once familiar icons by color a hunt-and-peck operation to find.

It was all just black and white. Then, due to feedback, they relented and put color back on all the icons.

It was madness.

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

#273

Post by djur »

ninkendo wrote: post #270

What I don’t understand is why Microsoft seems to have failed so often at creating the basic abstractions needed to be able to replace the old dialogs (for instance the file browser the ODBC connection UI) with new ones without needing to touch the calling code. Microsoft’s answer for making new UI always seems to involve making new API’s altogether, leaving the old ones intact for compatibility, and adopting the new…

MacOS has also been much more willing to break backwards compatibility. You haven't been able to directly run 1993-vintage software for a long time, much longer than the equivalent Windows period. And the difference gets even clearer for more recent software.

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

#274

Post by comechao »

I've tried Windows full-time again in 2022. I'm a developer. I bought an XPS 13 9310 UHD and activated Windows Pro. WSL2 make the life of a developer pretty easy, specially if you need Docker, it runs better on WSL2 than on Mac. But Lord! What a crappy UI/UX experience, but it is at least getting better. The battery management is terrible, make traveling with a "Thin and Light" laptop a bad experience, you have to be nearby a power outlet. On Dec 29 I bought another Mac. About same price of my XPS. Battery is amazing and the UI/UX still way better.

Note: People say that the XPS FHD has a good battery life. I don't care, I don't want a FHD, and UHD is a pretty bad product. Fix it.

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

#275

Post by russellbeattie »

I can't believe he didn't show the Device Manager window.

You know the one that you go to in hopes of figuring out why that USB peripheral or PCI card you plugged in isn't working, only to get a tree menu with a hierarchy of random categories, then a property dialog with zero real info?

That thing has been a decades old nightmare to me, and it still hasn't changed.

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

#276

Post by concordDance »

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

It's some specific fads that get complained about. Plus the big fact that, for the people who post on hackernews, more modern UIs are actually worse for them and their workflows.

Why would you not dismiss a profession that actively makes your life worse?

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

#277

Post by Arainach »

ninkendo wrote: post #270

What I don’t understand is why Microsoft seems to have failed so often at creating the basic abstractions needed to be able to replace the old dialogs (for instance the file browser the ODBC connection UI) with new ones without needing to touch the calling code. Microsoft’s answer for making new UI always seems to involve making new API’s altogether, leaving the old ones intact for compatibility, and adopting the new…

>If they decide to do a new UI theme for a macOS release, you generally see it everywhere

The corollary is that any Mac application that hasn't been touched in 5 years will quite likely break when Apple makes some sweeping API change.

I'm much happier to be able to run my Win95-era utilities whose developers are long gone at the cost of some older UI elements.

>why allow such things in the first place

Many of these things were built and designed at a time when computers had 4MB of RAM. Every additional layer of abstraction has a very real cost.

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

#278

Post by Arainach »

herbst wrote: post #113
n1vz3r wrote: post #93

As a long-time Linux user with habit of throwing everything into the mix, I got quite used to number of inconsistencies that I have, so I don't think that MS deserves criticism for having them too (although article is not very critical, it just counts the inconsisitencies). I have GTK2/3/4 apps, KDE apps, Qt apps, Electron apps, AND Windows apps running under wine. So the only consistency on my desktop is an inconsis…

Linux user here as well. The thing that upsets me with windows in the inconsistency in the OS not the applications. Take Fedora, Manjaro or Ubuntu with any major flavour like Gnome or KDE and you get a very consistent way of how your OS works and responds to common tasks. It's kinda easy for non experienced user to find the right settings with no UI change on a modern Linux Desktop.

Linux does this by breaking things wholesale. Any Gnome extensions etc. need constant maintenance or they break in between versions, while Windows provides binary compatibility and doesn't even require recompiling.

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

#279

Post by mbesto »

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

You're conflating 'being dismissive' with 'being critical'. I think HN very much agrees that good UI is very important, so much so that they take the time to critiquing it when it's obviously bad.

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

#280

Post by avx56 »

josephg wrote: post #182
323 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One universal solution that works for all apps - you render the app in an off-screen buffer and pass that to AI to re-render it in the new style. This way you don't need to touch the code. AI could also translate mouse clicks/coordinates accordingly if it moves stuff around. You could even have "UI themes", tell the AI to re-render in Windows 2000/XP/11 style. EDIT: the downvotes I'm getting with no comments are funn…

Sometimes in my career I wonder: Is this finally it? Have we finally hit the point where software will stop getting slower and chonkier every year? I can’t think of sensible sounding ways to justify making software run orders of magnitude slower than it does now. And yet, I don’t know how but every time … it happens. Java came out when I was young, with a huge JRE installation, slow startup times, GC pauses and Java…

I would "happily" use Windows again if every menu bar item was a very low-res AI-generated meme
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