How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11? • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by IAmGraydon » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:49 PM UTC

323 wrote: post #154

alentred wrote: post #30

To be fair, I think some examples, and specifically those from 95/NT and then 3.1 times, are too far-fetched. I agree that consistency is important, but it doesn't mean that every screen needs to be redesigned altogether. For instance, I don't think that examples of Screen Saver Settings or File Properties are relevant, as long as their styling is in line with the rest of the OS. One thing that surprises me a lot, th…

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…

Please tell me you aren’t a developer for any major software.

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

#322

Post by petepete » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:51 PM UTC

hulitu wrote: post #204

petepete wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how the huge silent majority get on just fine with GNOME but the vocal few act like the devs have poked them in the eye and called their mother fat.

the huge silent majority does not use Gnome.

It should be obvious that I'm referring to the huge silent majority of GNOME users.

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

#323

Post by wtallis » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

FatActor wrote: post #296

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

I don't know why it is so pervasive, but programmers think they are inherently good at UX/UI for some reason. And they are very possessive about it. I was until I married a designer, and they actually went to school to study visual composition, balance, color language, etc. I'm fond of saying UIs designed by engineers look exactly like UIs designed by engineers. I'm not saying that all designers are always better tha…

It sounds like you think the job of a UI designer it to make UIs look pretty. That's exactly the misconception that people are railing against, because it leads to disasters like Windows Vista, 8, and 11.

The job of a UI designer is to make the UI usable. Looking pretty in screenshots must always be a lower priority than being functional and accessible.

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

#324

Post by fest » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

herbst wrote: post #94

fest wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like Windows is heading towards Linux in this matter- having to know weird commands to get things done effectively. I only use Windows occasionally, but when I have to set up a printer (shared from another computer) or file sharing, I often have to resort to either creating obscure registry entries based on random internet tutorials or use command line to figure out what exactly the GUI wizard means by "the…

> It looks like Windows is heading towards Linux in this matter IMO Windows is just moving backwards. Back in the days for both os you needed to knew unobvious things. Registry and MMC being prime examples for windows. Some of todays Linux flavours come with consistent control panels that solve 99% of all common problems in the same UI wrapping cli tools you could also use if you want. Something Windows is far away f…

Backwards or forwards depends only on the perspective of the observer :)

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

#325

Post by Beltalowda » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:54 PM UTC

CoastalCoder wrote: post #150

Beltalowda wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How dare people charge money as compensation for their time! Can't they just live off sunlight like everyone else?!?!

FWIW, @vasqc clarified in a sibling comment that his use case is legal in his country. I think his use of the term "pirate" was confusing.

I don't care what the law says; the law says nothing about morality. If someone puts a piece of software on the internet and asks a reasonable price in return then you should just pay, and bypassing that is "piracy" and immoral. This isn't Microsoft Windows that you're forced to use due to their predatory (and illegal) business practices – which are mostly a thing of the past, but still has large effects today – by which Microsoft "earned" an ungodly sum of money.

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

#326

Post by procarch2019 » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:54 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #288

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been doing this my entire career. IMO its always been much easier to tell someone to hold the Win key and press R and enter a short command than it is to guide them through the UI to whatever setting needs interacting with, especially over the phone.

All Linux users have known that forever... Also you can email a command to copy and paste into a terminal, try emailing a procedure like "open app X, click button Y, type Z in field W..."

Some of the people I work with don’t understand cmd/posh syntax. Additionally they are often working with air gapped systems, so copy paste is not really an option. Those 2 things make it really difficult to have someone do something by cli only, especially if it’s relatively complex command (pipes, regex, vars)

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

#327

Post by neilalexander » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

magic123_ wrote: post #304

mdmglr wrote: post #301

It seems like every few weeks I see posts on HN criticizing Windows about privacy and it’s inconsistent UI. It’s getting a little old. It’s trivial to use Group Policy Editor to disable windows “spyware” as HNers like to call it. As far as the “inconsistent” UI goes, it’s funny to me how no one talks about Linux and it’s inconsistencies which are much more significant. Windows is an OS a tool to get things done. My c…

> no one talks about Linux and it’s inconsistencies which are much more significant. Except that with Linux you actually get to choose the desktop you want to use, and it's very possible to customize it yourself if you don't like the baked-in design.

This is an argument I hear a lot in places like HN by power users but almost never by anyone else anywhere else. Put technical people aside for one moment, how is a novice supposed to “choose the desktop” they use? How are they supposed to “customise the baked-in design”?

I believe that the average user at home or at work values consistency, intuitiveness and attractiveness far more than the potential for customisation. They need the user interface to be clear and explicit, they need patterns that are repeatable and easy to remember and they need to not hate looking at it. They need to feel confident enough that they can either guess how it works or to reuse some knowledge they already have learned from elsewhere on the system.

Customisation is so often touted as the be-all-and-end-all solution to outright deficiencies in design — if you don’t like it, just do this and this and this and this — but that totally misses the point because then the underlying problems never get solved. Just look at the significant behavioural differences between apps built in Qt, Gtk, Electron, wxWidgets, …

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

#328

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

INTPenis wrote: post #122

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…

You're such a nice person, but Windows is developed by one company while Linux is a mishmash of volunteer software. Additionally Windows is raking in MONEY for their OS. So from that perspective, Microsoft have no excuse for the shitty software they make people endure.

>Linux is a mishmash of volunteer software

Only if you intentionally ignore all the billions big-tech has poured into Linux over the years.

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

#329

Post by chazeon » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

I have really mixed feeling about these inconsistencies really.

On the one hand, I care deeply about the consistency and love the fresher look of the new Windows 11, a breath of fresh air from the ugly Windows 8–10 style.

On the other hand, I am really afraid if some of the settings / careful curated wizards are gone --

I recently has to reset network settings because I switch to a different router, and I have bridges from Hyper-V, the resetting wizard is buried in a Vista-era guide to diagnose internet. I am sure it will be gone if they refurbish that area of the control panel, the whole "experience" need years to refine which would not be allowed in the speed of corps today.

And there is also the performance issue.

Just look at the fresh macOS System Settings app, what a mess it is.

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

#330

Post by anonymousab » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #320

npteljes wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. Why do people even mention this? As you said, it has a toggle. How did it “kill your decade old reflex” when it literally takes 5 seconds to fix it?

Well, as the designers oft like to say: Defaults matter.