It was just so refreshing when I switched from Windows to MacOS. A system that's actually well designed it's a must.
How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?
381–390 of 421 posts
Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?
#382Earlier 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.
The one improvement modern Windows has over Windows from the 90s is the lack of those godawful cascading menus that would disappear off the screen the second you even slightly missed a hover target. I do not miss those at all.
Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?
#383Earlier 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…
It never stops, and it's because new guys can't understand (or are too lazy to try to understand) old code. So instead of changing it, they wrap it in new code and change the old code as little as possible.
Several generations of new guys later, we arrive at present day. And that ChatGPT future you described will come to pass, unless we stop using computers first.
Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?
#384I find the phrase "outdated spinning dots" design weirdly hilarious.
Why is it outdated?
It can't be because it doesn't convey the concept properly anymore, since it still does just fine in this regard...
I don't think I'll ever understand the minds of UI designers...
Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?
#385Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Considering these to be separate disciplines is just more of the same madness. They're inextricable. Not if you've actually done both. ;-) Here's an example: UX would be: on beginning a customer purchase, do we use a funnel pattern (isolating the purchase experience from the layout template), or is there backout that allows the user back to the store instead of back through the path. UI would be: how do we design t…
No, it doesn't make any sense. You cannot decide whether a small piece of what you call "UI" is good without considering its place within the larger context that you call "UX". A dialog box that is very pretty, fits well with the overall aesthetics of the application and the platform/OS, and properly does what it says it does—would still be an example of bad UI if it's one of those dialog boxes that shouldn't exist i…
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Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Considering these to be separate disciplines is just more of the same madness. They're inextricable. Not if you've actually done both. ;-) Here's an example: UX would be: on beginning a customer purchase, do we use a funnel pattern (isolating the purchase experience from the layout template), or is there backout that allows the user back to the store instead of back through the path. UI would be: how do we design t…
No, it doesn't make any sense. You cannot decide whether a small piece of what you call "UI" is good without considering its place within the larger context that you call "UX". A dialog box that is very pretty, fits well with the overall aesthetics of the application and the platform/OS, and properly does what it says it does—would still be an example of bad UI if it's one of those dialog boxes that shouldn't exist i…
There is an experience to using a UI (bad colors make for a bad experience), but it is not UX. Totally different. Here's how it Don Norman makes the distinction: there is no medium to UX. That's a fairly large conceptual difference.
Here's another example: user focus. When an important event occurs, should the user not be able to continue a task and be stopped until a decision is made, or should they continue to work and have the error as a notification? At what point in the experience is the user flow of execution halted for input? This is UX because it doesn't care about the UI. UI is after the UX decision and whether you implement it with a popup, or an alternate screen that overlays, or even a CLI prompt in the case when it is not a graphical UI. Maybe a good way for you to conceptually separate them is to think about the behavior and forget whether you are using a GUI or a CLI to implement it.
I can see this is pointless because clearly you have no experience with either in a professional context. I feel like you're just trying to "win" here and not really listening.
Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That money would mainly be going to the kernel, not the desktop applications.
Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going forward, when I hear the critique that Linux "has too many things to customize," I am going to point people at these comments. I am so glad that I got off this rollercoaster.
Completely agree with you and Linux is great for my home computer, but for some of us Windows at work is an unwavering reality.
I had it worse, Mac at work was an unwavering reality (Intune has since come to Ubuntu LTS which, while utter shite, is still better than MacOS). Apart from taking all direction from the marketing department, at least Windows is functionally competent. It could be worse - trust me.
Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Honorable mention for docker convincing windows and macos developers to write software inside slow virtual machines for no reason. There's plenty of reasons; it's a compromise like everything else. You trade away some performance for portability; the ability to run the same code and know your environment is identical each run is a significant pro. Docker wouldn't have gotten to where it is for no reason .
I don’t buy the portability argument. If you want to write native io_uring code from windows, sure. But as far as I can tell, most people using docker are using it to deploy cloud services. And guess what? Nodejs, Python, Java, golang, Ruby - they all work fine natively on every platform. I suspect the popularity of docker as a local developer tool comes from convenience. It feels easier to install docker than fix yo…
> But as far as I can tell, most people using docker are using it to deploy cloud services
People use docker and containers for multiple reasons. Reproducible dev environments, Unix development on Windows, etc. The biggest benefit is that your image is fully reproducible; you won't have random issues pop up because of edge cases being hit on dependency updates, you don't have to make sure your new devs install version X of tool Y for development, and you know your code will work identically each time you run `docker start`.
Like all other things, it has pros and cons. You may not value reproducibility, but your assessment is just that: yours. It's ok to have, but you need to realize others value things differently.
As a reminder, your argument is:
> Honorable mention for docker convincing windows and macos developers to write software inside slow virtual machines for no reason.
To say there's no benefit to Docker whatsoever is blatantly false.
> Everyone else is using it. We can’t all be wrong, can we?
If one person around you is wrong, then they might just be wrong. If everyone around you is wrong, then maybe it's you that's wrong.