Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

ntdotdev.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 421 posts

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

#401

Post by wtallis »

FatActor wrote: post #387
wtallis wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Don't be an ass.

You seem to have finally elucidated a meaningful, unambiguous distinction between UI and UX as you see it: UX is purely abstract, can be described with nothing more than flowcharts and probably is concerned with what kind of mental model the user forms for how the application works behind the scenes, while UI is any concrete realization of an interface; any discussion of a real on-screen layout of information and controls would fall under UI rather than UX.

I can see how that distinction could be useful in a more or less academic way. Unfortunately, even using your definitions there are a lot of usability concerns to UI, as I originally claimed but you took exception to. Bad UI layouts can lead to objectively, measurably worse usability (eg. number of clicks required, hard-to-hit targets, etc). Those problems are real: you cannot assess usability in your purely abstract "UX" context and then completely set aside usability concerns in favor of aesthetics when you start drawing a real UI. You have to constantly keep usability in mind throughout the entire design process, even when fine-tuning your final UI layout.

(Your definitions of UX vs UI would also seem to lead to "UX Designer" being a job title in the same vein as the kind of "software architects" who don't contribute at all to writing, reviewing or testing the actual code.)

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

#402

Post by mike_hearn »

mastax wrote: post #357
mike_hearn wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, MSIX is very different to MSI and ClickOnce was primarily a way to bootstrap MSIs from the web. MSI (long since deprecated) is essentially an ad-hoc relational database serialized to a file with embedded blobs that tells a generic engine how to install files and update the registry. It was written for Office in the 90s and was therefore dominated by the retail model of physically shipping CDs. MSIX is a…

In my experience MSIX is the typical MS Windows project where it sounds really cool and looks well documented and supported until you actually try to use it. If you're on the beaten path, like a mobile app port for the windows store, it's probably fine. But if you're trying to do anything out of the ordinary you have to start doing Microsoft archaeology to figure out why something doesn't work. For example certain bu…

Problems with CFI aren't related to the packaging mechanism though. Mismatches between DLLs have been an issue with Windows for a long time and the solution is usually to bundle the versions you need. Not sure about the background service thing, we haven't tried that.

I'd say that Windows in general is disappointingly buggy but it's been that way for a very long time, I remember having to work around bad Windows bugs in the 95 and XP days too. It just comes with the territory. We use MSIX as raw material and either work around bugs or reimplement features as necessary. The results seem to work fairly well. MSIX also has the advantage of being maintained and general purpose, which sounds basic, but a fair number of the competitors aren't.

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

#403

Post by wtallis »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #337
frosted-flakes wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Settings app. It's head-and-shoulders better than the Windows 10 version, or the mess that was Control Panel.

itd be a decent point if it wasnt still missing stuff that's existed as long as windows

Also, that new Settings app wasn't even in the original release of Windows 11. It was delivered after the fact through an update.

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

#404

Post by bundie »

rstat1 wrote: post #382
josephcsible wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 don't understand

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

#405

Post by numpad0 »

tehbeard wrote: post #292
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

Would you please care to point to something ACTUALLY useful to end users that came out of the W11 UI "redesign"? Because you cannot legitimately look at the W11 task manager and tell me it was designed with any sort of professional UI/UX in mind. It's busy work to keep a job. And if it is then there's something deeply wrong where no UX theory is being applied, or they're being overruled to make it "app-y".

Problem is fun busywork “creates value” and pays better than boring “actual work” in this absolute meme economy.

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

#406

Post by mike_hearn »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #214
AlexandrB wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like change for change's sake. XML is fine for stuff that's machine generated. I doubt anyone is hand-editing MSIX installers.

If it is not hand-edited, why isn't it binary?

Microsoft don't have any generically extensible binary format that they use consistently, like Google does with protobufs. Besides, XML isn't so bad.

Look at the alternative: Apple went with a generic binary config format for macOS (binary plists) but then introduced an XML version anyway. As an industry we've never got any good at managing the dichotomy between efficient-for-machines binary formats and efficient-for-humans text formats.

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

#407

Post by INTPenis »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #328
INTPenis wrote: post #122

Earlier 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.

Sure, but that doesn't improve microsofts case. The fact that hundreds of companies allow their employees to contribute to open source software, not just the kernel, also Gnome and surrounding software.

So dozens of huge companies, hundreds of smaller companies, they can all contribute code to an OS that is on-par with Windows, but missing things like patents and gaming hardware support that Microsoft pays for.

While Microsoft with all their advantages, all their insights and cooperations with hardware vendors still can't deliver.

It's really pathetic, and I put it down to their company culture not having any common goal.

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

#408

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

INTPenis wrote: post #407
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Linux is a mishmash of volunteer software Only if you intentionally ignore all the billions big-tech has poured into Linux over the years.

Sure, but that doesn't improve microsofts case. The fact that hundreds of companies allow their employees to contribute to open source software, not just the kernel, also Gnome and surrounding software. So dozens of huge companies, hundreds of smaller companies, they can all contribute code to an OS that is on-par with Windows, but missing things like patents and gaming hardware support that Microsoft pays for. While…

>While Microsoft with all their advantages, all their insights and cooperations with hardware vendors still can't deliver

What didn't they deliver? Last time I check Windoze desktop/laptop market share is still way higher than Linux despite Windoze costing $100 bucks and Linux being free.

And it's not difficult to see why. It's not even about the gaming anymore. The bugginess and jank of the modern Linux desktop can drive you up the walls.

For example, whenever I plug in my 4k monitor in my Ubuntu ThinkPad it rarely detects the 60Hz refresh rate, most of the time defaulting to 30Hz with no way of switching to 60Hz unless I go through a ritual of repeatedly unplugging and plugging the display-port cable again and again until the stars align and at the fifth or sixth time it finally detects the 60Hz option. Absolute madness that's a huge productivity killer. The Ubuntu 10.00 I used in university in 2010 - 2011 gave me less headaches than this. Yes, I tried different display-port cables. Meanwhile on Windows 10 and 11, both have always defaulted to 60Hz on this monitor and several laptops in the 3 years I had it, 100% of the time, every single time.

Now, since I need to get work/leisure done, and I don't have time to dig through Linux forums and tinker with the driver config files on Linux to find out why Ubuntu sucks so bad at detecting the right refresh rate, so windows has saved my sanity since the candy crush icon in the start menu is a lot quicker and easier to remove than having an OS that plays Russians roulette with your display refresh rate every time I start my day.

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

#409

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #388
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

And then why aren't big-tech also investing in the Linux desktop?

AFAIK IBM, SUSE, Red-HAt and Canonical are heavily investing in Gnome while other companies are investing in KDE.

KDE/Gnome aren't just some guys in a garage developing them in their spare time.

Post reply on HN