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Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

seattletimes.nwsource.com

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Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#171

Post by Permit »

runn1ng wrote: post #153

I still don't get why Microsoft is pushing Metro SO HARD to bet everything on it when nobody really likes it that much. Zune (where I saw it for the first time) failed in the market. Windows Mobile (that has the Metro theme) failed in the market. Now I don't know XBox (at all) and its GUI, but its success happened long before Metro was created. People don't seem to like it in the new Windows preview all that much, ei…

>I still don't get why Microsoft is pushing Metro SO HARD to bet everything on it when nobody really likes it that much.

I personally love Metro, and I'm not the only one in my circle of friends. I accept that not everyone likes it, but I really prefer a text driven design like Metro.

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#172

Post by bjornsteffanson »

rahoulb wrote: post #156
noblethrasher wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM and Apple each have a more homogeneous audience. IBM is a consulting company and courts mid- to upper-level manager types with purchasing authority. After few seconds on the page you are invited to speak with a sales consultant via a popup. Apple is focused exclusively on the (premium) consumer space. Both companies represent top-down totalitarianism (I say this without value-connotation): IBM suggest corporate c…

I've said it before, but I feel Microsoft's problem is that they cannot say no to things. This serves them well in the Enterprise, where every installation requires customisations (and people can afford to pay for the maintenance of those customisations) but spills over into everything they do, meaning they cannot keep things simple.

Interesting idea. Do you have any examples at the individual consumer level?

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#173

Post by sequoia »

rhplus wrote: post #161
colanderman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the URL… http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx , really? Have they not heard of internal/external URL mapping and Accept-Language? Not to mention it won't even load for me; I guess they don't cache this stuff either.

LCIDs in the URI remove ambiguity about which language to serve (do you use Accept-Language? Or IP sniffing? Or user prefs in cookies?), they remove ambiguity about which storefront to show for a market and - most importantly - they make alternate language/markets indexable by search engines because each has a distinct URI. Why are Apple, IBM, Amazon, Google doing it if it's such a terrible design? http://www.ibm.com…

> do you use Accept-Language? Or IP sniffing? Or user prefs in cookies?

How do you think they picked which language to serve me in the first place? ;) What you're saying is true about eliminating ambiguity but parent commenter just linked to microsoft.com.

When I had to do this for a site, the waterfall I settled on was:

    1. Did they just manually pick a language/is it in the URL? (serve that language, set cookie)
    2. Do they have a cookie? (serve that language)
    3. Do we support any of their Accept-Language prefs? (serve that language, set cookie)
    4. Serve en-us (fallback)
My points being a) Microsoft.com is using langauge-accept (probably) and b) you can support URL picking & language-accept and not always have an ugly URL.

EDIT: oops, changing my language to ``es``, clearing cookies & revisiting microsoft.com didn't change the language. I guess they are just serving everyone at .com English :p

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#175

Post by colanderman »

rhplus wrote: post #161
colanderman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the URL… http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx , really? Have they not heard of internal/external URL mapping and Accept-Language? Not to mention it won't even load for me; I guess they don't cache this stuff either.

LCIDs in the URI remove ambiguity about which language to serve (do you use Accept-Language? Or IP sniffing? Or user prefs in cookies?), they remove ambiguity about which storefront to show for a market and - most importantly - they make alternate language/markets indexable by search engines because each has a distinct URI. Why are Apple, IBM, Amazon, Google doing it if it's such a terrible design? http://www.ibm.com…

Accept-Language is clearly the correct solution. It's easy to set in browsers (at least it is in Opera, if it's not in some other browser then I contend that's a UI bug), and OEMs should set it to a sane default for the region in which the browser is distributed.

The indexability is an interesting argument, but my response is that there should be a standard mechanism to query, via HTTP OPTIONS, in which languages a resource is available. By doing so, a user agent or search engine can easily index all versions of a resource.

Whether or not such a standard exists I do not know, but Google certainly has the clout to standardize such a mechanism (viz. sitemaps and #!).

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#176

Post by baq »

podperson wrote: post #155
runn1ng wrote: post #153

I still don't get why Microsoft is pushing Metro SO HARD to bet everything on it when nobody really likes it that much. Zune (where I saw it for the first time) failed in the market. Windows Mobile (that has the Metro theme) failed in the market. Now I don't know XBox (at all) and its GUI, but its success happened long before Metro was created. People don't seem to like it in the new Windows preview all that much, ei…

Similarly the Ribbon. The Ribbon was supposed to make Office easier to use. It was so incomprehensible (not to mention annoying and wasteful of screen real estate), Microsoft created a GAME to explain to users how to use the Ribbon. (How bad a UI fail is that?) Still no-one likes it, so they shoehorn it into more places. I think Microsoft gets that Apple doesn't allow itself to be driven by focus groups, but instead…

i like the ribbon. it doesn't make access to anything harder - i couldn't find whatever i was looking for in pre-2007 office and i can't find anything now, but at least the icons are prettier. that's a net win for me.

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#177

Post by drivebyacct2 »

dhughes wrote: post #41

I can see the anti-Apple mentality of this. Apple icons are glossy this is flat. The icons on an iPad/iPod are small glossy "chicklets" but on Win8 they are flat and large tiles; no black space. I like the look and the design it's a nice change, as for the inner workings of the OS I have no idea since I only used it briefly in a (non-touchscreen) VM.

Everyone is pretty different visually from apple. Apple is stuck in 2003 with skeuomorphism, glossy buttons, faux wood. They and KDE would get along together great.

Versus Holo in Android, the beauty of Metro or whatever it's called, even GNOME3 and Elementary OS are embracing a minimal, flat-ish design

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#178

Post by colanderman »

Argorak wrote: post #152
colanderman wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP-sniffing is evil; I'm not advocating that. Accept-Language is trivial to change; on Opera, it's one of the three things on the first tab of Preferences, and I can set it for all sites rather than on a per-site basis.

I wonder how you change it in the browser of another person that you sent this link to.

Why would you want to do that?

The content is (should be) identical, and the recipient of your link would most likely want to read the content in his/her preferred language.

If you really wanted to point out to them some discrepancy in the content of some particular language, then just tell them "switch your language to Chinese and look at xxx here".

On sites where linking to a particular language version of some resource makes sense (e.g. Wikipedia), by all means, accept a ?lang=de parameter… it's exactly as much mechanism as a directory component, but it doesn't imply any hierarchical structure, and can be dropped to obtain a "canonical" URL.

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#179

Post by simonbrown »

Argorak wrote: post #152
colanderman wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP-sniffing is evil; I'm not advocating that. Accept-Language is trivial to change; on Opera, it's one of the three things on the first tab of Preferences, and I can set it for all sites rather than on a per-site basis.

I wonder how you change it in the browser of another person that you sent this link to.

There is a positive side to this (as with mobile versions): If you give someone a link to part of a website, they'll get it in their language.

Microsoft isn't the only website that does this. It seems like most websites use the URL to specify this kind of thing.

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#180

Post by Karunamon »

astrodust wrote: post #9
quarterto wrote: post #2

I... don't hate it. What's wrong with me? It's bold, it's fresh, it does a pretty damn good job of shrugging off the Microsoft of the past 25 years.

You mean the one that utterly dominated the computer market and made money by the truckload when other companies could barely survive? Well, at least that's over now.

Somehow I doubt their logo had much to do with this.
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