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Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)

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Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)

#11

Post by bloppe »

nehalem wrote: post #7

To me personally, it feels like Windows 2000 was the last and maybe only consistent UI onto which all later versions bolted what they considered improvements without ever overhauling the UI in full.

Windows 8 was a pretty big overhaul. But I agree with the author it was a most unwelcome overhaul.

Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)

#15

Post by cocoa19 »

derleyici wrote: post #5

8 for Windows 11? An OS that includes ads in the Start menu, made with React. I'm not even mentioning right-click, which has basically two views: you open it and see some uselessly chosen tools, and you still need to open the old version (with the old design, breaking design consistency) to access actually useful things. Viva Windows XP!

With that move to React or whatever web based monstrosity it is, it lost a lot of the existing user experience crafted over the years.

Not only OS pre-installed apps are much slower, but it broke shortcuts and common sense behaviors.

Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)

#16

Post by wlesieutre »

derleyici wrote: post #5

8 for Windows 11? An OS that includes ads in the Start menu, made with React. I'm not even mentioning right-click, which has basically two views: you open it and see some uselessly chosen tools, and you still need to open the old version (with the old design, breaking design consistency) to access actually useful things. Viva Windows XP!

When you hit print screen, it takes a screenshot, waits a blatantly visible number of frames while you type more letters or stuff keeps moving on screen, and then eventually rewinds time by overlaying the now outdated screenshot for you to select a target area

Pressing escape can sometimes cancel out of this overlay (in case you bumped print screen by accident). But sometimes it doesn’t, because the full screen overlay in front of everything has managed to lose keyboard focus, and you need to click on it before it can respond to keyboard input.

Godawful trash OS and I hate that I’m stuck working on it.

Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)

#17

Post by ANNOFlo »

As someone who grew up with Vista (yeah, I'm young) I will always love that look. Probably a good bit of nostalgia, but as a kid who couldn't really even manage files well that always looked so fancy and fun!

Even still have the laptop I used back then, fully with the barely functioning charging port that makes booting it up an exercise in dexterity.

Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)

#18

Post by somat »

spankibalt wrote: post #8
adastra22 wrote: post #3

I cannot accept this slander of Windows XP.

It is, strictly going by looks, one of Microsoft's ugliest UIs. I will never understand how people tolerate it, let alone defend it publicly. Shameful, absolutely and thoroughly shameful!

It was the style at the time. There are a lot of programs from that era with stupid, oversized nothing standard ui's, windows xp was a study in restraint compared to many applications. I think computers had just gotten powerful enough to have large bitmaps in the ui and the designers got a little crazy with their newfound power, as they tend to do. Our "modern" superflat look is probably the remnants of a reflexive recoil at all that excess. I expect it will start rebounding the other way in a few years as up and coming designers get nostalgic for their windows xp youth.

Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)

#19

Post by sedatk »

> With Windows 95, Microsoft managed to produce a version of its OS that scared Apple so much they ended up bringing Steve Jobs back, along with his own operating system, NeXTSTEP

Funny because Windows 95 contains many ideas from the more ambitious project codenamed Windows Cairo that was intended to mimic NextSTEP. Cairo was never released, but the gray slab 3D look, the "X" button on the top-right corner on Windows 95 are the hallmarks of NextSTEP.

Windows 95's most original GUI idea was the Start menu.

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