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

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

creolened.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 203 posts

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

#81

Post by bigstrat2003 »

ANNOFlo wrote: post #17

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.

I didn't grow up with Vista and I loved the look too. IMO it was by far the best looking version of Windows they ever produced. Win7 was pretty good too, though I preferred the look of Vista. The transparency on stuff looked (and still looks) really awesome.

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

#82

Post by Tanoc »

vrighter wrote: post #54
cubefox wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This begs the general question: why were PCs (and monitors, keyboards, mice etc) always sold in ugly grey, for decades? Before they finally relented and switched to black?

Bring back the 2000s transparency in the hardware. Transparent phone (nokia 3310, of course), transparent PC, transparent everything!

I would do unsavory things to get a matching keyboard, mouse, and monitor in translucent plastic akin to an Atomic Purple Gameboy Color. I've tried retrofitting an iMac G3 multiple times, but they're so old now that taking them apart literally breaks them because the plastic's too brittle.

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

#83

Post by sunaookami »

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!

It's not made in React, only the "recommended" section is made with React Native which compiles to native XAML. No web technologies involved. And yes I will debunk this every time I see it :) .

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

#84

Post by Kerrick »

steve1977 wrote: post #56

They say "I am skipping over all versions of Windows NT" and then proceed to rate XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and 11. * Also 2000, but at least they seemed to be aware that this too was Windows NT.

"Windows NT" the brand, not "Windows" with NT the kernel.

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

#85

Post by dangus »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #80
dangus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the end user care that the system is made with React? What is the tangible negative impact? My start menu doesn’t have ads, it really isn’t hard to manage that sort of thing. OneDrive is fully uninstalled, Copilot is fully uninstalled, I find my system to be quite clean. And if you don’t like the start menu, there are ways to replace the start menu entirely with something else. Good luck replacing entire major e…

> My start menu doesn’t have ads, it really isn’t hard to manage that sort of thing. I don't care. It is completely unacceptable to have ads in a product I paid them for . It doesn't matter how easy it is to remove, that doesn't fly. You act like people are hating on Win11 for no reason, but truthfully you're just ignoring the reasons to hate it.

I haven’t given Microsoft a dime since Windows 7. Users who buy a computer have the OS preinstalled. Millions of people never activate it. The product is effectively free.

It’s a commercial OS but people can’t get over it. There isn’t a single commercial OS out there that doesn’t try to sell you something at some point.

Maybe that is unacceptable to you and I respect you for that. But it’s a commercial OS and always has been.

What gets annoying is when these aspects conflate it to being a bad OS or some monstrously unethical system. Seeing some ads that are easily disabled is treated by a certain community like the Microsoft is selling blood diamonds. The ferver doesn’t match the magnitude of the crime.

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

#86

Post by stronglikedan »

kykat wrote: post #76

I'm pretty sure that Windows 8.1 didn't have a start menu at all, just a windows button that opened that full screen metro launcher

And yet somehow it was faster and more accurate than the Win 10/11 start menus, where you're lucky if it doesn't pop in something else right as you hit enter after typing an app name, opening the completely wrong app/webpage/etc. It's always one step forward and two steps back with MS.

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

#88

Post by dessimus »

vel0city wrote: post #77
isaacdl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad it's not just me struggling with the screenshot functionality. I've encountered the bugs you're describing, and recently, I've been encountering an incredibly frustrating one where hitting print screen just...doesn't do anything. The only way I've found to temporarily fix it is to manually open the Snipping Tool (via the Start menu) - then the print screen key starts working again for some indeterminate peri…

Win+Shift+S. It launches the snipping tool. Its been a feature for over a decade.

Especially since it can open with selecting the area to screenshot and not have to manually crop it in Paint or be sending a 4K image to someone.

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

#89

Post by stronglikedan »

moooo99 wrote: post #12

Windows 11 Just based on the start menu alone I can‘t think of any reason for 11 to lead the ranking

You also can no longer drag stuff onto the taskbar in Win 11, and they refuse to fix it or provide a viable alternative. It's a dealbreaker for me, and the single thing that has prevented me from updating.
Post reply on HN