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!
IMHO the right-click menu these days seems to get better, at least I can find "Open with Code" or "Open in Terminal", etc. Except that I need the old menu to create a desktop shortcut occasionally.
Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)
91–100 of 203 posts
Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)
#92One underappreciated thing about Windows 8 is that even if the start menu was ugly and blocked the entire screen, you could press the windows key, immediately start typing, and then press enter to somewhat deterministically pick the top app. This made it feel quite fast. Now on more recent windows editions, I find that I often need to wait for the menu to visually appear before it will accept any keyboard input, and…
Decent operating systems support this, and have for decades. macOS has the spotlight search (cmd-space), and most Linux DEs have some form of it too (eg XFCE's appfinder).
Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)
#938 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while you type more letters or stuff keeps moving on screen, and then eventually rewinds time by overlaying the now outdated screenshot for you to select a target area Pressing escape can sometimes cancel out of this overlay (in case you bumped print screen by accident).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 overl…
New Notepad had a broken typematic that took them 2 years to fix, but they added Copilot at the same patch. Resizing its window still rapidly still flickers and can max the CPU.
If you're using labels in the taskbar the buttons aren't fixed width, they resize to fit the window title - except that until recently they didnt, so if you cd from C:\ to a longer path you got the label "C...". That one is fixed, but not the one where I switch desktops with Ctrl+Alt+arrows and the entries have no icons.
If you have a folder with lots of audio files, sometimes explorer.exe will hang for 30 seconds while it dutifully extracts artist metadata (no way to disable). Possibly an old issue, but I've never hit it before.
Search is even worse than before, I have "alacrity.exe" both in PATH and as a shortcut on desktop, but when I type "alacr" I get a web suggestion until I fully type it out. "Visual..." toggles between VSCode and fat visual studio on every keypress.
I can't express my opinion on the Task Manager changes without using language inapropriate for this forum.
Those are my issues off the top of my head, if I record every single broken thing I see for a week this list would be way longer.
That's just the stuff that doesn't work, there's a similarly long list of things that work but are evil.
Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)
#94Earlier 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…
Windows 11 is much slower for me than Windows 7 or 10. A noticeable sub-second delay to bring up the start menu and respond to typing, about 3 seconds for file explorer to load, 5-20 seconds to start a screenshot. I wouldn't be surprised if antivirus is to partially to blame (only use Windows at work where it is required), but it is the same antivirus we used on Windows 10 and it wasn't this bad.
Settings > Accessibility > Animation Effects > Off
5-10 seconds to start a screenshot, yeah man now you’re just lying. You sure you didn’t leave the delay timer on?
Are we going to gloss over the fact that the screenshot interface in old windows versions basically didn’t exist? There was no keyboard shortcut to open snipping tool by default in Windows 7. You had to know to use your print screen key correctly and to paste the image into Paint, and there was no visual feedback. Of course that performed fast because there was no UI!
Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)
#95XP really looked like a Fisher Price toy... I liked the Media Center theme (as well as derivatives) so much more as part of that release.
Windows 7 was probably the best start menu of Windows' history, and Win10/11's taskbar enhancements (not the centering default) are pretty great as well. I'm hoping this gets better/similar in COSMIC.
Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)
#96Giving Windows 11 the highest rating and XP one of the worst ratings clearly demonstrates that this author is not a serious person.
Especially because you’ve provided no rebuttal of substance, and resorted to name calling.
Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)
#97One underappreciated thing about Windows 8 is that even if the start menu was ugly and blocked the entire screen, you could press the windows key, immediately start typing, and then press enter to somewhat deterministically pick the top app. This made it feel quite fast. Now on more recent windows editions, I find that I often need to wait for the menu to visually appear before it will accept any keyboard input, and…
> One underappreciated thing about Windows 8 is that even if the start menu was ugly and blocked the entire screen, you could press the windows key, immediately start typing, and then press enter to somewhat deterministically pick the top app. This made it feel quite fast. Decent operating systems support this, and have for decades. macOS has the spotlight search (cmd-space), and most Linux DEs have some form of it t…
Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)
#98I assume there is a reason for leaving out Windows Me.
Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)
#99Re: Windows GUI – Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (2023)
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
The upside was that it was 100% customizable, there were tons of themes that redesigned the entire look of the desktop, and lots of resources for it. Naturally, all mine looked like hot garbage, but it taught me about texture and image editing, and how transparencies worked in rendering (though xp themes were a special hell of using neon pink because transparent pixels werent usable yet)