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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)

#141

Post by c-hendricks »

hbn wrote: post #123
patapong wrote: post #69

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. 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…

I don't even bother using the start menu to sleep my PC anymore. I used to hit Win, then navigate with arrow keys to sleep, but at one point an update broke it so you couldn't navigate to the power menu with arrow keys. I don't know if it's fixed now, but regardless it's way faster to hit Win+x -> u -> s

Bonus is this goes back to like Windows 95 (albeit there was no Sleep option back then).

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

#142

Post by isaacdl »

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.

FWIW, my print screen button does exactly the same thing, literally; it's opening the snipping tool in "select a region to screenshot" mode.

This is a setting in Snipping Tool (called "Use the Print screen key to open Snipping Tool").

When I encounter this bug, Win-Shift-S behaves identically (i.e. doesn't work).

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

#143

Post by deltoidmaximus »

wink wrote: post #59
dag11 wrote: post #32

I'm surprised nobody caught this, but both the screenshot for Windows 8.1 is not Windows 8.1, it's Windows Threshold, the development phase of Windows 10. The specific screenshot they show is the very first start menu they cobbled together for Threshold, which would later be redesigned again before shipping as Windows 10. The screenshot is also showing off early adaptations of Windows 8 apps running in movable window…

I am not surprised, from memory I only know like 3 people who ever willingly used 8.x. The active user base must be tiny compared to Windows 7 and 10 users (if we just stick to that range). I have personally not used it for more than an hour total (on anyone's PC combined) and I have (co-)owned and used at least one Windows PC continuously since 1995.

In some ways 8.1 was better than 10. You could still control the updates and uninstall the or block telemetry updates. Unfortunately, a lot of hardware makers abandoned making driver updates for it before it even went out of support (unlike Windows 7 where they often kept making minor updates even after it was out of support)

I never used it really myself. The original UI wasn't what I'd ever want out of a PC but the impending stench of the Windows Store was what drove me off of Windows at that point.

I have an 8.1 VM in my unraid server that only exists to run an older radeon driver that allows the GPU to turn off to near 0 watts idle when the hardware isn't in use. Windows 10 broke the subsystem that these drivers used and AMD never got this feature working on 10.

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

#144

Post by deltoidmaximus »

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

Does it have any noteworthy features at all? The only one I can think of is the android emulation, which arrived late and then had support canceled. The reason its existence seems to be to kick any non-TPM supporting hardware out of the pool but they forgot even put any cheese on the rattrap.

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

#145

Post by Narishma »

sedatk wrote: post #28
karhuton wrote: post #21

Give the Windows 2 a second look and try to ignore the colorful GAME in the screenshot. It’s actually pretty ”elegant” design with white, black, grey with two shades of primary color: dark blue and light blue/cyan. Then complementary orange for active selection. The cyan is light enough for black text and blue is dark enough for white text. Really good palette choices. Remember this was only 16 CGA colors, of which o…

I agree. That was the only unfair assessment in the article, IMHO. Windows 2 was based on the Presentation Manager standard which was developed by IBM and Microsoft, and also used with OS/2, and more importantly, CDE + Motif. That's why many Unix desktops used to look like 3D Microsoft Windows desktops back then. Because they all were based on the same GUI standard.

You're talking about Windows 3. Windows 2 predates Presentation Manager.

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

#146

Post by deltoidmaximus »

cubefox wrote: post #44

I really hated the depressing grey GUI of Windows 95/98/NT/2000/Me. It looks like working in a dull grey concrete office with a grey PC and grey monitor while wearing a grey tie. I get that Windows XP and 8 look too colorful for many people (I like them), but Vista & Co, with their glass design, managed to avoid colors while still not making everything a drab grey.

All those versions had customizable color themes, which windows has gradually weakened to almost nothing. There was nothing stopping you from rocking hotdog stand back then except your own good taste and the bleeding from your eyes.

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

#147

Post by z500 »

hbn wrote: post #126
the_overseer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's slower. It's laggy. The taskbar and menus need to be native code of the highest optimization. Anything less than instantaneous means that PMs, managers, coders and everyone there should not have a job working on OSes if they can't get this simple idea through their thick skulls.

I've shared this on HN before, but starting with Windows 11, they seemingly started making the new UI essentially a separate process that runs on top of the existing Windows 10 UI and just modifies it. I learned this from a video where a guy was seeing how much of the Program Files folder you can delete before Windows breaks, and at some point it reverts to the Windows 10 UI. https://youtu.be/BVIN_PJu2rs?t=565

I got so frustrated with how slow the file explorer got after my work laptop updated. Turns out the new UI is just shell extensions, if you add registry keys to redirect them to non-existent paths you get the old file explorer back.

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

#148

Post by z500 »

cuber_messenger wrote: post #10
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!

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.

The new context menu is so awful. There is zero reason in this day and age for a context menu to take multiple seconds to pop up. They didn't even really improve on it in any meaningful way.

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

#149

Post by calmingsolitude »

sunaookami wrote: post #83
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 :) .

Here's the problem: your reply is factually correct, but it doesn't address the GP's overarching complaint - the start menu is simply not performant. And since the code powering the start menu is closed source, it is not possible to perform a benchmark to see if the react native portion of the start menu is to blame or if it is something else.

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

#150

Post by sedatk »

Narishma wrote: post #145
sedatk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. That was the only unfair assessment in the article, IMHO. Windows 2 was based on the Presentation Manager standard which was developed by IBM and Microsoft, and also used with OS/2, and more importantly, CDE + Motif. That's why many Unix desktops used to look like 3D Microsoft Windows desktops back then. Because they all were based on the same GUI standard.

You're talking about Windows 3. Windows 2 predates Presentation Manager.

It doesn't seem to be the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentation_Manager#History
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