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Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

#21

Post by pjmlp »

tdicola wrote: post #7
wahsd wrote: post #5

I'm going to lose it if Win10 does not integrate automatic time zone adjustment like OSX. What, does no one at MS mind having to manually change the time zone with 7 clicks every time they travel? Why is it not just two clicks to change the time zone at least? Maybe something like right-click time, select from list of preset "favorite" time zones. That doesn't even requite a time network, let alone being able to read…

> Can you think of anything else basic that is annoying as heck about Windows? That it took 10 versions to finally get a resizeable command line terminal that you can copy and paste text within.

Control Menu => Properties => Options => Quick Edit Mode

I can no longer remember, but I think it was already there back in the 16 bit days, or at very least Windows 95.

Re: Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

#22

Post by robotresearcher »

pjmlp wrote: post #21
tdicola wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you think of anything else basic that is annoying as heck about Windows? That it took 10 versions to finally get a resizeable command line terminal that you can copy and paste text within.

Control Menu => Properties => Options => Quick Edit Mode I can no longer remember, but I think it was already there back in the 16 bit days, or at very least Windows 95.

A UI triumph.

Re: Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

#23

Post by sp332 »

AdeptusAquinas wrote: post #14
sp332 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't understand why the built-in email client is so bad. Every other mail client Microsoft makes is at least usable. Outlook, Windows Live Mail, even outlook.com webmail has message threads enabled by default.

I was actually a fan, and to this day use it at work. Mainly because it was a much lighter version of my bloated outlook client, just giving me emails and allowing me to respond to them. That said, I don't receive more than thirty or so emails a day so perhaps that's the effective audience for the app.

When it launched, it didn't even support POP or IMAP, only Exchange. We had to put up instructions for all of our customers to install a third-party email client just to check their email. And there was a constant stream of phone calls to our support center for months until the update came out that added IMAP.

And if you have one email selected, and right-click on a different email, it selects both emails. That just seems broken.

Re: Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

#24

Post by pjmlp »

cturner wrote: post #19
wahsd wrote: post #5

I'm going to lose it if Win10 does not integrate automatic time zone adjustment like OSX. What, does no one at MS mind having to manually change the time zone with 7 clicks every time they travel? Why is it not just two clicks to change the time zone at least? Maybe something like right-click time, select from list of preset "favorite" time zones. That doesn't even requite a time network, let alone being able to read…

PDF viewer. Chrome is the only non-awful PDF viewer I've found for Windows. Requires third-party install. Copying and pasting text causes weird characters to be carried around (e.g. emdash), and I haven't found a reliable way to sanitise it. Does notepad handle \n separated lines correctly yet? Something about excel breaks the behaviour of the alt+tab stack. (if you have multiple documents open) Also, it's annoying t…

UNIX file locking is broken. Requiring all processes to play along. It suffices one process to ignore fcntl calls to corrupt files.

All non-POSIX OSes with proper file locking use the same approach as Windows does.

You can install telnet via the add features option from the control panel. Who wants to have such insecure program available anyway?

Commercial UNIX systems were know to charge at least $2000 for their SDKs, something that made many join the effort to improve GCC back in the day.

Windows NT family has had multi-threading since the day one, even at the kernel level. Which took ages for UNIX systems to catch up.

The only UNIX that matches Windows IO completion ports is Solaris.

The init is so bad that part of its design has been copied by UNIX systems, instead of using spaghetti init scripts.

Re: Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

#25

Post by joshuapants »

coldtea wrote: post #10

> We started by exploring concepts to push the boundaries of our design system, going from mild to wild variation, trying out new patterns and controls, new type treatment and using color in bold fresh ways. ...and we ended in the smallest possible variation from an unimaginative merging of the classic start menu and the Metro style blocks...

That doesn't necessarily mean they made a wrong or otherwise bad decision, though. In a way, being too imaginative was what made Windows 8 perform poorly.

Re: Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

#26

Post by joshuapants »

fl0wenol wrote: post #20
tdicola wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you think of anything else basic that is annoying as heck about Windows? That it took 10 versions to finally get a resizeable command line terminal that you can copy and paste text within.

The console was broken for a long time primarily to make it possible to do full-screen VGA text modes for NTVDM-requiring apps. Enabling either or both required elevated hardware privileges so they shoved the whole rendering thing into CSRSS and it gave us the shatter attack and (later) no cut/paste as thanks. I think we're paying for a mistake made upon the alter of backwards compatibility back when asking someone t…

> I think we're paying for a mistake made upon the alter of backwards compatibility

There's a book called The Old New Thing (I think I heard about it here on HN, haven't had a chance to get it yet) that discusses a lot of quirks that Windows has and how they came about. Usually there was a purposeful decision behind it, like you suggest with backwards compatibility. It'd be interesting to see if this particular case is addressed in the book.

Re: Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

#27

Post by joshuapants »

cturner wrote: post #19
wahsd wrote: post #5

I'm going to lose it if Win10 does not integrate automatic time zone adjustment like OSX. What, does no one at MS mind having to manually change the time zone with 7 clicks every time they travel? Why is it not just two clicks to change the time zone at least? Maybe something like right-click time, select from list of preset "favorite" time zones. That doesn't even requite a time network, let alone being able to read…

PDF viewer. Chrome is the only non-awful PDF viewer I've found for Windows. Requires third-party install. Copying and pasting text causes weird characters to be carried around (e.g. emdash), and I haven't found a reliable way to sanitise it. Does notepad handle \n separated lines correctly yet? Something about excel breaks the behaviour of the alt+tab stack. (if you have multiple documents open) Also, it's annoying t…

> Chrome is the only non-awful PDF viewer I've found for Windows.

I'm definitely guilty of using my web browser for PDFs most of the time, but when I use a standalone application I like Sumatra PDF. It's speedy, lightweight, and gets the job done. It is still pretty annoying that I have to install something else in the first place, however.

Re: Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

#28

Post by freehunter »

mhomde wrote: post #16

I'm a bit skeptic about the direction of Windows (Phone) 10. It's not that its bad, it's just that it isn't great and they've missed the opportunity to but in substantial UX improvements. Also having the same interface for Phone/tablet/desktop is a dangerous idea if pushed to far, jack of all trades, master of none. Of course they should share some common ground but they risk sacrificing an tailored experience for ea…

I hate gestures, especially on larger screens. It 100% ensures I will need to be using two hands, at which point I might as well just have a button. Occasionally I'll try to swipe and find there is a smudge on the screen or maybe the humidity has gone up and my hands are a bit more grippy and whoops, there goes the entire phone out of my hand. On something the size of an iPhone 5, it's fine. On an iPhone 6+ (where you have less of a hold on the phone one-handed anyway), that's a big deal.

Re: Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

#29

Post by Encosia »

wahsd wrote: post #5

I'm going to lose it if Win10 does not integrate automatic time zone adjustment like OSX. What, does no one at MS mind having to manually change the time zone with 7 clicks every time they travel? Why is it not just two clicks to change the time zone at least? Maybe something like right-click time, select from list of preset "favorite" time zones. That doesn't even requite a time network, let alone being able to read…

Outlook got conversation grouping and good search (long as you let Windows Search index your mail) a couple versions back, IIRC.

Re: Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right

#30

Post by Encosia »

cturner wrote: post #19
wahsd wrote: post #5

I'm going to lose it if Win10 does not integrate automatic time zone adjustment like OSX. What, does no one at MS mind having to manually change the time zone with 7 clicks every time they travel? Why is it not just two clicks to change the time zone at least? Maybe something like right-click time, select from list of preset "favorite" time zones. That doesn't even requite a time network, let alone being able to read…

PDF viewer. Chrome is the only non-awful PDF viewer I've found for Windows. Requires third-party install. Copying and pasting text causes weird characters to be carried around (e.g. emdash), and I haven't found a reliable way to sanitise it. Does notepad handle \n separated lines correctly yet? Something about excel breaks the behaviour of the alt+tab stack. (if you have multiple documents open) Also, it's annoying t…

> PDF viewer. Chrome is the only non-awful PDF viewer I've found for Windows. Requires third-party install.

The built-in viewer that shipped with 8 is no-frills (like Chrome's), but works well enough. If you have touch/pointer input, you can annotate and sign PDFs in that viewer too, which is great on a Surface.

> It'd be useful to be able to mute an application from the OS interface, and to see an indicator for audio activity ion something like the task manager.

This has been possible since 7, I think? Maybe 8.

> Would be good if you could choose a filesystem that had strong performance with git. Either make git+NTFS fast, or else offer a well-support FS that git does want to work on.

Not sure I understand this one. I've been using git on both OS X and Windows for years and haven't noticed any perf issue on my Windows machines (coming from SVN, granted). Is there something I'm missing, maybe with particular git features I don't use?

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