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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)

#151

Post by itsn0tm3 »

avn2109 wrote: post #120
coldpie wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

OSX's command-space spotlight search has been degrading functionally (at least on my machines) for literally years now. It peaked around ~2012, when it would reliably search the full text of all documents on my local hard drive quickly, and not do anything dumb like "search the internet by sending whatever I typed up into the search field to the cloud." Nowadays it fails to reliably search the full text of documents…

I truly hate it! Why not use Raycast or Alfred?

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

#152

Post by okanat »

Windows 7 and Vista unified almost all of the control panel. Windows had pretty good design language then and the other Microsoft software used native frameworks that shared it. Moreover neither Vista nor 7 removed features or dumbified the settings when the switch happened.

Compare that with the half-arsed switch that started from 8 and still continues today with 11. Windows 11 actively removes features and implements the system programs with multiple clunky UI frameworks. While chasing the whatever techbro trend, Microsoft jumped into multiple design trends. Win 11 Settings, Excel, OneNote, Teams, core utilities like Disk Cleanup each of these use a different UI language. I do understand slowly upgrading certain components but newer and actively maintained apps using different UX, come on.

Each of their UI frameworks are suffering from lack of maintenance. For example, WinUI 3 still draws white symbol on white background for window controls and the bug exist in many Microsoft apps including Powertoys and their showcase apps. 11 actively forces users to use Powershell to do almost any medium level customization where 7 had nice UIs for advanced network configuration, extra Bluetooth functions (you could proxy calls on Win 7 over BT, now you have to have a MS account).

Either the author lacks taste or just judges things very shallowly.

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

#153

Post by hiccuphippo »

nevada_scout wrote: post #47
galad87 wrote: post #14

I assume there is a reason for leaving out Windows Me.

From the article: > Note: I am skipping Windows Millennium Edition (Me) because while it had changes under the hood, visually it is pretty much Windows 98 Third Edition.

I remember it had a default black bar with a gradient and bold yellow text for the title.

Found a video of it: https://youtu.be/nVZW8i9-92U

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

#154

Post by dagmx »

chasing0entropy wrote: post #109
dagmx wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you disagree , doesn’t mean that your opinion holds any weight over theirs. Especially because you’ve provided no rebuttal of substance, and resorted to name calling.

Windows 11 usability is garbage compared to Windows 10. Windows 10 already had multiple desktops, docking(which does need app to augment), sandboxing, and the start menu worked. Further win 10 does not gimp the OS if not activated, doesn't require an online account, and has an identical update mechanism to win11. There is nothing superior or even functionally 'new' in Windows 11 besides compute burning eye candy and…

None of your points are relevant to the article at hand which is about the visual design of the OSs.

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

#155

Post by dagmx »

amarant wrote: post #113
dagmx wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you disagree , doesn’t mean that your opinion holds any weight over theirs. Especially because you’ve provided no rebuttal of substance, and resorted to name calling.

GP has a point tho. The article ranks vista over XP, and that's just ludicrous. Even Microsoft has admitted that vista was hot garbage. It's even become a slang expression: a app can have a "Vista moment", meaning they released a version that was completely unusable and a stark regression from previous versions. Meanwhile XP is widely regarded to have been the best windows version ever. The only version that even com…

What does anything you just said have to do with the article though, which specifically focuses on the UI?

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

#156

Post by dajtxx »

mghackerlady wrote: post #136
sunaookami wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :) .

[flagged]

Don't kwow why you're getting downvoted, seems like a reasonable comment to me.

I agree, JavaScript and all it has enabled is a curse.

If one wanted the good bits of JavaScript I'm sure there are languages they were copied from that could be used instead.

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

#157

Post by dajtxx »

tracker1 wrote: post #101
felixgallo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever product manager team decided to jump into React Native with both feet for the Windows experience needs to be ejected from the industry permanently. Think of how many thousands of human hours per day are now spent waiting on React Native jank, all in order to save the Windows developers from having to program in Windows using Microsoft products.

MS could/should have just made other XAML/MAUI options a better experience in general over the React Native thing... It might be different if they actually embrace web as a whole and at least gave a consistent UX, more like say WebOS or ChromeOS, but that's not what they're doing here. What MS really needs to do is create a really long checklist of all the UI defained configurations and options, along with a connecte…

It's a nice thought but think of the cost!

You do have to wonder what the hell the people in charge of the Windows UI are thinking. They seem to have got it so badly wrong. But so has Apple in macos.

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

#158

Post by SpecialistK »

reddalo wrote: post #39
xixixao wrote: post #29

I like the “did it improve or regress” angle. I hope it’s not controversial if I say that in the Apple world, Liquid Glass is, if not the first, certainly the worst regression. And I think this could have been predicted if you agreee with OP about Vista.

Liquid Glass is such a horrible regression. I'm holding onto my Sequoia for the time being (and maybe I'll then switch to Linux). I think the best version of macOS was High Sierra. After that, everything started becoming bloated and inconsistent.

In context, (Snow) Leopard was almost definitely the peak. Windows users were struggling with Vista (UAC, DWM, and Windows Update taking up an entire CPU core (of which most people had only 1) or the security issues of XP. Meanwhile Mac users had already been through the growing pains and now had a stable, pretty, powerful OS.

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

#160

Post by funnybeam »

okanat wrote: post #152

Windows 7 and Vista unified almost all of the control panel. Windows had pretty good design language then and the other Microsoft software used native frameworks that shared it. Moreover neither Vista nor 7 removed features or dumbified the settings when the switch happened. Compare that with the half-arsed switch that started from 8 and still continues today with 11. Windows 11 actively removes features and implemen…

From memory I believe it was windows 7 that broke the taskbar - before that you could put it on any side of the screen and also embed folders on it.

I used to have it on the left side of the screen with my actual documents folder (not “My Documents” which even then was full of other crap) embedded in it. Kind of like vertical tabs in the browser, but better

I was really annoyed when they took that functionality away for no apparent reason. Win 7 was the start of the slide for me, windows steadily got worse with them removing more and more functionality. Was it seven that removed all the customisation you used to be able to do as well and replaced it with much more limited themes?

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