How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11? • Hacker News Board

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#191

Post by johnwalkr » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

teekert wrote: post #163

Though I indeed experience this in Windows, in macOS I feel the same about buttons, especially when you mix in an external keyboard (I have a Logitech MX keys). It's always a mistery when and how home/end work (does nothing in terminal, it's page down/up in some apps, in Word it's like Windows), when cmd-arrows do home/end (not in terminal [annoying that ctrl-a/e are the only ways!], does work in FireFox), what butto…

MS office is the only time I’m frustrated by keys being different. Otherwise control/alt/fn + arrows is a pleasure to use for text navigation.

For terminal its pretty easy to remap keys, in iterm at least as far as I remember.[1] I stopped doing this because it was annoying when switching between MacOS and Linux.

[1]https://emilyemorehouse.com/blog/001-iterm-keybindings/

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#192

Post by Karunamon » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #170

hajile wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall, the UI designers didn't even ask for feedback. It was a case of "we know what you want better than you do". That design approach is basically always a mistake.

Well, yes, but if most people who is going to give feedback are tech-inclined Linux people and your aim is to build something which can be used by anyone at the end? Your initial design might land somewhere very wrong, but starting to ask for feedback from that point on will lead you better since it's wrong for everyone , no?

The word for the audience that GNOME developers are targeting is "lowest common denominator".

It's the same problem with all excessively friendly interfaces, great if you are a day one user (pretty rare on Linux), obstructive and shitty if you know what you're doing.

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#193

Post by lithos » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:47 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #66

Dalewyn wrote: post #35

>The ability to choose icons that are more than 30 years old is still here, with the inclusion of the very important and absolutely critical to the good function of the OS moricons.dll I will happily bet there are programs out there that would crash and burn horrifically without moricons.dll.

Also, it doesn’t hurt anyone to keep it around.

Sounds like a bigger attack surface for malicious actors.

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#194

Post by layer8 » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:50 PM UTC

lithos wrote: post #193

layer8 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it doesn’t hurt anyone to keep it around.

Sounds like a bigger attack surface for malicious actors.

Processes with write access to moricons.dll are able to do much worse things.

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#195

Post by flohofwoe » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

323 wrote: post #154

alentred wrote: post #30

To be fair, I think some examples, and specifically those from 95/NT and then 3.1 times, are too far-fetched. I agree that consistency is important, but it doesn't mean that every screen needs to be redesigned altogether. For instance, I don't think that examples of Screen Saver Settings or File Properties are relevant, as long as their styling is in line with the rest of the OS. One thing that surprises me a lot, th…

One universal solution that works for all apps - you render the app in an off-screen buffer and pass that to AI to re-render it in the new style. This way you don't need to touch the code. AI could also translate mouse clicks/coordinates accordingly if it moves stuff around. You could even have "UI themes", tell the AI to re-render in Windows 2000/XP/11 style. EDIT: the downvotes I'm getting with no comments are funn…

Since you're asking for 'downvote comments': UI themeing had already been solved decades ago, there's absolutely no need to bring AI into play for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist in the first place - on the other hand I get the impression that this is the one thing that AI is really good at ;)

But back to the topic: The reason why UIs are no longer themeable has zero technical reason, instead it's a cultural problem (the introduction of artificial 'fashion cycles' into UI design for no other reason than justifying the existence of a 'UI designer' job role.

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#196

Post by numpad0 » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:57 PM UTC

phpisthebest wrote: post #96

jeroenhd wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft seemed intent on removing settings and features that only a small segment of their telemetry showed enabled, probably because of some code cleanup efforts. This is despite their earlier attempt to convince everyone to use the weird 3D image editor instead of MS Paint. A real shame, because they showed with Windows 7 that they can redesign the OS UI without giving up features from earlier versions if they wa…

I dont like either, both take their lead from mac os, which I also do not like I am a gnome2 person, KDE, win7, etc type UI, if I wanted a mac I would buy a mac. There was a post on here a few months ago from a former MS engineer talking about how a large part of MS design team were all MAC users.

A lot of junior webdevs, iOS app devs and designers were buying Macs to run testing/staging envs, and they have a lot of leverages, so MS had to do what they did.

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#197

Post by johnwalkr » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:59 PM UTC

NGRhodes wrote: post #50

Windows file version history is an interesting example of UI inconsistent AND being broken as a result. It has been removed from settings (was in Win 10), but still exists in the control panel (where you can't configure folders to be included in file version history).

I had no idea it even had that feature. File revision ought to a basic OS function and basic computer skill. One drive and Dropbox kind of give it to you. MacOS does it (you can save named revisions in addition to Time Machine working pretty well) but it’s not become a well-known feature for some reason. On the other hand these features may cause pain if they aren’t something that will survive copy operations, OS updates etc.

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#198

Post by wadd1e » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 3:02 PM UTC

adql wrote: post #108

wadd1e wrote: post #11

I have a bit of a perfectionistic tendency to 'start over' things over and over and do them again as perfectly as possible; the Windows side of MS feels like a corporate embodiment of this habit. They've done this sort of thing with app installers(setup.exe, click once, appv, msi, msix) and UI frameworks(win32, mfc, wpf, winui 2, winui 3). It's like the teams responsible for their respective product keep starting ove…

Well, if you're UI designer and designed the UIs launched it and all works... what else you're going to do ? Same disease that plagues GNOME, change shit for sake of changing shit, fuck users that got used to the old way, they don't matter, is new way faster ? Who knows, we don't.

I'm not complaining about the visual appeal of the UIs, I think they look great. I think MacOS is a good example of iterating on your UI experience and improving it, but not changing it to the point where half your OS ends up looking out of place due to tiny inconsistencies like the colour of titlebars or because the entire style of your OS keeps changing upon every new version.

Imagine if the next version of MacOS had square icons for close/minimise/maximise and to update your app to use that new style, you had to switch UI frameworks. Then you'd end up with 2 different styles of apps on your system because not every app out there made the switch, and one would now look very out of place. That's the sort of thing Windows seems to do every major release.

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#199

Post by _y5hn » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 3:04 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #152

n1vz3r wrote: post #93

As a long-time Linux user with habit of throwing everything into the mix, I got quite used to number of inconsistencies that I have, so I don't think that MS deserves criticism for having them too (although article is not very critical, it just counts the inconsisitencies). I have GTK2/3/4 apps, KDE apps, Qt apps, Electron apps, AND Windows apps running under wine. So the only consistency on my desktop is an inconsis…

Linux distros are a mix of mostly independent projects, there is no central authority telling them how it should be done and therefore inconsistency is inevitable. It applies to the command line too (looking at you "ps"). And yet, the parts that the distro vendor controls, usually the default desktop environment and settings screens are usually rather consistent. For Windows, I don't think anyone complains about the…

Many distros adds their own layers of complexity, which inevitably breaks during upgrades or adding packages from third-party repos.

Arch packages do very little extra usually, and often works more like if you install from source. So it's not always the fault of devs, and is why installing from source was/is a thing.

Bonus with Arch is Aur, one big repo with most open source software available from git.

Re: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?

#200

Post by rhdunn » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 3:04 PM UTC

hajile wrote: post #178

noisy_boy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think with Linux, the amount of OS-level GUI screens is much more smaller compared to Windows. The main OS level GUI screen I interact with is the Settings screen and that basically has been a left-side tree showing the content on the right side or a grid that points to the individual sections. That is comparatively a much easier change in terms of UI level changes. Other OS-level screens are usually separate appli…

This MS inconsistency is entirely the fault of MS. You could build thousands of KDE environments with the amount of money MS spends on Windows, yet KDE has managed to update everything across 5 versions of their desktop environment. In fact, EVERY common operating system GUI with the exception of Windows manages to update all the things. If MS had spent some of those billions on updating those legacy apps each genera…

Part of the complexity is that there are Win32 APIs that allow applications to add UI to the Windows 95/2000-style control panels. In order to keep compatibility with those applications/code the control panels need to be kept around.

It may be possible to provide an updated UI while still allowing the existing APIs and applications to work and integrate with the control panel, but it is not straightforward.