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State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

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Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#81

Post by ComputerGuru »

ksec wrote: post #79
neelc wrote: post #36

Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but not on Windows (and I deal with a SaaS at MSFT). I am a FreeBSD committer and help maintain FreeBSD's GNOME packages and (very recently) the graphics drivers. The reason why Windows is full of UI inconsistencies is (largely) because of one thing: backwards compatibility. While backwards compatibility has it's perks, it also means having lots of old code in Windows that can't be to…

Well I thought Windows on ARM or Windows 10X was the perfect moment to get rid of those backward compatibility problem. At least there are incentive / reasons to be doing so. And why can Microsoft goes the same route as Apple's Cocoa and Carbon?

Nope. Because the goal was to make it as seamless as possible to port software to those platforms, ideally by just recompiling with a different flag. The offerings would be DOA without dev buy-in which wouldn’t happen if there was too much friction in porting.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#82

Post by sandermvanvliet »

koyote wrote: post #49
overgard wrote: post #29

The only consistency issue that really has bothered me is the constant mauling of the control panel. Windows 95 basically got it right, and every major release they just hide things further and further. And now the competing "Settings" thing is just an embarrassment. So now we have two competing ways of configuring the system, except the new one sucks and is incomplete, and the old one is kinda unmaintained.

I agree and am actually surprised that several years in there is still a bunch of stuff that is not configurable in the new Settings screen. I am obviously speaking without extensive knowledge of the underlying internals but surely it can't be that difficult to wrap some settings in a new UI if you dedicate a team to it? I actually spent 15 minutes the other day trying to remove an additional keyboard layout that som…

It super frustrating to have to go on a treasure hunt just to find some options there.

To this day, every time I need to uninstall an application I still do: win+R -> control appwiz.cpl -> enter and it brings me to the place I want to be.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#83

Post by tomaszs »

Funnily as a design developer, i switch off all UI enhancements because they slow down the system. So my system looks almost like Windows 95 confusing people.

I think the inconsistency is the price of having a system with so many features. I rather have them than have consistent Windows. Moreover, sometimes updating UI does not go as planned.

A regular calculator started like a breeze. After redesigning it in Windows 10 it takes several seconds to load. It is not a time worth spending if you add 2 plus 2.

To sum it up, consistent UI is great. But if it comes to my OS i don't care about it too much. More about the speed.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#84

Post by aasasd »

Stratoscope wrote: post #58
aasasd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> retain the ability to run programs written a quarter of a decade ago I think I've seen computers with more uninterrupted uptime than that, even if servers. Or at least approaching this figure. Perhaps you meant ‘quarter of a millennium’ or something like that.

I know Enterprise customers require extreme backward compatibility, but it must be a fairly small number who are still running legacy code written in 1771.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/jacquard-loom-simulator/

https://github.com/jfinkels/analyticalengine

https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/emulator.html

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#85

Post by iudqnolq »

koyote wrote: post #49
overgard wrote: post #29

The only consistency issue that really has bothered me is the constant mauling of the control panel. Windows 95 basically got it right, and every major release they just hide things further and further. And now the competing "Settings" thing is just an embarrassment. So now we have two competing ways of configuring the system, except the new one sucks and is incomplete, and the old one is kinda unmaintained.

I agree and am actually surprised that several years in there is still a bunch of stuff that is not configurable in the new Settings screen. I am obviously speaking without extensive knowledge of the underlying internals but surely it can't be that difficult to wrap some settings in a new UI if you dedicate a team to it? I actually spent 15 minutes the other day trying to remove an additional keyboard layout that som…

The SaaS version of exchange has the same problem, and the support people start by having you switch to the old menu because they don't know where everything has been moved in the new one.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#86

Post by vladvasiliu »

cookiengineer wrote: post #30
causality0 wrote: post #17

I don't think Microsoft has been truly interested in improving the Windows experience in a long time. I mean, surely if they cared about us you'd be able to right-click on any Notification icon and hit "always show icon and notifications" without having to open two menus to get to that option. It's been a pain in my ass for twenty years.

Can we also talk about inconsistencies when it comes to notifications on Windows 10, too, please? I mean, every app does whatever it wants. An update popup here, a warning there. Some blocking window with full attention here, some imutable "you got a message" there. Anti-virus systray icons even render webpages as popups, that contain even more notifications inside them. Windows is the worst OS I've ever used in rega…

I completely share your sentiment that Windows' constant nagging and irritating behavior is terrible for productivity.

But I'm not sure that this is a Windows issue per se, in that apps can and sometimes do produce random, custom notifications even on Linux and macOS. I think it's a "cultural" thing: it happens more often on Windows because... it happens more often, so people aren't as surprised when some new app does it, they've been seeing those for years and years. It's kind of "expected", the same way that most Windows users will say "just reboot it" without batting an eye [0]. "It's just how things are".

However, what trips me, is that even Microsoft's own products do this crap. I'm thinking of Teams in particular. I understand they've only recently introduced the "feature" of sending alerts to the notification center, yet Teams is a brand-new product, that appeared in the Windows 10 era.

And they use those same custom notifications on macOS and Linux, too, where they happily ignore any system configuration. Of course, those are actually custom windows that they put up, they didn't even configure the windows properties to be considered a notification (on Linux/X11).

---

[0] I know Windows requires much fewer random reboots nowadays, but the people are still trained to reboot it whenever something "doesn't work". They won't even consider that there's something wrong that should be investigated.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#87

Post by vladvasiliu »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #64
cookiengineer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we also talk about inconsistencies when it comes to notifications on Windows 10, too, please? I mean, every app does whatever it wants. An update popup here, a warning there. Some blocking window with full attention here, some imutable "you got a message" there. Anti-virus systray icons even render webpages as popups, that contain even more notifications inside them. Windows is the worst OS I've ever used in rega…

Does it not help to turn the notifications off in the notifications settings?

No, because many of those apps don't actually use the notification center. They just put up random (skinned) windows.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#88

Post by stinos »

johnwalkr wrote: post #53
curiousmindz wrote: post #14

This issue is way overblown here on HN. In day-to-day usage, I have rarely been annoyed by these "inconsistencies". The best example to illustrate this article is: Installing a driver with the Windows XP layer. That's probably something that will only happen to people installing very old hardware with drivers from over 10 years ago. I consider that a backward compatibility win: It is great that it even works in Windo…

The worst offender is network settings. After years of at least weekly needing to change some setting for a virtual adapter, VPN etc, I find myself stumbling trying to get to the right screen.

You just have to know it is called 'network connections'. So like most other GUI things: hit Start button, start typing 'network connections'. For me it pops up after typing 'net' already. Which is actually easier and more consistent than in any other Windows version (IIRC), and super accessible, and faster than hunting for things with the mouse. Now if they'd add fuzzy matching this would be wild :)

Alternative would be knowing that a lot of 'old' control panel UIs are accessible through the new one, so: go into the new settings UI to network-related stuff (Win-x, w or Win-X, n and start typing 'network') and there will be 'change adapter settings' somewhere. Or possibly you can change the setting you want from the new UI.

Which indeed shows this particular par was turned into a mess. But as the OP says: I haven't actually been bothered by it a lot myself. Likewise for some UI parts looking different: it has been like that since as long as I can remember on computers, no matter which OS or whether it's a CLI, TUI or GUI: if you use more than a couple of tools there are always going to be tools which look and/or do things in a different way. So people kinda get used to that anyway. Not that it's an excuse for doing this to an OS, but just looking at it from the practical side.

Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?

#90

Post by EdSchouten »

I know that Windows Vista still had some Windows 3.x UI elements included. For example, the file picker dialog you’d get when installing a font would be a pretty ancient one. Is that still the case, or has it been updated in the meantime?

Screenshot found online (from XP): https://cdncms.fonts.net/images/35b17bed9c542383/faq_xp_winz...

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