[HN Gopher] There are at least 10 different Microsoft design con...
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There are at least 10 different Microsoft design conventions in
Windows 11
Author : luke2m
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-06-18 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
| paxys wrote:
| 10 is a bit of a stretch. I only see 2-3 distinct styles.
| rado wrote:
| UI is a train wreck, but on the bright side, it has all that
| sophisticated telemetry to improve the UX.
| jbellis wrote:
| Glass half full: that's some serious commitment to backwards
| compatibility.
| dm319 wrote:
| I remember when Win 7 came out - even then it was so easy to
| click through the veneer of the Win 7 style. I think it was the
| 'display' dialogue, which looked almost identical to the Win98
| version, complete with the CRT-style monitor. Likewise, Windows
| 10 looks good with superficial use. Seems like each iteration
| adds an extra shell.
| solarkraft wrote:
| This is great for people who already know it, but terrible for
| people who don't and try to understand why there are 4
| different panels for the same thing that all look different.
| whalesalad wrote:
| This is how it's been forever. Windows 10 is the same - the fact
| that there are two control panels is mind boggling.
| jasdine817 wrote:
| Loads of third party apps have shell extensions that use
| control panel and there's 20 years of settings to migrate over.
| It's getting there.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I wonder if the software update dialog box will still feature the
| useless flying dots instead of providing useful information like:
| what update is actually doing (or more like trying to do but
| failing), how much progress it has made in trying to do it (or,
| more like where has the damn thing hung again) and (god forbid) a
| solid guess as to how many fricking hours are left.
|
| ~2T$ and these jokers can't figure out how to reasonably update
| their kludgy mess.
|
| (sorry for the rant, but this update crap killed a half a day of
| my non-profit volunteer time and is still unresolved)
| solarkraft wrote:
| They've mastered the art of inconsistency. At least they're doing
| _something_ to the previously hideous winforms widgets.
|
| Bonus points had actually updated them to the new design language
| (god fucking damn it).
| wpdev_63 wrote:
| Kinda wish microsoft would make Windows 10 the last backwards
| compatible windows and start from scratch. Virtualize Win10 for
| backwards compatibility and start from a blank slate with modern
| design principles.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Speaking of horrid design, Reddit is blocking me from viewing
| that page unless I visit it in their app
| [deleted]
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The article now points to old.reddit.com, which should not do
| that.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| The one that always gets me is how oddly forgotten the MMC stuff
| is:
|
| The Disk Management UI's bottom pane, for whatever reason, has
| never worked with scroll wheels. It still gleefully ignores
| scroll wheels.
|
| The Hyper-V Manager .. a new thing .. has a broken UI as well.
| It's "Actions" pane size is based off the screen-width, but the
| default size of the window is based off the screen height, so on
| ultra-wide screen monitors, a pane that should take up about a
| 1/3 of the window, ends up covering about 2/3 of the window.
|
| I also love how even the Action menu is a hold over from some
| older UX ideas. There are two ways to bring up the help dialog
| now in all of the MMC apps, either with the Help menu, or via the
| Action menu.
|
| But! At least they got enough attention to use Edge instead of
| the default browser if you try to open the "TechCenter Website"
| (a website that hasn't had that name in 8 years or so)
| siproprio wrote:
| Well... your problem is solved... disk management has no UI
| anymore...
| butz wrote:
| That feeling, when you are still patching up lesser used
| components for current design system and manager barges in with
| new redesign.
| allyourhorses wrote:
| Moral: the UX "sector" needs to shrink by about 98%, and what
| remains should be contractors or agencies
| tvanantwerp wrote:
| I've long suspected that there is a glut of not-terribly-good
| UX people who continually create pointless redesigns to justify
| their ongoing employment. I can't remember the last time (maybe
| never?) that I saw a redesign and thought, "Oh, yes, that's so
| much better, I'm excited for this!"
| slightwinder wrote:
| Maybe UX is a fashion-sector? As they also regulary reinvent
| themself to stay alive.
| nexuist wrote:
| This is a good way to think of it. We've had clothes for
| ages but they get _boring._ We seek different things that
| look unique because we want to be excited. Our brains didn
| 't like staring at text all day so we started wrapping the
| text with fun colors and shapes and it spiraled from there.
| caycep wrote:
| I kind of wonder - maybe it's a sign of what a company like MS
| is, and its strengths. i.e. they are focusing on being a good
| platform/services company, and end user UI/UX is really more of
| an afterthought for them. If somehow they end up with a good
| Apple-like UI/UX, would that be a bad sign the company is losing
| its focus or getting its culture muddled?
| kushalpandya wrote:
| In my years of using different operating systems, KDE Plasma has
| had the most consistent UI across the board.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The open source way of splitting out the actual utility into
| some command line thing, and then making a thin UI wrapper,
| seems to really improve consistency. Which, I guess, is
| unsurprising -- the open source community needed to make a UI
| on top of a chaotic ecosystem, so they actually had to deal
| with the problem up front. Windows skated by accidental
| consistency for quite a while.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Consistently ugly?
|
| Breeze cleaned things up a bit, but almost all the apps have an
| ,,I made the UI in 5 minutes before I fall asleep" vibe (namely
| because the spacings are all weird).
|
| To be fair: That is very consistent.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I got my start programming with a tool that originated on
| mainframes, saw a brief popularity in text-based minicomputers
| (Vaxen and Unixen), was ported to X11 Unix, then to PCs beginning
| with MS Windows 3, and through multiple generations as _that_
| became the overwhelmingly dominant user platform.
|
| There were further changes and inheretences from within each of
| those environments as well.
|
| It was possible when using the application to recognise where and
| how various components and features originated and what
| platform(s) they were developed on or for. Even some 50 years
| after the first release, this can be determined.
|
| As I came to use Unix and Linux more heavily, I noticed the same
| trend in various applications, both command-line (GNU and BSD
| userland, MVS JCL relics such as "dd", and others) and graphical.
| Various X11 and graphical toolkits became instantly recognisable,
| and though the appearances (and often feature locations and
| implementations) were often wildly inconsistent (Xt Intrinsics /
| Athena scrollbars, anyone?), _once the contexts were known, the
| visual indicators made clear "oh, this is an Athena app, this is
| a Motif app, this is a gtk app, this is a KDE app", or singletons
| (Netscape / Mozilla / Phoenix / Fireox, StarOffice / OpenOffice /
| NeoOffice / LibreOffice, Applixware (remember that?), etc. came
| to be known quantities._ Various JS toolkits and Electron apps
| are probably the current version of this.
|
| I've (mostly in jest, though possibly more seriously with time)
| had the tag "technological archaeologist" in various online bios.
| That traces directly to my experience with tools developed over a
| number of different platforms or tools. Or simply the influences
| of time and trends or fashions.
|
| Microsoft Windows at about 45 years of age now has its own design
| legacy and archaeological strata.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Eh, UI consistency is overrated. I'm old enough to remember the
| 90s and early 00s when people said the webapps would never really
| be widely used outside of toy applications because of UI/UX
| inconsistencies.
| azornathogron wrote:
| And instead, they are widely used and hated!
|
| Businesses are great at iterating to find out just how much
| customers are willing to put up with in quality reductions
| before they actually leave, and also great at putting up
| barriers to shift that tipping point further in the company's
| favour. It turns out people will put up with _a lot_. Even
| stuff they hate.
|
| We have the technology and ability to create things that are
| far higher quality, but it's usually a losing proposition from
| a profit-seeking perspective.
|
| It's just the same old "worse is better" story.
|
| (This is just a tangential thought, not some kind of
| disagreement or rebuttal.)
| spamizbad wrote:
| I don't find the the experiences of native desktop apps
| particularly compelling. I think much of the thinking behind
| this mentality grew from an era where computers were scary
| and intimidating and you had huge swaths of the population
| that didn't even want to use them. So everyone bent over
| backwards trying to appeal to reluctant adopters. That world
| doesn't exist anymore.
| solarkraft wrote:
| It's pretty sad, but unfortunately the exact reason why it
| seems like everything we use is terrible. Executives at
| companies don't care for the aforementioned reason, but they
| discount the deep scorching branding damage this incurs that
| no amount of marketing will fix.
|
| Users who have the choice _will_ switch eventually, whenever
| they get the chance, they will never come back and they will
| hate you and share their discomfort. This will lead to scales
| being tipped against you wherever possible.
|
| Now, you can still build a hard to avoid product and make a
| ton of money from it (Microsoft), so it's still not a losing
| strategy.
|
| So here I am just begging companies to stop building terrible
| products because they make people miserable.
|
| You can also build a high quality loved product and the
| effect above will reverse, but probably not at the same price
| (Apple, Jetbrains).
| jrm4 wrote:
| This entire field of so-called *design" is WILDLY overrated.
| The biggest problem is that there is way too much mere fashion
| masquerading as "scientifically proven methodologies of human
| interaction with machines." There's so much ridiculousness in
| this space because "designers" treat their own preferences (or
| worse, those of their company) as nearly immutable laws. Just
| let me pick poofy or flat buttons and get over yourselves.
| lioeters wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree. I'm always wary of design
| refresh/update in operating systems and commonly used
| applications like Firefox, because more often than not, it
| means worse user experience and no perceptible benefit.
|
| Your whole comment also rings true when "design" and
| "designers" are replaced with "software" and "programmers".
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How about let me have text on my buttons so I know what the
| hell they are for. And I can communicate to my parents what
| the hell they should be clicking on. And stop hiding every
| single button.
|
| I am specifically referring to Google.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Don't forget applications that still use a forked version of the
| Windows 3.1 common dialog.
|
| To be fair, the last consistent Windows UI was probably Windows
| 3.1. In hindsight, it looks is incredibly cohesive and
| functional. Swap out the font (MS Sans Serif, especially bold,
| looks pretty bad), make the graphical components vector-based,
| and it would still look great today.
| allyourhorses wrote:
| Windows 3.1 had something like 5 built-in widgets. CTL3D.DLL
| (dating myself here!) IIRC added a bunch more. IMHO somewhere
| between CTL3D and XP was when design topped out.
|
| I still love elements of 7 and 10, but honestly would have been
| totally fine if 2K or XP were the final themes. Imagine if
| after all this time, the only way to date a Windows
| installation was by subtle design variations of the window
| title bar. Such bliss! Although of course, I am glad for many
| of the changes made during the mobile/touch revolution.
|
| I wonder if the tide will ever turn on UX ideologists. Chased
| out of the industry like the witches and warlocks they are :)
| okareaman wrote:
| I have a feeling the only people who care about this are people
| who don't use Windows.
| slightwinder wrote:
| I do use windows. And it does annoye me how inconsistent it is.
| And I also use Linux, which is inconsistent by design. Yet
| windows is even worse than this IMHO.
| okareaman wrote:
| I like how the tabbed dialog to set the system path env vars
| is the same for 20 years, then if I open up the calculator
| and it's got a fancy new look and feel, that's good too.
| olivierestsage wrote:
| Although my favorite is Win32, Modern/Fluent is the only one that
| really strikes me as "bad."
| rado wrote:
| That's the funniest part: the oldest style is still the best.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Because back then usability was in focus:
| https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-
| windows-9...
|
| There is also a Twitter thread that notes what got lost over
| time - especially separation and contrast.
| https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805
| ziml77 wrote:
| I'm glad Windows still has a high contrast mode for the
| people who really need it to see things, but I so wish that
| designers everywhere would think much more about keeping
| good contrast. They're all working on high-end monitors in
| ideal conditions, all nicely color calibrated. But that's
| not normal. TN panels are still very popular. On those,
| elements displayed on screen very easily lose contrast when
| looking at them at an angle. I have a sub-optimal
| positioning right now on a TN panel where the center is
| lined up with my eyes and looks good, but if I look to the
| top of the panel, everything is darker than it should be.
| timw4mail wrote:
| You're thinking of a TN panel. VA panels can be nearly as
| good as IPS in terms of viewing angles.
| ziml77 wrote:
| You're right. I always get TN and VA mixed up. I'll edit
| that.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _TN panels are still very popular. On those, elements
| displayed on screen very easily lose contrast when
| looking at them at an angle._
|
| Back when ads were actually a different background color
| on Google, I suspect they A/B tested background colors
| right up to the point that they disappeared on cheap TN
| laptops. I experienced this first hand when helping a
| friend with their laptop 5-10 years ago, and they clicked
| on an ad by mistake. Turned out that the ad background
| turned white at normal laptop viewing angles.
| smoldesu wrote:
| You'd probably like GTK/QT. Both of them are effectively
| delineations of that same functional design language, with
| holistically different approaches to the subject. I personally
| love both, but they're a fascinating case study if nothing
| else.
| olivierestsage wrote:
| Yes, I certainly do -- especially Qt.
|
| I'm always wondering whether my preference for this more
| "traditional" design paradigm just comes from using Win32 in
| my formative years or some objective difference of quality.
|
| Anyone who shares the sentiment might want to check out the
| Chicago95 theme[1].
|
| [1] https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
| dm319 wrote:
| I think they were quite efficient designs. I grew up using
| a lot of paradigms, from 3.1, 95, RiscOS, Workbench and
| dabble of Mac 9/10 later on. I gave gnome 3 a good go, but
| while I really enjoyed the visual appeal of it, I found I
| wasn't as productive - trying to switch Windows was hard as
| the windows didn't stay in the same place like they did
| with a taskbar. Unity was more productive for me. But I'm
| happiest on MATE.
| [deleted]
| udev wrote:
| Yes, and you need about 12 digits to write the net worth of Bill
| Gates, which is to say this does not matter as much as you think.
| udev wrote:
| Downvotes from people who can't accept that one can dominate a
| market with many inconsistencies in your UI?
|
| I guess the same people who applaud each time when Federighi
| anounces the redesign of the macOS trashcan icon.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are...
| abalaji wrote:
| @dang can we update the link, on mobile you can't even view the
| thread (Reddit pop up)
| dt3ft wrote:
| I second this. I don't have the reddit app and will not
| install it to view this link. Might as well remove it from HN
| altogether.
| 015a wrote:
| I understand it can be fun to point stuff out like this, laugh at
| it, etc.
|
| Personally, I think this is actually good. Consistent and
| Productive Design, especially on the level of patterns across an
| entire operating system of both first and third party
| applications, is an insanely difficult problem. This means one
| absolutely needs to bring in the consideration of resource
| allocation. Its not possible to do everything exactly the same;
| in fact, a related but incorrect argument may be that its not
| possible to do everything exactly the same on Day 1, but because
| "Good Design" is a moving target, its actually really difficult
| to reach that goal in any capacity whatsoever.
|
| Inconsistent design, like this, tells me that it isn't a resource
| allocation priority for Microsoft. Thus, those resources are most
| likely diverted to more functional aspects; getting it working,
| faster, more consistent behavior, broader and deeper feature
| sets, etc.
|
| This is the right trade-off for Windows. One can point to MacOS
| or iOS and see a much more consistent design language across
| first-party apps, as well as pretty strong adoption of this
| design language across third-party apps, but the cost of this
| near-perfection is abstracted away. Its easy to see
| inconsistencies in design; its much harder to speak in aggregates
| about obscure software issues, missing features, delayed
| releases, etc. Strongly consistent design, in the face of these
| issues (many of which are unproveable externally) may actually be
| the right trade-off for MacOS and iOS; Apple is a far more
| design/PR/marketing driven company, and this guise of "everything
| is engineered and under control" may actually be materially
| important for their brand.
|
| Windows is different. Moreover; it _should_ be different. The
| fundamental idea that an entire operating system needs a
| cohesive, strongly consistent design language is one that
| Microsoft has tried to push several times, but one which hasn 't
| even seen internal adoption, let alone external. One can blame
| this on the design languages being bad, or their tooling being
| bad, or anything, but at the end of the day its still the most
| popular non-server OS in the world (or is Android bigger now?
| Well, its the same argument there too). Conforming to any central
| design pattern isn't a priority for Windows users. There's no
| physical law of the universe that OS-wide design languages are a
| naturally good thing; in fact, I would argue that design
| languages shared between many domains of applications may
| fundamentally fail to account for the wide variety of interaction
| patterns within every domain, and thus as a software platform
| increases its complexity of services offered, domain-agnostic
| design languages naturally begin to fall apart. They may actually
| be Generally Bad, though I only feel comfortable asserting with
| any certainty that they're probably not Generally Good or Bad,
| and there's room for different platforms to try different things.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I hate the inconsistencies, but this is a bit of an extreme
| breakdown.
|
| The ones marked as 95, NT, and XP are all fit with each other.
| Vista and 7 also go together fine, and with the UI theming still
| don't look inconsistent with the previous set.
|
| The one marked as 8 looks right at home with 11 (which was really
| just a matter of giving it blurred transparency and rounded
| corners).
|
| Splitting 10 RTM and the Store is weird. They very much go
| together.
|
| That leaves 10 19H1 which is the biggest oddball to me and
| hopefully gets fixed to be consistent with 11.
|
| But anyway, isn't it better that they haven't fucked with some of
| the older (95-7) UIs that your normal user is never going to see?
| (I'm counting add/remove programs in that set since there is a
| non-.cpl replacement that is modernized) Power users tend to hate
| it when things get changed for no reason other than aesthetics,
| especially since they often lose functionality.
| grishka wrote:
| The Microsoft's insistence on maintaining native backwards
| compatibility with software some of which is as old as me is so
| perplexing.
|
| I saw what the API of the classic Mac OS looked like[1] the
| other day, and it does resemble WinAPI very much. It's
| procedural, many functions take descriptors, many other
| functions take structs you allocate and fill in, there's a DIY
| event loop, and so on. It even has a windows.h (lol). Apple got
| rid of this in 2000. It then provided a VM-style "classic
| environment" backwards compatibility layer in OS X for ~5
| years, and Carbon library for source-level compatibility for
| even longer.
|
| Apple did manage to pull this off. Why can't Microsoft do the
| same? Why can't they put a seamlessly integrated 95/XP/whatever
| VM into their system that would launch when you run a win32
| application, and finally give themselves the freedom to rewrite
| everything from scratch, with more sensible APIs and in a more
| memory-safe language?
|
| [1] https://github.com/cy384/ssheven/blob/master/ssheven.c
| slownews45 wrote:
| I'm not even sure why they migrated settings to settings -
| control panel remains much more direct and explicit.
| userbinator wrote:
| Because it's not your computer to control anymore?
|
| It reminds me of when My Computer was renamed to This PC, and
| My Documents became Documents --- a subtle way to say it's
| not yours.
|
| The latest anti user trend is of course that of referring to
| computers as "devices".
| jaywalk wrote:
| Yeah... I think you might be reading just a _little_ too
| much into the new names.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Perhaps, but I've sat in design meetings for a very
| similar concept: the original product was something
| similar to "My Pass" and there was well over an hour of a
| dozen people discussing the psychological effects
| changing it to something closer to "[Brand] Pass" - the
| biggest one being that exact transition of ownership. The
| overwhelming majority agreed that removing the sense of
| individual ownership implied by "My" would both encourage
| sharing (in this case it was reasonable to do this as an
| "upgrade") and to encourage brand loyalty. I suggested
| "My [Brand] Pass" but was roundly shot down as "that just
| complicated things". Surveys were performed (NB: I do not
| know what these surveys contained or how they were
| handled) and eventually it was decided to call it
| something like "Family Pass".
|
| Point being that name changes _can_ come from such over
| thinking.
| bee_rider wrote:
| In the image, they've provided colored boxes around the
| different types, that seem to match your breakdown pretty well.
| (so, 95, NT, and XP are teal in the image). I guess for the
| post title, the more dramatic count was used.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| It also leaves out the Windows 3.1
|
| https://i.redd.it/5xo6c8xmst571.png
| ziml77 wrote:
| Ok, that's the absolute worst. I hate running into those 3.1
| file pickers because they're so annoying to navigate.
| kwanbix wrote:
| Horrible? Sure. But difficult to navigate? I am not so
| sure. Maybe because I used Win 3.x and 9x? Could be.
| nwallin wrote:
| If I recall correctly, the 3.1 file picker isn't
| resizable. And it's very small. The small size wasn't
| such a problem when the filesystem enforced 8.3 file name
| lengths, but these days it's reasonable to expect names
| for individual files or folders to be much longer than
| that.
|
| We have a bug in our backlog right now because we tack on
| an extra bit when we export files. Imagine we open
| foobar.raw and export foobar.txt and foobar.txt.info. But
| when the application tried to write out foobar.txt.info
| it hits the 260 character limit in NTFS. Meaning that the
| original file name was over 255 characters.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > And it's very small
|
| It was designed to work on a VGA screen with 480x640
| pixels after all.
|
| And this is from Windows NT 3.5 IIRC. Windows 3.1 didn't
| have long file names (like the Apple II had in 1979 or
| so).
| ziml77 wrote:
| Yes, difficult to navigate. The list can only display a
| few items at a time because it's so small. And really I
| don't want to be clicking my way to a folder anyway, I
| want to be able to paste the path in or type it with
| autocomplete.
|
| I grew up with 3.1 and 9x. I don't want that back.
| vehemenz wrote:
| I was looking for one of these, but I could only find Win31
| common dialogs in third-party (non-Microsoft) applications.
| Well done.
| ska wrote:
| > The ones marked as 95, NT, and XP are all fit with each
| other.
|
| They aren't really though. Aesthetically they are reasonably
| close but employ different conventions (e.g. the list/tree in
| win32 and the list in NT4 display the same kind of information
| but different ways, and with different icons).
|
| Consistency is a pretty fundamental thing in interface design,
| and whether or not something "fits" aesthetically is only a
| small part of all this, which I think was OP's point.
| jiofih wrote:
| > that your normal user is never going to see
|
| You underestimate the amount of ducking around a normal user
| has to do to keep windows happy over the years.
| cronix wrote:
| I have to do the same with my mom and her mac every week or
| two. The latest was all of the flash deprecation warnings and
| she uses flash routinely for puzzle games although she's
| never heard of this "flash" thing. I spend about as much time
| getting her mac fixed as I used to her windows computer and
| she's been using computers since the 80s. Remember, we're
| talking about "normal users," not us on HN. Most normal users
| don't know 90% of their computer. They know how to turn it on
| and do what they did yesterday, and if that doesn't work any
| longer they are mostly lost. Kind of like cars. Most know how
| to drive them and gas them up, but if there is ever any other
| sort of issue that isn't obvious like a flat tire they are
| lost. That's most "normal" users. There's a reason why "did
| you _simply_ try turning it off and on again " is a meme,
| because that's most people.
| setr wrote:
| > There's a reason why "did you simply try turning it off
| and on again" is a meme, because that's most people.
|
| Well, that and the fact that it actually does the trick 90%
| of the time, which is fairly stupid to begin.
|
| Troubleshooting Windows is largely an exercise in futility
| to begin with; turning it off and on again is usually the
| only thing that even IT people can reasonably do (that, and
| google the error to find out about turning on/off _this
| specific thing_ )
| rbanffy wrote:
| > I think 11 will be a true return to a Microsoft experience
| supremacy not seen in a decade.
|
| I'm sorry. I had to laugh.
|
| Windows has been so complicated and inconsistent, with built-in
| control panels, vendor mini-applications, inconsistent within
| Windows itself, where you see the parts that haven't been touched
| since NT 3.5, alongside each and every version of Windows ever
| sold, plus the built in vendor specific control panels that makes
| it impossible to figure out what is the currently active Wi-Fi
| configuration (a recurrent problem I have when helping house
| guests to connect. Macs just work. Linux just works, Androids and
| iPhones easily connect. Windows laptops? Ha! Just use the range
| extender that's in the guest bedroom. For some reason I will not
| dedicate the time to figure out for every Windows version and PC
| manufacturer why, that little thing seems to like Windows
| machines.
| kiwih wrote:
| I'll agree that Macs have it pretty good, but to say 'Linux
| just works' with WiFi is a bold statement. Some Linux
| distributions work well, but when you have to fall back to the
| command prompt to do something as simple as connect to an
| enterprise WiFi network for a device as common as a raspberry
| pi [0] because there is no GUI, well. I'll grant that at least
| the steps are moderately consistent. Anecdotally, even on my
| Ubuntu laptop, at least once a year I lose WiFi and have to
| delve into some online forums to learn what just broke it.
|
| I use both Linux (Ubuntu/Raspian) and Windows extensively and
| overall most things just work better on Windows, poor design
| philosophies aside.
|
| [0] https://iceburn.medium.com/raspberry-pi-connected-to-wifi-
| of...
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I installed Ubuntu Server 20.04 on a spare laptop. Long story
| short, it did not have any way to connect to my WiFi network
| unless I either first went through the guided installation
| with an Ethernet cord attached, or went through some
| excruciating troubleshooting steps involving setting up
| hardware via obtuse CLI commands and arguments. I tried the
| latter just to see if I could without looking things up on my
| phone/separate computer, and even with a bit of cheating I
| still gave up and tried again with the cord plugged in.
| jasonlfunk wrote:
| Is it just me, or can this Reddit post not even be viewed with
| iOS Safari? I understand that Reddit wants me to download their
| app, but to prevent me from even seeing the post is a step too
| far.
| mikelward wrote:
| Can't view it in Duck Duck Go browser on Android either. Reddit
| forces me to either download the app or go to /r/popular.
| janci wrote:
| old.reddit.com for the win
|
| (just change www. to old. or i. for mobile layout)
| mulmen wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are...
| AstaManasta wrote:
| It's pathetic. You can request the desktop version though which
| works fine in landscape mode
| olivierestsage wrote:
| What stopped me was having to click "View rest of discussion"
| to read a full comment thread. When I clicked it, it didn't
| show me the discussion, but instead took me to a window with
| another submission from r/Windows11 in focus. I had to scroll
| back up to actually find the discussion. Good grief!
|
| Edit: I meant "Continue this thread," not "View rest of
| discussion."
| rideontime wrote:
| Try to view too many comments and it'll force you to log in,
| too. At which point I just close the tab, remembering that
| I've never read anything in a reddit thread that was worth
| the time it takes to log in.
| keanebean86 wrote:
| There's also the NSFW thing too. If you try to view post in
| specific subreddits it will try to force you to the app.
| These aren't even smut subreddits. I think /r/greentext
| (4chat story screenshots) does this. I really need to
| finally leave.
| finiteseries wrote:
| No, that's "normal" and has been there for a while.
|
| This post forces you to use the app to see any of it period,
| or returns you to /r/popular. First time I've ever seen it as
| well.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/IFI9ik9
| btdmaster wrote:
| See also https://teddit.net.
| conradfr wrote:
| Most days I can't view Facebook or Instagram content because I
| don't have an account, I only get a login page.
|
| I guess this is a trend. I wonder if it's affecting
| influencers' business.
| edgeform wrote:
| Instagram walked back the forced-login-to-view-page change
| 2-3 weeks ago, and within the last couple days put it back
| on.
|
| Guess I don't get to see Instagram pages anymore. Sad thing
| is many small businesses use Instagram for their "website",
| there's a few around me that I haven't checked out because I
| can't see their "website" on Instagram.
|
| > I wonder if it's affecting influencers' business.
|
| HN is a self-selecting bunch. The vast, vast majority of
| people that care about influencers are logged in all the time
| anyway.
| 51Cards wrote:
| As an older developer I find it funny how design trends cycle
| around. I think in my life I've seen UI design go the full circle
| at least twice. The square corner, solid colour era is ending and
| it looks like we're pulling back into round corner and gradient
| land. Next stop, Skeuomorph station, all aboard.
|
| Upside, some of the legacy systems I wrote 20 years ago are going
| to look modern again!
| aksss wrote:
| I'm really disappointed in the center-justification of the task
| bar and start menu. I'm assuming that means the start menu icon
| will forever be creeping left as I open more apps, along with the
| start menu itself. Not a fan of this at all. There's an option to
| left-justify, I understand - and I like options - but would
| prefer left-justified to remain the default for users.
|
| I assume they're building in the option to left-justify in case
| this move turns out to be another Windows 8 cock-up of a UI
| experience. I remember MS executives being "excited" about
| Windows 8 as well, it means little to nothing to me that Satya is
| excited about Win11.
| spidersouris wrote:
| A mere hypothesis, but I wonder if that task bar centering
| wasn't pushed because of the increase in popularity of
| ultrawide screens as well as tablets (Microsoft has been
| pushing for Windows use on tablets for quite some time now).
| Because when you imagine a centered taskbar on an ultrawide
| screen or a tablet, it makes absolute sense and is preferable
| to having it on the left side of the screen. The centered
| taskbar doesn't work at all on smaller screens though.
| leokennis wrote:
| Huge advantage of the start button on the bottom left: I can
| just "throw" my mouse pointer as far down and left as I can
| and click, and I'll always hit the start button.
| arkitaip wrote:
| This is actual supported by Fitts' law, one of the very few
| laws in UX design [0]:
|
| "Placing layout elements on the four edges of the screen
| allows for infinitely large targets in one dimension and
| therefore present ideal scenarios. As the user's pointer
| will always stop at the edge, they can move the mouse with
| the greatest possible speed and still hit the target. The
| target area is effectively infinitely long along the
| movement axis. Therefore, this guideline is called "Rule of
| the infinite edges". The use of this rule can be seen for
| example in MacOS, which places the menu bar always on the
| top left edge of the screen instead of the current
| program's windowframe."
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law#Implication
| s_for...
| pavlov wrote:
| Seems like some progress has been made because the oldest style
| here is as recent as Win95.
|
| For a long time, the "Install Font" dialog was unchanged from
| Windows 3.0, with a tiny little folder tree view meant for 8.3
| character file names and a drive picker button...
|
| Some googling reveals they cleaned these up around 2015:
| https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/windo...
| slownews45 wrote:
| Talking to modern UI / Designer folks for these things - so much
| mushy weird aspirational language and constructs.
|
| What happened to this will be easier to see, to remember, takes
| fewer clicks, is quicker.
|
| I mean, you spend a billion bucks on a new design and get things
| like this (from MS Fluent):
|
| Fluent experiences listen and adapt... They unite people and
| ideas, whether they're on opposite sides of the globe or standing
| right next to each other... Fluent speaks in light and shadow, in
| spatial dimensions...
|
| I just want to get work done. Save me from my spatial dimensions
| (and whitespace overload).
| dntrkv wrote:
| You're just looking at the marketing speak from the new design
| language.
|
| When thinking about design systems, there are few different
| levels and you speak about different ones depending on who you
| are talking to. For me it breaks down something like this,
| going from high-level to low-level:
|
| Design Philosophy - Marketing (what you posted)
|
| Design Principles - Designers / UX (accessible, minimal,
| emotion)
|
| Design Language - Designers / UX (red is used to denote danger)
|
| Design Library - Designers / UX / Engineers (ButtonPrimary
| color = blue, ButtonDanger color = red)
|
| Design Implementation - Engineers
| (<ButtonDanger>Cancel</ButtonDanger>)
| kungito wrote:
| I'm no designer but I've seen amazing ones work. Could it be
| that this is just marketing talk unrelated to actual design
| philosophy underneath because it is not targeting people
| related to that?
| slownews45 wrote:
| But the modern interfaces are relative junk from my view with
| some exceptions.
|
| Just basic things like putting focus on an input field of a
| pop-up dialog. I get that isn't sexy but it IS efficient.
| They should focus more on the later and less on the sexy
| gradient / look stuff.
| sixothree wrote:
| This may seem crazy but that was one of the major
| accomplishments of the google.com search page. Before that
| when you navigated to a search engine, you still had to
| click the search box. The cursor was not located in the box
| for you.
| siproprio wrote:
| The trick is, these newer UWP apps, they all take fewer clicks,
| because they barely have any features!
|
| Startup time is stable though: windows calculator has the same
| startup time as excel. Don't get me started on microsoft
| photos...
|
| Modern UI quickly breaks down when you need to have complex
| software - software that needs a menubar, for example.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Exactly, this is my complaint. The calculator app is SLOWER
| with this modern UI, and I gain little in terms of
| efficiency.
| bitwize wrote:
| > Fluent experiences listen and adapt... They unite people and
| ideas, whether they're on opposite sides of the globe or
| standing right next to each other... Fluent speaks in light and
| shadow, in spatial dimensions...
|
| BARF. I can hear the thrumming of Enya's "Storms in Africa"
| behind this text...
| drumttocs8 wrote:
| Hey, that's a great song though.
| bitwize wrote:
| Considered on its own, it's quite lovely. I was going for
| the overuse of it to punch up meaningless faux-
| inspirational ad/prezo copy with generic positive vibes.
| c-smile wrote:
| We shall admit that to follow UI trends in one application is
| relatively easy.
|
| For example one application in last 15 years:
| https://sciter.com/from-skeuomorph-to-flat-ui-evolution-of-o...
|
| But to do the same on OS level - hundreds of different apps and
| applets ... That's Sisyphean task to be honest.
|
| We should be lucky that old stuff is still working and API that
| appeared in Win 3 is still with us.
|
| Actually that is not just Windows problem. On Linux, for example,
| all these utilities were historically console UI applications
| that are more "UI conservative" but even there - whole zoo of
| different approaches...
| nexuist wrote:
| Well, the reason for the Linux utilities is because Linux
| doesn't actually ship with a GUI; anything you see on screen is
| drawn by a userspace program that all other programs interact
| with (said program is called a "desktop environment" or DE).
|
| Building text-based tools is much easier than building GUIs on
| Linux because you have to target a specific GUI architecture
| like X11 / Wayland, and then you also have to think about
| fitting in with whatever window manager the user uses; GNOME /
| KDE / whatever.
|
| On Mac or Windows, you build a GUI using the vendor's tools and
| you're golden. No need to worry about how the user is getting
| windows to show up on their screen because every user is using
| the same software to do so. For similar reasons, a lot of
| software just says screw it and targets Ubuntu only so they
| don't have to support your weird configuration on any other
| distro.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I mean, it's fun to dunk on Microsoft OS design, but aren't we
| looking at screenshots from a leaked early build? Seems
| reasonable that it looks a bit hacked together at this point.
| Maybe it will launch this way. But maybe it won't.
| Loeffelmaenn wrote:
| I mean people thought the same thing about Windows 10 and to
| this day it's a mix of 7 different designs or so.
| emsy wrote:
| It's reasonable to assume it won't, when you see how legacy UI
| was kept mostly unchanged at least since Windows XP.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| Very contrived over-counting.
| notimetorelax wrote:
| Admins can you please change the url to the old Reddit UI. The
| new UI is locked on mobile Safari.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are...
| turminal wrote:
| Wow, reddit really hates website users.
| [deleted]
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