[HN Gopher] State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsis...
___________________________________________________________________
State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in
Windows 10?
Author : spideymans
Score : 450 points
Date : 2021-06-19 00:48 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ntdotdev.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ntdotdev.wordpress.com)
| dang wrote:
| Similar thread from earlier today:
|
| _There are at least 10 different Microsoft design conventions in
| Windows 11_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27553108 -
| June 2021 (125 comments)
| cutchin wrote:
| I've been primarily a linux user for some time, so I've gotten
| pretty desensitized to various applications looking vastly
| different on the same system. But in the last several years
| that's mostly gone away - Gnome knows how to change the theme for
| QT apps and KDE can configure GTK themes so things are actually
| remarkably uniform.
|
| But then when I fire up Windows, it is just this bizarre mix of
| all these different UI frameworks. I guess Windows isn't the big
| cash cow it once was for Microsoft and maybe it's not the highest
| development priority anymore, but still it's remarkably off-
| putting and I have no idea why they would let it stay in this
| state.
|
| I read they were introducing a new UI framework to unify
| everything (Project Reunion), but I can't help but think that
| will mean it's just another different-looking toolkit thrown into
| the mix.
|
| With all that said, Microsoft's commitment to backwards
| compatibility is fairly legendary so there could be an actual
| technical reason some things can't be redesigned with a newer
| toolkit.
| paavohtl wrote:
| As far as I know Project Reunion is not really a UI framework -
| it's more about refactoring Windows APIs into individual
| libraries which can be used across different OS versions. This
| should enable apps targeting all versions of Windows 10 to use
| the latest stuff, in a similar fashion to polyfills in
| browsers.
|
| This is probably to encourage developers to build software
| using the new Windows 10 APIs. Which is something they
| definitely have a problem with - I've been using Windows 10
| quite heavily since the first beta and I don't think I've ever
| seen or used a third party Windows 10 (fluent / modern / metro)
| application.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is a bit more than that, and I bet with Windows 11
| announcement we will get a more clear picture on it.
|
| It is also a way to bring into Win32 side most of the API
| that really matter on the UWP side of the fence, most likely
| (although they are yet to confirm this) as migration path to
| UWP developers.
|
| .NET Native, C++/CX are pretty much dead, and C++/WinRT keeps
| missing many of the tooling available on C++/CX for XAML
| applications.
|
| So I expect them to migrate the APIs into an OS version
| independent layer, and then give the mercy shot on UWP apps.
| [deleted]
| thrower123 wrote:
| There's just an insane amount of UI and code in Windows. I don't
| even want to hazard a guess how many millions, maybe billions of
| lines of code it takes to build Windows 10. Nobody is ever going
| to go through every dialog and update it to the design language
| of the week, while allocating the testing and QA resources to
| make sure it all works, in every language. If it ain't broke,
| don't fix it.
|
| There's a Uservoice thread I've been following for years as comic
| relief that demands that Microsoft port all of Visual Studio to
| Linux and Mac. It's the same thing; people largely have no
| concept how much hoary old code there is lurking there, or how
| many man-years their "simple" ask entails.
| dcl wrote:
| It's not just the UI that's inconsistent, it's that the different
| UI layers can actually present contradictory information.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/oNxlUzv.png
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| One more thing missing in the list: MDI (multiple document
| interface) child windows are styled with Aero basic (i.e. without
| glass styling) frames, which really look rather ugly when
| embedded into a Window with a Windows 10 frame.
| tgtweak wrote:
| I kind of hate how far down the rabbit hole you have to go to
| find a familiar management ui in windows today. I find myself
| using run commands to bring up these UIs more and more.
|
| It would be an acceptable tradeoff if these new interfaces added
| more functionality or visibility but it seems they're just trying
| to move to the new settings ux and not thinking about adding
| better function.
|
| Try adding a new local user account to latest windows, compare
| the functionality in new the network interface settings page vs
| the legacy adapter properties prompt.
|
| Seems most of the "this just works" stuff that I respect is from
| windows 2000 and the NT team.
|
| Wish Microsoft would head back that way with a nod to modern
| usability instead of dumbing things down and worse: changing it
| every release.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Windows has been on this road for a long time.
|
| I did some work on Windows servers in the XP era and it was a
| continuous hassle that the menus were always different in NT 4,
| Win 2k, Xp, Vista, and all the different versions of Windows
| server.
|
| Contrast that to command-line admin on Linux that stays the
| same or the perpetually busted Linux admin GUIs that should
| just be taken behind the woodshed and shot.
| TrianguloY wrote:
| I will always find it funny that you can use the windows 95
| alt+tab switcher by:
|
| - Pressing alt (don't release)
|
| - Pressing altgr
|
| - Releasing altgr
|
| - Pressing tab
| whoopdedo wrote:
| While experimenting with this I also discovered another
| unexpected quirk or the switcher. AltGr+Tab makes it "sticky".
|
| Also, I realized that despite being initially liking the
| beautiful 3D animated Win+Tab switcher when it was introduced
| in Vista, I never use it anymore.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| The sad part is that old win32 UI from the win95 era, rendered
| with a modern style, are the most useable and nicer looking, in
| my opinion.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Metro/fluent apps always look "broken" to me. Like someone
| forgot to add styling and that's why a bunch of stuff ends up
| with some kind of default 3px solid black border. Transient
| popups (e.g. drop-downs) have some kind of shadow but it just
| looks weird and broken. Clicking on "cards" (I believe that's
| what they're called, e.g. a program in the new software
| manager) animates them but it just looks completely broken and
| blurry. Windows are resizable but in most cases it seems like
| the app isn't using an layout, so the contents don't adjust to
| match. It all feels a lot like a broken webpage in a standalone
| window. Including no/bad error handling, infinitely hanging
| indeterminate progress displays, lack of keyboard usability
| etc.
|
| That being said the Windows 10 Win32 styling looks horrendous
| to me as well. Like BS_FLAT in Windows XP, it never looked
| good, not in 2005, not in 2021.
| tgtweak wrote:
| If did not age well, but it came out a long time ago.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Same. It just doesn't work for my brain. We're looking at
| pixels on a screen so you need to somehow trick the brain
| into registering this as an interface and the metro/fluent
| ones completely fail in this regard. I see something more
| like a dense information sheet than an interactive interface.
|
| Technically it seems broken too. There was a bug in the
| calculator app where one button was off by 1 pixel. It
| boggles the mind to imagine how that kind of thing is
| possible.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Sorry for the tangent but: I get really nostalgic looking at the
| Windows 3.1 icons. I remember using moreicons.dll for shortcuts
| so long ago that they didn't look out of place.
|
| Almost everyone can relate to hearing a song, or a smell, that
| takes you back to a different time in society and your life, but
| it's weird to get it from a computer UI. I think it may happen
| for me because computing has always been such a big part of my
| life, even since early childhood.
| dstaley wrote:
| I honestly don't envy Microsoft. On one hand, you have the people
| who don't want Microsoft to break backwards compatibility. They
| want Microsoft to retain the ability to run programs written a
| quarter of a century[1] ago. This is why all this legacy stuff
| sticks around in Windows. Then, you have those who want Microsoft
| to radically reinvent Windows, either by embracing WinUI 3 fully
| (what most people mean when they say UWP) or through something
| even newer. Windows 10X was a sort of middle ground: a OS that
| pushed all the old cruft into isolated containers. Sadly it looks
| like that approach isn't going anywhere (unless we see it come
| back in Windows 11). Project Reunion is a nice attempt to give
| developers an incremental upgrade path to modern Windows, so I'm
| hopeful that within the lifecycle of Windows 11 we'll start to
| see Microsoft develop a reasonable separation between modern and
| classic Windows apps.
|
| [1] Edit: quarter of a century, not quarter of a decade.
| siproprio wrote:
| What about me? I don't care about backwards compatibility - but
| I don't want "UWP" because it's impossible to make great apps
| following the guidelines.
| dstaley wrote:
| > something even newer
|
| ;) Sadly I think this is the group Microsoft is least likely
| to attempt to cater towards.
| can16358p wrote:
| I'm on the same boat, and would like to see proper design
| instead of supporting 200-years-old programs. But apparently
| we are minority and not the best interest of Microsoft.
| (Which is okay, BTW)
| pjmlp wrote:
| UNIX is older than Windows, and most people still expect to
| run their UNIX CLI applications on APIs that exist since
| UNIX V6.
| aasasd wrote:
| Sounds like you might want to look into MacOS. Or at least
| might've wanted before Big Sur, dunno about now.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Yeah, macOS jumping on the "huge UI elements with tons of
| empty space" bandwagon was the proverbial straw for me that
| moved my beloved MBP from daily workhorse to random idle
| browsing machine.
|
| I'd say it's still not as bad as Windows, in that at least
| it's not pure white that burns your eyes, but I still hate
| how half of my laptop screen is taken up by useless UI
| elements.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Is this a thing with Big Sur? I haven't moved to it yet,
| but reading here [1] it doesn't seem like bad changes?
|
| [1] https://www.macworld.com/article/234382/macos-big-
| sur-learn-...
| matwood wrote:
| As a Mac user, I find us (other Mac users) to be much
| more critical of UIs. Lots of people went crazy about the
| extra space in the menu bars with BS, but tbh it's not a
| big (pun? :D) deal.
|
| After using BS for a year+ now (since the early betas),
| the biggest UI/UX issue IMO is around notifications.
| After making other UI elements larger and 'touch
| friendly', clearing notifications require hitting a tiny
| X or a hover over to clear all. I'm not on the Monterey
| beta yet, but hopefully it is addressed.
|
| While macOS has consistency issues (why can't I resize
| the preference pane?!), and windowing problems (when
| plugging in an external monitor _sometimes_ my windows
| don 't go to the right spots), they are nothing compared
| to the inconsistencies in Windows. I'm sure Windows users
| would love to mainly complain about the size of a close
| button vs. wondering why they still see dialogs from the
| 3.11 days.
| aasasd wrote:
| News about Mac are frequently separate from criticism
| about Mac. Perhaps because they arrive earlier. You might
| want to look specifically for reviews, opinions, and
| summaries of critical reaction. Maybe watch reviews on
| Youtube to get a feel.
|
| Personally I'm thinking of trying BS in a virtual machine
| to see if I'm ok with it or will stay away until apps
| that I want drop support for Mojave (likely Brew will
| begin to compile lots of stuff instead of just installing
| binaries). Though, seeing as Catalina already makes life
| harder for developers outside of the App Store, Mojave is
| probably gonna stay with me for a while.
| aasasd wrote:
| > _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.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| 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.
| aasasd wrote:
| https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/jacquard-loom-simulator/
|
| https://github.com/jfinkels/analyticalengine
|
| https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/emulator.html
| Stratoscope wrote:
| I stand corrected, and awed. Thank you!
|
| I had the good fortune to see the Babbage Engine in
| action when it was at the Computer History Museum. Only
| got a few photos, but here they are (plus an unrelated
| photo of a core memory plane):
|
| https://geary.smugmug.com/Computers/History/
|
| https://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/
| Santosh83 wrote:
| > They want Microsoft to retain the ability to run programs
| written a quarter of a decade ago.
|
| Enterprises expect to run programs developed a quarter century
| ago... if a quarter decade was all that was required, MS could
| have abandoned a lot more cruft.
| edoceo wrote:
| 2.5 years?! Who wants stability that short?
| parheric wrote:
| ...android security/version updates??
|
| yes, I understand - bring on the downvotes
| dstaley wrote:
| Blergh, was trying to decide between "two decades" and
| "quarter of a century" and my brain went with both!
| vsskanth wrote:
| How is MacOS able to maintain such a consistent UI even with
| massive changes in their design language ? Is Windows UI not a
| separate layer or something that they can update ?
|
| Or is it that the UI elements somehow get baked into the program
| at the time you build it, so if you didn't update you are just
| stuck with that particular version of UI you built the program ?
| code_duck wrote:
| That's what I wonder... understood that the windows internals
| are developed to maintain backwards compatibility, but why are
| they not able to change the user interface?
|
| The Vista control panel being the second layer of the Windows
| 10 control panel is one of the weirdest. Other than maintaining
| the same layout for users, why is the second layer of their
| settings panel just the exact settings panel from the OS 14
| years ago?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This. It's not about backwards compatibility for Windows
| itself; it's about investment. They don't want to pay to
| update all their menus and settings screens.
| [deleted]
| aasasd wrote:
| Mac UI elements don't move around much--afaik they use about
| the same positioning that was decided when OSX was made. So the
| looks change but the layout not so much, and thus apps don't
| break on updates. Big Sur is probably the biggest change in the
| layout, in all these years.
|
| Whereas MS keeps rearranging the layouts that were perhaps too
| complex to begin with. Especially the toolbars, with the row
| upon row of buttons and whatever other stuff MS crammed in
| there. My pet theory is that MS treats all UI as tables of
| various sizes, because it's easy for devs to just slap whatever
| they think up into rows. Apple was much better at the
| 'proximity principle' so avoided cramming from the start.
|
| It also helps that MacOS is slimmer in terms of GUI apps--
| there's no 'management console' for admins and such heavy
| stuff. My litmus test of GUI environments is the control panel
| --and it's much lighter and more comprehensible in MacOS. (A
| similar telling exercise is comparing control panels of Gnome
| and KDE, at least it was when I last touched KDE in the 2000s.)
| zamadatix wrote:
| macOS isn't afraid to deprecate or completely remove things
| even if that means old things won't work. Windows demands 16
| bit apps from the 90s should have a very decent shot at running
| on Windows 11. That level of "it'll always be there" means for
| the vast majority of old UI it has no technology pressure to be
| redone, only pressure of what most average users will see day
| to day. E.g. nobody at Windows is going to dump control panel
| (need 3rd party add-ons to work) and nobody is going to rewrite
| it in a backwards compatible way when most users can do
| everything via Settings these days and it works with all quirks
| for legacy apps as is.
|
| That's not to say a lot of the Metro stuff shouldn't/couldn't
| be made to be Fluent but it also isn't as out of place as some
| of the older stuff. The only one that is really surprising is
| File Explorer - but again a lot of legacy app integration that
| wouldn't work with a new one (though maybe it is time anyways).
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > Windows demands 16 bit apps from the 90s should have a very
| decent shot at running on Windows 11.
|
| 16 bit applications never worked on any 64 bit Windows.
| jd3 wrote:
| Not natively, but ntvdmx64[0][1] and otvdm[2]/winevdm[3]
| work fine, albeit a bit slowly.
|
| [0]: http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/ntvdmx64.html
|
| [1]: https://github.com/leecher1337/ntvdmx64
|
| [2]: http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/otvdm.html
|
| [3]: https://github.com/otya128/winevdm
|
| ---
|
| For those interested, Wikipedia says there's no
| native/builtin 64bit NTVDM due to
|
| > In an x86-64 CPU, virtual 8086 mode is available as a
| sub-mode only in its legacy mode (for running 16- and
| 32-bit operating systems), not in the native 64-bit long
| mode.
|
| ...
|
| > The NTVDM is not supported on x86-64 editions of
| Windows,[31] including DOS programs,[32] because NTVDM uses
| VM86 CPU mode instead of the Local Descriptor Table in
| order to enable 16-bits segment required for addressing[33]
| and AArch64 because Microsoft did not release a full
| emulator for this incompatible instruction set like it did
| on previous incompatible architecture.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_DOS_machine#Windows_N
| T...
|
| ---
|
| Personally, since Microsoft still releases 32bit builds of
| Windows 10, I just dual boot 32bit (~48GB)/64bit (~900GB)
| partitions and run the 16bit programs natively on an old
| Thinkpad.
| zamadatix wrote:
| 32/64 bit is a compile time option not a separate codebase
| and unlike macOS they haven't discontinued 32 bit even in
| the latest versions.
| 8K832d7tNmiQ wrote:
| Easy. They never design their system with compactibility in
| mind. Also, since they own their own software and only allow to
| be installed in their own hardware, they have full control on
| everything.
| trnglina wrote:
| Built-in Windows controls, like buttons, scroll bars, etc. are
| updated with each system release. However, they are relatively
| inflexible, and no one uses WinApi anyway, so most frameworks
| and apps build their own components, with varying dedication to
| emulating the "native" style. Built-in controls also don't
| perform much in the way of layout (I believe the only way to
| position child HWNDs remains manual absolute positions?) so
| while your button might look native, your collection of two
| buttons won't.
|
| My guess is MacOS's consistency comes from some combination of
| developer incentives, and UI toolkit design.
| aasasd wrote:
| > _I believe the only way to position child HWNDs remains
| manual absolute positions? so while your button might look
| native, your collection of two buttons won 't._
|
| I thought the native APIs provided some kinds of constraints,
| like 'these go into corners, and this is next to that'? Such
| approach is sorta necessary when windows can be resized. And
| I thought that UI builders like Visual Basic depended on
| these constraints. However I didn't do much manual UI, so
| perhaps the programmer indeed has to recalculate everything
| in pixels when something moves or is resized--like we did
| back in the day before we knew better.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Which is the "native" API - win32, MFC/ATL, Form builder,
| WPF, or MAUI? If you're dealing with HWNDs directly, it's
| either win32 or MFC/ATL, but those haven't been touched in
| tens of years in favor of the current .NET APIs.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Win32 does not do automatic layout.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| The biggest thing is that a much larger percentage of Mac apps
| are written using the native UI toolkits, which receive most of
| the aesthetic changes for "free" (even in lieu of
| updates/recompiles). There's also stronger expectation from
| users for apps to fit in, so even devs who write in foreign
| toolkits (e.g. electron) are more likely to put in the effort
| to mimic the native toolkit, because failure to do so makes
| their app look crusty and outdated relative to the rest of the
| system and other apps.
|
| Under Windows, the rule has been that basically anything goes,
| and that's been true for upwards of two decades. Anybody who
| used Windows 98/2K/XP can probably name several apps they
| remember using totally custom UI off the top of their heads.
| That never really changed. Custom UI has become a lot less wild
| looking, but it's still custom (which means no "free" updates),
| and on top of that there's no incentive for developers to
| update their apps to match the latest look.
| code_duck wrote:
| But the programs we are discussing here are parts of windows
| written by Microsoft with their own toolkits.
| siproprio wrote:
| > Under Windows, the rule has been that basically anything
| goes
|
| Those rules were set by example by microsoft.
| deltron3030 wrote:
| I think it relates to how their internal structure is set up
| and their brand positioning. Apple has only one design team and
| design system I think, and only caters to folks who prefer
| simplicity over power features.
|
| I suspect that Windows is more like compilation of what
| different teams produce at MS, each with their own design
| opinions and target audience.
|
| I can only imagine how challenging it is to serve beginners and
| power users with the same UI at the same time in Windows, which
| kinda implies different UI densities depending on the part of
| the OS or type of widget.
|
| Apple has the advantage that they get away with simplifying
| things and have built a brand image around being easy to use.
| machello13 wrote:
| > macOS only caters to folks who prefer simplicity over power
| features
|
| This is said quite often, almost as a given, but I never
| thought it reflected reality. macOS has an abundance of
| useful features for power users -- system services,
| automator, AppleScript, tons of productivity touches like
| titlebar proxy icons and universal drag-and-drop support...
| not to mention it's all built on Unix so a terminal is right
| there for anything not exposed in the UI.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I think it is because breaking API changes are introduced
| often, and most apps only work across a narrow window of 2-3
| major releases.
| overgard wrote:
| 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.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I rarely use Windows but this is indeed ridiculous. I find
| myself guessing which button or link is hiding the dialogue
| that I really want. In almost all cases I just want the one
| from Windows 95, like display settings, but end up opening the
| wrong ones and seemingly going in circles before I finally
| crack the code.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| TBH I don't really see how the Settings app is an embarrassment
| at this point in time. This was definitely true in Windows 8
| and early Windows 10 versions, but with the leaps and bounds
| it's made since, I feel like 'settings app suxx' is a meme that
| has overstayed its welcome.
| overgard wrote:
| I don't sit around configuring my machine so I can't really
| say if it's gotten better, but I know the past 5 years have
| taught me too look anywhere but there. There's never been a
| good reason to have two different overlapping configuration
| apps.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I've used it fairly recently and it still has only the
| absolutely most common settings you'd want to change. 90% of
| the settings are still in the control panel.
|
| It will continue to suck until they've actually moved all the
| settings from the control panel into settings.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I do not have much to do with windows these days, but if you
| try to cange advanced network interface settings or audio
| settings beyond selecting a single input, you stil need to
| find the link to the old panel hidden somewhere. Also, good
| luck changing WiFi settings from the fluid menu.
|
| And lastly, while it always stays responsive, control of the
| background processes is also lacking. I spent quite some time
| restarting the download of a system language, just because I
| started it while having DNS issues (and to fix those... see
| above).
|
| I personally don't mind the older designs being mixed in,
| especially since most of them look good enough with the
| updated buttons, but the settings panel is, in its current
| state, still a sidegrade at best.
| Const-me wrote:
| I mostly agree, but if you use US English GUI locale there's a
| shortcut -- both new settings, and old control panel, have
| built-in search.
|
| Very often I don't bother opening either of them, instead using
| start menu search. For instance, to open the old "network and
| sharing center" GUI I press Win key, type "netw", and press
| enter.
| nwmcsween wrote:
| The settings app completely mauls things as well, turning off
| static DNS will just completely remove _all_ DNS servers
| instead of using dhcp like adapter settings
| koyote wrote:
| 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 somehow found itself on my
| machine. I had to give up as I could not find the option in the
| new Settings screen and it seemed to have disappeared (or
| moved?) from the usual place in the Control Panel...
| kaetemi wrote:
| Yep. It seems to occasionally add keyboard layouts if your
| region, language, and keyboard layout are different. Not
| handy if you live abroad. The new UI assumes it's more clever
| than the user.
| sandermvanvliet wrote:
| 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.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| 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.
| fifticon wrote:
| I had this too. I found and fixed the setting in the
| registry. They seem to have arrived at an UI design that
| cannot correctly represent the possible states of the
| underlying "real" model. Their current GUI for managing
| installed language keyboards is unfortunate. It appears to be
| optimized for a perceived majority of users only needing a
| single layout, in a way that makes it difficult to manage
| multiple layouts. Somehow their UI mix the keyboard layouts
| together with the GUI display language. I don't quite
| understand, why they don't just let the user manage a simple
| list of installed keyboard layouts (I believe it used to work
| that way, and behind the scenes it probably still does?)
| zamadatix wrote:
| I don't think the Fluent+Metro stuff is so different as to be a
| real consistency issue. Certainly minor inconsistencies that can
| be easily pointed out in a list but little that makes a typical
| user think "this is a completely different thing I'm using". The
| rest of the "old" stuff seems to have been made visually
| consistent in the 7 era even if the tools themselves originated
| from different eras with most gaining high DPI support and
| following the newer theming, again not a consistency issue in
| itself. There are a few REALLY old dialogs called by ODBC and
| maybe some others but I can't think of any you run into unless
| you're intentionally looking to run old software that will call
| them. So technically 3 but really 2 really noticeable UI
| environments in day to day.
|
| I'm worried with 11 it'll be a repeat of Windows 10 where at the
| start you're constantly using "yet another UI". At this point
| it's nearly gotten decent to the point if you aren't a sysadmin
| (MMC, regedit, task manager, advanced control panel items not
| nowadays part of Settings) you rarely run into the "old" style
| stuff with the one exception of File Explorer. Hopefully it
| doesn't take another 6 years to be saying that about Fluent/Metro
| stuff being updated to match 11's new look.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The inconsistency doesn't bother me so much as a lack of
| immediate responsiveness when I start a program.
|
| Sometimes I can wait 30 seconds after clicking on the menu before
| there is visual indication that the program is really loading. In
| that time I don't know if I should click again, reboot the
| computer, walk away for 5 minutes for the services to settle, or
| start diagnosing the problem and take remedial action.
|
| Part of a 'computer users bill of rights' is getting rid of all
| hourglasses and spinners and always having clear visual
| indication that progress is being made.
| agumonkey wrote:
| That bill has never been passed it seems, in the mainstream
| that is. I've been wondering how to design a system that would
| focus more on this aspect. Opportunities here.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Look at how you get correct progress bars for free with
| Hadoop. If it is that easy to do for a huge distributed
| cluster with 100+ machines imagine how easy it could be to do
| on a small scale.
|
| What if web browsers told the user outright which third party
| services were responsible for the world wide wait?
|
| One pet peeve of mine is the CDN distributed JavaScript in
| which people download 20 files of which they only need 2,
| have 8 in the cache, the rest loading efficiently, but the
| last DNS lookup hangs and causes a 30 sec timeout.
|
| If customers knew who the blame then the brand destruction
| would progress that much quicker; and I wouldn't be facing
| the sisphyian journey of proving over and over to sheeple
| that that the javascript CDN slightly improves median latency
| at the cost of vastly worse tail latency.
| agumonkey wrote:
| there was a contravariant scheme where web became
| chromeless, everything was ultra cute, flat and abstracted
| away while the web became more and more sophisticated (js
| loading, cdn, reactive/components) too
|
| back in the days you had more information about the
| technical details of browsing (and prior to that, some
| browser exposed GC/ram use as a toolbar button)
| cududa wrote:
| ...that's because you have a set job with constraints and
| machines dedicated to that sole task in a controlled
| environment. Personal computing, third party drivers,
| background tasks, etc all impact this.
| noxer wrote:
| If you kill dwm.exe (Desktop Window Manager) or if it crashes in
| widows 10 you can see the old UI on all windows that are open for
| maybe a second or so before dwm.exe comes back. (obviously not
| recommendation on "production" machines)
| elktea wrote:
| speaking of UI inconsistencies - why did the author of this page
| thing it was a good idea to hijack my page up/down buttons. come
| on man.
| cryptoz wrote:
| I really disliked the experience of trying to read that page so
| much I just chose not to read it. What a surprisingly awful
| experience - I'd really encourage the author to remove that.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Not just a terrible idea, but it was completely unnecessary.
| The highjacked PgUp/Dn keys scroll the screenshot galleries
| horizontally, but so do the left and right arrow keys just
| like in other image galleries.
|
| It did remind me to try a pair of browser shortcuts that I
| haven't used in probably ten years: Space and Shift+Space.
| They work!
| Boomerchick wrote:
| The irony.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I think it's caused by the stock WordPress image gallery
| widget. I've noticed the same issue in a KDE blog[1] also built
| with WordPress.
|
| [1]: https://pointieststick.com/2021/06/11/this-week-in-kde-
| plasm...
| ToFab123 wrote:
| Win 3.1 File Open Dialog can be found in Windows 11
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/o12no7/still_rocki...
| aasasd wrote:
| Afaik the Win3 file dialog gets called up by some old apps that
| use old APIs. I think I even ran into it in Wine.
|
| The analog in Unix apps are GTK's file dialogs, which always
| look jarring and out-of-place anywhere other than Gnome (and
| maybe XFCE and KDE, dunno)--making me feel like I stepped into
| 90s Unix with those Motif-derived concrete slabs. Plus they're
| un-integrated with non-Linux OSes, missing features. And the
| dialogs keep being dragged around by GTK apps--open Gimp on Mac
| or Windows and there you go: GTK dialogs.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think the tray and notification system is cruel.
|
| When I was a kid I saw other kids torment a horse by holding a
| hand up, getting the horse to turn away, then slapping the horse
| with the other hand.
|
| The tray is always popping up notifications that tell me to click
| on them but clicking on them does nothing. The notification often
| covers the UI elements that I need to respond to the
| notification. There is no way to clear the notification except to
| wait for the notification to be cleared.
|
| It's cruel, and even more cruel that if the notification isn't
| just actively in the way of your work and acting on the
| notification but the notification frequently disappears before
| you can act on it and you can't count on scrolling back and
| looking at it later.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I wish that operating systems (Windows, KDE) placed transient
| notifications in a "notification area" like older Windows and
| Android (before Android added popup notifications), where they
| don't cover up your work (like Windows/KDE/Mac notifications),
| you can see at a glance how many and which notifications are
| present (unlike Windows's Action Center with popups disabled),
| and remain until explicitly dismissed or responded to (unlike
| the current disappearing notifications).
|
| Sadly, on Windows 10, the bottom-left of the taskbar is already
| used for app launchers, and the bottom-right is already
| occupied with a clock, volume indicators, a "system tray" for
| background apps that you can't close, etc. It's even worse on
| KDE than on Windows, since there are a lot more applets in the
| bottom-right of my screen, and you can't control the order of
| icons in your system tray. Perhaps with Windows 11 moving apps
| to the center of the taskbar, a row of notification icons could
| be added to the left.
| worble wrote:
| If you're using a non-home version of Windows, open the Policy
| Editor, go to User Configuration -> Administrative Templates ->
| All Settings, find "Remove Notifications and Action Center",
| enable it, and poof! Annoying distractions begone.
| sockaddr wrote:
| I grew up with Windows as my daily driver so I feel a bit of
| nostalgia but after switching over to macOS about a decade ago
| when I look at Windows it always feels to me like their
| engineering/design efforts are just alright with getting things
| 85% correct and then never finishing the job. It's the last 15%
| where you start seeing attention to detail, treatment of edge
| cases, and thoughtfulness.
|
| To me it feels like the OS simply doesn't respect the user's
| time.
| podunkPDX wrote:
| I have so many irritants in the experience of using windows
| professionally, that I'm not going to waste time discussing it.
|
| I will leave you with one observation though.
|
| For any given text box in Windows, I have found that CTRL-A may
| or may not Select All.
| albanread wrote:
| If Microsoft were a person; they would be a rich, lucky, lazy,
| easily distracted person who takes zero pride in their work,
| content to leave inconsistent garbage littering a product used by
| hundreds of millions because they are just too bored by the whole
| thing to bother fixing it.
| curiousmindz wrote:
| 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 Windows 10.
| jolux wrote:
| As a primary macOS user who has also done professional Windows
| development, I am simultaneously blown away by the quality of
| the development environments and tools (PowerShell! C#! .NET!
| Visual Studio!) available on Windows and more or less disgusted
| with the inconsistency in using the operating system itself. It
| doesn't feel like Microsoft has had a consistent vision for how
| their UI is supposed to work for longer than five years at a
| time, if that. Sure, it's only an annoyance, but why the hell
| is it a problem in the first place? I can only conclude either
| that they do not see it as a problem, or that they are
| incapable of fixing it.
|
| I was a Windows user until 2014. Every time I think about
| switching back (mostly because WSL is so good) I have to think
| about putting up with the terrible UI.
| qball wrote:
| >I can only conclude either that they do not see it as a
| problem, or that they are incapable of fixing it.
|
| They really shot themselves in the foot 10 years ago when
| they decided to go all-in on making their desktop and server
| OSes a giant advertisement for their tablets.
|
| Which nobody bought, of course. Didn't help that it took them
| 4 years to get up to feature parity with what you could do on
| iOS and Android out of the box (like support for SQLite) or
| that the sandboxed nature of WinRT/UWP meant that you had to
| jump through a bunch of extra hoops if you so much dared to
| save a file to the local machine.
|
| They just haven't recovered from that, have had zero
| incentive to improve, and it shows (MS lost the mobile OS war
| just as hard as IBM lost the desktop OS war); workplaces are
| going to buy licenses no matter what, and home users only got
| the ability to pass through _a subset_ of consumer-level
| nVidia GPUs (which IIRC doesn 't apply to laptops, so you're
| still stuck there) to a Windows guest VM thanks to a recent
| driver hack, and that's only for technically competent users
| who are running Linux on hardware that isn't cutting edge
| (yep, it's still a problem for Linux) and who are willing to
| accept the associated 5% performance penalty.
|
| No free solutions to force MS to clean up their act means
| they just won't, no matter how many collective years of human
| life is wasted clicking through 5000 different boxes now.
| binarybanana wrote:
| >and home users only got the ability to pass through a
| subset of consumer-level nVidia GPUs (which IIRC doesn't
| apply to laptops, so you're still stuck there)
|
| That's not quite correct any longer. Nvidia now supports
| passthrough on all consumer GPUs that work with their
| current driver. This also includes laptops with Nvidia
| chips and they've been actively fixing bugs and
| compatibility problems in every driver release since then.
|
| Before official support the Nvidia kernel driver just
| crashed Windows with a BSOD on my laptop. Then it suddenly
| worked, but I wasn't able to open the control panel and
| worse, the HDMI output didn't work. The driver after that
| fixed those problems. The only things still not working are
| voltage and power monitoring, although temps work.
|
| Additionally, and I know this is a special case,
| performance is actually _better_ than on bare metal. The
| reason is that in a VM I can inject a modded VBIOS with
| higher power limits and that gives me a nice 15-20% boost.
| I can 't do that on bare metal because the VBIOS is stored
| in the system firmware and accessed via an ACPI method by
| the driver. Sadly only signed firmware can be flashed
| directly and even a flash programmer wouldn't help because
| at boot the firmware is verified and overwritten by a clean
| if it doesn't pass. This doesn't matter for desktop chips,
| but on a laptop you can actually get way more FPS if the
| power limits are ridiculously low by default! In my case I
| went from 30W or so to 75W (PCIe limit) and even though
| clocks stayed the same, games ran much faster. I guess it
| was hitting power limits and throttled, but didn't down
| lock because clocks only depend on voltage and available
| voltage level on temperature. I also ever saw power limits
| (via AfterBurner OSD) in furmark, but apparently it was
| also limited in other workloads without indicating it. With
| the modded VBIOS I don't even see power limits in furmark.
| It's either voltage or temps.
| igornadj wrote:
| The article shows clearly there are multiple design languages
| in very common tasks. The first point is that the volume picker
| is different from the latest design. This is something users
| interact with on a daily basis.
| code_duck wrote:
| It's very nice that you can install and all the driver, but
| what does that have to do with the control panel being a
| chaotic mess of layers from the past 25 years?
|
| I find this article rather informative as someone who hasn't
| used windows in 10 years. Now that it's all laid out there, I
| can clearly see that various layers of the control panel are
| using the visual style of Vista, 2000, and so forth.
|
| I suppose Microsoft has technical reasons for not making the
| some of the most important user-facing parts of their flagship
| product consistent in terms of interface, but it's quite a
| stretch to say that the consistency shown here is anything
| other than abysmal. No wonder my parents find this incredibly
| confusing.
| chaos_a wrote:
| Try right clicking anywhere. Almost everything has it's own
| fancy right click menu design for no good reason. Personally I
| don't find it annoying, but it's just silly that such a large
| company can't just stick to one design.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| It's kinda hilarious/sad that MS Office essentially developed
| their own UI framework which, as I understand it, was
| unavailable even for other teams in Microsoft, so stuff like
| ribbons and "advanced" pop up menus got reinvented even
| inside Microsoft, not to mention countless times outside
| Microsoft.
|
| So much of this is self-inflicted on the part of Microsoft.
| Macha wrote:
| Not unique to Microsoft here, there was an android police
| article where they identified like 10 inconsistent action
| bar implementations from Google apps then a follow up a
| year later doing the same for navigation drawers when they
| were the android UX elements Google were pushing most
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I don't understand why the UI is such a big deal to people
| here. I can deal with UI. I'll (grudgingly) accept changes to
| UI that break my hard-learned muscle memory and figure out the
| "new way" to do things.
|
| I just want a version of Windows that I am in control of. I
| don't want my machines (or my Customers' machines, for whom I
| am responsible to support) torpedoing themselves with shoddy
| updates that try to install at inappropriate times (need to
| shut down your laptop to put it into a bag and head home--
| tough-- we're installing updates!).
|
| I can deal with UI. I've been learning new UI my whole life.
| The whole "it's not your computer anymore" tack Microsoft took
| with Windows 10 is condescending and abusive.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I concur.
|
| Until reading this article I didn't know Fluent Design, Metro
| and Windows 8 Win32 were supposed to be separate design
| languages; I'm still not convinced, and in any case I can only
| see those with the sharpest of eyes noticing any differences
| here.
|
| Calling out things like MMC, winver and screensaver settings as
| relics from Windows 95 also seems like a huge stretch to me.
| Even though their layout has remained the same (which is a good
| thing; they do their job well), their design language is quite
| clearly different from their Windows 95 counterparts.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Isn't it interesting that the inconsistency arguments mostly
| surfaces around software configuration, like "_Settings_ app is
| stupid" "I still use XP style _driver installation_ screen"
| etc?
|
| It makes sense why it's not much of an issue on other GUI
| environments: in GNU/Linux and macOS, only what's available on
| GUI is available on GUI, and the rest goes to the unified scary
| black screen with very task specific procedures.
|
| Only in Windows the GUI is primary means of configuration and
| only Windows carry over old GUI associated with each
| configuration items.
| Closi wrote:
| It's a good point - I wonder if the actual user _really_ sees
| an old-looking GUI screen as worse than an arcane terminal
| configuration.
| TheSmiddy wrote:
| an arcane terminal configuration at least opens up the
| possibility of 3rd party settings GUI's to "unlock the
| hidden potential of your operating system" for the user who
| wants to tinker but with the safety rails still attached.
| oblio wrote:
| Most of the Windows stuff can be automated via WMI.
| audunw wrote:
| > In day-to-day usage, I have rarely been annoyed by these
| "inconsistencies".
|
| Don't you ever have to change sound settings? Because I have to
| deal with that every week, and have to dig through 3 different
| style of UIs and several different windows/dialogs to get to
| what I need.
|
| Everything related to control panel / settings is a giant mess,
| and it's often really hard to find the settings you want,
| especially if you don't already know where it is. Some things
| is in the new UI, some in an old UI.
|
| It's actually one of the main reasons why I really don't want
| to use Windows for my home laptop. Windows does have it
| strengths, and I don't mind using it at work, but I really
| don't want any of that bullsh*t when I get home from work.
| MikusR wrote:
| Can you explain what sound settings are you changing?
| dalmo3 wrote:
| Right click on the volume icon > Sounds - goes straight to
| the old XPish UI, which offers most if not all settings.
| SanJacobs wrote:
| Because this exists, I've never understood why they made
| another one, but missing half the options
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, people bash Linux
| distros for inconsistent UIs so I get a kick out of pointing
| out that the shoe is on the other foot.
| [deleted]
| unethical_ban wrote:
| My beef is mostly with the lack of consistency with the control
| panel and settings. They have "Win10"ed most of it by now,
| though, but for several years you had this weird, often
| overlapping set of UIs from Win7 and Win10.
|
| Minor things like Win10 vs. Metro are less obvious, though.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| mmis1000 wrote:
| yep... It now have about 3 or 4 dawn places for you to
| configure.
|
| The wifi and hotspots are in metro ui setting app.
|
| Interfaces are in its own standalone app. (win7 style)
|
| However... The firewall are in a xp style standalone app.
|
| Can't they combine them into one app or at least make a
| folder that contains link to them?
| stinos wrote:
| 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.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Maybe the Windows God Mode "cheat" would help. It has all
| Windows settings in one place. You can create a direct
| shortcut to any of them from there. Activate it be creating a
| new folder and naming it
| "GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}".
| azalemeth wrote:
| I still can't believe this works. People criticise MacOS or
| linux for hiding configuration information across a
| thousand different files (and that ignores the whole dconf
| thing!), but a random hex magic folder does indeed take the
| biscuit.
|
| Also -- it looks great! Why isn't that an option somewhere
| in Control Panels?
| nxc18 wrote:
| I find it hilarious that even in such a comprehensive post, the
| author missed some:
|
| Some apps are now shipping with "Fluent but inconsistently
| round", mostly the ones that use WinUI. Maps is a good example
| where this is noticeable. You can see some screenshots in link
| below.
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/3767
| didymospl wrote:
| Semi-related: if you enjoy classic Windows UI and feel like going
| to a nostalgia trip there's a great little game which will make
| you feel it's the turn of the millennium again - Progressbar95.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with its creators in any way, just
| wanted to share some fun.
| bitL wrote:
| I absolutely hate that if I open control panel, I can only focus
| on a single thing instead of having multiple windows open. My
| 64-core PC is not a smartphone, thank you very much!
| bruce343434 wrote:
| yes! modern UI feels so "trapped".
| cprecioso wrote:
| I feel you could a whole post also with just the inconsistencies
| in context menus. I remember a few releases of Windows 10 where
| already in the first screen right out of OOBE, you would get
| differently-styled context menus depending on where you clicked.
| tomaszs wrote:
| 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.
| eric__cartman wrote:
| I remember doing this with my Intel Atom netbook because it had
| the processing power of a baked potato, but with any modern
| system (something made in the last 8 years) with GPU
| acceleration, does it matter? I haven't noticed much of a
| difference in my Thinkpad with a fourth generation i5. Which is
| the oldest machine I have Windows installed on.
| neelc wrote:
| 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 touched very
| easily without breaking compatibility, And that means many old UI
| elements may stay, that's a side effect.
|
| While desktop Linux/BSD isn't exactly well known for it's UIs, I
| found GNOME 3/40 to be more consistent UI-wise than Windows 10,
| being a user of GNOME 3 on FreeBSD at home (which I am typing
| this comment from), and helping port GNOME 40, while
| (unsurprisingly) using Windows 10 at $DAYJOB.
|
| But then GNOME, KDE, Apple, et al. is more willing to break
| things than Windows is. They aren't as bound to legacy
| compatibility, so old UI elements can be shed easily.
| code_duck wrote:
| Backwards compatibility would be the most likely explanation
| for why the settings panel has interfaces from the last five
| operating systems versions. Considering how flaky Windows
| settings have been historically, and how complex it must be (in
| part due to the 40 years of backwards compatibility) it surely
| wasn't practical to completely rewrite those components.
| strictfp wrote:
| I'm also involved with Microsoft, and my view is that the
| culture is to move on to the next goal too soon after the next
| gen solutions have been developed.
|
| So they make control panel 2.0, reach 70% coverage, launch, and
| never move the remaining features into the new version so they
| can sunset the old one.
| KKKKkkkk1 wrote:
| _The reason why Windows is full of UI inconsistencies is
| (largely) because of one thing: backwards compatibility._
|
| I've been a Windows user since Windows 3.11. I suggest another
| explanation: Microsoft has been a monopoly in desktop OSs for
| 40 years, and it shows.
| muterad_murilax wrote:
| Surely at least the old bitmap graphics could be updated
| without breaking backwards compatibility?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| There's some intuitive logic to this. But it's also really
| really hard to understand why they cannot write modern
| interfaces for all the backwards compatible systems. Just
| pretty it all up.
|
| It's bizarre that to do some basic audio or networking
| configuration I have to wander through 2-3 generations of UI.
| meowkit wrote:
| I work on the core OS.
|
| This is the answer. Now it could be done to maintain backwards
| compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice
| is not worth the squeeze and there are more important things to
| focus on (such as making the OS work/build in such a way that
| there won't be inconsistencies in the future).
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| Could you ever see Microsoft dropping the registry?
|
| My probably unpopular opinion is that the registry is the
| worst feature in Windows. It's bloat directly impacts the
| speed of the operating system.
|
| Seems like such a waste for so many advancements in Windows
| but the registry sticks around like a bad hangover.
| em500 wrote:
| > It's bloat directly impacts the speed of the operating
| system.
|
| Do you have any evidence of this? I remember in the XP days
| the German c't computer magazine tested populating the
| registry with hundreds MBs of garbage and found no
| performance impact at all.
| runxel wrote:
| It is more on the contrary. The registry is one of the most
| well-thought features of Windows.
|
| Also there is nothing like "bloat". No process needs too
| loop around or smth like that, so there is literally no way
| to have a forgotten registry item slowing down your PC.
|
| And last but not least: What are the alternatives? .plist
| config files like with Apple, scattering around the system?
| for_xyz wrote:
| If you drop something, then you need some kind of
| replacement for that.
|
| I don't see any alternative on where entire OS could be
| configured other than registry.
| bmn__ wrote:
| KDE and all its applications and a majority of other
| Linux desktop application use the configuration laid out
| in <https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-
| spec/>.
| tored wrote:
| If I remember correctly there was an internal effort at
| Microsoft to scrap the registry (Longhorn?) but they
| decided not to, and probably because a registry is actually
| a good idea and necessary to get something performant
| (compared to ini files).
|
| The critique against the Windows registry stems from the
| Windows 95 days when the registry could become corrupt and
| repair or reinstall was necessary. However since then the
| registry works like a database, it has transaction logs and
| simultaneous writes are atomic. Registry is also strongly
| typed, not a bunch of strings. Registry can easily be
| backed up and restored.
| detaro wrote:
| Probably because Longhorn tried to replace even more
| parts of Windows with a database-like system, and they'd
| have rolled the registry-equivalent into that, if it had
| succeeded.
| secondcoming wrote:
| How is it worse than having config files scattered around
| in distro-specific locations?
| alexvoda wrote:
| And how is it worse than dconf? People hated on dconf
| during the transition to systemd, but it is here now.
|
| I do not really think one is better than the other.
| SSLy wrote:
| dconf has a nice schema that you can see with the editor
| occamrazor wrote:
| As other comments point out, there is nothing wrong with
| the registry itself. On the other hand the editor (regedt)
| is terrible.
| jpeter wrote:
| Is this also the reason why there are no tabs in windows
| explorer?
| Flockster wrote:
| I'm a TreeStyleTab user in Firefox with always >200 Tabs
| open. But I never got the idea of Tabs in Explorer (or
| Finder for that matter).
|
| When I use multiple Explorer Views, most of the time I do
| it, to interact between them. This is not the case for
| websites.
|
| So for drag and drop interactions, two windows always beat
| the drag, hover over the other tab until it catches my
| intend to switch to this tab, and drop it there workflow.
|
| The same goes for copy and paste. Ctrl+c, alt+tab, ctrl+v.
| I'm sure there is a corresponding command to cycle through
| the tabs, but alt+tab is deep muscle memory, that it beats
| this command always.
| lucumo wrote:
| > I'm sure there is a corresponding command to cycle
| through the tabs, but alt+tab is deep muscle memory, that
| it beats this command always.
|
| It's ctrl+tab. And shift will reverse direction in both.
| It's nice and related.
|
| And then there's MacOS, where cmd-tab doesn't cycle
| through windows, but through applications. Cmd-` cycles
| through windows of the same application. Because
| apparently, using multiple applications _and_ multiple
| windows means you 're a bad boy and need to be punished.
| filchermcurr wrote:
| Weird, I never saw it as a punishment. It's actually a
| lot faster to get where you need to go, in my experience.
| Not having to filter through both application and window
| makes it take slightly less thought and effort than
| flipping through just one application's windows. Plus
| switching between applications is a lot easier when there
| are only five listed instead of five + 20 windows.
|
| I guess it's dependent on the number of applications and
| windows you have going at any given time.
| temac wrote:
| Generalized tabs accros even different programs is an
| experiment that has been attempted a few years ago in a few
| insider builds, but has been quickly abandoned. IMO it was
| too complex from a UX pov, duplicated some of the use cases
| of virtual desktops, etc. Maybe had they tried tabs for
| single applications, it would have succeeded. In this
| alternate universe we may not have the new Windows Terminal
| program though (IIRC adding tabs specifically in
| console.exe was prevented because they were about to start
| this grand inter-program tab design instead, and Windows
| Terminal was started after the experiment failed)
| blackoil wrote:
| It is a power user feature which most users won't will not
| appreciate. I am using Mac for about 7 years now, and
| almost never use tabs in Finder.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Tabs are great for saving screen real estate. Finder
| windows are relatively small and, with large screens, the
| need to cram two or more folders into the same window
| ceases to exist. It's easier to remember the window to
| the right is my docs folder and the one to the left is
| the downloads one.
| tveyben wrote:
| I stopped using Windows file explorer more than a decade
| ago when I learned about spatial file managers.
|
| I have been in love with - and 10x more productive using
| - TotalCommander!
|
| The ability to >98% of the file related tasks from the
| keyboard is very addictive!!!
| bmn__ wrote:
| You have confused terminology. TC is an example of
| orthodox file manager. Explorer is an example of spatial
| file manager.
| Solocomplex wrote:
| They tried modernizing with Windows RT, which was actually
| very smooth and functional if it wasn't so locked down.
| cheschire wrote:
| Wasn't RT just windows 8 with an ARM build target and win32
| stuff removed so they could sell cheaper tablets?
|
| So if you wanted an "unlocked" windows RT, couldn't you
| just have run windows 8?
| qball wrote:
| >win32 stuff removed
|
| Win32 was not removed from Windows RT, but your access to
| it (if your name wasn't "Microsoft"; because that low-
| level access was reportedly how they got Office on it)
| was.
|
| And because of Secure Boot, which (unlike x86, for now)
| is mandated enabled for Windows on ARM systems, you had
| to wait for an unpatchable security hole in the booting
| process (which, while it exists, wasn't relevant until
| past the end of the Surface RT's lifecycle), you couldn't
| run full Windows 8 or a tablet-first Linux distro.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Stating that the UI consistency issues are due to backwards
| compatibility is stretching the truth to the point of
| outright deception.
|
| Backwards compatibility is not what stops Microsoft from
| updating the GUIs for their own components. It is not the
| reason that the components that _have_ been updated failed to
| carry forward 100% of the features of the components they 're
| replacing, necessitating the ongoing use of the legacy
| components. It is not the reason reams of GUIs have gone
| untouched for 20 years. It is not the reason Windows now has
| at least 4 versions(!) of Performance Monitor, all of which
| are broken in at least one glaring way. (More on that below.)
|
| The _believable_ reasons for the GUI inconsistencies I 've
| heard are:
|
| 1) API churn, because of which the UI teams did not have
| sufficient time to work on features versus playing catchup.
|
| 2) Bad system GUI APIs that are very difficult for even in-
| house teams to work with.
|
| 3) Unwillingness to take ownership of legacy code, with
| literally noone left at Microsoft willing to touch things
| like the ODBC connections panel or the Component Services
| snapin. People prefer to add new things instead of fixing or
| removing old things because it's "easier".
|
| Actually, let's just stop here for a second. That last point
| explains the performance monitor views. I mentioned at least
| 4 copies, written over decades, by different people. Each new
| team has steadfastly refused to touch (or remove!) the old
| code, but _hasn 't replaced the functionality_ of the old
| code, so now end-users need 4 different versions to get
| things done.
|
| These versions are:
|
| 1) The performance tab in Task Manager. The only GUI-based
| view that exposes some metrics such as GPU temperatures. Only
| shows a small number of fixed metrics.
|
| 2) Resource Monitor, which is opened from Task Manager. The
| only GUI-based view that shows certain per-process metrics,
| such as the names of files being touched, or per-connection
| network stats. Has permanent UI issues that will never be
| fixed, such as not using the system number formatting in some
| places, making large metrics unreadable as they change faster
| than users can count the digits. Similarly, the graphs take
| forever to change their vertical axes, making them useless
| 90% of the time.
|
| 3) The Performance Monitor MMC snapin. Totally legacy, with
| un-resizable controls that cut off text. Nonetheless, it is
| _absolutely essential_ because it provides the only live GUI
| view of 100% of the performance metrics available in the
| system. It is also the only way to record metrics and view
| recordings. It is the only GUI for creating metric logging
| that persists. Etc...
|
| 4) The various versions of Server Manager's performance
| views, which are so useless that I've literally never used
| it. Nobody can get their job done doing this, we're all still
| using RDP to connect to servers so that we can simultaneously
| launch the three tools above. Why RDP? Because 2 of the 3
| above do not support remoting.
|
| I could go on and on like this for _hours_ about how bad just
| this one aspect of Windows is, let alone the hundreds of
| other GUIs that have been butchered by bad decision making
| and _internal_ NIH syndrome leaving a trail of half-baked
| messes behind.
|
| Wait... did I say 4 performance metrics GUIs? I meant 5,
| because there's also the new Windows Admin Center, which was
| clearly written by people that have never had to diagnose a
| performance issue on a server. It's _very pretty and utterly
| useless_ , which means that: Nobody will use it, _and_ it
| will be superseded by someone else 's half-baked attempt in a
| few years, 100% guaranteed.
| tored wrote:
| This may explain why Microsoft have created so many email
| clients and none of them 100% work. *
| Microsoft Mail * Windows Messaging * Outlook
| Express * Microsoft Outlook * Windows Mail
| * Windows Live Mail * Mail.app
|
| There are also Microsoft Entourage for Mac OS, few
| different apps for mobile, and at least two web clients,
| Hotmail and Outlook.com. Did I miss any?
| rvba wrote:
| Why Outlook does not work?
| tored wrote:
| Tried it a year ago again and if I remember correctly it
| has tons of options but little customization and somewhat
| bloated mess. I like minimalism and I don't like cruft,
| things like how does the list of mails work when viewing
| 100+ and navigating at high speed with the keyboard and
| applying actions work. Most email client fails this btw.
|
| I think also I was annoyed over how one email list item
| was drawn, too big, thus reduces the number I can see at
| one time. Can't remember if I found anyway to customize
| that.
|
| I ended my Office subscription because I didn't really
| like the feeling of the applications. It feels like they
| have put lipstick on a pig. Yes, there is a minimal
| writing mode in Word, but beneath it is the same old
| steaming pile that seeps thru.
|
| But I'm somewhat harsh when evaluating software so maybe
| I'm missing something here.
| signal11 wrote:
| Microsoft Mail is a product from the early 90s for
| DOS/Classic Mac OS. Microsoft Internet Mail was a logical
| upgrade, then added support for newsgroups. Eventually,
| after the success of Outlook in the MS Office world, it
| rebranded to Outlook Express. You could still see echoes
| of Microsoft Internet Mail and News if you looked hard at
| Outlook Express, its executable was called msimn.exe.
|
| Windows Live Mail and Windows Mail were essentially
| newer, Vista-era versions of Outlook Express. It's the
| same program rebranded. Mail was bundled with Vista, Live
| Mail was a way to push the Live branding and get the
| newer program into the hands of those running older
| versions of the OS (WinXP).
|
| Microsoft Outlook is a different beast with a different
| lineage, part of MS Office, and can be thought of the
| "pro" version of the basic mail clients bundled with
| Windows.
|
| Yes, Microsoft could probably do with some branding
| discipline but the technology is quite predictable.
|
| I'm not sure what Mail.app is, I always thought that was
| Apple's. Entourage was IIRC a native 'designed for Apple'
| PIM that eventually made its way into Office for Mac,
| eventually they decided to rationalize and have one
| client -- Outlook.
|
| Hotmail / Outlook.com - Outlook.com, again despite the
| confused branding, is Hotmail evolved. Over time,
| Microsoft slowly merged its consumer (Hotmail, Windows
| Live) UI with its 'pro' UI (Outlook for desktops,
| Exchange Web) so that these days they are all pretty
| similar. These days you also have Outlook's mobile apps
| for Android and iOS and those too have a familiar look
| and feel.
|
| I don't see any of these as a bad thing. Microsoft's
| history is linked to the history of personal computing
| and the ebbs and flows of market forces that shaped the
| PC biz and continues to shape today's technology. Given
| all the churn in this space, it's actually kind of
| awesome how their technology has evolved -- and will
| continue evolving, e.g. with all the focus on a web
| version of Office. But yes, their sudden shifts in
| branding is pretty sucky and they could do a lot better
| there.
|
| But "none of them 100% work" is pretty harsh. No mail
| client is right for every use case (except emacs,
| naturally -- if it doesn't work for you it's because you
| haven't written enough elisp yet). But these are very
| widely deployed products and do work for a good segment
| of their target market.
| tored wrote:
| Nice write up.
|
| Mail.app is what I call the new "modern" app shipped with
| Windows 10. Mostly garbage. Spends most of its time and
| your CPU to resynchronize your mails.
|
| My experience with these programs is that the predecessor
| can have feature X but the successor doesn't but has
| feature Y, similar what OP described.
|
| I'm always harsh when reviewing software. No need to be
| gentle about things that doesn't work well.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Stating that the UI consistency issues are due to
| backwards compatibility is stretching the truth to the
| point of outright deception.
|
| I am not familiar with Windows APIs but I can see this be
| the truth if MS made it possible for developers to plug
| inside this dialogs, like a printer driver would plug soem
| GUI changes in the panels , changing this would break a lot
| of devices.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Sure, and hence the logical thing to do is to create the
| new GUI side-by-side with the old one. That doesn't
| explain the non-extensible GUIs being left behind, or why
| the new uplifts are so piecemeal, or why they randomly
| leave out critical features.
| [deleted]
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| >It is also the only way to record metrics and view
| recordings.
|
| Does logman not working anymore? If not, hasn't it been
| replaced by PS APIs?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I did specify that this is related to GUI approaches, not
| command-line tools. Thankfully the "churn" in the CLI is
| much lower, but not zero. Most users are happy about the
| the migration from the legacy CMD-based tooling to
| PowerShell, but the latest crop of tools are abandoning
| that and reverting back. E.g.: "dotnet", "bicep", "aks",
| "az", etc... are all going back to the UNIX-style
| parameters for consistency with Linux, even though
| PowerShell is a demonstrably superior shell, especially
| on Windows.
|
| So even there, the unnecessary and counter-productive
| interface churn continues to the detriment of the users.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| This is exactly what unit tests are for. Besides, the
| business logic should be already fairly separated from the
| presentation logic.
|
| As for preventing inconsistencies in future, try getting your
| QA team back.
| azinman2 wrote:
| > Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have
| everything completely up to date, but the juice is not worth
| the squeeze and there are more important things to focus on
|
| You state that as fact, but I believe the poor UI situation
| is holding windows back from gaining market share. It's not
| just the way things look, but uniformly communicate a single
| experience. Microsoft used to be very integrated and had an
| entire ecosystem that was uniform. Letting this go has really
| hurt the brand IMHO, and creates a very low bar for third
| parties.
| Joeri wrote:
| The ecosystem was never uniform. In the 95/2000 days there
| was a lot of 3.11 UI everywhere, in the 7/8 days a lot of
| XP UI. Office always had its own UI conventions, often
| being the playground where new ideas were tested.
|
| It's not so much that microsoft let things go as it was
| taken from them. When computers became networked we needed
| ways of easily distributing applications across that
| network in secure, reliable and always up to date ways.
| Windows never had a good solution to that (not even today),
| because every install was fraught with peril, and every app
| had to roll its own update mechanism. Meanwhile the web was
| sandboxed and up to date by definition, dramatically
| lowering the barrier to entry for networked software.
| Anything that could move to the web did move to the web,
| which opened the door for chromebooks, which in turn
| fragmented the OS market, which made it uneconomical for
| companies to invest in a windows native codebase. Microsoft
| could have stopped this had they leaned hard into the
| concept of an app store and sandboxing around 2000, and
| hadn't stumbled so badly when it came to extending windows
| to mobile.
|
| I'm pretty sure that modernizing the entire windows UI
| doesn't change a thing for windows market share. But the
| reason to do it is not because it makes economic sense, it
| is because they should have pride in the products they
| make, and want them to be well-made.
| andi999 wrote:
| What market share is left there to gain? Ok 17% Mac OS,
| maybe 5% would switch to Windows?
| rocqua wrote:
| I think this inconsistent experience is what is opening
| the door for competitors like Apple and Linux.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I use Apple because their OS is a Unix AND their hardware
| is nicely built and well integrated with the OS.
|
| I use Linux because it's a way to run a good Unix-like OS
| on non-Apple hardware.
|
| The overwhelming majority of people who use Windows (or
| macOS) is because their computer came with it. As long as
| it mostly works, people don't care about which OS they
| are using.
| wayneftw wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of people on Windows are there
| because Microsoft bent over backwards to give businesses
| what they needed so that they could beat out Apple and
| IBM to win the desktop wars of the 80s and 90s. If
| businesses had never used Windows, nobody else would have
| and computers wouldn't come pre-installed with it.
| Personally, I use all of them for different purposes.
|
| I like Windows because it's more compatible than other
| OSes with any hardware that I can throw at it. It's also
| more stable than any other OS. My Macs have been broken
| multiple times throughout their life by simply upgrading
| to the next version of macOS, but Windows has always just
| kept on trucking along year after year. Another reason I
| love Windows is that it's got a high degree of
| flexibility. While Apple hides APIs and does everything
| they can to prevent you from doing things that they don't
| approve of, Microsoft does the exact opposite and
| publishes APIs to help you get it done. Mostly though, I
| just love the Windows UI and the Windows way of doing
| things. I find it to be very simple and obvious. The
| things I don't like are largely unseen, like the forced
| telemetry and updates.
|
| I use my Mac when I need to build or test something for
| iOS or macOS. Outside of that, I just can't stand the way
| they do anything. I find the UI and the UX of macOS to be
| absolutely hideous. The fact that you have to install
| third party stuff just to get basic features like "decent
| window management" is simply beyond the pale to me.
|
| For work, I started using a Linux desktop a few years ago
| because Windows was annoyingly slow when doing anything
| with npm/yarn/node_modules or Docker and I was doing more
| and more work with NodeJS and less with .NET/SQL
| Server/etc. So, I installed Manjaro with XFCE and that's
| when I found out that XFCE does a minimalist Windows
| style desktop better than Microsoft does. They have all
| the Windows features that I want, like Window snapping
| and none of the Windows features that I don't want. They
| even have a feature that I usually installed 7+ taskbar
| tweaker to get: They let you middle-click taskbar items
| to close the window (also you can drag/drop them),
| similar to how Chrome treats browser tabs. I've had
| Manjaro installed on multiple systems (desktops and
| laptops) for years now and I haven't seen any of the
| issues that people complain about here, like having to
| fiddle with their system to get it to work. Everything
| just worked for me since day one.
|
| Now I just use Windows for entertainment - I've got a NUC
| style PC at every TV and I have one gaming PC.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > The overwhelming majority of people on Windows are
| there because Microsoft bent over backwards to give
| businesses what they needed so that they could beat out
| Apple and IBM to win the desktop wars of the 80s and 90s.
|
| That's one case of "it came with the computer".
|
| But Microsoft was really clever at giving all the
| functionality companies want for their corporate issue
| computers. In the mid-2000's very few companies offered
| Macs as desktops because of that. I only have a work
| MacBook because it can authenticate against AD and has
| all the management automation required by my employer.
| That's also why a Linux laptop wasn't an option.
| molasses wrote:
| Oh come, Linux's UI is completely inconsistent, between
| toolkits, desktops, distros and the like.
| exoque wrote:
| The only way of MAYBE having a consistent experience on
| linux is to only use applications written for the DE of
| your choice isn't it? Use firefox on KDE and the
| consistency is already gone.
| Macha wrote:
| Is that any different to Firefox on macOS? In a way
| Firefox's current UI design aligns with the win 10 modern
| stuff, but that's more luck for MS than Firefox making a
| big effort to fit in, since it's mostly the same
| everywhere
| golergka wrote:
| Android had a pretty consistent UI experience.
| ismayilzadan wrote:
| No it hasn't. Just buy a phone from let's say Samsung and
| install any Google app. Google app will have a different
| UI look and feel than rest of the system.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| what? people are going to switch to linux for a more
| consistent UI?
|
| UI consistency just isn't that important to most people.
|
| See: electron applications.
| kaliszad wrote:
| That would be for the USA or Canada. Everywhere else,
| macOS is perhaps a rounding error. ChromeOS gains some
| traction and is probably more popular than macOS in the
| education market at least. Windows is still king at least
| in the world we consider as somewhat developed.
| signal11 wrote:
| Strategically, worrying about the low end "worse"
| competitor is more worthwhile than the higher end
| competitor. Eg IBM were not undone by a better mainframe.
|
| In Windows's case the "worse" competitor is ChromeOS and
| Chromebook, and Microsoft's basically thrown in the towel
| when it comes to native apps, so with time everyone who
| doesn't need pro Photoshop or AutoCAD _could_ just use a
| Chromebook.
|
| Note that you can run Word for Android on Chromebooks
| full-screen already.
| bennysomething wrote:
| I doubt anyone in finance will be moving off excel
| anytime soon. Yeah it's on Mac, but why pay more for
| that.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| You forgot about PC gaming. Kid growing up with Windows
| is a huge advantage. I think it cannot be overstated and
| Mircosoft played this game well.
| mcny wrote:
| I know stadia is so poorly managed that it is not even a
| worthy competitor but the concept is sound and nVidia's
| GeForce Now and Microsoft's x cloud will eventually work
| well enough on Google Chrome that between that and
| Proton, Windows' gaming advantage should become a little
| diminished over time?
|
| I haven't used android games on chrome os but things like
| candy crush should work just fine in chrome os by now?
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Interesting thought. Is it really stadias management to
| blame or are there other limits hard to overcome?
| jimmydorry wrote:
| The problem is the massive gulf between "works well
| enough" and "pleasant experience". Console users would
| still balk at the terrible performance of Stadia... let
| alone PC users that are used to being first class
| citizens in terms of experience and responsiveness.
|
| Assuming you have a really low latency to a Google
| datacentre, the Stadia experience is not particularly
| compelling enough to ditch running the game on bare
| metal.
|
| All of the above is moot though if you are not within a
| few ms latency of a Google datacentre though... which for
| most of the world is absolutely the case.
| Maken wrote:
| I would say that happened unintentionally, given how hard
| they tried for years to undermine the PC gaming market in
| favour of Xbox.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| MS put a lot of effort in DirectX, did not loose focus
| with the rise of mobiles and still is ahead of all other
| graphics apis.
| pier25 wrote:
| Maybe is not about gaining but stop losing users to MacOS
| and Chrome os.
|
| And one day Google will release desktop Fuchsia.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back
| from gaining market share.
|
| Big companies just love to jack around with Windows, and do
| things like prevent users from changing their desktop
| backgrounds (in the name of "security," of course), and
| Microsoft has always bent over backwards to give them the
| ability to do any stupid thing some corporate IT drone can
| think of, so they continue to be loved my companies around
| the globe.
|
| There's a _fundamental_ difference in the way that
| Microsoft and Apple have approached making an operating
| system. One treats it like a layer of software in an entire
| stack that someone else owns and controls, and the other
| makes PERSONAL devices. And it shows.
|
| And, of course, the Microsoft-slobbering trade press can't
| imagine a scenario where they don't try to prove that YOU
| should be running Windows because the numbers -- inflated
| by the Fortune 1000 -- says it's what "everyone" is
| running. Meanwhile, more than half the people I know now
| run NOT-Windows for their personal computing.
|
| Let's break out the corporate purchases from sales data,
| and then let's talk about actual, personal market share,
| and whether better UI/UX would help Microsoft in a heads-up
| battle against macOS or ChromeOS.
| kaliszad wrote:
| I have been in the corporate environment for more than 6
| year more on the administrator/ engineering side of
| things. Currently, I am about a year at OrgPad - a very
| small and quite alternative startup. Two extremes so to
| say. ;-)
|
| In my experience, Windows is still the target for most
| specialized or business software. Most of these things
| also demand a Windows Server component. Typical suspects
| are: "Personalmanagement" timesheet software basically
| (accounting working hours, vacation, bonuses etc. and
| making sure the right receipts are printed at the end of
| each month and more, like when somebody leaves the
| company, is ill or the is "Kurzarbeit" because the union
| with the employer settled on this). Another suspect is
| software for insurance and taxes, energy management
| (which in a stainless steel foundry is an important piece
| of software and keeps at least a handful of people fully
| employed), logistics software (usually also with needle
| printers that are able to still print "Durchschlag"
| carbon paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_paper
| which is fast and handy for the drivers). There is
| special software for measurement and production with
| complex machines, ovens, mills, spectrometers,
| microscopes, x-ray machines etc. Oh and then there is the
| internally developed application, that keeps running the
| company and will be replaced sometime during the next 10
| years with a different Windows native app if it is ever
| finished. And there is the MS SQL administration in
| addition to group policy for all the Windows computers
| everywhere that also is best done from a Windows
| computer.
|
| People are used to Windows, older generations in middle
| and slightly eastern european countries (former east
| Germany/ DDR included) especially. There just were no
| Macs in any company besides maybe a top design studio in
| the capital or regional hub. This is a big factor. In
| most companies, ordering certain behaviour just doesn't
| work in practise.
|
| In companies, every purchase is oriented towards
| "Abschreibung" or the amortisation period that is
| determined by "Abgabenordnung" if I am not mistaken -
| basically the tax. To be most efficient on paper, you
| have to use the device at least for the duration of the
| period determined by the state tax books, else you will
| have a bad tax audit etc. Anything that hasn't followed
| the rule will raise an eyebrow and somebody will have to
| explain otherwise you will likely pay more in taxes or
| whatever. I don't understand this stuff at all but I was
| told it works something like that and therefore you do so
| much accounting stuff such as inventory of basically
| everything that costs at least X, every piece of
| software, where you also get Microsoft and Oracle and
| other audits from time to time...
|
| If you are not in the business of selling/ writing
| enterprise or specialized software in some capacity, you
| don't really have to care. Most things work using a web
| browser nowadays, even some enterprise software some
| companies use. Some software is just more performant or
| can access certain APIs that aren't available in the web
| browser. Also, it is very hard to support anything for
| 10+ years in the webbrowser. Stuff just breaks too
| frequently on the web, even compared to Windows 10.
|
| In the end, people usually buy Windows, because it really
| is the only platform that actually works for 99,9% of
| things. You can spend a long time to support the CEO's
| Mac, because it is the CEO. Of course, most things
| running a web app or supporting infrastructure can be
| Linux or UNIX-based without an issue, but the OS on
| people's desks just is Windows and it will stay like that
| for a long time. There are few companies that have the
| resources to support something else on the desktop as
| well. I bet, these are in the software or hardware
| development or creative/ design/ art business and not
| much else.
|
| Education is a very special market, really anything goes
| there. Simple things tend to win, but what simple is
| changes school to school. :-) There are schools that it
| seems don't know what to do with their money and have
| dedicated IT department, supporting anything Apple,
| Google, Adobe, AutoDesk and Microsoft is not a problem
| there. There are schools that cannot even equip one IT
| classroom and students have to share computers each with
| a different OS and updates barely work because the
| internet connection is flaky.
| sorbits wrote:
| _> It's not just the way things look, but uniformly
| communicate a single experience. Microsoft used to be very
| integrated and had an entire ecosystem that was uniform_
|
| Their Office suite may have been internally consistent, but
| I did a bit of software for Windows 2000 (back when it was
| the latest version), and I found the UI of Windows (in
| general) inconsistent, scrollbars would e.g. have subtle
| difference between applications.
|
| I ended up using Qt for my own work, as I couldn't figure
| out what was the official / dominant style to follow.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back
| from gaining market share.
|
| I'm having a hard time believing that. While some Mac users
| who are used to a more integrated user experience might be
| deterred, I'm not sure that the os's ui esthetics really
| affect windows adoption. My feeling is that most people who
| use Windows do so because they're either (a) told to use it
| or (b) they choose to use it because it's the shortest path
| to doing what they want to do.
|
| I'm sure Microsoft know this and understand the tradeoffs
| very well
| andrew_ wrote:
| Windows user from 3.1 to Win 7 here. Once I saw the MacOS
| experience in 2012, I never looked back. an engineer
| might say the juice isn't worth the squeeze, but to a
| consumer, and a power user, the swath of UI and UX
| inconsistencies is what keeps me away from Windows.
| criley2 wrote:
| For the price of the absolute cheapest MacOS running
| computer (Mac Mini, with a monitor) one can get basically
| 2 entire Windows computers.
|
| For the cost of the average computer running MacOS, one
| could buy a TV, a console, a desktop Windows computer,
| and a laptop. Or whatever it may be. ($1500 on an iMac
| could be $400 console, $500 TV, $500 computer. Or
| whatever your break down is. For the lower middle class
| and working class, trying to 'gear up' their family and
| make their kids happy and be happy with their home, this
| is real math they have to do).
|
| While it is true that for those who are wealthy or who
| can justify the cost, the experience is very nice and
| justifiable, the cold hard facts of living in the western
| world is that most people would need to spend
| irresponsibly to use MacOS regularly.
|
| It is what it is but it's no surprise that the cheapest
| mass market OS has 90% market share, and anyone who
| thinks that "UX" is the reason instead of cost doesn't
| understand the industry fundamentally.
| andrew_ wrote:
| I don't understand how your views on cost-value are
| related to my views on the user interface and experience.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| I don't understand how your views on the user interface
| and experience are related to the Microsoft engineering
| tradeoffs you commented on.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > the cold hard facts of living in the western world is
| that most people would need to spend irresponsibly to use
| MacOS regularly.
|
| A $900 MacBook Air would probably have lasted far longer
| and needed less time troubleshooting than a $500 computer
| made with subpar components. The amortized costs are far
| lower with Apple products (or other products using higher
| quality components) compared to buying the cheapest
| devices made with the lowest quality components, so there
| is no point in comparing the two.
|
| And most people only need 1 computer, if that. I would
| actually bet most people can do everything they need to
| with iOS and an iPad would suffice. And other than the
| smaller screen size, I can see people make do with an
| iPhone even, especially if all you are doing is
| consuming.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > A $900 MacBook Air would probably have lasted far
| longer and needed less time troubleshooting than a $500
| computer made with subpar components.
|
| I've never seen a more-true statement on this site. Years
| ago, my wife was using a $500 Acer laptop, which was a
| cheap plastic POS, which broke after a couple of years. I
| bit the bullet, and bought a pre-owned Air for $900. She
| is still using it, 11 years later. I used to have to fix
| something on her Windows computer every other week. Now I
| hardly ever have to help her with anything.
|
| A year later, I bought another $900, used Air for my
| daughter. She is still using that, 10 years later. I
| bought a new MBP, and gave my son my 7-year-old version.
| I expect him to get many more years out of it.
|
| People who have never owned a MacBook expect that they
| "wear out" like a $500 laptop, but they just don't. They
| cost much less over the long run. It's like hiking boots.
| You can buy cheap ones every year, or bite the bullet,
| and pay 3 times more, and have a pair that lasts for 10
| years.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| That 11 year old Air can't run a recent OS that supports
| modern web browsers including security patches.
| rhodozelia wrote:
| For most users who are emailing, reading some web forum,
| social media, and maybe office that matters very little.
|
| Even fully up to date there is always another zero day,
| so for individuals doing nothing of particular importance
| the best bet is good up to date backups of the important
| files and when your software tools are working well to
| help you get whatever it is you do done, don't change
| them, and don't update them, because odds are there will
| be some regression, some feature removed, a change to a
| subscription model, some functionality now depends on the
| Internet, or some level of telemetry/spying.
|
| Software has become hostile to users. Everything is
| nearly malware now. Easily snap shotted and sandboxed VMs
| are just about the only way to maintain some level of
| consistency over a 5-10 year span where you are depending
| on the software to just keep doing what it is doing.
| secabeen wrote:
| Perhaps it would have but the Boots theory of wealth from
| Terry Pratchett still applies.
| manigandham wrote:
| Cost is not the same as value. Apple hardware routinely
| runs better, lasts longer, and has longer software
| support. This is reflected in the incredible demand and
| higher resale values.
|
| This actually helps makes new devices more affordable as
| the cost is amortized over a longer and more useful
| lifespan, while the secondary market serves others very
| well.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Most people use it because most people use it. It's
| what's compatible and widespread, and comfortable and
| known. It's the reason that people send docx files.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| I send PDFs, but always generated from docx files. I did
| the Open/Libre Office thing for about 15 years and if you
| do a lot of work in these you'll find that MS Office is
| simply superior. You can still use a mostly compatible
| version of odt with it. There's just too many handy
| things about MSO that I've learned it's worth paying for.
| One example is opening PDFs with Word and having it do a
| surprisingly good job at converting it to a Word doc.
| Very handy stuff.
| indymike wrote:
| > I'm sure Microsoft know this and understand the
| tradeoffs very well
|
| Microsoft understands keeping their customers. That is
| why backwards compatibility is king with Ms.
|
| Windows is not growing in adoption. It is under attack by
| Google (Android killed Windows on phones and Chromebooks
| are eating away the education market), Apple, and on the
| server, Linux.
| bennysomething wrote:
| I use it because it supports any bit of hardware thrown
| at it, with little fuss.
|
| I tried to go all Linux many times, gave up, I just
| wanted something that works.
| bkallus wrote:
| The exception to this is older hardware. My ATI Radeons
| are still useful as 1080p graphics adapters under Linux,
| but they are totally unsupported by Windows. My laser
| printer is in a similar situation.
| molasses wrote:
| It doesn't always work. I have two machines, one that has
| issues with a north bridge, which initially prevented
| shutdown and prohibits, suspend and hibernate. And
| another where the Bluetooth dies until reboot on an Intel
| wireless card. Another machine wouldn't upgrade due to a
| wireless card, that took about three days of
| troubleshooting. My Linux boxes glitch too. I rarely have
| stuff that just works.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| Hardware vs software issues right there.
| webmobdev wrote:
| I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back
| from gaining market share.
|
| I hope you jest. Windows has _far_ bigger problems than the
| uniformity of their UI - there 's the whole forced update
| thing, the whole _" we really need to spy on literally
| everything you do on our OS"_ approach, online
| advertisement built and integrated with the OS (based on
| the spying) ... these are the major issues that they need
| to fixed urgently if they wish to retain their userbase.
| Windows has been a continuing shitshow since Windows 8 ...
| molasses wrote:
| I tried win 10 recently on older hardware with 2gb ram.
| Long story short: totally unusable. Turned on Win 8.1 on
| machine with 2gb ram. That was pretty usable and almost
| pleasant by comparison. I used to think that distro was a
| stinky turd. The UI in 8.1 was very inconsistent and gave
| me hives. 10 has changed markedly already between big
| updates.
| chakkepolja wrote:
| For the first half I thought it was sarcasm.
| kavalg wrote:
| All this, plus the fact that Win10 has become increasingly
| unstable for me in the last 6 months (random restarts,
| nasty performance problems with WSL2 etc.) that it simply
| isn't worth the money anymore, unless you have some apps
| that only run on widows (e.g. games :))
| pix64 wrote:
| Honestly, it sounds like you have faulty HW.
| kavalg wrote:
| It could be. I only use it on my Lenovo idea pad S540 AMD
| / Ryzen 5. However, the overall user experience with
| Win10 just doesn't click with me, compared to e.g. Ubuntu
| Desktop. The thing feels slow, bloated and unstable. Not
| to mention the tendency to always stay connected and
| report telemetry of many kinds (you notice this when you
| are on a slow / intermittent connection).
| thrower123 wrote:
| Holding Windows back from gaining on their 90+% market
| share?
| aasasd wrote:
| > _creates a very low bar for third parties_
|
| The bar for third parties was always nonexistent. That was
| precisely the advantage of Windows which permitted the boom
| of development for it in the 90s-2000s.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Asking the obvious question: why aren't the UIs in newer
| Windows versions not "just" different themes over Win32
| widgets? Instead the UI theme seems to be tied to UI
| frameworks which seem to be created and discarded annually at
| Microsoft, so each time some genius decides to overhaul the
| UI, a completely new sediment layer is created instead of
| letting some UI designers tinker with a theme editor.
|
| I don't get it. Functional UI changes should be different
| from visual fluff, yet Windows seems to the only OS where the
| two aren't separated.
| paavohtl wrote:
| I guess one challenge with this is that old school Win32
| doesn't really support anything resembling automatic /
| responsive layout. All controls are of a fixed size in a
| fixed pixel location. This means you can't for example
| change the default font, add margin or padding or do any
| other significant changes without essentially breaking all
| existing applications.
| Macha wrote:
| This was historically the case, it's why despite the
| article calling out winver, folder properties, the run
| dialog as being from the win9x -> win2k period, they didn't
| look remotely as out of place in win7 as win10.
|
| Of course there are limits. iirc Windows 7 RTM had an
| obviously 3.1 derived file picker make it into the add
| fonts dialog until it was replaced in SP1 if my memory has
| the timing right. Despite using win32 widgets which had the
| correct theming, that didn't look native at all
| flohofwoe wrote:
| FWIW: I consider fixes like the improved environment
| variable editor in the "old" system control panel in
| Win10 much more important than the entire new settings
| panel mess. The same type of improvements would make a
| lot more sense for the rest of the builtin UIs instead of
| creating entirely new "construction sites" all the time,
| which will be left incomplete and outdated in a few years
| time as the current people are replaced with new people.
| fassssst wrote:
| There is no such thing as canonical "win32 widgets." There
| have always been several different UI libraries even for
| win32. The original win32 styling you get with CreateWindow
| doesn't support modern font rendering, high DPI, doesn't
| work well with touch, is only software rendering, doesn't
| support latest accessibility features, etc.
|
| The newer stuff sits on top of DirectX.
|
| The latest UI framework (XAML/WinUI) sits on top of a
| better rendering architecture (compositor) that itself
| wraps DirectX tech.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| There's no reason why the old Win32 window and widget
| foundation couldn't have been lifted on top of a modern
| rendering architecture though, there was certainly enough
| time to achieve this. This would also reduce the need for
| creating entirely new UI frameworks every year (or even
| better, higher level UI frameworks could be built on top
| of a modernized but backward compatible Win32 widget
| foundation instead of doing all their own rendering
| directly on top of DirectX).
|
| (TL;DR: the Windows UI mess looks to me like an
| organizational problem, not a technological problem. From
| the outside it looks like as the old guard is leaving,
| the new people coming in discard all the old code and
| instead prefer to start completely new projects, which of
| course is destined to fail, because the new people are
| repeating the same errors which had been identified and
| fixed decades ago).
| fassssst wrote:
| If you listed out all the requirements a modern UI
| framework needs you would find that the original Win32 UI
| API's are not viable. Especially if you want to support
| more than just C and C++.
|
| So much code is required to do things we now take for
| granted that the resulting patterns became new
| frameworks.
| thu2111 wrote:
| The Apple APIs date back to NeXTStep at the end of the
| 80s, yet they managed to mostly keep them fresh.
|
| Win32 is old and unviable because Microsoft hasn't
| bothered making comprehensive upgrades for it and never
| laid out a gap-free plan for how to move off it. They
| could have upgraded it more smoothly but never did.
| temac wrote:
| > such as making the OS work/build in such a way that there
| won't be inconsistencies in the future
|
| I'm always very skeptical of refusal to handle the past
| because of the promise that the same won't reiterate in the
| future. What could also happen is that 5 years from now, you
| or another dev justifies refusal to handle inconsistencies
| developed "temporarily" and or accidentally in the meantime
| with exactly the same reasoning.
|
| A more direct and simple observation is that if nobody is
| working on converging / cleaning up stuff, they don't
| converge and aren't cleaned up.
|
| As for the amount of backward compat already provided by
| Windows, it is good but not great anyway. Try to play old
| games, install/use old VS with a few patches, install/old
| Matlab, use old devices, etc... Hell even try to continue to
| use your semi-recent devices across new build of windows,
| like 20H2 breaking USB-C on my XPS 15 9560 (but now I'm
| ranting so I'll stop :D )
| emsy wrote:
| The juice is absolutely worth the squeeze. Everybody and
| their grandmas think Windows is a mess, yet theres no real
| alternative for most people, so there's no real incentive for
| MS to make it better (or for a start, stop making it worse
| with telemetry, forced restarts and adware).
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > yet theres no real alternative for most people
|
| I just don't buy that. Everyone I've ever persuaded to buy
| a Mac or iOS device comes to prefer it to Windows in a
| couple of weeks, and I stop needing to fix something for
| them every other month.
| emsy wrote:
| I actually did that for my parents and in-laws and it
| went as you said. But there's no alternative to Windows
| for a lot of professionals and gamers and that's an
| issue. There's no need for Windows to be better because
| they own that segment. Also, as much as Windows Desktop
| dominance sucks, Linux just isn't there yet and I don't
| want to see the walled garden dystopia that a majority of
| Mac desktops would bring us.
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| I understand the backwards compatibility case for APIs, but not
| for OS dialogs. Is there a compatibility reason why the folder
| properties dialog is crufty (unresizable, etc)? I always just
| assumed there was no engineering appetite or business case to
| work on it.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Non-resizable dialogs are one of the top reasons why I cannot
| stand Windows and find it a huge pain to work with as a non-
| regular user.
|
| Now, while I can understand the sibling's point about third-
| party overlays [0] which may break when the windows suddenly
| become resizable, what I find absolutely infuriating is that
| even what seem like recent features still inherit this stupid
| behavior.
|
| The thing that I'm reminded of is "Windows Defender
| Exceptions" (or similar, don't have a Windows box at hand).
| Those are configured through a new, Settings App-looking
| window.
|
| Now I understand this is somehow different, because even
| though the window vaguely looks like the Settings App (huge
| icons, tons and tons of whitespace), it _behaves_ very
| differently.
|
| This "exceptions" panel shows a list of the folders that is
| fixed, although the outer window can be resized. So if you've
| got a big high-res screen and maximize it, you'll get 90% of
| blank space and will _still_ have to scroll around to see the
| contents. Bonus points for the list being so skinny that I 'm
| only able to see "C:\Users\vlad\\..." and have to click on
| each entry to see it in full.
|
| I sometimes jokingly say that it shows MS has a mouse
| business, and having to click a thousand times for the
| simplest of things is by design.
|
| ---
|
| [0] Not sure what those are. Do random third-parties
| "augment" _system_ dialogs by drawing random stuff on top of
| them? I find that thought horrendous.
| Jochim wrote:
| >[0] Not sure what those are. Do random third-parties
| "augment" system dialogs by drawing random stuff on top of
| them? I find that thought horrendous.
|
| The common example would be Dell/Synaptics adding their own
| tabs to the old Mouse system dialog.
|
| I think the idea was quite sensible. Keeping the
| configuration in one place while supporting whatever
| features the manufacturers might have added e.g. touch pad
| gestures.
|
| The only reason it's unfortunate is that the new dialogs
| don't support the old extension mechanism, forcing the old
| dialogs to be kept around.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > I think the idea was quite sensible. Keeping the
| configuration in one place while supporting whatever
| features the manufacturers might have added e.g. touch
| pad gestures.
|
| I agree, but I thought that there was some sort of
| extension functionality, along the lines of "this is a
| mouse configuration panel, register it to [something] so
| that it's added to the mouse settings".
| Someone wrote:
| If any program tweaks a dialog, say by floating a title-
| barless window with a new control on top of some empty space
| (possibly after slightly resizing the window or a control in
| the window to make space), you can't resize any window
| control, can't change tab order, can't add controls, can't
| change background color, etc.
|
| Detecting whether that is being done is challenging. Typical
| workaround is that, if any callback is registered with a
| dialoog, to keep things 'as is'.
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| Wow! There really are programs which plug into dialogs in
| this way? Well, that's a new level of compatibility hell.
| Thanks for the answer.
| underwater wrote:
| You say that, but that's standard operating procedure for
| plugins on web pages.
|
| A node you create could be arbitrarily changed or
| removed.
| Someone wrote:
| A typical scenario is saving as jpg, where you really
| want to provide the user the option to select compression
| level.
|
| That typically is for a single program, though, and by
| that program. System-wide changes, for example for a
| product that can compress files on the fly, affect every
| program using open dialogs.
| creshal wrote:
| Look at Autohotkey for a starter down the rabbit hole of
| "we don't need APIs, we have a GUI!" and the fallout of
| people desperately working around it.
| williamdclt wrote:
| AHK was how I started programming, good times. When I
| switched to Linux, this was the main thing that I missed
| (and I still kind of do on MacOS)
| _nub3 wrote:
| The good old days with AHK. I remember writing the
| winsock wrapper library and httpquery wrapper back then,
| software of which i hope has been long superseeded by
| now.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| In the days before heavy security it was quite possible
| for programs to monkey around with other programs' UI in
| all sorts of way. A lot of that is still possible from an
| administrator or SYSTEM-privileged context. Some 15 years
| ago I wrote an Internet Explorer addon that added stuff
| to the statusbar by hooking into the IE window's message
| pump and intercepting winforms calls. Shit was wild.
|
| Growing up in the 90s, I remember an article in Visual
| Basic Programmer's Journal teaching subclassing in VB by
| hooking into Notepad and adding a font picker (via a new
| menu entry that opens the font dialog) to change the text
| control's typeface. (This was long before MS added that
| same feature)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes, Windows is a kind of OOP based OS at its "kernel"
| (not to mix with OS kernel).
|
| So one way to extend UI components, since its inception,
| is to request the Windowsclass structure of an existing
| control, replace its event handler function and then call
| the "base class" handler for the built in behavior.
| reniflex wrote:
| Please don't waste your time and talent on GNOME.
|
| The GNOME project burnt all their good will and capital
| building a touch focused UI (for all those touch devices
| running linux, you know) at the cost of their very desktop
| orientated userbase (sound familiar?). The core project members
| are more interested in social justice witch hunts than creating
| a good product and it shows.
|
| Open UNIX's are desperate for a light comprehensive desktop
| environment with modern features. GNOME ain't it chief.
| jorvi wrote:
| I don't know if Apple deserves to be in that list, UI-wise at
| least.
|
| Yes, they do break backwards compatibility in many many other
| ways, but you could put a technical layperson who is used to
| Mac OS 9 and put them on macOS 11.4 (for those unfamiliar,
| Apple's OS has been at 10.x for about 20 years) and they would
| still reasonably be able to find their way around.
|
| One element especially (the global menu bar) is why I got my
| parents to switch to macOS. They had to learn where 'print' or
| 'edit' or 'save' was once, and now they can find it for any
| program, and it'll probably still be in that place in 20 years
| time.
|
| Its also why I think it's sad that Gnome abandoned the global
| menu bar. It's an amazing concept that if stuck with makes
| computers so much easier to use for a large contingent of
| people.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I think global menubars are severely underrated. They act as
| a sort of index of any given program's functionality,
| complete with key shortcuts and because it's a facet of the
| OS itself and will be there regardless, there's no point in
| paring away menus for minimalism's sake.
| ksec wrote:
| Yes. There are so many things Mac got it right for parents or
| grand parent users. Global Menu Bar and Single Mouse Button.
|
| But generally speaking for them it was still a hassle and
| hurt to use a _computer_. iPad with Home Button was _so much_
| easier. No support calls for _years_. It was _the_ computing
| devices that works. But now they moved on to Smartphone meant
| iPad get way less usage.
|
| Which also means some of those design decisions that make
| macOS easier to use might not be relevant as PC transfer to a
| more professional type usage rather than consumer / everyone
| computing devices. But even in that case I still think Global
| Menu Bar is a better design.
| willtim wrote:
| The global menu bar is great for laptops and small screens.
| I'm less convinced it makes sense for big cinema displays or
| dual displays.
| flyingchipmann wrote:
| The worst part about the new gnome not only we don't have the
| global menu bar, the default top bar is basically a waste of
| space with barely any useful content in it.
| rbreaves wrote:
| That's why I just use Just Perfection extension & remove
| the top bar. Then you just run budgie-panel or xfce4-panel
| w/ vala appmenu for the global menu bar on Gnome. Use xfce4
| if you need it on 2 or more monitors though - Budgie only
| supports 1.
|
| Better than KDE imo - you keep sane defaults, simpler
| configs, & consistent themes.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| I like the global bar and also its underrated, consistent
| command search function. I think it was probably abandoned by
| gnome because every application also has a top row of icons
| in each window now.
|
| My perfect OS would have a global menu bar and enforce that
| all commands can be issued by searching and all ribbons/icon
| bars can be turned off.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _Apple, et al. is more willing to break things than Windows
| is. They aren 't as bound to legacy compatibility, so old UI
| elements can be shed easily._
|
| macOS has actually been pretty good at seamlessly adding new
| features to old apps, with just a recompile against the latest
| SDK, like all the NSDocument-derived stuff (auto-save, auto-
| recover, iCloud etc.), Dark Mode, accessibility etc.
| dkarras wrote:
| Not to mention they pulled two complete arch changes.
| Razengan wrote:
| Ah yes, _and_ maintained almost seamless compatibility with
| the previous archs for a while.
| josteink wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Completely unrelated and a shot in the dark, but if you're both
| a Microsoftie and a FreeBSD user/committer, the FreeBSD .NET
| port is stumbling/regressing somewhat and could definitely use
| a little help:
|
| https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/14537
|
| (Better start at the end of that thread, rather than the start)
|
| Anything you could do to help (if only pushing the right
| buttons/people internally), I'm sure would be greatly
| appreciated.
| ksec wrote:
| 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?
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| 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.
| Macha wrote:
| It's not like they haven't tried it - Windows RT and
| Windows 10S have largely flopped. You could say this is
| because of the other changes trying to put the MS store as
| a required middle man, but both boil down to users
| rejecting Windows when it doesn't run all their existing
| software
| MillenialMan wrote:
| >The reason why Windows is full of UI inconsistencies is
| (largely)
|
| ...completely unjustifiable?
|
| Come on, why does this mean we need 5 different sound dialogues
| to do 5 different things? That's ridiculous on every level. It
| _used_ to all be in one place anyway, so it 's not even like it
| needs to be spread out in the first place. Make the old
| dialogues inaccessible, hide them, and create a new one which
| does all of those jobs. Then get rid of the old, now unused
| ones at the first opportunity.
|
| Is the explanation really backwards compatibility, or is it
| lack of organisation?
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Or they could just stop screwing with it?
|
| Every windows update makes the strips a function from the
| control panel and ads something not quite as good to the
| settings app.
|
| After the last update the settings app even has ads for 'bing
| rewards points' in it. Which appear to be impossible to
| remove.
|
| I need to look harder at getting one of the commercial
| versions of windows that only gets security updates, but no
| feature updates, because I've come to hate and fear upgrades.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| The updates/upgrades on Windows 10 were particularly bad- i
| was a late adopter and still ran into an unfixable black
| screen on startup. not good.
| MillenialMan wrote:
| They've made a mess, they should clean it up.
|
| I get it, all practical evidence seems to be that they're
| completely incompetent and this is impossible and any
| attempts to clean it up will inexplicably make it worse,
| but the fact that's the state of affairs at a two
| _trillion_ dollar company is absolutely ridiculous.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Why can't old code remain underneath but UI elements replaced?
| refactor_master wrote:
| UI and logic are probably not as decoupled as we'd like to
| think.
| MillenialMan wrote:
| So decouple them. Microsoft has annual revenue of $143
| _billion_. Their flagship product should not be a neglected
| mess.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Thrre are literally people with scripts that click around
| the UI every hour to achieve something in a factory. The
| motto of windows is write once, run forever. I think
| there is a certain beauty to that
| MillenialMan wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1172/
| summerlight wrote:
| Perhaps Microsoft doesn't own all the relevant code?
| Historically, there are too many win32 API users "clever"
| enough to exploit the coupling between UI, business logic
| and old assumptions that don't work anymore in modern
| platforms.
| MillenialMan wrote:
| I don't think it's actually about backwards
| compatibility, because the logical solution to that would
| be to provide a unified dialogue with all necessary
| settings, and keep the old ones for BC. Instead, they've
| just moved _some_ of the features from the old dialogues
| into new interfaces, and left others (many of which are
| vital), so the entire thing is fragmented. It 's
| completely incompetent.
| Const-me wrote:
| > And that means many old UI elements may stay, that's a side
| effect.
|
| They should stay on disk to be used by programs compiled 20
| years ago.
|
| They should not be used by OS components, nor visible to end
| user unless they run these old applications.
|
| The OS already has multiple good ways to achieve that.
|
| 1. New programs can opt in to new stuff with a manifest. That's
| how you get high DPI support in WinAPI:
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/hidpi/setting...
|
| 2. New programs can call some API functions to enable new
| stuff. That's how you get modern versions of Win32 common
| controls: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/win32/api/commctrl/...
|
| 3. The OS has a lightweight virtualization layer for file
| system and registry, that's how 32-bit apps view things
| differently: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/win32/winprog64/fil... Microsoft could have used
| that thing not just for 32-bit apps, for backward compatibility
| too, i.e. old apps could use special compatibility view of the
| environment.
|
| 4. Finally, the kernel supports multiple user-mode
| environments, Win32 is just one of them. The initial good
| version of WSL (I still use it every day, too bad they have
| killed the awesome product moving to virtual machines in WSL 2)
| runs Linux binaries directly on top of Windows 10 kernel, the
| subsystem is implemented in lxss.sys and lxcore.sys. Microsoft
| could have embedded couple popular Windows versions, such as 7
| and XP, as different subsystems used for running old apps.
| baxuz wrote:
| Don't forget the Windows Vista installer.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Windows 10 lacked a cohesive vision for the UI.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Seems like there used to more open criticism and suggested
| improvements of Microsoft Windows on the internet/web. When the
| company bought out Mark Russinovich that quelled some of it.
| There was also a website called annoyances.org. Anyone know why
| it disappeared. This is the last record of it I could find in the
| Internet Archive:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20121222074911/http://www.annoya...
| adzm wrote:
| What I want to know is how can I get that Betta fish on my boot
| screen!
| causality0 wrote:
| 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.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| 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 regards to focussed
| work. Every single program running there has the right to
| disturb my work, and the user is just a dummy that can't get
| anything done because the UX guidelines treat users like a
| click monkey.
|
| Having used both older and newer Linux distros, MacOS pre-
| Catalina and Windows XP/Vista/7/10 as a main machine for work
| over the years, I'd choose Linux or MacOS for productive work
| anytime.
|
| I don't care about an _asynchronous_ email when I'm working on
| something else...you should start to understand this, designers
| at Microsoft. If a spammer can literally disturb a work
| productivity of an OS user while the email app is running in
| the background, your UX is literally the worst solution
| possible.
|
| I effing hate notifications and the lack of user-focussed
| Window management on Windows.
|
| Even MacOS without any real window management is better,
| because at least the IDE window keeps the focussed state and
| notifications can be force-silenced.
|
| Sorry for the rant, but it's the truth. Windows is not made for
| productive work in my opinion.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| Does it not help to turn the notifications off in the
| notifications settings?
| [deleted]
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| No, because many of those apps don't actually use the
| notification center. They just put up random (skinned)
| windows.
| causality0 wrote:
| Man, the sheer number of times I have fucked something up
| because a background window jumped to the foreground while I
| was in the middle of typing and striking the spacebar
| activated whatever option button was highlighted on the pop-
| up is staggering.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| 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.
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| Like you I am also continually frustrated at how Windows apps
| are always trying to demand my attention. In Windows 10 I
| have the Notification Center set to "alarms only" which helps
| with a lot of the spam, but not all. There are still plenty
| of programs that bypass this and pop their own kinds of
| balloons and notifications.
|
| Then there's programs that flash the taskbar when they want
| attention. Teams in particular is super aggressive about
| flashing the taskbar when it wants something - even when Do
| Not Disturb is turned on - and I have essentially all
| notification features turned off.
|
| For years I've looked for some sort of OS setting like a
| magic registry value to turn taskbar flashing off completely
| but have come up empty. (There's a few reg hacks out there
| that purport to reduce the frequency but none that turn it
| off entirely. And not all applications honor those registry
| settings ... like blasted Teams.)
| aasasd wrote:
| In Win7's control panel I counted ten different kinds of windows
| --in only MS' own sections, no third-parties (who tend to make
| the problem worse). Some of navigational widgets weren't used
| anywhere in the remainder of the OS.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I mostly hate settings in Windows 10 after 15 years of OSX, which
| are very inconsistent.
| KORraN wrote:
| Interesting read. There's also "State of the Windows, part 2: Did
| Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?":
| https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2021/02/21/state-of-the-windo...
| akersten wrote:
| I _like_ the Run dialog and the folder properties menu and others
| that have been untouched since the early days. Their utility has
| been proven and so much muscle memory has been built up. I can
| not possibly imagine a revision that could be done to them that
| would have more benefits than simply leaving them be.
|
| All of the Fluent/Metro designs have made things markedly worse.
| For example, check out the Metro control panel widget for
| selecting a default program for a file extension. It's a list
| view with 5 file extensions visible at a time, with no search.
| That's what I think of when I hear about a Windows UI update, and
| I'd love to be proven wrong.
| rvba wrote:
| For some reason when you search for files and folders now, this
| menu does not return the folder path, but some strange search
| path
| nett18 wrote:
| I would hate for Microsoft to kill off the original Control
| Panel.
| api wrote:
| Why has there been such a push to nerf UIs? Is it just trying
| to ape mobile? Mobile UIs are more basic because the screen is
| so damn small and the use case is more casual.
| aniforprez wrote:
| Most use cases for Windows are casual. I don't want to hazard
| a guess but I'd say easily more than 70% of Windows users may
| be basic? The type to not go particularly deep into the
| options and explore these menus and instead leave it up to
| the experts or get systems configured for them
|
| For all these people, the new UI is actually pretty good. My
| parents find the settings they need easily enough. Most
| business people I work with use Windows and rarely want to
| configure anything more than the wallpaper. For all these
| people, the "nerfed" UI is more accessible than a wall of
| options in the control panel. It's a shame for us power users
| but most people actually like these changes or at least find
| them usable enough
| XorNot wrote:
| For casual users these UIs are catastrophic. Casual users
| just straight don't change settings - they tend to live
| with the most insane easily fixable problems.
|
| Whereas for me, person who has to give phone support, every
| version of Windows has made important settings harder to
| get too, which means I can't muscle memory train casual
| users about what setting they need to review if the problem
| recurs.
|
| The new UIs are all attempted flash over substance, and
| idiom breaking - buttons and interactive controls are not
| clearly highlighted and information density is low.
| shados wrote:
| This. I would forgive the inconsistencies if the new stuff was
| better. But it's worse. Its not a "meh I'm used to the old and
| hate change" situation.
|
| It's a "holy shit fire the UX design and product manager leads
| in charge of this asap". The audio tab is another good example.
| It's so hard to do anything with the new one, you almost have
| to know how to get to the old UX to make any kind of change.
| Macha wrote:
| I have a 1440p screen. Why do I need to scroll to do anything
| in the new audio properties dialog? The old one fit more
| functionality on screen all at once on 768p laptops
| Dah00n wrote:
| While i agree that there's a lot of old layers in Windows I must
| say that I much prefer this to the way Apple does things. In
| their camp it is like UI designers change things around for no
| other reason than to have a job (see also: Firefox). I feel like
| Apple have moved a lot closer to what they used to point fingers
| at in their commercials about PCs but without gaining any of the
| strengths. With that said I also think Gnome (and KDE) are light-
| years ahead of both OS' UI.
| EdSchouten wrote:
| 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...
| muterad_murilax wrote:
| > Is that still the case, or has it been updated in the
| meantime?
|
| It's been updated. See:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27553728
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