6 ms·

I love it every time I get the 'old' control panel. It means I know where the switches are, and more importantly, what they do. The new UIs change with every m

by gnud 7y ago

I love it every time I get the 'old' control panel. It means I know where the switches are, and more importantly, what they do. The new UIs change with every minor update. Layout, labels and semantics. It's truly horrible. Please don't encourage Microsoft to mess it up even more.

jug 7y ago
Yes, if things keep changing around or is hard to find, that's annoying but I see this as a separate problem from a bad pace and inconsistency. Nothing here in particular hinders good and well researched design.
- y4mi 7y ago
  I could find stuff in the old panel without knowing where it is. I can't in the new one. Either because the options are missing entirely or because they're too well hidden. My biggest gripe is not being able to directly open the old settings... Always having to open "control panel" and then clicking on the correct category gets old fast, but is nonetheless more effective than fruitlessly searching in the new panels until I give up.
pantalaimon 7y ago
Not to mention that the 'old' control panel has a lot more options!
simonh 7y ago
>It means I know where the switches are, and more importantly, what they do Or even more importantly than that, that they even exist in there somewhere.
- AndrewDavis 7y ago
  My goodness. Recently I went to play a game on my laptop, something i don't normally do. I'm not even normally a windows user. It has this 'feature' where if a key is pressed then it disables all mouse clicks for X number of seconds. This is to prevent a forearm from tap to clicking on the touchpad while typing. Absolutely makes sense. Only... I had a mouse plugged in. It disabled a physical USB mouse from clicking after a keypress. Even after disabling the touchpad entirely it continued this behaviour. After some Googling there should have been a switch in the modern Windows 10 style mouse config. But it wasn't there. More Googling, "go edit this registry key" but i didn't have that registry key. More Googling, the registry key depends on your touchpad driver. More Googling finally found a way to disable it globally with regedit. #1 Why was the switch not available in the mouse settings #2 Why was it applied to a usb mouse #3 Why did the registry key differ depending on mousepad driver. Just a nightmare.
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    This one is mostly the touchpad driver being poorly written and or outdated. Let me guess, Synaptics touchpad? For some inexplicable reason their newer touchpads (in newer laptops) support the Settings configuration, whereas their older ones (in older laptops) only work via the Mouse Control Panel applet (and sometimes not even then). I've also had their touchpad driver cause keyboard input latency (it tries to hook hotkeys) with uninstalling it entirely and having no touchpad being the only solution. Their stuff is just bad, and they should feel bad about it. I doubt they do feel bad as they have a seeming monopoly on Windows laptop touchpads.
  - DennisP 7y ago
    I've got a Macbook Pro and it doesn't seem to have or need this feature in the first place.
    - wlesieutre 7y ago
      It does have an analogous feature, the MBP's trackpad is huge and you probably touch it by accident all the time. It's just that Apple's system tries to separate deliberate touches from accidental ones, rather than disabling the trackpad input completely. You used to be able to turn this on and off (it was called "Ignore accidental trackpad input" in the trackpad preference pane) but now it's an always on feature. The trackpad has extended so far into the palm rests that it would be very difficult to use without it, and the feature works well enough that you don't even realize it's happening. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201822 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201822
      - DennisP 7y ago
        Yes, I touch the pad by accident all the time. But why is Apple so good at detecting which touches are accidental, while so many other manufacturers are not?
        the_pwner224 7y ago
        On Linux this works similarly. ~5 years ago my old laptops did the 'disable touchpad when typing' thing, now with libinput the touchpad has excellent and completely invisible (to the user) anti-false-touch functionality. Apple has invested the time to make great trackpad drivers. People have invested time to make libinput a great driver for Linux (in this regard - it does lack customization possible in older drivers). On Windows the manufacturers don't care. IIRC MS is doing a thing where manufacturers can add some property to their touchpad HW/drivers which tells Windows to handle the touchpad entirely on its own, and the result has been that touchpads have been improving significantly over the last few years since MS is investing time in making good drivers. But that depends on your specific touchpad allowing Windows to do its magic, instead of using crappy OEM drivers.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
Not only that but the new interface is becoming just as complex as the old. By the time they have finished they will be back where they started.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- supernovae 7y ago
  Nah, it's pretty simple these days and people who love scripting can use powershell for everything
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Nah, it’s getting just as complex as the old interface, there is nobody with the ability to say no, this is too much. I’m a big fan of PowerShell, I have embedded it in two products. However it’s not a good justification for a poor user interface.
cm2187 7y ago
And also items from the old control panel don't appear any more when you search in the start menu. Which would be ok if they had been replaced by an equivalent in the new menu. But they have not. So what is the point in hiding them?
- gexla 7y ago
  Let me have their pretty UI. If you want to geek out, there's Powershell.
  - LIV2 7y ago
    Powershell is shit for discovery & not useful at all for the majority of Windows consumers i.e regular users. You shouldn't need to learn powershell to switch your audio output
- nikanj 7y ago
  See a few comments up this very comment chain. They’re hidden because they look dated, regardless of their usability
- velox_io 7y ago
  They're removing the pre-Windows 10 Control Panel items with a new Settings interface. The problem is that it's far worse:- Tasks such as changing network adaptors setting, or sound settings. I regularly switch between three different audio devices on my desktop PC, and doing simple tasks such as toggling volume levelling isn't in the new interface and digging into the old is becoming harder and harder to find, with more clicks for every revision. Just yesterday I went to add a firewall rule, and that was hard to find. I'm an MCSE, so you would think I could change a firewall setting! It definitely doesn't feel like an improvement, it feels like they're forcing an abstraction. Plus they've recently removed the Control Panel when you right-click the Start menu. That was about the only 'Safe Space' left. I feel for anyone who has to support Windows 10. They're definitely not listening to the users. This is the FisherPrice interface all over again, but there's no stopping it this time around.
x3haloed 7y ago
> It means I know where the switches are, and more importantly, what they do Does that mean you would never be comfortable with with a complete UI overhaul? > The new UIs change with every minor update I completely agree that this is a problem. And this part of my biggest issue with Windows 10. They're constantly reworking the new UI for what seems like micro-optimizations, but they're mostly ignoring the old UI. Not only is it a headache for users to keep up with new paradigms every 6 months, but there continues to be two areas in Windows to control system settings, one of which is hidden pretty well, and the location of settings between the two is continually changing. It's a nightmare. .NET Core, on the other hand, is pure gold. It's fast, it runs everywhere, it's well document, and it's a joy to work with. Which leads us to Visual Studio, which is becoming like Windows. Constant tweak updates that break things. I stopped installing '.0' releases, beacsue they're consistently broken.
- Faark 7y ago
  > Does that mean you would never be comfortable with with a complete UI overhaul? I'd like for the old interface to be still around, so I can click though the nav layers like I always have. At the end, instead of the information / setting I'm looking for, I'd be fine with info on how now to find that info/setting. This "tutorial" should obviously be kept up to date on later UI changes. It also requires the info/setting to still be available... so no dumbing-down please.
celticmusic 7y ago
same here. I still prefer the old control panel. They hid everything behind "usability". I'm sure for a lot of people it's more usable, but for me it's just more painful.
nick_ 7y ago
I call it the Windows control fractal. Each new version of Windows requires clicking through a totally new UI layer to get to the previous version's control panel. Finally you arrive at the Windows 95 settings program you were trying to get to in the first place.
rkagerer 7y ago
Agreed. Most of my time trying to adjust settings in Windows 10 is spent trying to locate the 'old' control panel dialogs. What's sad is that all their attempts at redesigns and tweaks have not resulted in something I want to use more.
samus 7y ago
Funny, I always thought the same things about the control panel of various other window environments like Gnome and KDE.

by gnud 7y ago

jug 7y ago

Yes, if things keep changing around or is hard to find, that's annoying but I see this as a separate problem from a bad pace and inconsistency. Nothing here in particular hinders good and well researched design.

y4mi 7y ago
I could find stuff in the old panel without knowing where it is. I can't in the new one. Either because the options are missing entirely or because they're too well hidden. My biggest gripe is not being able to directly open the old settings... Always having to open "control panel" and then clicking on the correct category gets old fast, but is nonetheless more effective than fruitlessly searching in the new panels until I give up.

pantalaimon 7y ago

Not to mention that the 'old' control panel has a lot more options!

simonh 7y ago

>It means I know where the switches are, and more importantly, what they do Or even more importantly than that, that they even exist in there somewhere.

AndrewDavis 7y ago
My goodness. Recently I went to play a game on my laptop, something i don't normally do. I'm not even normally a windows user. It has this 'feature' where if a key is pressed then it disables all mouse clicks for X number of seconds. This is to prevent a forearm from tap to clicking on the touchpad while typing. Absolutely makes sense. Only... I had a mouse plugged in. It disabled a physical USB mouse from clicking after a keypress. Even after disabling the touchpad entirely it continued this behaviour. After some Googling there should have been a switch in the modern Windows 10 style mouse config. But it wasn't there. More Googling, "go edit this registry key" but i didn't have that registry key. More Googling, the registry key depends on your touchpad driver. More Googling finally found a way to disable it globally with regedit. #1 Why was the switch not available in the mouse settings #2 Why was it applied to a usb mouse #3 Why did the registry key differ depending on mousepad driver. Just a nightmare.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  This one is mostly the touchpad driver being poorly written and or outdated. Let me guess, Synaptics touchpad? For some inexplicable reason their newer touchpads (in newer laptops) support the Settings configuration, whereas their older ones (in older laptops) only work via the Mouse Control Panel applet (and sometimes not even then). I've also had their touchpad driver cause keyboard input latency (it tries to hook hotkeys) with uninstalling it entirely and having no touchpad being the only solution. Their stuff is just bad, and they should feel bad about it. I doubt they do feel bad as they have a seeming monopoly on Windows laptop touchpads.
- DennisP 7y ago
  I've got a Macbook Pro and it doesn't seem to have or need this feature in the first place.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    It does have an analogous feature, the MBP's trackpad is huge and you probably touch it by accident all the time. It's just that Apple's system tries to separate deliberate touches from accidental ones, rather than disabling the trackpad input completely. You used to be able to turn this on and off (it was called "Ignore accidental trackpad input" in the trackpad preference pane) but now it's an always on feature. The trackpad has extended so far into the palm rests that it would be very difficult to use without it, and the feature works well enough that you don't even realize it's happening. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201822 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201822
    - DennisP 7y ago
      Yes, I touch the pad by accident all the time. But why is Apple so good at detecting which touches are accidental, while so many other manufacturers are not?
      - the_pwner224 7y ago
        On Linux this works similarly. ~5 years ago my old laptops did the 'disable touchpad when typing' thing, now with libinput the touchpad has excellent and completely invisible (to the user) anti-false-touch functionality. Apple has invested the time to make great trackpad drivers. People have invested time to make libinput a great driver for Linux (in this regard - it does lack customization possible in older drivers). On Windows the manufacturers don't care. IIRC MS is doing a thing where manufacturers can add some property to their touchpad HW/drivers which tells Windows to handle the touchpad entirely on its own, and the result has been that touchpads have been improving significantly over the last few years since MS is investing time in making good drivers. But that depends on your specific touchpad allowing Windows to do its magic, instead of using crappy OEM drivers.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago

Not only that but the new interface is becoming just as complex as the old. By the time they have finished they will be back where they started.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
supernovae 7y ago
Nah, it's pretty simple these days and people who love scripting can use powershell for everything
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  Nah, it’s getting just as complex as the old interface, there is nobody with the ability to say no, this is too much. I’m a big fan of PowerShell, I have embedded it in two products. However it’s not a good justification for a poor user interface.

cm2187 7y ago

And also items from the old control panel don't appear any more when you search in the start menu. Which would be ok if they had been replaced by an equivalent in the new menu. But they have not. So what is the point in hiding them?

gexla 7y ago
Let me have their pretty UI. If you want to geek out, there's Powershell.
- LIV2 7y ago
  Powershell is shit for discovery & not useful at all for the majority of Windows consumers i.e regular users. You shouldn't need to learn powershell to switch your audio output
nikanj 7y ago
See a few comments up this very comment chain. They’re hidden because they look dated, regardless of their usability
velox_io 7y ago
They're removing the pre-Windows 10 Control Panel items with a new Settings interface. The problem is that it's far worse:- Tasks such as changing network adaptors setting, or sound settings. I regularly switch between three different audio devices on my desktop PC, and doing simple tasks such as toggling volume levelling isn't in the new interface and digging into the old is becoming harder and harder to find, with more clicks for every revision. Just yesterday I went to add a firewall rule, and that was hard to find. I'm an MCSE, so you would think I could change a firewall setting! It definitely doesn't feel like an improvement, it feels like they're forcing an abstraction. Plus they've recently removed the Control Panel when you right-click the Start menu. That was about the only 'Safe Space' left. I feel for anyone who has to support Windows 10. They're definitely not listening to the users. This is the FisherPrice interface all over again, but there's no stopping it this time around.

x3haloed 7y ago

> It means I know where the switches are, and more importantly, what they do Does that mean you would never be comfortable with with a complete UI overhaul? > The new UIs change with every minor update I completely agree that this is a problem. And this part of my biggest issue with Windows 10. They're constantly reworking the new UI for what seems like micro-optimizations, but they're mostly ignoring the old UI. Not only is it a headache for users to keep up with new paradigms every 6 months, but there continues to be two areas in Windows to control system settings, one of which is hidden pretty well, and the location of settings between the two is continually changing. It's a nightmare. .NET Core, on the other hand, is pure gold. It's fast, it runs everywhere, it's well document, and it's a joy to work with. Which leads us to Visual Studio, which is becoming like Windows. Constant tweak updates that break things. I stopped installing '.0' releases, beacsue they're consistently broken.

Faark 7y ago
> Does that mean you would never be comfortable with with a complete UI overhaul? I'd like for the old interface to be still around, so I can click though the nav layers like I always have. At the end, instead of the information / setting I'm looking for, I'd be fine with info on how now to find that info/setting. This "tutorial" should obviously be kept up to date on later UI changes. It also requires the info/setting to still be available... so no dumbing-down please.

celticmusic 7y ago

same here. I still prefer the old control panel. They hid everything behind "usability". I'm sure for a lot of people it's more usable, but for me it's just more painful.

nick_ 7y ago

I call it the Windows control fractal. Each new version of Windows requires clicking through a totally new UI layer to get to the previous version's control panel. Finally you arrive at the Windows 95 settings program you were trying to get to in the first place.

rkagerer 7y ago

Agreed. Most of my time trying to adjust settings in Windows 10 is spent trying to locate the 'old' control panel dialogs. What's sad is that all their attempts at redesigns and tweaks have not resulted in something I want to use more.

samus 7y ago

Funny, I always thought the same things about the control panel of various other window environments like Gnome and KDE.