5 ms·

Bring back the classic start menu and UI and call it a day. The Windows UI is so inconsistent, tedious and un-metaphorical today.

insickness 7y ago
Classic Shell app for the win! http://www.classicshell.net/ http://www.classicshell.net/
- ptx 7y ago
  Or the actively developed fork linked to from that site, Open-Shell: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
typescriptfan1 7y ago
I'll go on... the 95/XP UI was meticulously crafted. It solved some real usability problems by drawing on metaphors to aid discovery. It was close to a language. I think what happened was eventually the designer types got their hands in there and started making changes here and there to make specific things look good. Now we're here.
- vezycash 7y ago
  Busy work - that's what they are doing.
- salawat 7y ago
  That's exactly what happened, and it all started with the damn ribbon BS in Office. To me, the "advancement" of the human-computer interface came to a screeching halt at that time. People grok menus. Memorizing sequences of Mnemonic accelerators is natural when overlaid on a haptic path created by mouse movement/menu navigation. Then you take everything and throw out the baby with the bath water by trying to put every past bit of functionality on screen at the same time when what one needs is to be able to set up a work bench quickly, and just do your work, and if necessary save said work bench state to return to later. I've seen more and "better" advancements in UI design in exactly 1 place, in all the different software suites I use, and that is in IDEs. Ironically, the one place that programmers have to make due day in, day out. It makes me wonder whether anyone who presides over these programs is actually proficient in the non-computing version of said task. A Typesetter/document composer for instance. Nothing about the modern interface leads me to believe that any actually invested individual is involved, and that the design was pushed by the need for someone at Microsoft to be seen as needed in order to change something. Then again... Can"t judge 'em for that. We all want to be wanted.
  - vezycash 7y ago
    I actually like Ribbon. What I hate is the save / options / preference / file menu of office 2016 upwards. It's a nightmare - just too many steps to save a simple file to disk. Even after using it for years, I still need to pay full attention in this menu rather than muscle memory. Just because they are pushing OneDrive.
    - exergy 7y ago
      Yep. That thing is a fucking abomination. I believe it's called backstage or something and the idiots who petitioned for, designed and approved it should be dishonorably discharged.
    - generatorguy 7y ago
      Ctrl + s works great for me
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    I agree. With the the ribbon they broke their own UI guidelines and never got back. Windows 95 was a huge jump in usability but first with the ribbon and then with Windows 8 they destroyed their own progress. Even after years I prefer menus and toolbars over the ribbon. With them you can scan in one direction whereas with the ribbon you have to up and down, left and right. I find it really difficult to find something there.
- untog 7y ago
  > I think what happened was eventually the designer types got their hands in there No, what happened is Microsoft placed a bet on us moving to a multi-platform future where there are many fewer PCs and more tablets, hybrid devices, whatever, all with the need to use touch, pen as well as keyboard for input. The existing start menu and taskbar would be hideous on mobile devices. The problem is they were wrong. But I'm not going to blame "designer types". If you ever used Metro UI on a Windows Phone device you'd see that it was a truly remarkable system... that was bent to fit a task it didn't fit.
  - vezycash 7y ago
    I feel their main mistake was lack of choice. The second biggest mistake was pushing too many changes at a time. For choice, they finally relented with windows 8.1 and allowed people to boot to desktop directly rather than the start screen. Windows 10 took off the start screen completely. Choice matters. I liked the start screen but the horizontal scrolling killed it. Like pouring salt in Tea. Too many changes. Facebook's learned this lesson well. They no longer do large overhauls. Small changes at a time and in a few months, it's a whole different interface. Only infrequent users would notice. That's what they are doing with Windows 10 - many small interface changes. The little changes are mainly minor inconveniences. One last thing. When they released windows 8 - hardware support was almost non existent. Touch screen PC from that era really sucked. Now with detachable screens, Win 8 style pc interactions might be cool.
  - ogre_codes 7y ago
    > a multi-platform future where there are many fewer PCs and more tablets, hybrid devices, whatever, ... > The problem is they were wrong. They weren't far off either. While PC sales haven't crashed as many feared, the majority of growth in larger form factor computing has been iPads & Chromebook. That plus the fact that a big percentage of desktop software has moved to Javascript/ Electron.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    GNOME 3 actually does a far better job of integrating the "desktop" and "tablet/mobile/hybrid" worlds, and that's with a pretty conventional widget toolkit (Adwaita), albeit running on a loosely Win8-like shell (no "applications menu" or taskbar by default, they're replaced by an "overview" screen). So I'm pretty sure that the traditional Win32 UI would've been up to the task with a few tweaks.
tokamak-teapot 7y ago
I wouldn’t mind that much, because I can just pin some stuff to the taskbar, press a button to type and find other stuff, and use a few apps. All I do is use a few apps. The OS just needs to make the network connect, show an image on the screen, and keep out of my way. Unfortunately that’s not what Windows does any more. It lags. It does weird stuff. It keeps moving things around. This isn’t just one installation. I’ve installed W10 a few times over the past few years and the lag, weirdness and cheese-moving continue in whatever installation I try to get along with. There are plenty of useful things that can be done below the surface that would make Windows better over time. Breaking the interface due to incessant fiddling isn’t adding value: it’s removing it. And yes, these are the main reasons I’m currently sticking with MacOS everywhere. I just need the OS to work and let me run my stuff in peace.
losttheplot 7y ago
Too many cooks in the kitchen. Besides a shit UI, the creepy phoning home and ads created many a defector away from MS.
kongolongo 7y ago
I like that settings is (somewhat) searchable.
bob1029 7y ago
Who remembers how snappy the experience was on a fresh XP install? Sure, everything loaded slow off disk, but once you got your basics into RAM it felt so much faster by comparison to how Win10 responds today. Explorer.exe in particular. What a gem that implementation was. I could play folder tetris at lightspeed with that thing, because it actually felt faster than I could ever go. Today, I am sad to report that despite my reflexes not being what they used to, I now wait upon file explorer to do its thing on a regular basis. To see what I'm talking about, just run something extremely lightweight like mspaint, then right click it in your task bar. Be sure to have a stopwatch handy. It might take a little while for the context menu to appear and you don't want to lose track of your seconds. It's the perfect amount of delay right between complete disengagement (e.g. walking off to get coffee) and proper instantaneous feedback. I sometimes wonder if psychologists working at Microsoft have specifically tuned this delay to be as misanthropic as possible. I used XP not too long ago and I recall a visceral emotional experience due to the realization that we will never have a UI that feels that snappy again branded by Microsoft. I realize I can probably get my low-latency UI fix with various Linux installs... Anyone have any recommendations? Who has the fastest window manager these days? With .NET Core working on Linux and any code targeting it being largely portable... I could maybe get used to a new normal on Linux for purposes of software development, which is also when I'm looking for a snappy UI. Visual studio on windows being the bloated nightmare it is... Some days I spend a few minutes writing specifications for a new IDE just as a means of catharsis. There is zero excuse for the kinds of delays I regularly see between keypress and UI feedback.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > I realize I can probably get my low-latency UI fix with various Linux installs... Anyone have any recommendations? Who has the fastest window manager these days? LXDE (the original, not LxQT) is still well-supported on Debian Stable, and that's probably the closest thing to a 'XP-like or better' experience on Linux these days. Xfce is not far behind, though. Or you can experiment with more niche stuff such as WindowMaker, Fvwm95, IceWM and whatnot, but you're more likely to run into unimplemented stuff and these are simple window managers, so utility programs must be installed separately. Of course, you should be mindful of RAM requirements. A modern Linux install will need at least 1GB to feel really snappy, which is far above the typical XP machine.

insickness 7y ago

Classic Shell app for the win! http://www.classicshell.net/ http://www.classicshell.net/

ptx 7y ago
Or the actively developed fork linked to from that site, Open-Shell: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

typescriptfan1 7y ago

I'll go on... the 95/XP UI was meticulously crafted. It solved some real usability problems by drawing on metaphors to aid discovery. It was close to a language. I think what happened was eventually the designer types got their hands in there and started making changes here and there to make specific things look good. Now we're here.

vezycash 7y ago
Busy work - that's what they are doing.
salawat 7y ago
That's exactly what happened, and it all started with the damn ribbon BS in Office. To me, the "advancement" of the human-computer interface came to a screeching halt at that time. People grok menus. Memorizing sequences of Mnemonic accelerators is natural when overlaid on a haptic path created by mouse movement/menu navigation. Then you take everything and throw out the baby with the bath water by trying to put every past bit of functionality on screen at the same time when what one needs is to be able to set up a work bench quickly, and just do your work, and if necessary save said work bench state to return to later. I've seen more and "better" advancements in UI design in exactly 1 place, in all the different software suites I use, and that is in IDEs. Ironically, the one place that programmers have to make due day in, day out. It makes me wonder whether anyone who presides over these programs is actually proficient in the non-computing version of said task. A Typesetter/document composer for instance. Nothing about the modern interface leads me to believe that any actually invested individual is involved, and that the design was pushed by the need for someone at Microsoft to be seen as needed in order to change something. Then again... Can"t judge 'em for that. We all want to be wanted.
- vezycash 7y ago
  I actually like Ribbon. What I hate is the save / options / preference / file menu of office 2016 upwards. It's a nightmare - just too many steps to save a simple file to disk. Even after using it for years, I still need to pay full attention in this menu rather than muscle memory. Just because they are pushing OneDrive.
  - exergy 7y ago
    Yep. That thing is a fucking abomination. I believe it's called backstage or something and the idiots who petitioned for, designed and approved it should be dishonorably discharged.
  - generatorguy 7y ago
    Ctrl + s works great for me
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  I agree. With the the ribbon they broke their own UI guidelines and never got back. Windows 95 was a huge jump in usability but first with the ribbon and then with Windows 8 they destroyed their own progress. Even after years I prefer menus and toolbars over the ribbon. With them you can scan in one direction whereas with the ribbon you have to up and down, left and right. I find it really difficult to find something there.
untog 7y ago
> I think what happened was eventually the designer types got their hands in there No, what happened is Microsoft placed a bet on us moving to a multi-platform future where there are many fewer PCs and more tablets, hybrid devices, whatever, all with the need to use touch, pen as well as keyboard for input. The existing start menu and taskbar would be hideous on mobile devices. The problem is they were wrong. But I'm not going to blame "designer types". If you ever used Metro UI on a Windows Phone device you'd see that it was a truly remarkable system... that was bent to fit a task it didn't fit.
- vezycash 7y ago
  I feel their main mistake was lack of choice. The second biggest mistake was pushing too many changes at a time. For choice, they finally relented with windows 8.1 and allowed people to boot to desktop directly rather than the start screen. Windows 10 took off the start screen completely. Choice matters. I liked the start screen but the horizontal scrolling killed it. Like pouring salt in Tea. Too many changes. Facebook's learned this lesson well. They no longer do large overhauls. Small changes at a time and in a few months, it's a whole different interface. Only infrequent users would notice. That's what they are doing with Windows 10 - many small interface changes. The little changes are mainly minor inconveniences. One last thing. When they released windows 8 - hardware support was almost non existent. Touch screen PC from that era really sucked. Now with detachable screens, Win 8 style pc interactions might be cool.
- ogre_codes 7y ago
  > a multi-platform future where there are many fewer PCs and more tablets, hybrid devices, whatever, ... > The problem is they were wrong. They weren't far off either. While PC sales haven't crashed as many feared, the majority of growth in larger form factor computing has been iPads & Chromebook. That plus the fact that a big percentage of desktop software has moved to Javascript/ Electron.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  GNOME 3 actually does a far better job of integrating the "desktop" and "tablet/mobile/hybrid" worlds, and that's with a pretty conventional widget toolkit (Adwaita), albeit running on a loosely Win8-like shell (no "applications menu" or taskbar by default, they're replaced by an "overview" screen). So I'm pretty sure that the traditional Win32 UI would've been up to the task with a few tweaks.

tokamak-teapot 7y ago

I wouldn’t mind that much, because I can just pin some stuff to the taskbar, press a button to type and find other stuff, and use a few apps. All I do is use a few apps. The OS just needs to make the network connect, show an image on the screen, and keep out of my way. Unfortunately that’s not what Windows does any more. It lags. It does weird stuff. It keeps moving things around. This isn’t just one installation. I’ve installed W10 a few times over the past few years and the lag, weirdness and cheese-moving continue in whatever installation I try to get along with. There are plenty of useful things that can be done below the surface that would make Windows better over time. Breaking the interface due to incessant fiddling isn’t adding value: it’s removing it. And yes, these are the main reasons I’m currently sticking with MacOS everywhere. I just need the OS to work and let me run my stuff in peace.

losttheplot 7y ago

Too many cooks in the kitchen. Besides a shit UI, the creepy phoning home and ads created many a defector away from MS.

kongolongo 7y ago

I like that settings is (somewhat) searchable.

bob1029 7y ago

Who remembers how snappy the experience was on a fresh XP install? Sure, everything loaded slow off disk, but once you got your basics into RAM it felt so much faster by comparison to how Win10 responds today. Explorer.exe in particular. What a gem that implementation was. I could play folder tetris at lightspeed with that thing, because it actually felt faster than I could ever go. Today, I am sad to report that despite my reflexes not being what they used to, I now wait upon file explorer to do its thing on a regular basis. To see what I'm talking about, just run something extremely lightweight like mspaint, then right click it in your task bar. Be sure to have a stopwatch handy. It might take a little while for the context menu to appear and you don't want to lose track of your seconds. It's the perfect amount of delay right between complete disengagement (e.g. walking off to get coffee) and proper instantaneous feedback. I sometimes wonder if psychologists working at Microsoft have specifically tuned this delay to be as misanthropic as possible. I used XP not too long ago and I recall a visceral emotional experience due to the realization that we will never have a UI that feels that snappy again branded by Microsoft. I realize I can probably get my low-latency UI fix with various Linux installs... Anyone have any recommendations? Who has the fastest window manager these days? With .NET Core working on Linux and any code targeting it being largely portable... I could maybe get used to a new normal on Linux for purposes of software development, which is also when I'm looking for a snappy UI. Visual studio on windows being the bloated nightmare it is... Some days I spend a few minutes writing specifications for a new IDE just as a means of catharsis. There is zero excuse for the kinds of delays I regularly see between keypress and UI feedback.

zozbot234 7y ago
> I realize I can probably get my low-latency UI fix with various Linux installs... Anyone have any recommendations? Who has the fastest window manager these days? LXDE (the original, not LxQT) is still well-supported on Debian Stable, and that's probably the closest thing to a 'XP-like or better' experience on Linux these days. Xfce is not far behind, though. Or you can experiment with more niche stuff such as WindowMaker, Fvwm95, IceWM and whatnot, but you're more likely to run into unimplemented stuff and these are simple window managers, so utility programs must be installed separately. Of course, you should be mindful of RAM requirements. A modern Linux install will need at least 1GB to feel really snappy, which is far above the typical XP machine.