5 ms·
Exactly. One of my annoyances with Microsoft's post-Windows 2000 design philosophy is its penchant for consuming large amounts of vertical space. This started
by linguae 6y ago
Exactly. One of my annoyances with Microsoft's post-Windows 2000 design philosophy is its penchant for consuming large amounts of vertical space. This started with the large title bars used in the Windows XP Luna theme. I wasn't impressed with this "Fischer-Price" theme and always switched to the Windows Classic theme, which I continued to do even during the Windows 7 days. Next, Microsoft introduced the ribbon in Office 2007. I've since gotten used to the ribbon (which has spread to Mac versions of Office, albeit with traditional menus still existing), but I still prefer toolbars and traditional menus. Finally, Windows 10's interface is just gaudy to me, with its oversized title bars and its liberal use of whitespace. It's acceptable on a high-resolution display, but on a 1366x768 display (common on corporate laptops) Windows 10 just looks downright ugly to me.
I find it interesting that during the past 15 years the industry has switched away from 4:3 displays to 16:9 displays (which seem to provide more horizontal space at the expense of vertical space), yet Microsoft's designs seem to consume more vertical space as opposed to horizontal space. Instead of ribbons, I prefer the horizontal inspectors that are found in macOS applications.
On Hacker News I'm seeing more interest lately in the desktop UIs from the 1990s and 2000s. For example, the latest beta release of Haiku, an operating system inspired by BeOS, garnered a lot of attention. What I like about Windows 2000, macOS (both the classic Mac OS and Mac OS X), BeOS, GNOME 2, and other classic desktops is their utilitarian focus on design, where form and function are intertwined. UI design isn't about "the bling"; it's about providing a good experience to the user. Mac OS X's Aqua interface did a good job providing a compelling interface to users that was also beautiful. Unfortunately, some people only saw the "bling" and not the functionality behind the Aqua theming, and thus we've been suffering from fashion-driven UIs for nearly 20 years, a trend that has been made worse by the advent of mobile computing. Hopefully the pendulum will swing back to how things were in the 1990s; we can learn a lot from the human interface guidelines Microsoft and Apple published in that era.
- sergeykish 6y agoScreen space consumption was on the rise since Windows 1.0 days, there was a story recently [1]. Horizontal tiling mode become unusable [2] vs [3]. I think it traces transition from power users to casual. It makes sense, but there was no alternative. Screen become cluttered so much that most applications run on full screen only. And web become spoiled too - sticky headers everywhere (uBlock fixes this), wide content (media queries kicks in much narrower windows, Stylus to the rescue). Explorer (shell) decorations is much to blame. Do we actually need task bar, title bar, menu bar, tool bar, status bar, scroll bar? I do not think so - plenty of space and distraction free [4]. There are a lot of tiling managers on Linux, but Windows has its share too. Like dwm port [5] (never tried on Windows) though I prefer wmii and xmonad with wmii layout. [1] Windows Explorer Through the Years https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23487698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23487698 [2] Windows 1.0 tiling https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Microsoft_Windows_1.0_screenshot.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Microsof... [3] Windows 10 tiling https://i2.wp.com/www.nextofwindows.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Show-windows-stacked-on-Taskbar.png https://i2.wp.com/www.nextofwindows.com/wp-content/uploads/2... [4] No decorations http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png [5] DWM on Windows https://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dwm-win32/ https://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dwm-win32/
- elwes5 6y agoI agree on the vertical space thing. I would add that lack of contrast between controls is very annoying. That 'flat' look is a pain. Can I or can I not click on this? The one that is a real pain is the disappearing scroll bar. It is there. The space for it is used. But just gone until you hover over it. Then it is clunky to use in relation to all of the other windows controls. The rules for making a GUI were dead simple for MS in the 90s. I had them printed out on 1 sheet of paper and most of that was a couple of pictures.
- vezycash 6y ago>lack of contrast between controls is very annoying. That 'flat' look is a pain. Can I or can I not click on this? Vs code. How many seconds does it take to figure out the active code tab?
- sillywalk 6y agoTHIS. I still have to think when I look at the control center on my phone, uh.. moon == Do not disturb, and is it on or not?? The faux-3d let you know. I also wish there was text under the controls. I've resorted to turning on some of the contrast accessibility stuff to make it a little more usable. And don't even get me started on the hamburger menu.
- Miraste 6y agoI must use scrolling windows differently than you, because I haven't clicked and dragged a scroll bar probably for years. The only thing I need a scroll indicator for is to see how far I am down the page, which I only do when I'm actively scrolling. MacOS disappearing scrollbars (which do not waste space when inactive, but pop in over content when you scroll) are my ideal implementation.
- barrkel 6y agoLinux has been much worse for margins in UIs, FWIW.
- zozbot234 6y agoReally? It looks just fine to me. People like to complain about the GTK3 header bars, but those encompass everything that you'd previously find in toolbars and menubars, at least for simple utils. And they enable full touch readiness, as do the slightly bigger buttons and widgets.
- int_19h 6y agoHow many people actually use desktop Linux on touch devices?
- Bnshsysjab 6y agoAlso curious about this, I use mostly Openbox and GTK based apps and don’t have an issue
- brnt 6y agoHave a look at KDE! One of the reasons I switched.