4 ms·

That reminds me there are two control panels. One with the trendy web page style (the pretty one) and the other using the old Windows 7 style (the useful contro

That reminds me there are two control panels. One with the trendy web page style (the pretty one) and the other using the old Windows 7 style (the useful control panel). And I suspect they know its terrible. What other reason would they reserve the the good stuff like the LTSC version to premium enterprise contracts? People who purchase and run Windows Pro and Windows Home are literally paying to feed the monstrous Microsoft telemetry machine. And that's also the reason they don't care anymore if you ever register and activate.

duxup 5y ago
That's exactly what I thought when I ran into the old control panel. "Oh ... I see ... they know."
the_only_law 5y ago
It’s obnoxious because while it seems like they keep adding features to the former that I’m used to using the latter for. The other day, I was trying to set a static IP on a VM. Apparently the new Setting app has an option, but for whatever reason, it would change the IP settings. So I went into the classic network adapter options and set it there. That seemed to work, but the Settings app still didn’t show the adapter configured with a static IP. So I ran up config, and everything checked out thankfully. Old one is still cooler because you can add custom items in it :^)
duskwuff 5y ago
And even within the Control Panel (the older one), there's multiple visually distinct UIs: 1. First, there's "Windows 7 style" applets like "File History", "Power Options", and "Programs and Features". I'm not sure how to summarize these beyond that they have a resizable window and usually have some options in a sidebar on the left, but they all have a visually consistent look (which was a lot more obvious before Windows 10). 2. Next, some Windows 7 era applets use a different interface which displays in a (mock) file browser, like "Devices and Printers" or "Fonts". 3. Then there's some older applets which use a Windows XP-era interface in a small, fixed-size window with tabs at the top, like "Date and Time" or "Mouse". 4. Finally, there are a few applets which have a completely unique interface, like "Indexing Options" or "Device Manager". 5. Oh, and I forgot to mention: some of the applets in the Control Panel open up a Settings applet when clicked, like "System" and "Taskbar". But even this isn't consistent; some applets in Settings, like "Mouse" have a "additional settings" link on the right which opens the Control Panel applet when clicked. Confused yet? Don't worry, the next version of Windows will assuredly find a way to make it worse.
- alexvoda 5y ago
  1 and 2 are part of the same Vista/7 era Control Panel UI. 3 I believe is even older than that, maybe since 95 4 is the MMC. The MMC is actually great and I am disaponted to see it lose favor. You can even use the MMC to remotely admin other computers. The MMC is somethig I miss on other OSs. Microsoft should have really invested time in creating template projects used to migrate from the 95 era panels to the Vista/7 era panels. And then again for Win10. Because even if they migrate all windows settings to new panels they are still stuck with 3rd party panels using the old infrastructure (Synaptics, Flash, others still use the 95 era panels). And now migration across all the versions means a complete rewrite effort. And I am not even sure it is possible in all cases. So they are stuck maintaining old infrastructure. Mac OS fairs better because they had a clean break from 9 to X. And eventually X had pluggable 3rd party panels which proved to be a pain during the transition from 32bit to 64bit. Did Mac OS 9 and earlier have plugable 3rd party panels? Linux for a long time just didn't care. I belive KDE Plasma has this capability since 5 (not sure it was there in 4). It is the same with Windows (File) Explorer. It is incredibly plugable. Way more than alternatives on other OSs. There are namespace extensions, context menu extensions, icon overlay extensions, online storage support (since 10), etc.. Being stuck with supporting old infrastructure is a consequence of creating that infrastructure in the first place. The less you create the less you have to maintain. But, as a user, I will take more over less.
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    > Microsoft should have really invested time in creating template projects used to migrate from the 95 era panels to the Vista/7 era panels. And then again for Win10. A lot of the problem just feels like they've repeatedly given up halfway through converting old settings UIs to newer ones and fallen back to bundling the old UIs into "advanced" or "additional settings" windows. The Personalization settings are a perfect example of this -- there's a Windows 10 Settings applet, which defers to a Windows 7 Control Panel applet for some options, which internally defers to a Windows XP era dialog for setting colors (which are mostly no-ops on Windows 10, but I digress). What they really need is a concerted effort to finish the job. > Did Mac OS 9 and earlier have plugable 3rd party panels? Ooooooh boy. Tangent time: Control Panels and Extensions were perhaps one of the most terrifying part of Classic Mac OS from a modern development perspective. They represented modules of code which were loaded system-wide at startup, which could patch any (ANY!!) part of the operating system with their own code to add custom functionality -- for example, some common ones would add a screen saver (After Dark), add custom system-wide menus (Now Menus), or change the appearance of system controls and windows (Kaleidoscope). Conflicts between different cdevs/extensions were commonplace; System 7.5 added a first-party Extensions Manager utility that could be used to temporarily disable extensions, and a number of third-party utilities existed to diagnose startup crashes caused by conflicts. The only difference between a Control Panel and an Extension was that a Control Panel could be launched as an application, typically to change its settings. There was no special UI framework for third-party Control Panels; they used the same UI toolkits as any other application.
tinus_hn 5y ago
The old style control panel is part of the Windows api, if they drop it they’ll break things like mouse drivers that often add tabs to the dialogs.

duxup 5y ago

That's exactly what I thought when I ran into the old control panel. "Oh ... I see ... they know."

the_only_law 5y ago

It’s obnoxious because while it seems like they keep adding features to the former that I’m used to using the latter for. The other day, I was trying to set a static IP on a VM. Apparently the new Setting app has an option, but for whatever reason, it would change the IP settings. So I went into the classic network adapter options and set it there. That seemed to work, but the Settings app still didn’t show the adapter configured with a static IP. So I ran up config, and everything checked out thankfully. Old one is still cooler because you can add custom items in it :^)

duskwuff 5y ago

And even within the Control Panel (the older one), there's multiple visually distinct UIs: 1. First, there's "Windows 7 style" applets like "File History", "Power Options", and "Programs and Features". I'm not sure how to summarize these beyond that they have a resizable window and usually have some options in a sidebar on the left, but they all have a visually consistent look (which was a lot more obvious before Windows 10). 2. Next, some Windows 7 era applets use a different interface which displays in a (mock) file browser, like "Devices and Printers" or "Fonts". 3. Then there's some older applets which use a Windows XP-era interface in a small, fixed-size window with tabs at the top, like "Date and Time" or "Mouse". 4. Finally, there are a few applets which have a completely unique interface, like "Indexing Options" or "Device Manager". 5. Oh, and I forgot to mention: some of the applets in the Control Panel open up a Settings applet when clicked, like "System" and "Taskbar". But even this isn't consistent; some applets in Settings, like "Mouse" have a "additional settings" link on the right which opens the Control Panel applet when clicked. Confused yet? Don't worry, the next version of Windows will assuredly find a way to make it worse.

alexvoda 5y ago
1 and 2 are part of the same Vista/7 era Control Panel UI. 3 I believe is even older than that, maybe since 95 4 is the MMC. The MMC is actually great and I am disaponted to see it lose favor. You can even use the MMC to remotely admin other computers. The MMC is somethig I miss on other OSs. Microsoft should have really invested time in creating template projects used to migrate from the 95 era panels to the Vista/7 era panels. And then again for Win10. Because even if they migrate all windows settings to new panels they are still stuck with 3rd party panels using the old infrastructure (Synaptics, Flash, others still use the 95 era panels). And now migration across all the versions means a complete rewrite effort. And I am not even sure it is possible in all cases. So they are stuck maintaining old infrastructure. Mac OS fairs better because they had a clean break from 9 to X. And eventually X had pluggable 3rd party panels which proved to be a pain during the transition from 32bit to 64bit. Did Mac OS 9 and earlier have plugable 3rd party panels? Linux for a long time just didn't care. I belive KDE Plasma has this capability since 5 (not sure it was there in 4). It is the same with Windows (File) Explorer. It is incredibly plugable. Way more than alternatives on other OSs. There are namespace extensions, context menu extensions, icon overlay extensions, online storage support (since 10), etc.. Being stuck with supporting old infrastructure is a consequence of creating that infrastructure in the first place. The less you create the less you have to maintain. But, as a user, I will take more over less.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  > Microsoft should have really invested time in creating template projects used to migrate from the 95 era panels to the Vista/7 era panels. And then again for Win10. A lot of the problem just feels like they've repeatedly given up halfway through converting old settings UIs to newer ones and fallen back to bundling the old UIs into "advanced" or "additional settings" windows. The Personalization settings are a perfect example of this -- there's a Windows 10 Settings applet, which defers to a Windows 7 Control Panel applet for some options, which internally defers to a Windows XP era dialog for setting colors (which are mostly no-ops on Windows 10, but I digress). What they really need is a concerted effort to finish the job. > Did Mac OS 9 and earlier have plugable 3rd party panels? Ooooooh boy. Tangent time: Control Panels and Extensions were perhaps one of the most terrifying part of Classic Mac OS from a modern development perspective. They represented modules of code which were loaded system-wide at startup, which could patch any (ANY!!) part of the operating system with their own code to add custom functionality -- for example, some common ones would add a screen saver (After Dark), add custom system-wide menus (Now Menus), or change the appearance of system controls and windows (Kaleidoscope). Conflicts between different cdevs/extensions were commonplace; System 7.5 added a first-party Extensions Manager utility that could be used to temporarily disable extensions, and a number of third-party utilities existed to diagnose startup crashes caused by conflicts. The only difference between a Control Panel and an Extension was that a Control Panel could be launched as an application, typically to change its settings. There was no special UI framework for third-party Control Panels; they used the same UI toolkits as any other application.

tinus_hn 5y ago

The old style control panel is part of the Windows api, if they drop it they’ll break things like mouse drivers that often add tabs to the dialogs.