10 ms·

There are at least 10 different Microsoft design conventions in Windows 11

149 points by luke2m 5y ago

dm319 5y ago
I remember when Win 7 came out - even then it was so easy to click through the veneer of the Win 7 style. I think it was the 'display' dialogue, which looked almost identical to the Win98 version, complete with the CRT-style monitor. Likewise, Windows 10 looks good with superficial use. Seems like each iteration adds an extra shell.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  This is great for people who already know it, but terrible for people who don’t and try to understand why there are 4 different panels for the same thing that all look different.
spamizbad 5y ago
Eh, UI consistency is overrated. I'm old enough to remember the 90s and early 00s when people said the webapps would never really be widely used outside of toy applications because of UI/UX inconsistencies.
- jrm4 5y ago
  This entire field of so-called *design" is WILDLY overrated. The biggest problem is that there is way too much mere fashion masquerading as "scientifically proven methodologies of human interaction with machines." There's so much ridiculousness in this space because "designers" treat their own preferences (or worse, those of their company) as nearly immutable laws. Just let me pick poofy or flat buttons and get over yourselves.
  - lioeters 5y ago
    I'm inclined to agree. I'm always wary of design refresh/update in operating systems and commonly used applications like Firefox, because more often than not, it means worse user experience and no perceptible benefit. Your whole comment also rings true when "design" and "designers" are replaced with "software" and "programmers".
    - hnick 5y ago
      On this new update of Firefox, tabs are disconnected from the page. Are they even tabs anymore?!? They're just disconnected rectangles with round corners! I'm half joking but honestly I don't know why they bother with this. And for whatever reason, it gets under my skin and feels weird.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    How about let me have text on my buttons so I know what the hell they are for. And I can communicate to my parents what the hell they should be clicking on. And stop hiding every single button. I am specifically referring to Google.
- azornathogron 5y ago
  And instead, they are widely used and hated! Businesses are great at iterating to find out just how much customers are willing to put up with in quality reductions before they actually leave, and also great at putting up barriers to shift that tipping point further in the company's favour. It turns out people will put up with a lot. Even stuff they hate. We have the technology and ability to create things that are far higher quality, but it's usually a losing proposition from a profit-seeking perspective. It's just the same old "worse is better" story. (This is just a tangential thought, not some kind of disagreement or rebuttal.)
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    It’s pretty sad, but unfortunately the exact reason why it seems like everything we use is terrible. Executives at companies don’t care for the aforementioned reason, but they discount the deep scorching branding damage this incurs that no amount of marketing will fix. Users who have the choice will switch eventually, whenever they get the chance, they will never come back and they will hate you and share their discomfort. This will lead to scales being tipped against you wherever possible. Now, you can still build a hard to avoid product and make a ton of money from it (Microsoft), so it‘s still not a losing strategy. So here I am just begging companies to stop building terrible products because they make people miserable. You can also build a high quality loved product and the effect above will reverse, but probably not at the same price (Apple, Jetbrains).
  - spamizbad 5y ago
    I don't find the the experiences of native desktop apps particularly compelling. I think much of the thinking behind this mentality grew from an era where computers were scary and intimidating and you had huge swaths of the population that didn't even want to use them. So everyone bent over backwards trying to appeal to reluctant adopters. That world doesn't exist anymore.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
olivierestsage 5y ago
Although my favorite is Win32, Modern/Fluent is the only one that really strikes me as "bad."
- smoldesu 5y ago
  You'd probably like GTK/QT. Both of them are effectively delineations of that same functional design language, with holistically different approaches to the subject. I personally love both, but they're a fascinating case study if nothing else.
  - olivierestsage 5y ago
    Yes, I certainly do -- especially Qt. I'm always wondering whether my preference for this more "traditional" design paradigm just comes from using Win32 in my formative years or some objective difference of quality. Anyone who shares the sentiment might want to check out the Chicago95 theme[1]. [1] https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
    - dm319 5y ago
      I think they were quite efficient designs. I grew up using a lot of paradigms, from 3.1, 95, RiscOS, Workbench and dabble of Mac 9/10 later on. I gave gnome 3 a good go, but while I really enjoyed the visual appeal of it, I found I wasn't as productive - trying to switch Windows was hard as the windows didn't stay in the same place like they did with a taskbar. Unity was more productive for me. But I'm happiest on MATE.
- rado 5y ago
  That’s the funniest part: the oldest style is still the best.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    Because back then usability was in focus: https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-95s-user-interface/ https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9... There is also a Twitter thread that notes what got lost over time - especially separation and contrast. https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805 https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805
jasonlfunk 5y ago
Is it just me, or can this Reddit post not even be viewed with iOS Safari? I understand that Reddit wants me to download their app, but to prevent me from even seeing the post is a step too far.
- AstaManasta 5y ago
  It’s pathetic. You can request the desktop version though which works fine in landscape mode
- olivierestsage 5y ago
  What stopped me was having to click "View rest of discussion" to read a full comment thread. When I clicked it, it didn't show me the discussion, but instead took me to a window with another submission from r/Windows11 in focus. I had to scroll back up to actually find the discussion. Good grief! Edit: I meant "Continue this thread," not "View rest of discussion."
  - rideontime 5y ago
    Try to view too many comments and it'll force you to log in, too. At which point I just close the tab, remembering that I've never read anything in a reddit thread that was worth the time it takes to log in.
    - keanebean86 5y ago
      There's also the NSFW thing too. If you try to view post in specific subreddits it will try to force you to the app. These aren't even smut subreddits. I think /r/greentext (4chat story screenshots) does this. I really need to finally leave.
  - finiteseries 5y ago
    No, that’s “normal” and has been there for a while. This post forces you to use the app to see any of it period, or returns you to /r/popular. First time I’ve ever seen it as well. https://imgur.com/a/IFI9ik9 https://imgur.com/a/IFI9ik9
nmeofthestate 5y ago
Very contrived over-counting.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
paxys 5y ago
10 is a bit of a stretch. I only see 2-3 distinct styles.
rado 5y ago
UI is a train wreck, but on the bright side, it has all that sophisticated telemetry to improve the UX.
allyourhorses 5y ago
Moral: the UX "sector" needs to shrink by about 98%, and what remains should be contractors or agencies
- tvanantwerp 5y ago
  I've long suspected that there is a glut of not-terribly-good UX people who continually create pointless redesigns to justify their ongoing employment. I can't remember the last time (maybe never?) that I saw a redesign and thought, "Oh, yes, that's so much better, I'm excited for this!"
  - slightwinder 5y ago
    Maybe UX is a fashion-sector? As they also regulary reinvent themself to stay alive.
    - nexuist 5y ago
      This is a good way to think of it. We've had clothes for ages but they get boring. We seek different things that look unique because we want to be excited. Our brains didn't like staring at text all day so we started wrapping the text with fun colors and shapes and it spiraled from there.
kushalpandya 5y ago
In my years of using different operating systems, KDE Plasma has had the most consistent UI across the board.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  Consistently ugly? Breeze cleaned things up a bit, but almost all the apps have an „I made the UI in 5 minutes before I fall asleep“ vibe (namely because the spacings are all weird). To be fair: That is very consistent.
  - kushalpandya 5y ago
    You haven't used KDE Plasma as primary desktop for long time, have you?
    - solarkraft 5y ago
      It has been about a year.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  The open source way of splitting out the actual utility into some command line thing, and then making a thin UI wrapper, seems to really improve consistency. Which, I guess, is unsurprising -- the open source community needed to make a UI on top of a chaotic ecosystem, so they actually had to deal with the problem up front. Windows skated by accidental consistency for quite a while.
vehemenz 5y ago
Don't forget applications that still use a forked version of the Windows 3.1 common dialog. To be fair, the last consistent Windows UI was probably Windows 3.1. In hindsight, it looks is incredibly cohesive and functional. Swap out the font (MS Sans Serif, especially bold, looks pretty bad), make the graphical components vector-based, and it would still look great today.
- allyourhorses 5y ago
  Windows 3.1 had something like 5 built-in widgets. CTL3D.DLL (dating myself here!) IIRC added a bunch more. IMHO somewhere between CTL3D and XP was when design topped out. I still love elements of 7 and 10, but honestly would have been totally fine if 2K or XP were the final themes. Imagine if after all this time, the only way to date a Windows installation was by subtle design variations of the window title bar. Such bliss! Although of course, I am glad for many of the changes made during the mobile/touch revolution. I wonder if the tide will ever turn on UX ideologists. Chased out of the industry like the witches and warlocks they are :)
udev 5y ago
Yes, and you need about 12 digits to write the net worth of Bill Gates, which is to say this does not matter as much as you think.
- udev 5y ago
  Downvotes from people who can't accept that one can dominate a market with many inconsistencies in your UI? I guess the same people who applaud each time when Federighi anounces the redesign of the macOS trashcan icon.
arthurcolle 5y ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are_at_least_10_different_microsoft_design/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are...
- abalaji 5y ago
  @dang can we update the link, on mobile you can’t even view the thread (Reddit pop up)
  - dt3ft 5y ago
    I second this. I don’t have the reddit app and will not install it to view this link. Might as well remove it from HN altogether.
ziml77 5y ago
I hate the inconsistencies, but this is a bit of an extreme breakdown. The ones marked as 95, NT, and XP are all fit with each other. Vista and 7 also go together fine, and with the UI theming still don't look inconsistent with the previous set. The one marked as 8 looks right at home with 11 (which was really just a matter of giving it blurred transparency and rounded corners). Splitting 10 RTM and the Store is weird. They very much go together. That leaves 10 19H1 which is the biggest oddball to me and hopefully gets fixed to be consistent with 11. But anyway, isn't it better that they haven't fucked with some of the older (95-7) UIs that your normal user is never going to see? (I'm counting add/remove programs in that set since there is a non-.cpl replacement that is modernized) Power users tend to hate it when things get changed for no reason other than aesthetics, especially since they often lose functionality.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  It also leaves out the Windows 3.1 https://i.redd.it/5xo6c8xmst571.png https://i.redd.it/5xo6c8xmst571.png
  - ziml77 5y ago
    Ok, that's the absolute worst. I hate running into those 3.1 file pickers because they're so annoying to navigate.
    - kwanbix 5y ago
      Horrible? Sure. But difficult to navigate? I am not so sure. Maybe because I used Win 3.x and 9x? Could be.
      - ziml77 5y ago
        Yes, difficult to navigate. The list can only display a few items at a time because it's so small. And really I don't want to be clicking my way to a folder anyway, I want to be able to paste the path in or type it with autocomplete. I grew up with 3.1 and 9x. I don't want that back.
pavlov 5y ago
Seems like some progress has been made because the oldest style here is as recent as Win95. For a long time, the "Install Font" dialog was unchanged from Windows 3.0, with a tiny little folder tree view meant for 8.3 character file names and a drive picker button... Some googling reveals they cleaned these up around 2015: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/windows-10-will-soon-be-more-environmentally-friendly-with-updated-dialog-box/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/windo...
whalesalad 5y ago
This is how it’s been forever. Windows 10 is the same - the fact that there are two control panels is mind boggling.
- jasdine817 5y ago
  Loads of third party apps have shell extensions that use control panel and there's 20 years of settings to migrate over. It's getting there.
wintermutestwin 5y ago
I wonder if the software update dialog box will still feature the useless flying dots instead of providing useful information like: what update is actually doing (or more like trying to do but failing), how much progress it has made in trying to do it (or, more like where has the damn thing hung again) and (god forbid) a solid guess as to how many fricking hours are left. ~2T$ and these jokers can't figure out how to reasonably update their kludgy mess. (sorry for the rant, but this update crap killed a half a day of my non-profit volunteer time and is still unresolved)
solarkraft 5y ago
They’ve mastered the art of inconsistency. At least they’re doing something to the previously hideous winforms widgets. Bonus points had actually updated them to the new design language (god fucking damn it).
gentleman11 5y ago
Speaking of horrid design, Reddit is blocking me from viewing that page unless I visit it in their app
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  The article now points to old.reddit.com, which should not do that.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
caycep 5y ago
I kind of wonder - maybe it's a sign of what a company like MS is, and its strengths. i.e. they are focusing on being a good platform/services company, and end user UI/UX is really more of an afterthought for them. If somehow they end up with a good Apple-like UI/UX, would that be a bad sign the company is losing its focus or getting its culture muddled?
okareaman 5y ago
I have a feeling the only people who care about this are people who don't use Windows.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  I do use windows. And it does annoye me how inconsistent it is. And I also use Linux, which is inconsistent by design. Yet windows is even worse than this IMHO.
  - okareaman 5y ago
    I like how the tabbed dialog to set the system path env vars is the same for 20 years, then if I open up the calculator and it's got a fancy new look and feel, that's good too.
aksss 5y ago
I'm really disappointed in the center-justification of the task bar and start menu. I'm assuming that means the start menu icon will forever be creeping left as I open more apps, along with the start menu itself. Not a fan of this at all. There's an option to left-justify, I understand - and I like options - but would prefer left-justified to remain the default for users. I assume they're building in the option to left-justify in case this move turns out to be another Windows 8 cock-up of a UI experience. I remember MS executives being "excited" about Windows 8 as well, it means little to nothing to me that Satya is excited about Win11.
- spidersouris 5y ago
  A mere hypothesis, but I wonder if that task bar centering wasn't pushed because of the increase in popularity of ultrawide screens as well as tablets (Microsoft has been pushing for Windows use on tablets for quite some time now). Because when you imagine a centered taskbar on an ultrawide screen or a tablet, it makes absolute sense and is preferable to having it on the left side of the screen. The centered taskbar doesn't work at all on smaller screens though.
  - leokennis 5y ago
    Huge advantage of the start button on the bottom left: I can just “throw” my mouse pointer as far down and left as I can and click, and I’ll always hit the start button.
    - arkitaip 5y ago
      This is actual supported by Fitts' law, one of the very few laws in UX design [0]: "Placing layout elements on the four edges of the screen allows for infinitely large targets in one dimension and therefore present ideal scenarios. As the user's pointer will always stop at the edge, they can move the mouse with the greatest possible speed and still hit the target. The target area is effectively infinitely long along the movement axis. Therefore, this guideline is called “Rule of the infinite edges”. The use of this rule can be seen for example in MacOS, which places the menu bar always on the top left edge of the screen instead of the current program's windowframe." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law#Implications_for_UI_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law#Implications_for...
slownews45 5y ago
Talking to modern UI / Designer folks for these things - so much mushy weird aspirational language and constructs. What happened to this will be easier to see, to remember, takes fewer clicks, is quicker. I mean, you spend a billion bucks on a new design and get things like this (from MS Fluent): Fluent experiences listen and adapt... They unite people and ideas, whether they’re on opposite sides of the globe or standing right next to each other... Fluent speaks in light and shadow, in spatial dimensions... I just want to get work done. Save me from my spatial dimensions (and whitespace overload).
- bitwize 5y ago
  > Fluent experiences listen and adapt... They unite people and ideas, whether they’re on opposite sides of the globe or standing right next to each other... Fluent speaks in light and shadow, in spatial dimensions... BARF. I can hear the thrumming of Enya's "Storms in Africa" behind this text...
  - drumttocs8 5y ago
    Hey, that's a great song though.
    - bitwize 5y ago
      Considered on its own, it's quite lovely. I was going for the overuse of it to punch up meaningless faux-inspirational ad/prezo copy with generic positive vibes.
- kungito 5y ago
  I'm no designer but I've seen amazing ones work. Could it be that this is just marketing talk unrelated to actual design philosophy underneath because it is not targeting people related to that?
  - slownews45 5y ago
    But the modern interfaces are relative junk from my view with some exceptions. Just basic things like putting focus on an input field of a pop-up dialog. I get that isn't sexy but it IS efficient. They should focus more on the later and less on the sexy gradient / look stuff.
notimetorelax 5y ago
Admins can you please change the url to the old Reddit UI. The new UI is locked on mobile Safari. https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are_at_least_10_different_microsoft_design/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are...
turminal 5y ago
Wow, reddit really hates website users.
51Cards 5y ago
As an older developer I find it funny how design trends cycle around. I think in my life I've seen UI design go the full circle at least twice. The square corner, solid colour era is ending and it looks like we're pulling back into round corner and gradient land. Next stop, Skeuomorph station, all aboard. Upside, some of the legacy systems I wrote 20 years ago are going to look modern again!
c-smile 5y ago
We shall admit that to follow UI trends in one application is relatively easy. For example one application in last 15 years: https://sciter.com/from-skeuomorph-to-flat-ui-evolution-of-one-application/ https://sciter.com/from-skeuomorph-to-flat-ui-evolution-of-o... But to do the same on OS level - hundreds of different apps and applets ... That's Sisyphean task to be honest. We should be lucky that old stuff is still working and API that appeared in Win 3 is still with us. Actually that is not just Windows problem. On Linux, for example, all these utilities were historically console UI applications that are more "UI conservative" but even there - whole zoo of different approaches...
- nexuist 5y ago
  Well, the reason for the Linux utilities is because Linux doesn't actually ship with a GUI; anything you see on screen is drawn by a userspace program that all other programs interact with (said program is called a "desktop environment" or DE). Building text-based tools is much easier than building GUIs on Linux because you have to target a specific GUI architecture like X11 / Wayland, and then you also have to think about fitting in with whatever window manager the user uses; GNOME / KDE / whatever. On Mac or Windows, you build a GUI using the vendor's tools and you're golden. No need to worry about how the user is getting windows to show up on their screen because every user is using the same software to do so. For similar reasons, a lot of software just says screw it and targets Ubuntu only so they don't have to support your weird configuration on any other distro.
snowwrestler 5y ago
I mean, it’s fun to dunk on Microsoft OS design, but aren’t we looking at screenshots from a leaked early build? Seems reasonable that it looks a bit hacked together at this point. Maybe it will launch this way. But maybe it won’t.
- Loeffelmaenn 5y ago
  I mean people thought the same thing about Windows 10 and to this day it's a mix of 7 different designs or so.
- emsy 5y ago
  It’s reasonable to assume it won’t, when you see how legacy UI was kept mostly unchanged at least since Windows XP.
jbellis 5y ago
Glass half full: that's some serious commitment to backwards compatibility.
dredmorbius 5y ago
I got my start programming with a tool that originated on mainframes, saw a brief popularity in text-based minicomputers (Vaxen and Unixen), was ported to X11 Unix, then to PCs beginning with MS Windows 3, and through multiple generations as that became the overwhelmingly dominant user platform. There were further changes and inheretences from within each of those environments as well. It was possible when using the application to recognise where and how various components and features originated and what platform(s) they were developed on or for. Even some 50 years after the first release, this can be determined. As I came to use Unix and Linux more heavily, I noticed the same trend in various applications, both command-line (GNU and BSD userland, MVS JCL relics such as "dd", and others) and graphical. Various X11 and graphical toolkits became instantly recognisable, and though the appearances (and often feature locations and implementations) were often wildly inconsistent (Xt Intrinsics / Athena scrollbars, anyone?), once the contexts were known, the visual indicators made clear "oh, this is an Athena app, this is a Motif app, this is a gtk app, this is a KDE app", or singletons (Netscape / Mozilla / Phoenix / Fireox, StarOffice / OpenOffice / NeoOffice / LibreOffice, Applixware (remember that?), etc. came to be known quantities. Various JS toolkits and Electron apps are probably the current version of this. I've (mostly in jest, though possibly more seriously with time) had the tag "technological archaeologist" in various online bios. That traces directly to my experience with tools developed over a number of different platforms or tools. Or simply the influences of time and trends or fashions. Microsoft Windows at about 45 years of age now has its own design legacy and archaeological strata.
015a 5y ago
I understand it can be fun to point stuff out like this, laugh at it, etc. Personally, I think this is actually good. Consistent and Productive Design, especially on the level of patterns across an entire operating system of both first and third party applications, is an insanely difficult problem. This means one absolutely needs to bring in the consideration of resource allocation. Its not possible to do everything exactly the same; in fact, a related but incorrect argument may be that its not possible to do everything exactly the same on Day 1, but because "Good Design" is a moving target, its actually really difficult to reach that goal in any capacity whatsoever. Inconsistent design, like this, tells me that it isn't a resource allocation priority for Microsoft. Thus, those resources are most likely diverted to more functional aspects; getting it working, faster, more consistent behavior, broader and deeper feature sets, etc. This is the right trade-off for Windows. One can point to MacOS or iOS and see a much more consistent design language across first-party apps, as well as pretty strong adoption of this design language across third-party apps, but the cost of this near-perfection is abstracted away. Its easy to see inconsistencies in design; its much harder to speak in aggregates about obscure software issues, missing features, delayed releases, etc. Strongly consistent design, in the face of these issues (many of which are unproveable externally) may actually be the right trade-off for MacOS and iOS; Apple is a far more design/PR/marketing driven company, and this guise of "everything is engineered and under control" may actually be materially important for their brand. Windows is different. Moreover; it should be different. The fundamental idea that an entire operating system needs a cohesive, strongly consistent design language is one that Microsoft has tried to push several times, but one which hasn't even seen internal adoption, let alone external. One can blame this on the design languages being bad, or their tooling being bad, or anything, but at the end of the day its still the most popular non-server OS in the world (or is Android bigger now? Well, its the same argument there too). Conforming to any central design pattern isn't a priority for Windows users. There's no physical law of the universe that OS-wide design languages are a naturally good thing; in fact, I would argue that design languages shared between many domains of applications may fundamentally fail to account for the wide variety of interaction patterns within every domain, and thus as a software platform increases its complexity of services offered, domain-agnostic design languages naturally begin to fall apart. They may actually be Generally Bad, though I only feel comfortable asserting with any certainty that they're probably not Generally Good or Bad, and there's room for different platforms to try different things.
rbanffy 5y ago
> I think 11 will be a true return to a Microsoft experience supremacy not seen in a decade. I’m sorry. I had to laugh. Windows has been so complicated and inconsistent, with built-in control panels, vendor mini-applications, inconsistent within Windows itself, where you see the parts that haven’t been touched since NT 3.5, alongside each and every version of Windows ever sold, plus the built in vendor specific control panels that makes it impossible to figure out what is the currently active Wi-Fi configuration (a recurrent problem I have when helping house guests to connect. Macs just work. Linux just works, Androids and iPhones easily connect. Windows laptops? Ha! Just use the range extender that’s in the guest bedroom. For some reason I will not dedicate the time to figure out for every Windows version and PC manufacturer why, that little thing seems to like Windows machines.
- kiwih 5y ago
  I'll agree that Macs have it pretty good, but to say 'Linux just works' with WiFi is a bold statement. Some Linux distributions work well, but when you have to fall back to the command prompt to do something as simple as connect to an enterprise WiFi network for a device as common as a raspberry pi [0] because there is no GUI, well. I'll grant that at least the steps are moderately consistent. Anecdotally, even on my Ubuntu laptop, at least once a year I lose WiFi and have to delve into some online forums to learn what just broke it. I use both Linux (Ubuntu/Raspian) and Windows extensively and overall most things just work better on Windows, poor design philosophies aside. [0] https://iceburn.medium.com/raspberry-pi-connected-to-wifi-of-wpa2-enterprise-ddd5a40c0b07 https://iceburn.medium.com/raspberry-pi-connected-to-wifi-of...
  - jimmygrapes 5y ago
    I installed Ubuntu Server 20.04 on a spare laptop. Long story short, it did not have any way to connect to my WiFi network unless I either first went through the guided installation with an Ethernet cord attached, or went through some excruciating troubleshooting steps involving setting up hardware via obtuse CLI commands and arguments. I tried the latter just to see if I could without looking things up on my phone/separate computer, and even with a bit of cheating I still gave up and tried again with the cord plugged in.
banana_giraffe 5y ago
The one that always gets me is how oddly forgotten the MMC stuff is: The Disk Management UI's bottom pane, for whatever reason, has never worked with scroll wheels. It still gleefully ignores scroll wheels. The Hyper-V Manager .. a new thing .. has a broken UI as well. It's "Actions" pane size is based off the screen-width, but the default size of the window is based off the screen height, so on ultra-wide screen monitors, a pane that should take up about a 1/3 of the window, ends up covering about 2/3 of the window. I also love how even the Action menu is a hold over from some older UX ideas. There are two ways to bring up the help dialog now in all of the MMC apps, either with the Help menu, or via the Action menu. But! At least they got enough attention to use Edge instead of the default browser if you try to open the "TechCenter Website" (a website that hasn't had that name in 8 years or so)
- siproprio 5y ago
  Well... your problem is solved... disk management has no UI anymore...
butz 5y ago
That feeling, when you are still patching up lesser used components for current design system and manager barges in with new redesign.
wpdev_63 5y ago
Kinda wish microsoft would make Windows 10 the last backwards compatible windows and start from scratch. Virtualize Win10 for backwards compatibility and start from a blank slate with modern design principles.
nly 5y ago
So... any god damn news on what MS are doing with 11 beyond dicking around with the UI again?
ppetty 5y ago
Is Reddit usable without the app on a phone? I can’t seem to get to that page, two prompts to continue without an app that I don’t have or want and I’m redirected to the homepage…
hakfoo 5y ago
I suspect there's a belief in some mythic market of "computer-averse" people, who if we just round off enough rough corners-- both metaphorically and literally-- they'll be willing to jump from, say, an iDevice or Chromebook, or no computer at all, to a full Windows PC. What saddens me is that this steers the whole design process. You create a thin candy coating over the system to appeal to this audience, but at the same time, that clogs up established workflows and creates an inconsistent mess for more experienced users who have to work with both new and old UX flows. Maybe we need to simply own the inconsistency. Build the shiny new experiences as a seperate flow, and allow users to migrate towards more traditional, powerful tools with the old UI conventions. Something like the manufacturer-provided shell you'd see on a late Windows 3.1 PC, where eventually you outgrow it and switch to using Program Manager.

149 points by luke2m 5y ago

I remember when Win 7 came out - even then it was so easy to click through the veneer of the Win 7 style. I think it was the 'display' dialogue, which looked almost identical to the Win98 version, complete with the CRT-style monitor. Likewise, Windows 10 looks good with superficial use. Seems like each iteration adds an extra shell.

solarkraft 5y ago
This is great for people who already know it, but terrible for people who don’t and try to understand why there are 4 different panels for the same thing that all look different.

spamizbad 5y ago

Eh, UI consistency is overrated. I'm old enough to remember the 90s and early 00s when people said the webapps would never really be widely used outside of toy applications because of UI/UX inconsistencies.

jrm4 5y ago
This entire field of so-called *design" is WILDLY overrated. The biggest problem is that there is way too much mere fashion masquerading as "scientifically proven methodologies of human interaction with machines." There's so much ridiculousness in this space because "designers" treat their own preferences (or worse, those of their company) as nearly immutable laws. Just let me pick poofy or flat buttons and get over yourselves.
- lioeters 5y ago
  I'm inclined to agree. I'm always wary of design refresh/update in operating systems and commonly used applications like Firefox, because more often than not, it means worse user experience and no perceptible benefit. Your whole comment also rings true when "design" and "designers" are replaced with "software" and "programmers".
  - hnick 5y ago
    On this new update of Firefox, tabs are disconnected from the page. Are they even tabs anymore?!? They're just disconnected rectangles with round corners! I'm half joking but honestly I don't know why they bother with this. And for whatever reason, it gets under my skin and feels weird.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  How about let me have text on my buttons so I know what the hell they are for. And I can communicate to my parents what the hell they should be clicking on. And stop hiding every single button. I am specifically referring to Google.
azornathogron 5y ago
And instead, they are widely used and hated! Businesses are great at iterating to find out just how much customers are willing to put up with in quality reductions before they actually leave, and also great at putting up barriers to shift that tipping point further in the company's favour. It turns out people will put up with a lot. Even stuff they hate. We have the technology and ability to create things that are far higher quality, but it's usually a losing proposition from a profit-seeking perspective. It's just the same old "worse is better" story. (This is just a tangential thought, not some kind of disagreement or rebuttal.)
- solarkraft 5y ago
  It’s pretty sad, but unfortunately the exact reason why it seems like everything we use is terrible. Executives at companies don’t care for the aforementioned reason, but they discount the deep scorching branding damage this incurs that no amount of marketing will fix. Users who have the choice will switch eventually, whenever they get the chance, they will never come back and they will hate you and share their discomfort. This will lead to scales being tipped against you wherever possible. Now, you can still build a hard to avoid product and make a ton of money from it (Microsoft), so it‘s still not a losing strategy. So here I am just begging companies to stop building terrible products because they make people miserable. You can also build a high quality loved product and the effect above will reverse, but probably not at the same price (Apple, Jetbrains).
- spamizbad 5y ago
  I don't find the the experiences of native desktop apps particularly compelling. I think much of the thinking behind this mentality grew from an era where computers were scary and intimidating and you had huge swaths of the population that didn't even want to use them. So everyone bent over backwards trying to appeal to reluctant adopters. That world doesn't exist anymore.
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olivierestsage 5y ago

Although my favorite is Win32, Modern/Fluent is the only one that really strikes me as "bad."

smoldesu 5y ago
You'd probably like GTK/QT. Both of them are effectively delineations of that same functional design language, with holistically different approaches to the subject. I personally love both, but they're a fascinating case study if nothing else.
- olivierestsage 5y ago
  Yes, I certainly do -- especially Qt. I'm always wondering whether my preference for this more "traditional" design paradigm just comes from using Win32 in my formative years or some objective difference of quality. Anyone who shares the sentiment might want to check out the Chicago95 theme[1]. [1] https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
  - dm319 5y ago
    I think they were quite efficient designs. I grew up using a lot of paradigms, from 3.1, 95, RiscOS, Workbench and dabble of Mac 9/10 later on. I gave gnome 3 a good go, but while I really enjoyed the visual appeal of it, I found I wasn't as productive - trying to switch Windows was hard as the windows didn't stay in the same place like they did with a taskbar. Unity was more productive for me. But I'm happiest on MATE.
rado 5y ago
That’s the funniest part: the oldest style is still the best.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  Because back then usability was in focus: https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-95s-user-interface/ https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9... There is also a Twitter thread that notes what got lost over time - especially separation and contrast. https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805 https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805

jasonlfunk 5y ago

Is it just me, or can this Reddit post not even be viewed with iOS Safari? I understand that Reddit wants me to download their app, but to prevent me from even seeing the post is a step too far.

AstaManasta 5y ago
It’s pathetic. You can request the desktop version though which works fine in landscape mode
olivierestsage 5y ago
What stopped me was having to click "View rest of discussion" to read a full comment thread. When I clicked it, it didn't show me the discussion, but instead took me to a window with another submission from r/Windows11 in focus. I had to scroll back up to actually find the discussion. Good grief! Edit: I meant "Continue this thread," not "View rest of discussion."
- rideontime 5y ago
  Try to view too many comments and it'll force you to log in, too. At which point I just close the tab, remembering that I've never read anything in a reddit thread that was worth the time it takes to log in.
  - keanebean86 5y ago
    There's also the NSFW thing too. If you try to view post in specific subreddits it will try to force you to the app. These aren't even smut subreddits. I think /r/greentext (4chat story screenshots) does this. I really need to finally leave.
- finiteseries 5y ago
  No, that’s “normal” and has been there for a while. This post forces you to use the app to see any of it period, or returns you to /r/popular. First time I’ve ever seen it as well. https://imgur.com/a/IFI9ik9 https://imgur.com/a/IFI9ik9

nmeofthestate 5y ago

Very contrived over-counting.

deleted 5y ago

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paxys 5y ago

10 is a bit of a stretch. I only see 2-3 distinct styles.

rado 5y ago

UI is a train wreck, but on the bright side, it has all that sophisticated telemetry to improve the UX.

allyourhorses 5y ago

Moral: the UX "sector" needs to shrink by about 98%, and what remains should be contractors or agencies

tvanantwerp 5y ago
I've long suspected that there is a glut of not-terribly-good UX people who continually create pointless redesigns to justify their ongoing employment. I can't remember the last time (maybe never?) that I saw a redesign and thought, "Oh, yes, that's so much better, I'm excited for this!"
- slightwinder 5y ago
  Maybe UX is a fashion-sector? As they also regulary reinvent themself to stay alive.
  - nexuist 5y ago
    This is a good way to think of it. We've had clothes for ages but they get boring. We seek different things that look unique because we want to be excited. Our brains didn't like staring at text all day so we started wrapping the text with fun colors and shapes and it spiraled from there.

kushalpandya 5y ago

In my years of using different operating systems, KDE Plasma has had the most consistent UI across the board.

solarkraft 5y ago
Consistently ugly? Breeze cleaned things up a bit, but almost all the apps have an „I made the UI in 5 minutes before I fall asleep“ vibe (namely because the spacings are all weird). To be fair: That is very consistent.
- kushalpandya 5y ago
  You haven't used KDE Plasma as primary desktop for long time, have you?
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    It has been about a year.
bee_rider 5y ago
The open source way of splitting out the actual utility into some command line thing, and then making a thin UI wrapper, seems to really improve consistency. Which, I guess, is unsurprising -- the open source community needed to make a UI on top of a chaotic ecosystem, so they actually had to deal with the problem up front. Windows skated by accidental consistency for quite a while.

vehemenz 5y ago

Don't forget applications that still use a forked version of the Windows 3.1 common dialog. To be fair, the last consistent Windows UI was probably Windows 3.1. In hindsight, it looks is incredibly cohesive and functional. Swap out the font (MS Sans Serif, especially bold, looks pretty bad), make the graphical components vector-based, and it would still look great today.

allyourhorses 5y ago
Windows 3.1 had something like 5 built-in widgets. CTL3D.DLL (dating myself here!) IIRC added a bunch more. IMHO somewhere between CTL3D and XP was when design topped out. I still love elements of 7 and 10, but honestly would have been totally fine if 2K or XP were the final themes. Imagine if after all this time, the only way to date a Windows installation was by subtle design variations of the window title bar. Such bliss! Although of course, I am glad for many of the changes made during the mobile/touch revolution. I wonder if the tide will ever turn on UX ideologists. Chased out of the industry like the witches and warlocks they are :)

udev 5y ago

Yes, and you need about 12 digits to write the net worth of Bill Gates, which is to say this does not matter as much as you think.

udev 5y ago
Downvotes from people who can't accept that one can dominate a market with many inconsistencies in your UI? I guess the same people who applaud each time when Federighi anounces the redesign of the macOS trashcan icon.

arthurcolle 5y ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are_at_least_10_different_microsoft_design/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are...

abalaji 5y ago
@dang can we update the link, on mobile you can’t even view the thread (Reddit pop up)
- dt3ft 5y ago
  I second this. I don’t have the reddit app and will not install it to view this link. Might as well remove it from HN altogether.

ziml77 5y ago

I hate the inconsistencies, but this is a bit of an extreme breakdown. The ones marked as 95, NT, and XP are all fit with each other. Vista and 7 also go together fine, and with the UI theming still don't look inconsistent with the previous set. The one marked as 8 looks right at home with 11 (which was really just a matter of giving it blurred transparency and rounded corners). Splitting 10 RTM and the Store is weird. They very much go together. That leaves 10 19H1 which is the biggest oddball to me and hopefully gets fixed to be consistent with 11. But anyway, isn't it better that they haven't fucked with some of the older (95-7) UIs that your normal user is never going to see? (I'm counting add/remove programs in that set since there is a non-.cpl replacement that is modernized) Power users tend to hate it when things get changed for no reason other than aesthetics, especially since they often lose functionality.

wlesieutre 5y ago
It also leaves out the Windows 3.1 https://i.redd.it/5xo6c8xmst571.png https://i.redd.it/5xo6c8xmst571.png
- ziml77 5y ago
  Ok, that's the absolute worst. I hate running into those 3.1 file pickers because they're so annoying to navigate.
  - kwanbix 5y ago
    Horrible? Sure. But difficult to navigate? I am not so sure. Maybe because I used Win 3.x and 9x? Could be.
    - ziml77 5y ago
      Yes, difficult to navigate. The list can only display a few items at a time because it's so small. And really I don't want to be clicking my way to a folder anyway, I want to be able to paste the path in or type it with autocomplete. I grew up with 3.1 and 9x. I don't want that back.

pavlov 5y ago

Seems like some progress has been made because the oldest style here is as recent as Win95. For a long time, the "Install Font" dialog was unchanged from Windows 3.0, with a tiny little folder tree view meant for 8.3 character file names and a drive picker button... Some googling reveals they cleaned these up around 2015: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/windows-10-will-soon-be-more-environmentally-friendly-with-updated-dialog-box/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/windo...

whalesalad 5y ago

This is how it’s been forever. Windows 10 is the same - the fact that there are two control panels is mind boggling.

jasdine817 5y ago
Loads of third party apps have shell extensions that use control panel and there's 20 years of settings to migrate over. It's getting there.

wintermutestwin 5y ago

I wonder if the software update dialog box will still feature the useless flying dots instead of providing useful information like: what update is actually doing (or more like trying to do but failing), how much progress it has made in trying to do it (or, more like where has the damn thing hung again) and (god forbid) a solid guess as to how many fricking hours are left. ~2T$ and these jokers can't figure out how to reasonably update their kludgy mess. (sorry for the rant, but this update crap killed a half a day of my non-profit volunteer time and is still unresolved)

solarkraft 5y ago

They’ve mastered the art of inconsistency. At least they’re doing something to the previously hideous winforms widgets. Bonus points had actually updated them to the new design language (god fucking damn it).

gentleman11 5y ago

Speaking of horrid design, Reddit is blocking me from viewing that page unless I visit it in their app

dredmorbius 5y ago
The article now points to old.reddit.com, which should not do that.
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caycep 5y ago

I kind of wonder - maybe it's a sign of what a company like MS is, and its strengths. i.e. they are focusing on being a good platform/services company, and end user UI/UX is really more of an afterthought for them. If somehow they end up with a good Apple-like UI/UX, would that be a bad sign the company is losing its focus or getting its culture muddled?

okareaman 5y ago

I have a feeling the only people who care about this are people who don't use Windows.

slightwinder 5y ago
I do use windows. And it does annoye me how inconsistent it is. And I also use Linux, which is inconsistent by design. Yet windows is even worse than this IMHO.
- okareaman 5y ago
  I like how the tabbed dialog to set the system path env vars is the same for 20 years, then if I open up the calculator and it's got a fancy new look and feel, that's good too.

aksss 5y ago

I'm really disappointed in the center-justification of the task bar and start menu. I'm assuming that means the start menu icon will forever be creeping left as I open more apps, along with the start menu itself. Not a fan of this at all. There's an option to left-justify, I understand - and I like options - but would prefer left-justified to remain the default for users. I assume they're building in the option to left-justify in case this move turns out to be another Windows 8 cock-up of a UI experience. I remember MS executives being "excited" about Windows 8 as well, it means little to nothing to me that Satya is excited about Win11.

spidersouris 5y ago
A mere hypothesis, but I wonder if that task bar centering wasn't pushed because of the increase in popularity of ultrawide screens as well as tablets (Microsoft has been pushing for Windows use on tablets for quite some time now). Because when you imagine a centered taskbar on an ultrawide screen or a tablet, it makes absolute sense and is preferable to having it on the left side of the screen. The centered taskbar doesn't work at all on smaller screens though.
- leokennis 5y ago
  Huge advantage of the start button on the bottom left: I can just “throw” my mouse pointer as far down and left as I can and click, and I’ll always hit the start button.
  - arkitaip 5y ago
    This is actual supported by Fitts' law, one of the very few laws in UX design [0]: "Placing layout elements on the four edges of the screen allows for infinitely large targets in one dimension and therefore present ideal scenarios. As the user's pointer will always stop at the edge, they can move the mouse with the greatest possible speed and still hit the target. The target area is effectively infinitely long along the movement axis. Therefore, this guideline is called “Rule of the infinite edges”. The use of this rule can be seen for example in MacOS, which places the menu bar always on the top left edge of the screen instead of the current program's windowframe." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law#Implications_for_UI_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law#Implications_for...

slownews45 5y ago

Talking to modern UI / Designer folks for these things - so much mushy weird aspirational language and constructs. What happened to this will be easier to see, to remember, takes fewer clicks, is quicker. I mean, you spend a billion bucks on a new design and get things like this (from MS Fluent): Fluent experiences listen and adapt... They unite people and ideas, whether they’re on opposite sides of the globe or standing right next to each other... Fluent speaks in light and shadow, in spatial dimensions... I just want to get work done. Save me from my spatial dimensions (and whitespace overload).

bitwize 5y ago
> Fluent experiences listen and adapt... They unite people and ideas, whether they’re on opposite sides of the globe or standing right next to each other... Fluent speaks in light and shadow, in spatial dimensions... BARF. I can hear the thrumming of Enya's "Storms in Africa" behind this text...
- drumttocs8 5y ago
  Hey, that's a great song though.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Considered on its own, it's quite lovely. I was going for the overuse of it to punch up meaningless faux-inspirational ad/prezo copy with generic positive vibes.
kungito 5y ago
I'm no designer but I've seen amazing ones work. Could it be that this is just marketing talk unrelated to actual design philosophy underneath because it is not targeting people related to that?
- slownews45 5y ago
  But the modern interfaces are relative junk from my view with some exceptions. Just basic things like putting focus on an input field of a pop-up dialog. I get that isn't sexy but it IS efficient. They should focus more on the later and less on the sexy gradient / look stuff.

notimetorelax 5y ago

Admins can you please change the url to the old Reddit UI. The new UI is locked on mobile Safari. https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are_at_least_10_different_microsoft_design/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are...

turminal 5y ago

Wow, reddit really hates website users.

51Cards 5y ago

As an older developer I find it funny how design trends cycle around. I think in my life I've seen UI design go the full circle at least twice. The square corner, solid colour era is ending and it looks like we're pulling back into round corner and gradient land. Next stop, Skeuomorph station, all aboard. Upside, some of the legacy systems I wrote 20 years ago are going to look modern again!

c-smile 5y ago

We shall admit that to follow UI trends in one application is relatively easy. For example one application in last 15 years: https://sciter.com/from-skeuomorph-to-flat-ui-evolution-of-one-application/ https://sciter.com/from-skeuomorph-to-flat-ui-evolution-of-o... But to do the same on OS level - hundreds of different apps and applets ... That's Sisyphean task to be honest. We should be lucky that old stuff is still working and API that appeared in Win 3 is still with us. Actually that is not just Windows problem. On Linux, for example, all these utilities were historically console UI applications that are more "UI conservative" but even there - whole zoo of different approaches...

nexuist 5y ago
Well, the reason for the Linux utilities is because Linux doesn't actually ship with a GUI; anything you see on screen is drawn by a userspace program that all other programs interact with (said program is called a "desktop environment" or DE). Building text-based tools is much easier than building GUIs on Linux because you have to target a specific GUI architecture like X11 / Wayland, and then you also have to think about fitting in with whatever window manager the user uses; GNOME / KDE / whatever. On Mac or Windows, you build a GUI using the vendor's tools and you're golden. No need to worry about how the user is getting windows to show up on their screen because every user is using the same software to do so. For similar reasons, a lot of software just says screw it and targets Ubuntu only so they don't have to support your weird configuration on any other distro.

snowwrestler 5y ago

I mean, it’s fun to dunk on Microsoft OS design, but aren’t we looking at screenshots from a leaked early build? Seems reasonable that it looks a bit hacked together at this point. Maybe it will launch this way. But maybe it won’t.

Loeffelmaenn 5y ago
I mean people thought the same thing about Windows 10 and to this day it's a mix of 7 different designs or so.
emsy 5y ago
It’s reasonable to assume it won’t, when you see how legacy UI was kept mostly unchanged at least since Windows XP.

jbellis 5y ago

Glass half full: that's some serious commitment to backwards compatibility.

dredmorbius 5y ago

I got my start programming with a tool that originated on mainframes, saw a brief popularity in text-based minicomputers (Vaxen and Unixen), was ported to X11 Unix, then to PCs beginning with MS Windows 3, and through multiple generations as that became the overwhelmingly dominant user platform. There were further changes and inheretences from within each of those environments as well. It was possible when using the application to recognise where and how various components and features originated and what platform(s) they were developed on or for. Even some 50 years after the first release, this can be determined. As I came to use Unix and Linux more heavily, I noticed the same trend in various applications, both command-line (GNU and BSD userland, MVS JCL relics such as "dd", and others) and graphical. Various X11 and graphical toolkits became instantly recognisable, and though the appearances (and often feature locations and implementations) were often wildly inconsistent (Xt Intrinsics / Athena scrollbars, anyone?), once the contexts were known, the visual indicators made clear "oh, this is an Athena app, this is a Motif app, this is a gtk app, this is a KDE app", or singletons (Netscape / Mozilla / Phoenix / Fireox, StarOffice / OpenOffice / NeoOffice / LibreOffice, Applixware (remember that?), etc. came to be known quantities. Various JS toolkits and Electron apps are probably the current version of this. I've (mostly in jest, though possibly more seriously with time) had the tag "technological archaeologist" in various online bios. That traces directly to my experience with tools developed over a number of different platforms or tools. Or simply the influences of time and trends or fashions. Microsoft Windows at about 45 years of age now has its own design legacy and archaeological strata.

015a 5y ago

I understand it can be fun to point stuff out like this, laugh at it, etc. Personally, I think this is actually good. Consistent and Productive Design, especially on the level of patterns across an entire operating system of both first and third party applications, is an insanely difficult problem. This means one absolutely needs to bring in the consideration of resource allocation. Its not possible to do everything exactly the same; in fact, a related but incorrect argument may be that its not possible to do everything exactly the same on Day 1, but because "Good Design" is a moving target, its actually really difficult to reach that goal in any capacity whatsoever. Inconsistent design, like this, tells me that it isn't a resource allocation priority for Microsoft. Thus, those resources are most likely diverted to more functional aspects; getting it working, faster, more consistent behavior, broader and deeper feature sets, etc. This is the right trade-off for Windows. One can point to MacOS or iOS and see a much more consistent design language across first-party apps, as well as pretty strong adoption of this design language across third-party apps, but the cost of this near-perfection is abstracted away. Its easy to see inconsistencies in design; its much harder to speak in aggregates about obscure software issues, missing features, delayed releases, etc. Strongly consistent design, in the face of these issues (many of which are unproveable externally) may actually be the right trade-off for MacOS and iOS; Apple is a far more design/PR/marketing driven company, and this guise of "everything is engineered and under control" may actually be materially important for their brand. Windows is different. Moreover; it should be different. The fundamental idea that an entire operating system needs a cohesive, strongly consistent design language is one that Microsoft has tried to push several times, but one which hasn't even seen internal adoption, let alone external. One can blame this on the design languages being bad, or their tooling being bad, or anything, but at the end of the day its still the most popular non-server OS in the world (or is Android bigger now? Well, its the same argument there too). Conforming to any central design pattern isn't a priority for Windows users. There's no physical law of the universe that OS-wide design languages are a naturally good thing; in fact, I would argue that design languages shared between many domains of applications may fundamentally fail to account for the wide variety of interaction patterns within every domain, and thus as a software platform increases its complexity of services offered, domain-agnostic design languages naturally begin to fall apart. They may actually be Generally Bad, though I only feel comfortable asserting with any certainty that they're probably not Generally Good or Bad, and there's room for different platforms to try different things.

rbanffy 5y ago

> I think 11 will be a true return to a Microsoft experience supremacy not seen in a decade. I’m sorry. I had to laugh. Windows has been so complicated and inconsistent, with built-in control panels, vendor mini-applications, inconsistent within Windows itself, where you see the parts that haven’t been touched since NT 3.5, alongside each and every version of Windows ever sold, plus the built in vendor specific control panels that makes it impossible to figure out what is the currently active Wi-Fi configuration (a recurrent problem I have when helping house guests to connect. Macs just work. Linux just works, Androids and iPhones easily connect. Windows laptops? Ha! Just use the range extender that’s in the guest bedroom. For some reason I will not dedicate the time to figure out for every Windows version and PC manufacturer why, that little thing seems to like Windows machines.

kiwih 5y ago
I'll agree that Macs have it pretty good, but to say 'Linux just works' with WiFi is a bold statement. Some Linux distributions work well, but when you have to fall back to the command prompt to do something as simple as connect to an enterprise WiFi network for a device as common as a raspberry pi [0] because there is no GUI, well. I'll grant that at least the steps are moderately consistent. Anecdotally, even on my Ubuntu laptop, at least once a year I lose WiFi and have to delve into some online forums to learn what just broke it. I use both Linux (Ubuntu/Raspian) and Windows extensively and overall most things just work better on Windows, poor design philosophies aside. [0] https://iceburn.medium.com/raspberry-pi-connected-to-wifi-of-wpa2-enterprise-ddd5a40c0b07 https://iceburn.medium.com/raspberry-pi-connected-to-wifi-of...
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  I installed Ubuntu Server 20.04 on a spare laptop. Long story short, it did not have any way to connect to my WiFi network unless I either first went through the guided installation with an Ethernet cord attached, or went through some excruciating troubleshooting steps involving setting up hardware via obtuse CLI commands and arguments. I tried the latter just to see if I could without looking things up on my phone/separate computer, and even with a bit of cheating I still gave up and tried again with the cord plugged in.

banana_giraffe 5y ago

The one that always gets me is how oddly forgotten the MMC stuff is: The Disk Management UI's bottom pane, for whatever reason, has never worked with scroll wheels. It still gleefully ignores scroll wheels. The Hyper-V Manager .. a new thing .. has a broken UI as well. It's "Actions" pane size is based off the screen-width, but the default size of the window is based off the screen height, so on ultra-wide screen monitors, a pane that should take up about a 1/3 of the window, ends up covering about 2/3 of the window. I also love how even the Action menu is a hold over from some older UX ideas. There are two ways to bring up the help dialog now in all of the MMC apps, either with the Help menu, or via the Action menu. But! At least they got enough attention to use Edge instead of the default browser if you try to open the "TechCenter Website" (a website that hasn't had that name in 8 years or so)

siproprio 5y ago
Well... your problem is solved... disk management has no UI anymore...

butz 5y ago

That feeling, when you are still patching up lesser used components for current design system and manager barges in with new redesign.

wpdev_63 5y ago

Kinda wish microsoft would make Windows 10 the last backwards compatible windows and start from scratch. Virtualize Win10 for backwards compatibility and start from a blank slate with modern design principles.

nly 5y ago

So... any god damn news on what MS are doing with 11 beyond dicking around with the UI again?

ppetty 5y ago

Is Reddit usable without the app on a phone? I can’t seem to get to that page, two prompts to continue without an app that I don’t have or want and I’m redirected to the homepage…

hakfoo 5y ago

I suspect there's a belief in some mythic market of "computer-averse" people, who if we just round off enough rough corners-- both metaphorically and literally-- they'll be willing to jump from, say, an iDevice or Chromebook, or no computer at all, to a full Windows PC. What saddens me is that this steers the whole design process. You create a thin candy coating over the system to appeal to this audience, but at the same time, that clogs up established workflows and creates an inconsistent mess for more experienced users who have to work with both new and old UX flows. Maybe we need to simply own the inconsistency. Build the shiny new experiences as a seperate flow, and allow users to migrate towards more traditional, powerful tools with the old UI conventions. Something like the manufacturer-provided shell you'd see on a late Windows 3.1 PC, where eventually you outgrow it and switch to using Program Manager.