4 ms·

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 toget

by 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.
      - kwanbix 5y ago
        Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you mean to use the different objects in it. Not the specifics of browsing the files/folders. Yes, I agree then.
    - nwallin 5y ago
      If I recall correctly, the 3.1 file picker isn't resizable. And it's very small. The small size wasn't such a problem when the filesystem enforced 8.3 file name lengths, but these days it's reasonable to expect names for individual files or folders to be much longer than that. We have a bug in our backlog right now because we tack on an extra bit when we export files. Imagine we open foobar.raw and export foobar.txt and foobar.txt.info. But when the application tried to write out foobar.txt.info it hits the 260 character limit in NTFS. Meaning that the original file name was over 255 characters.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        > And it's very small It was designed to work on a VGA screen with 480x640 pixels after all. And this is from Windows NT 3.5 IIRC. Windows 3.1 didn’t have long file names (like the Apple II had in 1979 or so).
  - blibble 5y ago
    still better than the gtk3 one
- vehemenz 5y ago
  I was looking for one of these, but I could only find Win31 common dialogs in third-party (non-Microsoft) applications. Well done.
  - wlesieutre 5y ago
    I can’t take credit, saw it here: https://reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o1x183/the_famous_windows_31_dialogue_is_again_in/ https://reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o1x183/the_famous_wi...
- thunderbong 5y ago
  Comment on the Reddit thread from where this screenshot was taken - https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o1x183/the_famous_windows_31_dialogue_is_again_in/h24k1zi/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o1x183/the_famou... The ODBC Driver interface for configuration is tied to the old dialog. The interface for the drivers was designed around GetOpenFileName() as it was at the time. One of the features of GetOpenFileName/GetSaveFileName is that the structure passed in can include two special options- a function pointer to a hook routine, as well as a custom dialog template which windows will insert. The functions were improved in Windows 95 with the "Explorer style". Even old programs get this style at the very least, because windows will imply the flag. unless a template or hook routine is specified. See if a hook routine or template is specified and the OFN_EXPLORER flag is not, then the hook routine or template was designed for the old-style dialog. Windows uses the old-style dialog in this instance so that the program can run and doesn't crash. The ODBC Driver configuration uses a dialog template to add the "read Only" and "Exclusive" checkboxes. That is why it shows the old style dialog. People might say, "They should update it" Update what? If GetOpenFileName()'s ability to fallback to the old-style dialog is removed, than you won't see this dialog. Instead, it will crash. Cool. great experience. the driver interface? OK great. so now there is a new version of the ODBC Driver interface. Now all the ODBC Drivers need to be updated. Some of the drivers were written by companies that are either out of business or rather different. I have this sneaking suspicion that Paradox software isn't going to be writing a new ODBC Driver for the MS-DOS Database. Just drop everything? OK Cool.... so now companies get forcibly upgraded to Windows 11 and literally cannot do business because they rely on them in some manner. "They should upgrade". I won't get into that except to say it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but companies in that position are far more likely to find ways to not upgrade the software that caused the problem so, you know, they can keep doing business. And not upgrading the OS is certainly cheaper than countless thousands of man-hours in upgrading their Business software. And a big thing people don't understand about backwards compatibility is it's not just about old programs working. It's about new ones working to. If Microsoft removed all "backwards compatibility", than practically nothing would actually work. Software would be constantly crashing, sending error reports, etc. Now, call me crazy, but somehow that doesn't seem like it's a great experience. And if upgrading to Windows X+1 suddenly caused programs to crash left & right, nobody is going to blame the programs.
slownews45 5y ago
I'm not even sure why they migrated settings to settings - control panel remains much more direct and explicit.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Because it's not your computer to control anymore? It reminds me of when My Computer was renamed to This PC, and My Documents became Documents --- a subtle way to say it's not yours. The latest anti user trend is of course that of referring to computers as "devices".
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    Yeah... I think you might be reading just a little too much into the new names.
    - jimmygrapes 5y ago
      Perhaps, but I've sat in design meetings for a very similar concept: the original product was something similar to "My Pass" and there was well over an hour of a dozen people discussing the psychological effects changing it to something closer to "[Brand] Pass" - the biggest one being that exact transition of ownership. The overwhelming majority agreed that removing the sense of individual ownership implied by "My" would both encourage sharing (in this case it was reasonable to do this as an "upgrade") and to encourage brand loyalty. I suggested "My [Brand] Pass" but was roundly shot down as "that just complicated things". Surveys were performed (NB: I do not know what these surveys contained or how they were handled) and eventually it was decided to call it something like "Family Pass". Point being that name changes can come from such over thinking.
      - notriddle 5y ago
        The name was probably changed because there were so many school- and work-issued Windows PCs that calling it "my computer" made no sense.
  - 5y ago
jiofih 5y ago
> that your normal user is never going to see You underestimate the amount of ducking around a normal user has to do to keep windows happy over the years.
- cronix 5y ago
  I have to do the same with my mom and her mac every week or two. The latest was all of the flash deprecation warnings and she uses flash routinely for puzzle games although she's never heard of this "flash" thing. I spend about as much time getting her mac fixed as I used to her windows computer and she's been using computers since the 80s. Remember, we're talking about "normal users," not us on HN. Most normal users don't know 90% of their computer. They know how to turn it on and do what they did yesterday, and if that doesn't work any longer they are mostly lost. Kind of like cars. Most know how to drive them and gas them up, but if there is ever any other sort of issue that isn't obvious like a flat tire they are lost. That's most "normal" users. There's a reason why "did you simply try turning it off and on again" is a meme, because that's most people.
  - setr 5y ago
    > There's a reason why "did you simply try turning it off and on again" is a meme, because that's most people. Well, that and the fact that it actually does the trick 90% of the time, which is fairly stupid to begin. Troubleshooting Windows is largely an exercise in futility to begin with; turning it off and on again is usually the only thing that even IT people can reasonably do (that, and google the error to find out about turning on/off this specific thing)
    - Zababa 5y ago
      > Well, that and the fact that it actually does the trick 90% of the time, which is fairly stupid to begin. I don't think it is, it's like aging on an accelerated scale. Turning on and off is like death and rebirth, you don't have all the stuff you acumulate with age. No injuries, no tumors, it's a clean start.
  - jiofih 5y ago
bee_rider 5y ago
In the image, they've provided colored boxes around the different types, that seem to match your breakdown pretty well. (so, 95, NT, and XP are teal in the image). I guess for the post title, the more dramatic count was used.
ska 5y ago
> The ones marked as 95, NT, and XP are all fit with each other. They aren't really though. Aesthetically they are reasonably close but employ different conventions (e.g. the list/tree in win32 and the list in NT4 display the same kind of information but different ways, and with different icons). Consistency is a pretty fundamental thing in interface design, and whether or not something "fits" aesthetically is only a small part of all this, which I think was OP's point.
- dm319 5y ago
  Yes, they are different paradigms.
grishka 5y ago
The Microsoft's insistence on maintaining native backwards compatibility with software some of which is as old as me is so perplexing. I saw what the API of the classic Mac OS looked like[1] the other day, and it does resemble WinAPI very much. It's procedural, many functions take descriptors, many other functions take structs you allocate and fill in, there's a DIY event loop, and so on. It even has a windows.h (lol). Apple got rid of this in 2000. It then provided a VM-style "classic environment" backwards compatibility layer in OS X for ~5 years, and Carbon library for source-level compatibility for even longer. Apple did manage to pull this off. Why can't Microsoft do the same? Why can't they put a seamlessly integrated 95/XP/whatever VM into their system that would launch when you run a win32 application, and finally give themselves the freedom to rewrite everything from scratch, with more sensible APIs and in a more memory-safe language? [1] https://github.com/cy384/ssheven/blob/master/ssheven.c https://github.com/cy384/ssheven/blob/master/ssheven.c
- webmobdev 5y ago
  Microsoft's insistence on maintaining native backwards compatibility with software some of which is as old as me is so perplexing. This is why Microsoft has such a huge presence in corporate - unlike you or me, most corporates do not immediately update to latest, hi tech flashy tool of the month. If something works really well, they'll keep using it, sometimes for decades. And demand that Microsoft don't break it on their OS. Microsoft will happily support them as they earn a lot from corporate licenses and support. Apple doesn't have the kind of importance that Microsoft does in corporate. Nor does Apple have to support the kind of hardware and software that Microsoft does, and so Apple's monoculture helps them makes changes to their platform faster than Microsoft can.
  - grishka 5y ago
    > If something works really well, they'll keep using it, sometimes for decades. But why does it apparently not apply to the operating systems themselves? And how would running win32 apps in a seamless VM (a-la Apple's classic environment) break that?
    - 5y ago

by ziml77 5y ago

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.
    - kwanbix 5y ago
      Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you mean to use the different objects in it. Not the specifics of browsing the files/folders. Yes, I agree then.
  - nwallin 5y ago
    If I recall correctly, the 3.1 file picker isn't resizable. And it's very small. The small size wasn't such a problem when the filesystem enforced 8.3 file name lengths, but these days it's reasonable to expect names for individual files or folders to be much longer than that. We have a bug in our backlog right now because we tack on an extra bit when we export files. Imagine we open foobar.raw and export foobar.txt and foobar.txt.info. But when the application tried to write out foobar.txt.info it hits the 260 character limit in NTFS. Meaning that the original file name was over 255 characters.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      > And it's very small It was designed to work on a VGA screen with 480x640 pixels after all. And this is from Windows NT 3.5 IIRC. Windows 3.1 didn’t have long file names (like the Apple II had in 1979 or so).
- blibble 5y ago
  still better than the gtk3 one
vehemenz 5y ago
I was looking for one of these, but I could only find Win31 common dialogs in third-party (non-Microsoft) applications. Well done.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  I can’t take credit, saw it here: https://reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o1x183/the_famous_windows_31_dialogue_is_again_in/ https://reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o1x183/the_famous_wi...
thunderbong 5y ago
Comment on the Reddit thread from where this screenshot was taken - https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o1x183/the_famous_windows_31_dialogue_is_again_in/h24k1zi/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o1x183/the_famou... The ODBC Driver interface for configuration is tied to the old dialog. The interface for the drivers was designed around GetOpenFileName() as it was at the time. One of the features of GetOpenFileName/GetSaveFileName is that the structure passed in can include two special options- a function pointer to a hook routine, as well as a custom dialog template which windows will insert. The functions were improved in Windows 95 with the "Explorer style". Even old programs get this style at the very least, because windows will imply the flag. unless a template or hook routine is specified. See if a hook routine or template is specified and the OFN_EXPLORER flag is not, then the hook routine or template was designed for the old-style dialog. Windows uses the old-style dialog in this instance so that the program can run and doesn't crash. The ODBC Driver configuration uses a dialog template to add the "read Only" and "Exclusive" checkboxes. That is why it shows the old style dialog. People might say, "They should update it" Update what? If GetOpenFileName()'s ability to fallback to the old-style dialog is removed, than you won't see this dialog. Instead, it will crash. Cool. great experience. the driver interface? OK great. so now there is a new version of the ODBC Driver interface. Now all the ODBC Drivers need to be updated. Some of the drivers were written by companies that are either out of business or rather different. I have this sneaking suspicion that Paradox software isn't going to be writing a new ODBC Driver for the MS-DOS Database. Just drop everything? OK Cool.... so now companies get forcibly upgraded to Windows 11 and literally cannot do business because they rely on them in some manner. "They should upgrade". I won't get into that except to say it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but companies in that position are far more likely to find ways to not upgrade the software that caused the problem so, you know, they can keep doing business. And not upgrading the OS is certainly cheaper than countless thousands of man-hours in upgrading their Business software. And a big thing people don't understand about backwards compatibility is it's not just about old programs working. It's about new ones working to. If Microsoft removed all "backwards compatibility", than practically nothing would actually work. Software would be constantly crashing, sending error reports, etc. Now, call me crazy, but somehow that doesn't seem like it's a great experience. And if upgrading to Windows X+1 suddenly caused programs to crash left & right, nobody is going to blame the programs.

slownews45 5y ago

I'm not even sure why they migrated settings to settings - control panel remains much more direct and explicit.

userbinator 5y ago
Because it's not your computer to control anymore? It reminds me of when My Computer was renamed to This PC, and My Documents became Documents --- a subtle way to say it's not yours. The latest anti user trend is of course that of referring to computers as "devices".
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Yeah... I think you might be reading just a little too much into the new names.
  - jimmygrapes 5y ago
    Perhaps, but I've sat in design meetings for a very similar concept: the original product was something similar to "My Pass" and there was well over an hour of a dozen people discussing the psychological effects changing it to something closer to "[Brand] Pass" - the biggest one being that exact transition of ownership. The overwhelming majority agreed that removing the sense of individual ownership implied by "My" would both encourage sharing (in this case it was reasonable to do this as an "upgrade") and to encourage brand loyalty. I suggested "My [Brand] Pass" but was roundly shot down as "that just complicated things". Surveys were performed (NB: I do not know what these surveys contained or how they were handled) and eventually it was decided to call it something like "Family Pass". Point being that name changes can come from such over thinking.
    - notriddle 5y ago
      The name was probably changed because there were so many school- and work-issued Windows PCs that calling it "my computer" made no sense.
- 5y ago

jiofih 5y ago

> that your normal user is never going to see You underestimate the amount of ducking around a normal user has to do to keep windows happy over the years.

cronix 5y ago
I have to do the same with my mom and her mac every week or two. The latest was all of the flash deprecation warnings and she uses flash routinely for puzzle games although she's never heard of this "flash" thing. I spend about as much time getting her mac fixed as I used to her windows computer and she's been using computers since the 80s. Remember, we're talking about "normal users," not us on HN. Most normal users don't know 90% of their computer. They know how to turn it on and do what they did yesterday, and if that doesn't work any longer they are mostly lost. Kind of like cars. Most know how to drive them and gas them up, but if there is ever any other sort of issue that isn't obvious like a flat tire they are lost. That's most "normal" users. There's a reason why "did you simply try turning it off and on again" is a meme, because that's most people.
- setr 5y ago
  > There's a reason why "did you simply try turning it off and on again" is a meme, because that's most people. Well, that and the fact that it actually does the trick 90% of the time, which is fairly stupid to begin. Troubleshooting Windows is largely an exercise in futility to begin with; turning it off and on again is usually the only thing that even IT people can reasonably do (that, and google the error to find out about turning on/off this specific thing)
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > Well, that and the fact that it actually does the trick 90% of the time, which is fairly stupid to begin. I don't think it is, it's like aging on an accelerated scale. Turning on and off is like death and rebirth, you don't have all the stuff you acumulate with age. No injuries, no tumors, it's a clean start.
- jiofih 5y ago

bee_rider 5y ago

In the image, they've provided colored boxes around the different types, that seem to match your breakdown pretty well. (so, 95, NT, and XP are teal in the image). I guess for the post title, the more dramatic count was used.

ska 5y ago

> The ones marked as 95, NT, and XP are all fit with each other. They aren't really though. Aesthetically they are reasonably close but employ different conventions (e.g. the list/tree in win32 and the list in NT4 display the same kind of information but different ways, and with different icons). Consistency is a pretty fundamental thing in interface design, and whether or not something "fits" aesthetically is only a small part of all this, which I think was OP's point.

dm319 5y ago
Yes, they are different paradigms.

grishka 5y ago

The Microsoft's insistence on maintaining native backwards compatibility with software some of which is as old as me is so perplexing. I saw what the API of the classic Mac OS looked like[1] the other day, and it does resemble WinAPI very much. It's procedural, many functions take descriptors, many other functions take structs you allocate and fill in, there's a DIY event loop, and so on. It even has a windows.h (lol). Apple got rid of this in 2000. It then provided a VM-style "classic environment" backwards compatibility layer in OS X for ~5 years, and Carbon library for source-level compatibility for even longer. Apple did manage to pull this off. Why can't Microsoft do the same? Why can't they put a seamlessly integrated 95/XP/whatever VM into their system that would launch when you run a win32 application, and finally give themselves the freedom to rewrite everything from scratch, with more sensible APIs and in a more memory-safe language? [1] https://github.com/cy384/ssheven/blob/master/ssheven.c https://github.com/cy384/ssheven/blob/master/ssheven.c

webmobdev 5y ago
Microsoft's insistence on maintaining native backwards compatibility with software some of which is as old as me is so perplexing. This is why Microsoft has such a huge presence in corporate - unlike you or me, most corporates do not immediately update to latest, hi tech flashy tool of the month. If something works really well, they'll keep using it, sometimes for decades. And demand that Microsoft don't break it on their OS. Microsoft will happily support them as they earn a lot from corporate licenses and support. Apple doesn't have the kind of importance that Microsoft does in corporate. Nor does Apple have to support the kind of hardware and software that Microsoft does, and so Apple's monoculture helps them makes changes to their platform faster than Microsoft can.
- grishka 5y ago
  > If something works really well, they'll keep using it, sometimes for decades. But why does it apparently not apply to the operating systems themselves? And how would running win32 apps in a seamless VM (a-la Apple's classic environment) break that?
  - 5y ago