4 ms·

We live in the world of web apps and electron now, UI consistency is dead and buried because they killed it. Windows's UI mess is just a reflection of them hiri

We live in the world of web apps and electron now, UI consistency is dead and buried because they killed it. Windows's UI mess is just a reflection of them hiring modern developers.

blackhaz 5y ago
Apple has killed UI consistency too. New iOS and tvOS are just a mess of endless half-broken features in a pathetic attempt to satisfy every possible use case out there. Jobs would have used napalm on the whole UI/UX team.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Maybe. Jobs also introduced some rather outrageous UI (IMHO) when he returned to Apple.
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    I think a difference with Jobs at the helm though was yes, he let some really terrible UI's get into production, but he also had no problem axing them when he finally accepted they were awful. The problem we're seeing now is nobody is willing to rollback bad ideas.
cies 5y ago
The UI consistency of most Linux distros is better out of the box. 2021 the year of the Linux desktop? /s
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Ironically Linux's relative consistency is in part due to the long standing complaint about how inconsistent it was, which motivated developers to create ways to have unified theming across toolkits. Meanwhile, the rest of the world went full derp and decided that UI consistency is for boring people who like to actually get things done with a computer.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    To add to the irony too, because Linux was so inconsistent for so long more of the GUI toolkits also had to adapt better to fluctuating layouts and had fewer reasons to hard-code specific pixel sizes for controls (because one person's theme might use hugely different sizes than the next person). Microsoft found out the hard way with Windows XP that Win32 controls generally can't be rethemed in ways that change the pixel counts because they were consistent for so long that apps did all sorts of (sometimes very dumb) pixel-specific logic. Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility makes any consistency in theming Win32 controls near impossible without application developer buy-in, and buy in of XAML and actually adaptive layouts has still been extremely slow overall even if you can discount how long pixel-perfect RAD tools with zero adaptive layout support dominated early Windows development (including and especially VB <= 6).
- marcodiego 5y ago
  Consistency is not something windows users expect. In the "windows world" most software is downloaded from different sources, different vendors, different styles and each tries to stand out. The result: every program is different in appearance and behaviour.
  - cies 5y ago
    I did not use it much after W98SE. W98SE was very consistent imho.
    - marcodiego 5y ago
      Office 97 had a different style. Most commonly used programs had different sytles: winamp had its own UI, IE had it own theme, winfile had different icons... Yes, system and default apps were somewhat consistent. But out of the box, a win9x installation was very poor with regard to installed software; you had to install more things if you wanted you computer to be useful. And the consistency went away.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
That is true. I pine for the Macintosh Toolbox days when there was a simple and consistent UI ... essentially dictated by having a modest set of UI elements and a single framework for displaying them. But I remind myself that in 1984, the idea of a visual interface was a little shocking to people: "What do I do? Where can I click?" The Web kicked open the door and allowed all manner of UI designs. At the same time though, people were more comfortable navigating the breadth of UI by then. I still prefer simplicity, consistency though.
- userbinator 5y ago
  "What do I do? Where can I click?" ...and now several decades later, I find myself asking the same question whenever I have to interact with a "modern" UI. Is it really that hard to make buttons look like actual buttons, and static text not look like buttons!?
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
>Windows's UI mess is just a reflection of them hiring modern developers While I agree UI consistency is dead even on MacOS now, personally I believe the Windows issue stems from them being too scared to actually push out full redesigns. Look how vocal and angry people were when they started redesigning Settings even though most of control panel was designed for sub 800x600 resolutions. This is why we're stuck with such inconsistency because they can never make sweeping changes without people freaking out, this is why we're stuck with things like that terrible device manager that refreshes the whole view and flickers 3 times when you plug in a USB device. Really Windows should be pushing out a complete redesign and update of at least 2 of these apps every version. People will scream and shout every time they do but it's the only chance Windows has to completely modernize itself and get it up to par with Mac system tools and standard apps.
- rocqua 5y ago
  What surprises me is how little functionality the new settings app has, and how often to get things done, I need to click through to an older settings screen. Its not that they modernized the old settings / configuration screen. They made a new one that does about 1/3 of the job and still links to the old one for the last 2/3. It does not seem like Microsoft intend to slowly have the new settings setup subsume the old settings. Nor do they seem to want to improve the old settings. Instead we are left with a weird stack of settings screens.
  - vidanay 5y ago
    This is largely because "modern" design has such poor information density, it requires 15 different screens for a single screen of a "legacy" UI.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    They've made it pretty clear that to prioritize they've been following the 80/20 rule as best they can with the data they have. They try to prioritize the things people do most often in each iteration because they don't have the budget to do 100% of the things all at once. (And it probably is a waste of time to upgrade settings features that 0% of people use.) The big real complication is that data they have available on what is used 80/90% of the time is telemetry. It's not a coincidence that the people that find that the settings they use the most that haven't been converted are in the set of people most complaining about telemetry and most actively disabling it.
imbnwa 5y ago
Windows UI has been utterly inconsistent since Windows 8. 'Modern develpoers'? What're you talking about, first of all, HN has weird trend of speaking as if Devs are these all-powerful artisans at their org when actually there's a Product Manager and a whole design org that makes these calls, Devs at best can file a recommendation and maybe get it considered. Secondly, Electron is a business choice to minimize time spent doing cross-platfom GUI development. Can someone give me the list of cross-platform apps from back in the day with well thought out platform-specific GUIs? Cause I swear most of the popular Windows apps I used in the early 2000s like Winamp, Foobar2000, Notepad++, Soulseek, µTorrent, were Windows-only. Everyone's not just gonna run out and learn Qt, so tired of this low-hanging fruit type comment about Electron/Web Developers ruining everything. Go talk to this thing called the market instead.

We live in the world of web apps and electron now, UI consistency is dead and buried because they killed it. Windows's UI mess is just a reflection of them hiring modern developers.

blackhaz 5y ago

Apple has killed UI consistency too. New iOS and tvOS are just a mess of endless half-broken features in a pathetic attempt to satisfy every possible use case out there. Jobs would have used napalm on the whole UI/UX team.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Maybe. Jobs also introduced some rather outrageous UI (IMHO) when he returned to Apple.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  I think a difference with Jobs at the helm though was yes, he let some really terrible UI's get into production, but he also had no problem axing them when he finally accepted they were awful. The problem we're seeing now is nobody is willing to rollback bad ideas.

cies 5y ago

The UI consistency of most Linux distros is better out of the box. 2021 the year of the Linux desktop? /s

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Ironically Linux's relative consistency is in part due to the long standing complaint about how inconsistent it was, which motivated developers to create ways to have unified theming across toolkits. Meanwhile, the rest of the world went full derp and decided that UI consistency is for boring people who like to actually get things done with a computer.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  To add to the irony too, because Linux was so inconsistent for so long more of the GUI toolkits also had to adapt better to fluctuating layouts and had fewer reasons to hard-code specific pixel sizes for controls (because one person's theme might use hugely different sizes than the next person). Microsoft found out the hard way with Windows XP that Win32 controls generally can't be rethemed in ways that change the pixel counts because they were consistent for so long that apps did all sorts of (sometimes very dumb) pixel-specific logic. Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility makes any consistency in theming Win32 controls near impossible without application developer buy-in, and buy in of XAML and actually adaptive layouts has still been extremely slow overall even if you can discount how long pixel-perfect RAD tools with zero adaptive layout support dominated early Windows development (including and especially VB <= 6).
marcodiego 5y ago
Consistency is not something windows users expect. In the "windows world" most software is downloaded from different sources, different vendors, different styles and each tries to stand out. The result: every program is different in appearance and behaviour.
- cies 5y ago
  I did not use it much after W98SE. W98SE was very consistent imho.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    Office 97 had a different style. Most commonly used programs had different sytles: winamp had its own UI, IE had it own theme, winfile had different icons... Yes, system and default apps were somewhat consistent. But out of the box, a win9x installation was very poor with regard to installed software; you had to install more things if you wanted you computer to be useful. And the consistency went away.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

That is true. I pine for the Macintosh Toolbox days when there was a simple and consistent UI ... essentially dictated by having a modest set of UI elements and a single framework for displaying them. But I remind myself that in 1984, the idea of a visual interface was a little shocking to people: "What do I do? Where can I click?" The Web kicked open the door and allowed all manner of UI designs. At the same time though, people were more comfortable navigating the breadth of UI by then. I still prefer simplicity, consistency though.

userbinator 5y ago
"What do I do? Where can I click?" ...and now several decades later, I find myself asking the same question whenever I have to interact with a "modern" UI. Is it really that hard to make buttons look like actual buttons, and static text not look like buttons!?

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

>Windows's UI mess is just a reflection of them hiring modern developers While I agree UI consistency is dead even on MacOS now, personally I believe the Windows issue stems from them being too scared to actually push out full redesigns. Look how vocal and angry people were when they started redesigning Settings even though most of control panel was designed for sub 800x600 resolutions. This is why we're stuck with such inconsistency because they can never make sweeping changes without people freaking out, this is why we're stuck with things like that terrible device manager that refreshes the whole view and flickers 3 times when you plug in a USB device. Really Windows should be pushing out a complete redesign and update of at least 2 of these apps every version. People will scream and shout every time they do but it's the only chance Windows has to completely modernize itself and get it up to par with Mac system tools and standard apps.

rocqua 5y ago
What surprises me is how little functionality the new settings app has, and how often to get things done, I need to click through to an older settings screen. Its not that they modernized the old settings / configuration screen. They made a new one that does about 1/3 of the job and still links to the old one for the last 2/3. It does not seem like Microsoft intend to slowly have the new settings setup subsume the old settings. Nor do they seem to want to improve the old settings. Instead we are left with a weird stack of settings screens.
- vidanay 5y ago
  This is largely because "modern" design has such poor information density, it requires 15 different screens for a single screen of a "legacy" UI.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  They've made it pretty clear that to prioritize they've been following the 80/20 rule as best they can with the data they have. They try to prioritize the things people do most often in each iteration because they don't have the budget to do 100% of the things all at once. (And it probably is a waste of time to upgrade settings features that 0% of people use.) The big real complication is that data they have available on what is used 80/90% of the time is telemetry. It's not a coincidence that the people that find that the settings they use the most that haven't been converted are in the set of people most complaining about telemetry and most actively disabling it.

imbnwa 5y ago

Windows UI has been utterly inconsistent since Windows 8. 'Modern develpoers'? What're you talking about, first of all, HN has weird trend of speaking as if Devs are these all-powerful artisans at their org when actually there's a Product Manager and a whole design org that makes these calls, Devs at best can file a recommendation and maybe get it considered. Secondly, Electron is a business choice to minimize time spent doing cross-platfom GUI development. Can someone give me the list of cross-platform apps from back in the day with well thought out platform-specific GUIs? Cause I swear most of the popular Windows apps I used in the early 2000s like Winamp, Foobar2000, Notepad++, Soulseek, µTorrent, were Windows-only. Everyone's not just gonna run out and learn Qt, so tired of this low-hanging fruit type comment about Electron/Web Developers ruining everything. Go talk to this thing called the market instead.