3 ms·

Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of GUIs. Things have gotten worse since then. In the past five years they've fallen off a cliff. Absurd amounts of whitespace. But

Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of GUIs. Things have gotten worse since then. In the past five years they've fallen off a cliff. Absurd amounts of whitespace. Buttons without borders. Icons only instead of text buttons. And I have to reiterate the absurd whitespace quantities.

bombcar 4y ago
Exactly this. Aero was great not because of itself, but because it was basically Fisher-Price Windows 2000, where things were clearly things. The Mac from around that time was similar, even if pinstriped. Touch and the anti-skeumorphism has destroyed computer UIs.
- wtallis 4y ago
  IIRC, Aero was the Windows Vista UI disaster, while Luna was the reasonably usable (albeit excessive) Windows XP theme.
sigzero 4y ago
Agree with you there.
domador 4y ago
I would call the design aesthetic du jour "the White Wasteland". It's a symptom of what I'd call "fundaminimalism". Minimalism isn't automatically better when it comes to user interface design, but too many designers seem to think it is. On a related note, why does everyone have to slavishly imitate Google's ugly, bland, undifferentiated interfaces, why?!? Nowadays, GUI seems to stand for Google-Ugly Interface.
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  > the White Wasteland > fundaminimalism > Google-Ugly Interface The irony is that you put more effort into coining those pejoratives than the UX designers put into their UIs.
pjerem 4y ago
I’ll be honest, I liked the XP "Fisher Price" look even more. Yes it was hype to mock its colorful style, but it’s forgetting that every UI control was refined, consistent, with enough relief and contrast but still sober enough to not steal the app identity. It was flashy for sure but for me it was a breadth of oxygen after decades of grey. Icons were very discoverable, Control Panel was just the OG control panel but sorted into categories. It was a beautiful OS for the present, not an UI coming from a futuristic movie like everything today where animations and great looking empty space are more important than usability.
walrus01 4y ago
if you like windows 2000 as a pinnacle of GUIs, you should be quite happy with the current stable versions of XFCE4
- polski-g 4y ago
  I've been using xfce for almost a decade.

bombcar 4y ago

Exactly this. Aero was great not because of itself, but because it was basically Fisher-Price Windows 2000, where things were clearly things. The Mac from around that time was similar, even if pinstriped. Touch and the anti-skeumorphism has destroyed computer UIs.

wtallis 4y ago
IIRC, Aero was the Windows Vista UI disaster, while Luna was the reasonably usable (albeit excessive) Windows XP theme.

sigzero 4y ago

Agree with you there.

domador 4y ago

I would call the design aesthetic du jour "the White Wasteland". It's a symptom of what I'd call "fundaminimalism". Minimalism isn't automatically better when it comes to user interface design, but too many designers seem to think it is. On a related note, why does everyone have to slavishly imitate Google's ugly, bland, undifferentiated interfaces, why?!? Nowadays, GUI seems to stand for Google-Ugly Interface.

HeckFeck 4y ago
> the White Wasteland > fundaminimalism > Google-Ugly Interface The irony is that you put more effort into coining those pejoratives than the UX designers put into their UIs.

pjerem 4y ago

I’ll be honest, I liked the XP "Fisher Price" look even more. Yes it was hype to mock its colorful style, but it’s forgetting that every UI control was refined, consistent, with enough relief and contrast but still sober enough to not steal the app identity. It was flashy for sure but for me it was a breadth of oxygen after decades of grey. Icons were very discoverable, Control Panel was just the OG control panel but sorted into categories. It was a beautiful OS for the present, not an UI coming from a futuristic movie like everything today where animations and great looking empty space are more important than usability.

walrus01 4y ago

if you like windows 2000 as a pinnacle of GUIs, you should be quite happy with the current stable versions of XFCE4

polski-g 4y ago
I've been using xfce for almost a decade.