4 ms·

There is a real cost to consistency/change, and I don't personally believe that this is just laziness or poor design on Microsoft's behalf. Sure, Windows could

by Closi 4y ago

There is a real cost to consistency/change, and I don't personally believe that this is just laziness or poor design on Microsoft's behalf. Sure, Windows could have changed the look and layout of every component with every release, but with an application as widely used as Windows you really want the ability for users to move from Windows XP to Windows 11 and still have a sense of familiarity and confidence. It is also difficult for them to remove settings or change their behaviour of settings without breaking compatibility, so really whenever they are making the UI 'consistent' we really mean moving around the existing settings rather than rethinking them entirely - true change has to be done in baby-steps across many Windows versions.

mihaaly 4y ago
With those 8 or so (partial!) redesigns I do not feel the overwhelming urge for consistency here. (in fact they broke this and that along the road, the latest and most crucial for me is the taskbar, and I am not talking about the alignemnt, not at all, but all the other possibilities gone, starting with the option of grouping/ungrouping, but not ending there)
- Closi 4y ago
  > (in fact they broke this and that along the road, the latest and most cruitial for me is the taskbar, and I am not talking about the alignemnt, not at all, but all the other possibilities gone, starting with the option of grouping/ungrouping, but not ending there) The way I look at it (which may be wrong!) is that companies get a 'change budget' of how much users will tolerate in terms of change (i.e. an 'emotional' budget with users rather than a cash/resource budget). Look at the large facebook designs which recieved huge amounts of backlash from the community - while each of them pushed Facebook in the right direction, each of the changes was also very disruptive to an extent that Microsoft probably couldn't tolerate in Windows. This time around they decided to use a lot of their 'change budget' on the taskbar, which probably means you don't want to touch other parts. IMO they should have added the option of grouping/ungrouping too before making the change, although the fact that people are complaining about taskbar grouping probably further demonstrates how careful Microsoft needs to be with design changes (Especially as you can probably see WHY Microsoft might want to remove the option of grouping/ungrouping and follow their thought process with this, which shows how easily these UI pitfalls can occur when making changes).
garbagecoder 4y ago
Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t decades of backwards compatibility cruft everywhere. Microsoft needs to just support legacy versions of windows more or less forever to keep those institutional users happy and draw a line for the majority of users who want to at least keep some kind of pace. You don’t have to obsolete everything like Apple does, but we’re well past the point where you can virtualize or emulate something like Windows 7 or older and it will still be faster than bare metal of the time.

by Closi 4y ago

mihaaly 4y ago

With those 8 or so (partial!) redesigns I do not feel the overwhelming urge for consistency here. (in fact they broke this and that along the road, the latest and most crucial for me is the taskbar, and I am not talking about the alignemnt, not at all, but all the other possibilities gone, starting with the option of grouping/ungrouping, but not ending there)

Closi 4y ago
> (in fact they broke this and that along the road, the latest and most cruitial for me is the taskbar, and I am not talking about the alignemnt, not at all, but all the other possibilities gone, starting with the option of grouping/ungrouping, but not ending there) The way I look at it (which may be wrong!) is that companies get a 'change budget' of how much users will tolerate in terms of change (i.e. an 'emotional' budget with users rather than a cash/resource budget). Look at the large facebook designs which recieved huge amounts of backlash from the community - while each of them pushed Facebook in the right direction, each of the changes was also very disruptive to an extent that Microsoft probably couldn't tolerate in Windows. This time around they decided to use a lot of their 'change budget' on the taskbar, which probably means you don't want to touch other parts. IMO they should have added the option of grouping/ungrouping too before making the change, although the fact that people are complaining about taskbar grouping probably further demonstrates how careful Microsoft needs to be with design changes (Especially as you can probably see WHY Microsoft might want to remove the option of grouping/ungrouping and follow their thought process with this, which shows how easily these UI pitfalls can occur when making changes).

garbagecoder 4y ago

Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t decades of backwards compatibility cruft everywhere. Microsoft needs to just support legacy versions of windows more or less forever to keep those institutional users happy and draw a line for the majority of users who want to at least keep some kind of pace. You don’t have to obsolete everything like Apple does, but we’re well past the point where you can virtualize or emulate something like Windows 7 or older and it will still be faster than bare metal of the time.