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That old Windows 3.1 GUI looks so much more intuitive, efficient, and usable compared to what we've got today. https://wuffs.org/user/pages/02.blog/windows-3x-

That old Windows 3.1 GUI looks so much more intuitive, efficient, and usable compared to what we've got today. https://wuffs.org/user/pages/02.blog/windows-3x-graphics/640x480.jpg https://wuffs.org/user/pages/02.blog/windows-3x-graphics/640... What would Win11 even look like on a lower-resolution display such as in TFA? The Win11 Start Menu is borderline unusable beyond typing in a keyword and praying to the circuits. What happened? Naive hypothesis: Windows NT and 2k hit a sweet spot, then product managers have been working their magic ever since. KDE and Gnome are looking more and more appealing over time, despite not changing much. :)

XorNot 2y ago
Flat design has been an absolute pox on the industry. Skeumorphism was also pretty bad (since it was basically just flat design with pictures). Windows Forms got a lot right: I think the one missing symbol was "active but not editable".
- Dwedit 2y ago
  Blinking cursor in textbox with gray background? That would be one case of "active and not editable".
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    In Windows, the text cursor no longer blinks (more accurately it stops blinking after a few seconds, becoming static) in the interests of battery saving. At least I think it was battery saving, been months since I read it and my memory is foggy because it's fucking stupid. Even on desktops that don't have batteries.
  - XorNot 2y ago
    The problem is grey usually means "disabled" which also implies that data may be stale. As it is you can set a text box read only but active, but it does waste time since it doesn't code that it's not interactable visually (i.e. you have to make up a scheme). Basically it would've been nice to have a consistent background color or other visual cue which says "this will update, this is live, but you can't type here".
yyyyz 2y ago
[dead]
GuB-42 2y ago
I'd go with Windows 7 as the last "good" version. It is similar to NT/2k, but prettier, thanks to improved graphics hardware. Same thing for XP before it. Even Vista had a decent UI, its flaws were elsewhere. Windows 8 broke everything and Windows never recovered. I blame it on two reason: the rise of mobile platforms, and laziness from Microsoft. For the first point, we have now what seems like an unsolvable problem. Many apps now come with a desktop version and a mobile version. Completely different user experience. One has a large screen, a keyboard and mouse. The other has a small touchscreen. A good desktop app would be completely different from a good mobile app. However, you don't want that either, as you want your users familiar with one version to feel at ease with the other. It means that even when you do your best, there are compromises. But Microsoft probably could have done a decent work, but they didn't. They just become lazy. It is evident by looking at the control panel. The new control panel (settings) dates back from Windows 8, 12 years ago, and they still didn't port all the features from the old one to the new one, so you need both. They intended for a complete switch a few months ago, they weren't ready, will they ever be? In addition they regularly remove popular customization options, the style is inconsistent between the bundled apps, etc... This is not just controversial, it is objectively bad. Another factor, but Microsoft and Windows are not to blame here is that app developers prioritize branding and internal consistency over OS integration. Many modern UIs are just a web page rendered with a browser engine (ex: Electron). They are not using native OS controls, ignore theming, draw their own Windows decorations, etc... Maybe the OS is inconsistent, but app developers don't help.
- immibis 2y ago
  FWIW mobile and desktop aren't even the only distinct "UI environments". Steam's had a "big picture mode" aka "tenfoot mode" for a long time which is designed for media center PCs (same hardware, but you're sitting on the other side of the room, ten feet away, so everything had better be big) and of course there are things like VR. Notably, the way Steam implements its tenfoot experience is an entirely separate UI instead of a single jack-of-all-trades UI. I've never used it since I don't have that type of setup so I can't say how well it works for people accustomed to the desktop UI. It does seem that as annoying as it might be to get used to a new UI for mobile and desktop, using the same UI for both is even worse. Again we see this theme, as in other parts of software engineering, that people try to hard to invent abstractions instead of just grinding out the work (a separate design for each platform).
hypercube33 2y ago
Lore is Windows 11 is Windows 10X built for phones and tables too. The start menu really appears influenced by Android where it just flat shows everything installed and you're more inclined to search instead. I do agree however - a beta for Win10 was a hybrid of tiles mixed with a Windows 7 list that throws back to Windows 2000 and I set that as my peak - you could have the best of both. The notifications area has always been weak and the settings panel is crap compared to the control panel (though debatable if control panel ever was the best we could have since it's somewhat cluttered and complex)
- zamalek 2y ago
  The whole flat thing was pioneered by Microsoft. Boggles the mind as to why Apple and Android copied this nonsense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language)
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Kind of, Windows 10X was going to be the final reboot, also with Win32 sandboxing. Instead they have been bringing UWP infrastructure into Win32 execution environment, but hardly anyone cares nowadays, unless there is no way to reach the same functionality with classical Win32/COM APIs. However due to security issues like last year Crowdstrike, Win32 sandboxing is pretty much part of Windows roadmap.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

XorNot 2y ago

Flat design has been an absolute pox on the industry. Skeumorphism was also pretty bad (since it was basically just flat design with pictures). Windows Forms got a lot right: I think the one missing symbol was "active but not editable".

Dwedit 2y ago
Blinking cursor in textbox with gray background? That would be one case of "active and not editable".
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  In Windows, the text cursor no longer blinks (more accurately it stops blinking after a few seconds, becoming static) in the interests of battery saving. At least I think it was battery saving, been months since I read it and my memory is foggy because it's fucking stupid. Even on desktops that don't have batteries.
- XorNot 2y ago
  The problem is grey usually means "disabled" which also implies that data may be stale. As it is you can set a text box read only but active, but it does waste time since it doesn't code that it's not interactable visually (i.e. you have to make up a scheme). Basically it would've been nice to have a consistent background color or other visual cue which says "this will update, this is live, but you can't type here".

yyyyz 2y ago

[dead]

GuB-42 2y ago

I'd go with Windows 7 as the last "good" version. It is similar to NT/2k, but prettier, thanks to improved graphics hardware. Same thing for XP before it. Even Vista had a decent UI, its flaws were elsewhere. Windows 8 broke everything and Windows never recovered. I blame it on two reason: the rise of mobile platforms, and laziness from Microsoft. For the first point, we have now what seems like an unsolvable problem. Many apps now come with a desktop version and a mobile version. Completely different user experience. One has a large screen, a keyboard and mouse. The other has a small touchscreen. A good desktop app would be completely different from a good mobile app. However, you don't want that either, as you want your users familiar with one version to feel at ease with the other. It means that even when you do your best, there are compromises. But Microsoft probably could have done a decent work, but they didn't. They just become lazy. It is evident by looking at the control panel. The new control panel (settings) dates back from Windows 8, 12 years ago, and they still didn't port all the features from the old one to the new one, so you need both. They intended for a complete switch a few months ago, they weren't ready, will they ever be? In addition they regularly remove popular customization options, the style is inconsistent between the bundled apps, etc... This is not just controversial, it is objectively bad. Another factor, but Microsoft and Windows are not to blame here is that app developers prioritize branding and internal consistency over OS integration. Many modern UIs are just a web page rendered with a browser engine (ex: Electron). They are not using native OS controls, ignore theming, draw their own Windows decorations, etc... Maybe the OS is inconsistent, but app developers don't help.

immibis 2y ago
FWIW mobile and desktop aren't even the only distinct "UI environments". Steam's had a "big picture mode" aka "tenfoot mode" for a long time which is designed for media center PCs (same hardware, but you're sitting on the other side of the room, ten feet away, so everything had better be big) and of course there are things like VR. Notably, the way Steam implements its tenfoot experience is an entirely separate UI instead of a single jack-of-all-trades UI. I've never used it since I don't have that type of setup so I can't say how well it works for people accustomed to the desktop UI. It does seem that as annoying as it might be to get used to a new UI for mobile and desktop, using the same UI for both is even worse. Again we see this theme, as in other parts of software engineering, that people try to hard to invent abstractions instead of just grinding out the work (a separate design for each platform).

hypercube33 2y ago

Lore is Windows 11 is Windows 10X built for phones and tables too. The start menu really appears influenced by Android where it just flat shows everything installed and you're more inclined to search instead. I do agree however - a beta for Win10 was a hybrid of tiles mixed with a Windows 7 list that throws back to Windows 2000 and I set that as my peak - you could have the best of both. The notifications area has always been weak and the settings panel is crap compared to the control panel (though debatable if control panel ever was the best we could have since it's somewhat cluttered and complex)

zamalek 2y ago
The whole flat thing was pioneered by Microsoft. Boggles the mind as to why Apple and Android copied this nonsense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language)
pjmlp 2y ago
Kind of, Windows 10X was going to be the final reboot, also with Win32 sandboxing. Instead they have been bringing UWP infrastructure into Win32 execution environment, but hardly anyone cares nowadays, unless there is no way to reach the same functionality with classical Win32/COM APIs. However due to security issues like last year Crowdstrike, Win32 sandboxing is pretty much part of Windows roadmap.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]