Improving the Windows XP User Interface?

Pimpin' Up Windows asks: "Many of us are forced to live with Windows XP for our day-to-day computing needs - at work, home or school - and longingly look to the not only beautiful, but functional and efficient, Mac OS X 'Aqua' user interface. Apart from just themes, what would be Slashdot reader's suggestions for improving the user interface of XP? What changes, add-ons and other improvements could further enhance its usability?"

Comments

Start button doesn't stay in the bottom left

[robolemon]

One of my biggest pet peeves is that if I make the Windows XP taskbar 2 rows tall instead of one, the start button only takes up the top row instead of spanning both or taking up the bottom row.

This results in a spot underneath the start button that has no use. This also breaks the shortcut of clicking on the bottom left corner of the screen to access the start menu.

Re:Start button doesn't stay in the bottom left

[NanoGator]

"The Mac theory of UI seems to revolve around Apple knowing the right way to do something. But different people end up working with the UI in different ways."

On the flip side, though, this philosophy makes it considerably easier to support the user. If people re-map their kb shortcuts and the locations of their icons, it's considerably harder to tell or show somebody how to do something in particular.

I run into this problem with Lightwave, sometimes. When they went from version 7 to 8, they remapped a bunch of the kb shortcuts. 'u' used to be Undo, but then they made it ctrl+z. So when it comes time to write documentation for LW (or a plug-in made for LW, which I recently did...), I had to write documentation for both LW 7 and 8. If LW had followed Apple's lead, the documentation and tutorial part would have been easier.

I'm not saying Apple is right or wrong or that Newtek should follow their lead, rather I'm simply pointing out that it's not all bad. It really depends on your target audience. In Apple's case, I think it works for them. It also makes their job of automating stuff a lot easier. I recently installed a wireless router for my cousin, I was shocked at how easy that was. "Oh lookie, I found a wireless router. Would you like me to talk to it? Well, here's what I need..."

Re:Start button doesn't stay in the bottom left

[jonadab]

> Say what you want about the Windows UI. In my opinion it is far better than
> the OS X UI, NOT because of its inherent functionalty, but because its far
> more customizable than the Mac UI.

If you like a customizeable UI, you really should have a look at Gnome.
Screenshot:
http://www.bright.net/~jonada b/screenshot.png

My favourite feature is the ability to have panel drawers (visible as the icons with little white arrows in their lower-right corners, on the left panel), each of which can contain a full row of icons; this completely obviates the need for icons on the desktop, entirely removing the need to minimize stuff all the time. But in general, the Gnome UI is *way* more customizeable than the Windows one. You'll notice I've removed the Gnome foot (equivalent of the Start button/menu), because I never use it.

Useability?

[billh]

Switch to classic mode
Turn off menu delays
Turn off every other stupid effect
Install unix command line tools
Never use IE or Outlook
Install some decent fonts

It might not be as pretty, but it is more functional.

Re:Useability?

[Glonoinha]

Proportional fonts make it difficult to eye-ball character columns, particularly if you are want to keep string lengths under a certain length.

With fixed space fonts you can put one of these : //345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 123456789012345678901234567890
for an 80 character wide ruler, cut it and paste it as necessary into your code and Voila! instant width chart (make it whatever size you want.)

I have also found that my head OCR's faster with certain fonts (Courier 10 point, San Serif 10 or 12 point) than in all the fruity variable width fonts.

That said, I have grown to like Verdana too.

Re:Useability?

[jonadab]

> I like to bash MS as well, but Georgia and (especially) Verdana are lovely

I like Georgia and Verdana as well. Also Andale Mono. At work, I have them on my checklist of stuff to install on every new Windows system. Occasionally a new Windows system comes with either Georgia or Verdana already installed, but so far in my experience never both, and never Andale Mono. I don't know if this is the OEMs screwing things up or what, but I always have to track them down -- formerly at MS Typography, these days at corefonts.sourceforge.net instead -- and install them myself. (And people wonder why the Core Fonts initiative never succeeded in getting all the world's webmasters to rely on those fonts being installed. The webmasters' own systems probably didn't have them half the time.)

Other things on my new-Windows-system install checklist include TweakUI, Pegasus Mail, a decent browser (these days usually Firefox), OpenOffice, ActivePerl, the lastest Acrobat Reader, a recent Java vm, and the CommandPromptHere powertoy. Microsoft *ought* to bundle at least half of that (specifically, TweakUI and the CommandPromptHere should just be standard, and the Core Fonts of course, and I'm sure MS could reach an agreement with Adobe on acroread, and there's no excuse for not including a decent browser in any modern OS these days, and runtimes for Perl and Java are standard in every other OS I think, so MS really needs to get on the stick in terms of these things; and if MS doesn't, the OEMs should at least make some attempt to fill in the most glaring gaps; it's pathetic how worthless a new computer is out of the box, until you download umpteen updates and enhancements, all of which are free downloads and most of which presumably could have been included by the manufacturer if they would just do so).

Want improvement in XP? Go back to Windows 2000

[LazloToth]

Truly, if you're into function over form, the Win2K interface is far more refined than the prettier, but painfully illogical backwards step that became XP. I am amazed, yet not surprised, at the number of people who are barely competent enough to create a desktop icon, but manage to figure out how to return to the "classic" style. I hope the next Windows interface will be a return to crisp function and logical work flow.

Re:Want improvement in XP? Go back to Windows 2000

[NanoGator]

"Truly, if you're into function over form, the Win2K interface is far more refined than the prettier, but painfully illogical backwards step that became XP. I am amazed, yet not surprised, at the number of people who are barely competent enough to create a desktop icon, but manage to figure out how to return to the "classic" style. I hope the next Windows interface will be a return to crisp function and logical work flow."

Can you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by 'painfully illogical backwards step'? For basic folder stuff, etc, XP's not that much different. The difference is mostly cosmetic. The start menu is questionably better or worse, depending on how you drive. It's great if you use 10 apps requently, it's an extra step if you blow past that. The Control Panel... er... I have no idea what they were thinking with that, but you're a click away from bringing it back.

Err okay I was just babbling for a moment. When you switch from XP's default to classic view, the main change to it is cosmetic, not functional. (Unless you can correct me on that, which I'd appreciate.) You still have your min/max/restore/and close Icons etc.

In the mean time, what XP does offer you is the ability to lock the taskbar. That little feature suddenly makes the toolbar a far more interesting UI tool. There's actually a lot you can do down there, but I don't think most people bothered with a whole lot because you could accidently drag it and mess up the order of everything.

Re:I've got an idea!

[NanoGator]

"Make it NOT look like froofy pastel crap that makes people violently ill!"

Err okay. The XP default scheme, though quite bold, is not pastel. (It's more like Fisher Price. :P)

In all seriousness, it's not all that bad. I discovered that my biggest beef with that color scheme wasn't the colors used, but the wallpaper. I turned that black, and suddenly XP's interface isn't so bad. What's nice about it is that it's rather easy to tell which window is active or blinking. The difference between orange and blue is quite striking. Green is a nice highlight color as it has a decent contrast against blue.

I can understand the screenshots not looking so appealing, but having used it for a while now, I actually kind of like it. (Especially after getting rid of that damn wallpaper.) I wish by default the titlebars were smaller, but their color choice is fine.

Consistency and Integratioin.

[mabinogi]

The two things that people love to say is Windows' advantage are actually things they do really badly.

Why can't I rename the recycle bin, when I can rename "My Computer", "Network Places" and "My Documents?"

Why don't I have a "send to" context menu on items in a zip folder?
In fact, why do zip files act nothing like regular folders at all when explorer presents them as if they are.

Why do control panel items open up in a dialogue style menu, when you've navigated to them via a web style interface?

Why does MS-Office _always_ have a totally different look and feel to any existing windows version at the time of its release?

Why can't I open from and save to WebDav and ftp from any application?

Why can I use windows networking paths (being able to "cd //servername/sharename") in cygwin of all things, but not in cmd.exe?
I think they had to actually try to make that one not work, as fopen() in Windows will accept those paths.

Microsoft loves to introduce an idea - and then not follow through with a complete and useful implementation, but they'll still use their half arsed useless implementation as an example of how innovative they are.
Innovation is all very well, but it does you fuck all good if you have the worst implementation of your own idea.

Windows could be an absolutely excellent environment if only Microsoft finished half of what they started.

Nvidia Owners Only

[nuintari]

Nvidia Nview is pretty handy for the X junkie who has to live in windows.

It can do a very nice on mouse over auto raise, sloppy focus style. It needs more options for people who are yused to a different type of mouse focus. But for those who prefer sloppy, its there.

MS Power Toys include a virtual desktop manager, but it sucks. Nview has a much better one, that has far fewer bugs (but it does have them), and is _much_ faster.

Then there are the little features, which include, but are not limited to: shading (minimize to title bar), throwing (toss a window accross the screen and watch it stick to the opposite edge), and true transparency (for those with massive cpu time to waste).

But of course, you non Nvidia people miss out.

Re:Get rid of the annoying pop-ups

[Ratbert42]

Nothing like being in the middle of typing an email and getting a popup like "Would you like to install this unsigned control from xxyyz.com?" just before you press enter.

A big list

[Darth_Burrito]

For me, the biggest problems with the windows UI are the things that are missing.

• Programming editor with syntax highlighting, something like editplus.
• An industrial grade database (msde but with a usable interface)
• centrally manageable Apt-get like software package management.
• Remote Desktop access on XP Home
• SSH client & server
• A little choice for common applications (web browsers, email).
• A scripting environment that doesn't suck.
• A command line environment that doesn't suck.
• Outlook deserves it's own wing in the museum of usability nightmares.
• Network places was a horrible idea. Now no one knows how to find anything on a network if it's not a shortcut in network places.
• XP is lousy at search on so many levels. Example find-text-in-files doesn't show you the context of the matching text. Even searching by filename is very slow.
• The OS litterally hides things from users. Abstracting complex ideas is good. Information hiding can be good. But you shouldn't hide information that a user is going to need at some point. For example, people need to access those hidden application data directories all the time because, go figure, that's where a lot of applications keep their data. Yet they are both hidden and buried.

Re:Win XP Power Toys

[cgenman]

The best desktop expansion you can do for windows is get additional monitors. Most video cards will allow you to plug in a second monitor, usually one analog and one DVI. A cheap DVI connector and a used monitor can be had for about 30 bucks. Add a cheap PCI secondary video card, Two DVI connectors, and three new monitors and you have all of the desktop that you'll ever need for about 150.

I had pretty much constant problems with the multiple virtual desktop setup in XP, but the multiple monitor support in applications is pretty good these days.

Re:What a wonderful troll of a subject.

[zero_offset]

Despite which OS you've decided you like to use you really can't say that OS X isn't easier for a computer novice to use.

Yeah, actually I can. I know two formerly-computer-averse "regular people" who couldn't manage to get much useful done under OS X on their shiny new Macs, but who rather quickly "got it" when I brought an XP laptop to them. Both have since ditched their Macs. As a bonus, they're much happier that their PC's are so relatively inexpensive.

I'm not saying "TEH MAC SUX" or anything extreme like that, but the assumption of UI superiority has, in my opinion, never been proven with any especially compelling authority. It is my opinion that the Mac superiority thing is primarily a result of very careful MARKETING efforts.

The Mac isn't bad, but it isn't a miraculous plateau of UI wisdom, either.