Aero Glass UI No More On Windows 8

New submitter closer2it writes with news of interface changes in Windows 8. From the article: "Microsoft has revealed that it has made some big changes to its desktop UI for Windows 8, which includes moving away from Aero Glass — the UI first introduced with Vista. According to the company, this means visual changes that include 'flattening surfaces, removing reflections, and scaling back distracting gradients.' Despite all of these changes with the interface, the company doesn't appear to be worried about the issue of 'learnability.' Instead, Microsoft believes that with a little help it won't take long for users to adapt to the new operating system."

Comments

Less eye candy

[gagol]

more walled garden... still not enough to make me leave my Linux freedom that I enjoy so much.

Re:Less eye candy

[maitai]

There's an option in Windows to adjust the border width (it defaults to 4 but can be lowered all the way to 0).

Appearance -> Window Color -> Advanced appearance settings.. -> Border padding

They got it all wrong

[kakaburra]

The start button seems to be missing

Re:They got it all wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

If I have to guess what to do, the GUI lost its purpose. May as well just go back to DOS

The purpose of the GUI is to keep UX designers employed. The year 24-bit color becomes standard, XP's Fisher-price look is "needed" to make that boring and stodgy NT/2K look go away. The year 3d graphics appears on commodity hardware, Aero is "needed" to make that "childish" XP look go away. The year touchscreens come out, Metro is "needed" to make that "distracting" 3D glossy look go away.

Same sorta deal with Firefox - a few years ago, a browser with lots of options and user control was a good thing. Now it's "distracting" and even the status bar and the name of the communications protocol in the title bar needs to go away to make it "clean".

It's not UX design, it's fashion design. Bunch of artistes wanking away on Photoshop trying to out-trendify each other. It's an utter waste of computing resources, and I'm sick of it.

Re:They got it all wrong

[Fishead]

If I could buy a car today with no features, minimal upholstery, nothing more than a chassis, powertrain, and seat... available in flat black paint... I'd buy one so fast your head would spin.

Relearn an OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead, Microsoft believes that with a little help it won't take long for users to adapt to the new operating system.

I finally agree with Microsoft on this one. They are correct, with only a little help it won't take long for users to adapt to a new OS such as MacOSX or Linux! Glad they finally are admitting it.

The only reason anyone stuck with Windows was the backwards compatibility and all the software available and that people have already invested in. Seems they are working pretty hard to remove as much of that as they can from Win8, which lowers the reasons to use it from 1 to 0 for a large number of people.

Re:Relearn an OS?

[bmo]

sudo-like interface for running things that require elevated permissions

The reason for UAC was not to recreate sudo. UAC is, and was, exceptionally intrusive for one purpose only: to create negative feedback to developers who insisted on using Admin permission for everything. Even some games required Admin access under XP, for example.

Microsoft had finally given consumers a multi-user OS in XP and developers were insisting on defeating the benefits of multi-user, making limited user accounts especially painful.

Thus UAC. If your program was bringing up UAC for every stupid thing, then you were doing it wrong.

Now, most programs need to bring up Admin privs for installation and that's the last you see of UAC if you are not doing admin-specific tasks.

It annoyed the piss out of end users when UAC first showed up and everyone in the press misunderstood its purpose. UAC was considered a black mark against Vista. But you have to ask, how else was Microsoft going to force developers into obeying the practices everyone else did on other multi-user OSes?

I am a Unix and Linux guy, but I have to give credit to Microsoft for doing it right for once.

--
BMO

Stop fiddling with the GUI

[Karmashock]

The windows OS was largely similar from Windows 3.1 to Vista. Stop toying with it. I think it's find to have these as optional or even the default GUI if people really want it. But some of us have been using the windows GUI for ages and it's frankly not appreciated when things are moved around.

We know where all the buttons and features are supposed to be guys. There is no other place you can put them that will be better.

Every new version of windows is like some guy randomly coming into your kitchen and reorganizing everything only to leave a little message behind saying "I fixed your kitchen, you're welcome.".... Well great... I can't find the maynanese... my spice rack is completely out of order... and there are about a hundred things that i have to patiently remove from whatever stupid location they were put and put them back where I want them.

What? I can't move it there because you outright removed cabinets and installed totally different appliances? I had that experience in Windows 7 where they took away the ability to sort folders manually. Happily I found a registry hack that added the feature back into the system.

This is obnoxious Microsoft. And beyond that, we've lost compatibilty with most of the old dos apps in the 64 bit version of windows. There's no good reason for that since dos was already being emulated. You can't tell me that you can't emulate a 16 bit environment in a 64 bit environment when there are a dozen dos emulators on the market that will do just that. Of course, most of them are designed for games and so don't work with networked printers or any of the other fun stuff that we've been counting on for YEARS.

Seriously Microsoft. You're killing it. Your selling point forever has been standards and backward compatibility.

I can over look a lot of nonsense if you just give me an updated version of the same thing. I don't use windows to be wowed by the GUI graphics. I use windows because that's how I launch the programs and manage the files that I ACTUALLY care about. Changing everything around randomly is not helpful. Stop doing it. At the very least, at least provide some buried Classic mode somewhere in the system.

I'm tired of New Coke Windows. No one stick with you because you're innovative. We stick with you because you're consistent.

Microsoft Pledges

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

To sell more Macs.

Re:Microsoft Pledges

[cjb658]

To sell more Macs.

FTA: "It won't take users long to adapt to a new operating system.

balmer's plan to run microsft into the ground

[Dan667]

is complete.

Nah, we'll just bypass it

[Sycraft-fu]

If they keep Metro as The One UI to Rule Them All, as it seems they wish to, my strategy at work will be twofold:

1) Don't roll out Windows 8. 7 has support until 2020, there's plenty of time. We'll stay on 7, and we'll make sure to let the MS rep know why.

2) In cases where we need/want 8 get a UI mod to make 8 look like 7. Someone will have what we need, probably Stardock. They already have a start button restorer (http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/) and given that UI customization is their big market, I imagine they'll develop a suite of tools that'll make 8 act like 7 to whatever degree you desire.

So that's my plan. If people want to use Metro they'll be allowed, of course, but I'm not going to be doing any hand holding on it. Anyone who says "I don't like this can I have the old way back," will be accommodated.

I just think it is funny that MS doesn't seem to realize they are going to create another XP, meaning an OS that people don't want to move off of. XP wasn't all their fault, it was just the first real solid version of Windows most people had used (the first NT based OS for home users), Vista had teething problems initially due to very lazy-ass driver development from many manufacturers, and there was a big smear campaign against it (to the point I'll see people at work say that Vista sucks and they like 7... working on a Vista machine, they don't even know what it is, they just know it is bad, so they think they are on 7).

Well this time they'll do it again with 7, but it'll be all their fault. They have a good OS that people were happy with the upgrade to. If they release one that people don't like, they'll get stuck in the mentality of "7 is the only good OS, I won't upgrade."

That's the part I'm going to be annoyed about. Not 8, but in 2018 when 9 or 10 is the thing and it is a good OS, trying to convince people that yes, there is a new good one and you need to move to it before support expires.