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Users Decry New Icon Look In Windows 10
jones_supa writes A lot of people got upset about the flat looks of Modern UI presented in Windows 8. Recent builds of Windows 10 Technical Preview have now started replacing the shell icons, and to some people they are just too much to bear. Basically, Microsoft opted to change the icons in search of a fresh and modern look, but there are plenty of people out there who claim that all these new icons are actually very ugly and the company would better stick to the previous design. To find out what people think about these icons, Softpedia asked its readers to tell their opinion and the messages received in the last couple of days pretty much speak for themselves. There are only few testers who think that these icons look good, but the majority wants Microsoft to change them before the final version of the operating system comes out.
why did you vote for Obama? Twice??
They remind me of the icons from whatever Redhat version I loaded in 2000.
Microsoft's UI designers will be first up against the wall...
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
I was withholding my opinion until I heard the expert opinions of random Softpedia readers, but now it seems pretty clear that Windows 10 is a bust.
Those icons look like someone's first pixel art experiments. It seems that Microsoft has fired all of its professional graphics artists.
1. Offer different sets of icons, easily exchangable.
2. File managers should have tabs, MIcrosoft, or are you reliving 1995?
Yeah, they're doubling down on the "modern" look, which essentially translates to "flat and ugly" to me. I sort of knew that going in when I saw the Windows 8 styling hadn't changed. Microsoft's Windows 10 is shaping up to be pretty nice in terms of usability. I've been testing it out, and it's fixed most of the most horrible aspects of Windows 8, by which I mean they've pretty much chopped them out and replaced them with UI systems that actually work on a desktop. It's shaping up to be what Windows 8 should (or could) have been. But damn... it's still as ugly as sin.
I guess they're still trying to prove that they can ignore overwhelming customer feedback in a way that's uniquely suited to mega corporations. Seriously, I can't wait until this design trend ends, and people look back like we now do at 70's fashion trends and say, "Dear God, what were we thinking? We really thought that was cool?"
Also:
Keep in mind that this is still a Technical Preview build and the icons we see here might not make it to the final version of Windows 10
Hahahaha, oh man... that's just adorable. Seriously, they're not going to change them because a few people are bitching about them at this point.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
They look like they are from the seventies and using an 8 bit colour pallet.
In the past MS used http://iconfactory.com/
They did not use internal staff.
But the managers that approve it are to go first.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Every UI element from vista onwards is atrocious.
In fact, to be honest, XP onwards.
The classic look with a decent theme is far superior.
But the theme manager itself is the worst part of the Windows UI, so that is why it ends up not used.
Now thanks to tablet-crap, we have icons that would normally be reserved for BLIND people being used by default for everything, EVEN ON NOT-TABLET BUILDS.
Gee, great one Microsoft, you guys sure know what you are doing.
Take your Ribbon and shove it. Worst UI I've ever had to use. Toolbars are what people use if they actually want to get work done.
The hilarious thing is Microsoft did a usability study of the new UI and Ribbon was absolutely not used, yet they just glossed over the fact entirely.
I've never known a single person that has liked that trash.
They need to fire everyone that works in their design department and stop hiring that oh-so-fresh college graphics talent, they are all terrible terrible people. Literally Hitlers of graphics.
...that thinks the new icons actually look quite nice? I will reserve judgement until I see them at the smallest size though (i.e. in "details" view).
The flat look is easier on the GPU, it's easier to render and therefore it's better for Desktop Virtualization and remote support. Aero added a lot of overhead for remoting just to have the transparent look, which is nicer to the eye, but IMHO doesn't add to usability.
...there is nothing seriously wrong in that OS (to be fair).
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Hello oblique projection! Here's to the white heat of progress, they've made finally Windows 10 look as graphically sophisticated as Q*bert.
Maybe in another 20 years they'll re-discover perspective.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The biggest problem with the new icons is not lack of beauty but that the overly stylistic design has made them more difficult to visually parse.
The purpose of icons is to make recognition of objects on the screen easier. The use of three dimensions, contrasting edges, shading and shadows are significant visual aids - and those are the things that these new icons lack the most. It takes more than Photoshop skills to earn the title of UX Designer.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Looks like clickbait is here to stay on Slashdot, and common sense is out.
It doesn't. Something is broken with your version of chrome.
I guess operating systems acquiring HiDPI support is one of the reasons going for the flat look. Vector graphics are easy to scale. But maybe some genius will eventually come up with a system that both scales well and looks cool. Some might also say that good appearance isn't the be-all and end-all, but we had quite nice thing going on with Aero, so why go backwards in evolution. The window zoom animations look really good in Windows 10 though.
File Manager rules! Yeah yeah, that's the ticket!
"after releasing Windows 7"
So the bugs in Win 7 UI were actually created by Microsoft people?
1. In Win 7, open Windows Explorer
2. Get a list of files up.
3. Delete a file
4. Whoa, the file is STILL THERE in the list
5. Delete it again
6. Whoa, ERROR MESSAGE "file not found" - if so, why is it listed?
That's a fundamental breach of the user paradigm. No previous Windows has ever done anything so mindlessly wrong.
This shit is why I decided to stay with XP till the end, and then moved to Linux Mint Cinnamon. Which was an excellent move - it runs lighter and faster on my hardware than XP ever did, and looks and feels a lot more like the UI that I already knew than Win 7, Win 8, Win 8.1 does.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
The same one the Mac OS got hit with in the most recent release.
Best Slashdot Co
I think soon they will just frustrated to dealing with users who hate "modern" look and replace all icons with pictures of Dolan.
The sooner idiot 'designers' stop using this stupid phrase to try to justify their inability to design properly, the better...
'Flat' UI design is BAD design, plain and simple. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
People complained about the playschool look of XP and hated all the chrome. Those same users swore by XP after Vista came out, and will adapt to metro the same.
The icons look unfinished as a set. The image linked to shows some hard drives as flat, and some as the old, 3D shaded variety. The folders have a cutout on the right hand side that seems missing from the music folder, but it's there in the downloads variety. You can't see the cutout for documents and others so it looks out of place.
But the my computer icon. Just look at that for 10 seconds. I hereby rename it to the 'Oh My God computer icon'. It's incredibly awful.
Please, no.
The new Windows logo looks like it was made in MS Paint by a child, and these folder icons fit right in to that aesthetic. Good to see Microsoft bringing some visual consistency to their OS.
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
Oh my God - those look like my first attempts at making my own custom icons in MS Paint when I was 6(and it was when Win 95 was groundbreaking). ...should I sue them for copyright? :D
I'd be completely happy with keeping the Windows 7 UI, and just having each Windows release upgrade the guts underneath. And I bet so would 95% of corporations.
I don't understand why Microsoft feels to compelled to tinker with the UI at this point. (Yes I've heard some reasons, I just don't see why they're compelling to Microsoft.)
It's not. It looks fine to me with Chrome (on 3 different PCs/3 OSes to boot, plus Chrome on IOS). Disable your addons and/or update chrome. Something on your end is messing it up, not the website.
Users bitch and moan is what users do. Never, ever, seen a user decry.
You are a cow! Moooooooooo! A cow says moo.
For me, the ugliest element is the title bar. The dark blue and black elements are very difficult to see (no contrast). Furthermore, the title bar buttons look like they are mis-aligned.
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
It seems to me that the constant "overhaul" of a GUI to change icons, menu structures, etc is bad design. Not because the final product is necessarily bad, but because whatever improvements the new design brings are dwarfed by the cost of throwing away of user knowledge about the old interface and the cost of re-learning a new interface and its symbols and structure.
There's probably even unconsidered effects. A lot of clients I've worked with have resisted upgrades (they own and have paid for) to Office because of the radical changes in look and feel. By running older versions with weaker security, they're now exposed to greater risk of compromise by malware. There may even be meaningful losses in productivity from missing new features or improved implementations of existing functionality. This can even be made even worse by resisting operating system updates.
I've always been puzzled that some of the best minds in user interface design get together and say "obviously, the best solution is to throw out everything the users have learned and give them something totally different."
lets face it, the regular windows 10 icons are SHIT, but they made them nice compared to this late turd job
i dont understand why these assholes dont just copy the windows 7 icons, i will use windows 10 because its going to have a new directx and i happen to play games with the computer and never owned a console, but i would never stop using windows 7 if it wasnt for that, because all windows after 7 look like SHIT and offer nothing else i care about at all, they are just massive ugly turds
Having a button that lets the users choose which style they prefer? Or would that be too revolutionary for Microsoft?
When the iOS flat look came out it looked like My Little Pony, but now people have gotten used to it nobody cares anymore.
Good god, it's like Microsoft told them they were holding it wrong....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Get over it and move on.
Or maybe the change sucx they don't want to get over it. Getting over it would be like replacing slashdot classic with beta and no one complaining.
I've seen worse Icon schemes than what Win10 promises.
Besides, icon file view is for kids, old folks and newbs.
Use detail view to get stuff done.
And now confirmed for Slashdot, making this literally The Last Site. In social media (confirmed with Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Google+, Ello, StackExchange, Digg, Myspace, Twitch, and Slashdot), any discussion with the name "Microsoft" is a toxic public relations stunt where nobody is allowed to express anything not approved ahead of time of by the PR firm.
Slashdot now joins a long list of sites I will refuse to ever discuss or read of Microsoft on. If they keep this up, they may alienate enough of us that their marketers can only talk to themselves. If they are really so intent on having us discuss news about them, then they could just stop posting it. Now watch the negative mod points get spent by their robots, on this below-threshold, third layer comment that almost nobody will ever see.
You could at least add a link to check the icons out OP.
Don't really mind them, they look bad if just viewing by themselves but in a screen shot are not that bad.
Comparing them to Windows 7 the artist that did those was a lot more skilled, throwing in reflections and shading.
The biggest problem for most users (especially non-technical users) when changing Windows versions (upgrading is a bit of a misnomer, imho), is how the UI changes with every version.
:)
By the time end users start to feel comfortable navigating around in Windows and learning what is where (i.e; WinXP: control panel -> add/remove programs), they are forced to 'upgrade' to the latest version of Windows and have to relearn the UI again (i.e; Win7: control panel -> programs and peatures).
As a technical user I find this very frustrating. For non-technical users, this is hell.
Every version of Windows seems to do this, and it is absolutely ridiculous.
On the bright side, there are alternatives. Thanks Linus!
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Meh, I love the flat look. While I could not stand the metro start screen of windows 8, the flat simple look is a nice change of pace.
You know what? This is a million dollar scam right here.
1) Work for Microsoft, implement horribly ugly UI. You just have to sell it to execs for Windows.
2) Know everything about it inside & out, all icons, everything.
3) Windows 10 gets released. Everyone hates UI. Either you quit or get fired.
4) Implement 3rd party software to upgrade UI in multiple custom looks, each of which is awesome.
5) Sell implemented 3rd party software for profit.
6) Get hired back on at Microsoft as consultant who can 'fix' Windows 11.
7) Go to step 1.
I remember people decrying the UI change from Windows 3.1 to 95... a lot of "grumpy old men" in the IT world
Apple did the same thing with OSX 10.10 / Yosemite. The 'new' icons are flat and just plain nasty. I assume everyone wants to 'streamline the user experience' across phones, tablets, watches, and real computers, but I think pandering to the lowest common denominator is just a bad idea.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
...are presumably only saying that because they are too young to remember the icon set from Windows 3.1.
Windows 10 isn't even finished yet. Just stop complaining. On top of that... They are only icons. What's the big deal?
And what's with the (0,0,255) primary blue window title?
Christ. Looks as bad as Windows XP.
Looks fine for me in Chrome, also what does your comments have to do with the one you replied to.
...anything to make you more productive.
I am in the minority camp, I guess. I actually quite like the flattened look of the Win10 UI, including the icons. I am using it on my primary desktop with very few problems at all.
This happened a few years ago for the iconography in Visual Studio (2010 I believe) too, and the users were up in arms. It took what felt like a tremendous amount coordinated feedback over a very long time to get some very small concessions from Microsoft. If you don't like it you had better start letting them know about it now and en-mass, because this decision will have a LOT of inertia behind it. It won't be easy to get them to change their minds at this point.
Those new icons are ugly, and make Windows look like a poorly designed toy. I do not mind change, when change is for the better. But Microsoft took a big step backwards on this one.
At last! BeOS icons have become mainstream! I can die happy knowing that average users will get to know the glory of the BeOS icon style!
...but those Windows 10 icons are pretty bad. Someone in the design department doesn't know that "flat" doesn't have to mean "done in MS Paint". The new Adobe CC icons are "flat" but contain very subtle gradients, which is why they look great. The MS icons are thin and hollow in comparison.
My UID is prime!
I mean, what is good about the changes that they make?
A lot of us use our computers for work - they aren't playthings, and we aren't using the machine for entertainment. So when Microsoft randomly changes the UI on a whim, all it creates for me is aggravation with no upside.
Apple and Microsoft seem to be working hard to make BeOS look modern again.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Or global warming.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Windows fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a PC (a Dell Dimension with 4 Gigs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my MacBook Air, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this PC, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, IE will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even MSPaint is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various PCs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a PC that has run faster than its Mac counterpart, despite the Pcs' faster chip architecture. My Mac IIfx with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this Dell machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Windows is a superior machine.
PC addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a PC over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
NOT because it's good
NOT because it's intuitive
because designers told us it's good so most idiots say "this is in, it's good"
It's as bad as fucking fashion, for fucks, fucking sakes.
I'm SO over it, websites, phone apps, now phone OS's - everything is going SINGLE colour FLAT, no shading, NO DIVIDING LINES (ARGH) just complete white space (or any other colour)
The new dialler on the Samsung iteration of Lollipop is disgusting. All the numbers are just on one big flat shaded mess.
Forget about what's "cool" forget about aesthetics, tell me which one of these looks easier to hit the fucking numbers on?
http://www.sammobile.com/wp-co...
It's 19'th level, fucking desk smashingly frustrating. I'm a NERD, I'm a GEEK, I'm a fucking IT guy, I WANT TO DO THINGS AS FAST AS HUMANLY FUCKING POSSIBLE. The only thing holding me back should be my fingers, my computer or my device. I should not be sitting there mentally processing shit because it's obfuscated with poor design.
The textless icon 'fad' (which saves them translation costs) is probably the worst part. It's full spec kitten stamping insanity. I don't give 2 fucks if the wifi icon is ubiquitous, they have now dozens if not hundreds of icons for applications across the world on iOS, android, windows which are fucking meaningless and we're meant to know what they do.
"Well just press them to learn once" NO - a, that could be a bad thing I don't want to do and b, EVERY time I see the icon, I wonder "is that?...." I shouldn't think that. I should see the text too. The more I can instantly relate to the better.
I even think (despite it likely being ugly) that we should be consider using colours more.
Wouldn't it be nice if the 'send' button was always not only a "play" looking icon on my Android device, but it was LABELLED "send" and it was ALWAYS green.
Delete / trash icon? Always a trash bin, ALWAYS labelled with text, ALWAYS red? That's THREE fast things which will help me very very (very!) quickly identify what i want to click.
I tire so much of the 0.4'th of a second it takes my brain to 'double check' if I'm going to press the right thing. Those 0.4'ths wouldn't exist if this shit was done properly.
I apologise for ranting but this stuff is BAD, it's UGLY and it's SHIT and I'm ultra sick of it. It's hipster, flat, bland, wank for the sake of wank and it's costing me time.
One more thing, I no longer work in IT support. It was hard enough as it is when I did it, I couldn't begin to empathise enough with some poor piece of shit helpdesk guy now, who not only has to do that work but tell them "no click the icon that looks like an old cupboard but with 2 circular dials on it, no it's up the top right, no there's no colour, no there's no label, yeah it looks like........" for fucks sake.
Madness, utter madness.
LABEL things
put COLOUR on things
USE DIVIDING LINES - 1 pixel thick lines to separate sections ain't gonna kill anyone
If you work in the UI / UX industry and support this stuff. Kill yourself
No, I mean it, actually kill yourself, you're a scourge on technology.
Open source software has mediocre to bad icons. One of the things I like about commercial software, is that the icons can be professional, high resolution, and aesthetically pleasing. It's a minor concern. APIs, and driver reliability are a bigger issue. But Microsoft can definitely do better, than this, and KDE 4.
"We don't like change" is the rough translation.
Those icons look no uglier than the old ones.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The new icons do look pretty terrible, but if that's the biggest complaint so far about Windows 10, then maybe that version of Windows won't be too bad.
The title should be changed to:
"Users Decry Windows 10"
There....fixed it....
The new icons don't look great, but the far bigger crime is making the whole GUI look flat where the same washed out white background is used for the foreground and background.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I guess none of these people are old enough to remember when XP was introduced. Most people bitched about XP icons looking like they came from a cartoon in comparison to what was in NT, 95, 98 and 2K.
The icons don't like that different than usual, I see no problems with it. They're a bit too bright for my liking, I find it a bit aggressive, but that's the style these days apparently.
What is really problematic in the screenshot though, is the "This PC" text. It's barely readable. There are two shades of blue next to each other that are almost the same, and in one the text is white and in the other it's black. It's incoherent.
They need to fix their color scheme and take accessibility into account.
On previous OS releases, major UI changes were always driven by human-factors concerns. There are entire college majors in human factors, and courses in it are available to nearly every CS major. ACM has a whole group dedicated to it. So it would of course be utterly irresponsible and unprofessional to make UI changes that haven't been analyzed by experts for their impact on the user. I know in the past seemingly odd GUI decisions have been explained to me by human factors experts rationally.
So go ahead and hit me, Internet. I want to see the Human Factors explanation for why low resolution and color icons and flat no-shadowed controls like I used to have on my SunView workstation in 1986 is actually a superior way to design an interface on my 1024x3840 home PC in 2015.
Yeah, I'll agree they look worse, but they're not SOO much worse that I'd find it distracting. They're still relatively professional looking. After a while the icon theme just kinda becomes something I'm gonna ignore anyways.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Sure.. the OS is free, but if you want pretty icons, you'll have to buy the DLC.
Every iteration people complain about the UI but ultimately learn to love it with the exception of Metro of course ;)
News at 11..
I read almost he same complaints about Yosemite OSX when it was released. Lot of it has to do with weaker hardware using new OS's and requiring a more efficient use of the desktop interface. Windows 10 will be the OS for all platforms and that means creating a leaner OS. After all the many complained that Windows 8 was a attractive UI albeit confusing. It actually had some effective ways of saving energy in mobile devices. The truth came out a while ago that Aero effects in Windows Vista and Windows 7 ended up being rather power hungry. Apple actually has moved on to more efficient although less speedy processors too. The latest MacBook Air's and Mac Mini are using low powered CPU's that consume half the wattage of previous generations. But are also a tad slower.
I personally don't like Yosemite that well but tolerate it. As for Windows 10 my opinion is that its acceptable and if your looking to see a XP like user interface again or a Aero like effect. Don't hold your breath on that.
"Apparently scanning things like rounded corners and shading takes the human brain measurably longer to process, and you can use the flat interface faster."
Sure, we believe you. Just who is this "apparent" to? The retards who designed the 'flat' look? 'Flat' interfaces are BAD interfaces, because you can't see what is a button, what isn't a button, etc. Because modern 'designers' are sheeplike idiots, who will follow whatever is 'trendy' at the time.
Aren't icons tied to a theme and/or customizable anyhow? Last time I checked this was the case, so one should be able to change them if so desired, unless that's now changed and you're locked into the default set.
You cannot satisfy all the people all of the time. Humanity limes to complain.
Or should I say not terrible, but there are good things in that lone screenshot. No huge window borders for a start (maybe too thin then, looks like zero pixel border?), title bar a bit ugly but the color theme minimizes the ugliness.
The icons are inconsistent due to a mix of appearances : the trash can and some drives are in "realistic" style, like in XP and early OSX. The "line art" icons, I somewhat like them though perhaps the colors aren't great ("open folder with another icon in it"). But why I like them is they look like 80s icons to me, like Xerox desktop, Apple Lisa, Atari ST etc. !
Lets change the alphabet, I am totally bored with the letter "A" in particular(just the cap)
I have finished my transition to Debian as a desktop OS and run older versions of Windows in a VM as needed. Problem solved. You want to talk about the latest pop singer now?
It seems to me the problem here is the nightly build process, which seems to have even reached the graphics artists. Rather than checking in nothing, which would break the build, he/she/it/they checked in hastily concocted outline stuff. Heck, that music note on the article screenshot is HARDLY recognizable as one. After all, when one does read sheet music, notes are akin to typeset letters, not merely baubles hanging off a washing line by their tails.
Well, this is what I HOPE to be the case, and that something more polished goes into that software, both what one can see on-screen and the stuff behind the scenes....
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
It's great to have a ringside seat watching the devolution of operating systems.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
It looks like shit, that's why.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
If the main complaint people have about the new version of Windows is that the icons don't look very nice it must mean this is a pretty good version.
After all, it's not like you can't just change the icons to whatever you want them to be. I'm sure by the time it ships there will be more than a dozen "Classic Icon" themes available for download. I may spend 45 seconds finding one I like and then never think of it again.
The icons aren't the worst thing. There's plenty else on the screenshot that would drive me batty before the new icons. I'm so glad that I only have to use Windows once or twice a year because I got so tired of fighting with it. Now if I could just find a good software package to do Canadian business taxes on the Mac.
Don't get your panties in a bunch.
It looks like a clean, white shirt with mustard stains. Why do the folders have to be yellow? Why not choose a color that actually blends nicely with the rest of the scheme?
sig: sauer
Talk about hypocrisy http://www.iwillfolo.com/2014/...
There is a reason for the existence of flat icon. I believe that in the next step in user interface, it will be one icon for all resolution except the below minimum resolution. That is possible with vector icon. Flat icon are more easier to design with vector tools.
For that reason, I support flat icon. From here it will only get better with time.
If icons are all we have to bitch about then I'll be fine.
i'm just an intern : (
As somone who skipped 8 and will probably skip 10 unless there is a tangible advantage over windows 7, I think the icons are ugly. But I also don't think it's a big deal. You can change them anyway, and I'm sure someone will come out with a Windows 7/8 icon collection.
The real question for me is whether they will continue to keep Metro/Modern apps in a walled garden. I don't care that Microsoft has a store, but I think its complete bullshit that you wouldn't be able to install modern apps outside the store. (Same reason I went with Android and not Apple)
Can we get past the yellow, "folder" icon yet? It doesn't go with the rest of the interface at all, and its based on a wildly outdated concept. Even when I still use folders, they're never yellow. It's time to move on.
Maybe there's even a new way of visualizing "folders" altogether. Let's get creative.
Windows users hate the OS they love the most. They think they know what they want. They want a modern OS with all the bells and whistles but without any of the bloat or a UI they are unfamiliar with.
For all the people who hate the new windows: You'll still use it no matter how much you complain, and Microsoft knows this and therefore doesn't care what you think. What are you gonna do? Switch to mac or linux? You don't know how, or you would just complain even more.
For everyone else: I'm sure it will be fine. It will seem weird at first and have its quirks, but it will probably work pretty well for the most part, and after some time you'll just get used to it, like every other UI.
Windows 10 will sell. Why? Because it's there. Microsoft's goal is to push their tablet OS's and stuff. So they are making the UI more like the tablet, so you'll be used to it and want their tablet offerings.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Ok, I'll bite.
On Windows 7 you are viewing everything in Detail View. Then you switch to the Recycle Bin and bang you are in Icon View.
Frustrates the hell out of me. Borked by design.
I think "fresh and modern look" is designer speak for the fashion trend du jour. This is like all of Windows 8, 8.1 and now 10. "Screw actual usability and functionality...we'll never sell this to the Apple sheep unless it is fresh and modern". Note to Microsoft, you aren't going to sell this to the Apple types, they'll never settle for "just as good as" and you are only pissing off your own user base. Get over Metro already. Release Windows Classic with the Windows 7 GUI and the more recent kernel refinements under the hood. You can always make the Metro run-time available as an option if folks just have to run Metro apps on their computers.
Its the new(est) Cornflower blue, some days its not worth chewing through the restraints. This is the human race's version of throwing feces, I hope they're all really proud of themselves.
I think part of the flat icon craze is directly related to touch interfaces. Our mind, like it or not, sees 'bubbly' icons or buttons like the old XP start menu as an item where pressing on the edges is no good, like accidentally pressing the edge of a real-world rounded button and it not fully depressing. In a touch interface, this gives the illusion that the contact area is much smaller than it actually is, and makes for a hesitant approach. 'Flat' icons or targets give the impression that you can register a press on any part of the item. This is important on touch interfaces where tactile feedback is limited and your big fingers block what you're actually pressing.
This becomes quite obvious when looking at some of the old touchscreen keyboard UIs on the early touchscreen-era phones. The start of 'flat' UIs didn't come from windows 8, it came from the touchscreen phone. As someone else mentioned, DPI scaling might also be a factor, but this also came from the DPI race on touchscreen phones.
So don't buy it. Jeesh what a bunch of clods.
I remember this happening with iOS and the first thought that came to mind was "Naw... you're just too lazy to make a good icon, that's why you switched".
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
What a complete triviality. I actually don't mind the new icons. Ultimately you'll stop noticing them after some time. I imagine each new major iteration of Windows should beget cosmetic changes (though not necessarily functional ones), especially now with stronger competition from Apple.
Windows Phone 7
This was, and still is, a UX that fitted the device perfectly, it is intuitive, efficient and beautiful.
Some 'for instances'
why do we need a 'button'? This is already an artificial construct; if an idea is captured by text then touch the text to access the associated sub-levels. Or headings that extend beyond the screen; so you naturally swipe to see the end of the title and you get to the next page with a new title.
I am probably as upset as anybody for how Windows8/8.1/10 has evolved but for entirely the opposite reasons of most people.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
i have a real gripe with most OS UI designers - *most* OS of recent years have decided that updating the OS means hiding functionality, if that wasn't backwards enough already, running more daemons in the background too seems to be a general trend too. Why does years of interface use (how long have computers been mainstream ?) get suddenly thrown away after users have got used to them, and they have developed their own ways to do things and their preferred tweaks.. and some pointy haired designer comes along, and he decides the UI needs a new look, (understandably) so the first thing is to remove customisation and set god-awful defaults - the mess that is Gnome 3 or whatever its called is a big, clunky, dumbed-down Fisher-priced UI with oversized buttons, menus, hidden features - whilst announcing that its intended for new users, then expecting them to call up many GUI controls via the CLI window -( hint: Ubuntu - a few years ago)
Gnome 2 was ugly, but could be tweaked, KDE3 was actually really nice for power users back in the day, but if they shifted to QT4 and decided that they needed to hide features.. and introduce the god awful NepoMUCK & semantic desktop search crapola -
We don't all live in an office and some of us know where our files are - and quit compiling against these resource sucking daemons into the desktop too, so we have the devils own job removing this crap. Mac os X - coming with Facebook & Twitter & some game crap in, and all kinds of crap running in the background all the time, Apple, for power users, give us a bit of a hand about which services to disable, some of us understand computers you know Apple..
Windows - god help us - Windows 8 - UI, Yosemite's flat UI, Linux's bundling all daemons & desktop search & akonadi which is a royal pain oin the ass to remove.. its about time, now computers are ubiquitous, that UI's and OS become *more* flexible -
as for windows - at least the OS has a large community of theming and desktop mods - if you dont like the icons, change them, theme it, or stick with Seven
The latest Icons largely are stellar looking with great usability.
And yet, Jason Buckman believes that Microsoft shouldn't be criticized for this new set of icons. “I don't think they're bad at all. They're icons. Who cares?" he concludes.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
even on windows
Have the flat ones as default. Allow content creators to provide additional icon packs in your store. Problem solved.
without provoking a shitstorm among some of it's billions of users. unfortunately, microsoft usually yields to them, which males windows the mess it is.
This is nothing, wait until you see the new Control Panel icons.
http://www.winbeta.org/news/wi...
Folder icons are easy to change, and no you don't need 3rd party software to do it, just go into properties.
Netflix changed the its Icon from having a red background to a white background. While this seems like a minor change, when I scan the screen on my tablet or phone I don't see it right away. It is like having muscle memory that suddenly fails you.
You can also just shut the lid on your toilet after that Taco Bell deuce you just dropped and not flush it, but it's still there and the stank pervades the entire house. I don't want to smell shit all day but if you do, well.....
What idiots. It's the metric system that does that. They'll charge you as much for a kilogram as they do for a demifirkin, just you watch.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
and they especially hate design changes that give the UI the most horrible look in Operating System history.
I doubt you will find a substantial amount of people that like those newly designed icons, if they know the old ones or not.
Saying that the only reason people reject a certain change, is that they generally do not like changes is obviously a quite narrow-minded approach that does take the nature of those changes into account. You must be able to call good things good and bad things bad.
To wave away any critique by just calling it backward does not help. It does not allow to differentiate between what should be welcomed and what should be abandoned.
Windows was never about the look or design. It's about functionality, customization, and widespread adaptation. Somehow Gates communicated this without saying it. Windows may still be a success, but it seems to bounce around aimlessly in these ways now, satisfying no one. If you want sumptuous design, go with Apple. If you want no frills nuts and bolts, go with Linux. If you want the most universally used OS on the planet, you go with Windows. Microsoft: stop trying to be Apple! Gamers don't care, Grandma doesn't care, the people on the assembly line don't care, the employee at the POS screen doesn't care. They aren't using Windows for its looks.
In the past MS used http://iconfactory.com/
They did not use internal staff.
But the managers that approve it are to go first.
At least the folks at Icon Factory know a thing or two about iconography, which is as much of an exact science as UI design ever was; part pixel art, part language. As other 'dotters here have happily provided links to not only the historical iconography of Microsoft, but other platforms as well, you can see the evolution of aesthetic choices; the playful isometric simplicity of BeOS, the monochromatic elegance of NeXT, and the neo-realism of Gnome. Saying that the flat colors is a throwback to the primitive computer era (8/16 bit) is rather ignorant, simply because the color-palette choice wasn't a matter of preference, as much as necessity. Back then, the engineers were put in charge of defining the color gamut based on just 16 or 256 'slots' to use. Naturally, the engineers approached this in an algorithmic fashion, rather than aesthetically. That's why it took us 30 years to come up with color rendering that could represent natural/earth/skin tones, because there were all these mathematical gaps in the subtle spectra of blues, browns and greens. In that sense, I suppose the selection of flat saturated colors is indeed ironic in the age of hyper-realistic imagery. I applaud an aesthetic choice for elegant iconography, however the execution can be equally delightful or disastrous.
While I agree in part with the dissent over the design choices, I don't agree that TFA is representative of any significant "majority". Let's be real here, the headline reads, "icons look like a bad joke." Do you really think that contributing readers would be unbiased? You might as well have a big sign out front, "MS-bashing Trolls Welcome!" ...majority indeed.
But here's the catch. It's hard to have a serious discussion about UI choices even in this forum, one that's so inclined to conflate the design with every poor PR move, questionable politics and troubled past of the legacy platform, all making it impossible to take a step back and appreciate the design choices for what they are. It's also important to add that UI choices aren't just about making it artful, but mostly, meaningful. These mini-pictures are purpose-made to fall into the background, rather than be their own eye-candy. (that's what custom icon sets are for)
So here, I'll take a stab at it. This icon gallery clearly perpetuates the traditional Windows brand "manila folder" trope as a foundation. With flat colors and angled lines, it does an attempt at three-dimensional appearance, which arguably does look very 'flat', with or without comparison to its predecessors. While those do not make up 100% of the new icon set, the "folders" establish the overall paradigm and 'look' of the interface. I'm not convinced that the non-folder icons are even complete, since most of them still resemble Aero's photo-realistic set of devices. The icons that notably reflect the new art style are the "My Computer" and "Network" icons, which is a simple line-art treatment style. This is not consistent with the folder paradigm, not only because they don't resemble folders, but because these images are using boundary lines to define shapes, rather than flat colors. Overall, it's rather inelegant and poorly executed. The folders use subtle boundary lines, but inconsistently, and the line doesn't diminish on the smaller icons, making the left face of the folder look awkward, like a backwards "L" from a varsity jacket. Again, we see that the Redmond workshop has neglected the beauty of scale and only centers their model on an 'ideal' size, whatever size that may be, and also belies an underlying framework that is—yet again—bullishly ignorant of modern, precision rendering. As I'm running Win10-TP myself, I can also see that File Explorer attempts to express folder contents a
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
The sound I use to indicate that the system is shutting down (the "that's it man, game over (NSFW)") sound bite from Aliens. Icons could be the same way, I would think, sort of like themes. But ultimately icons are shortcuts to replace long words like "Save" or "Stop". And look how far the Egyptians of 4,000 years ago got with their icon-based language. And cross cultural issues abound. The red "X" used in 1990's German software caught me off guard, compared to common English usage to indicate "Delete".
... everyone has their own, sometimes just for marketing.
In the final analysis, icons are like standards
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
I like them. The body of the icon contains descriptive info. Not all of it has to be textual next to the icon
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I do not care about windows but I have to agree that these icons aren't even modern, whatever that means.
This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
... sometimes clumsily (iPhoto icon good. Photos icon bad.) they too need to decide flat&tilted vs roundrect vs circles. They're still a bit schizophrenic about device icons within programs and in the Finder. Given the history of Windows 7 to 8 to 10, they don't need any more flash points. I'd imagine they simply need to lock the door until they can release a coherent UI. And please stop with the size-shifting icons/panes. It's useless on desktop UI (it know which icon I need - letting me make some of them the size of baseball cards is no gain) and just reduces focus on a small screen. Someone needs to stop imagining that there is a non-modal better way to use a small device.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Ya, exactly. Not sure what was trollish about my original post but whatever - the mods around here have really gone downhill lately.