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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.

16 of 516 comments (clear)

  1. they used http://iconfactory.com/ by cheekyboy · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  2. Re:Flat Look may be ugly, but it is useful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can always turn off the effects for VMs and remote connections. For local use, effects like transparency and whatnot do not introduce any kind of penalty. Even the slowest GPUs (all the way to GMA950) have been able to do it without any perceivable slowdown. Windows is very well optimized in this regard.

  3. Bugs in Win 7 UI by CaptainOfSpray · · Score: 5, Informative

    "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
    1. Re:Bugs in Win 7 UI by dissy · · Score: 4, Informative

      3. Delete a file
      4. Whoa, the file is STILL THERE in the list

      Err, wut?

      I manage around 150 Win7 machines at work, and have 4 of them at home, and never once seen the behavior you are describing.

      Are you sure there isn't more involved with recreating that? Have you seen this on more than one Win7 computer?

      When I use explorer to delete a file, it is removed from the file list and placed in the recycle bin folder for that drive, just as has been the case for some time now.

      If explorer is open to a remote file server it still removes the file from the list when deleted, just skipping the recycle bin part of things.
      (Not to mention my complaint about a confirmation prompt being there when the recycle bin is used and so recovery is possible, and NO confirmation when deleting on a file share despite no recovery of the file being possible by default, which always seemed bas-ackward to me)
      But you didn't mention browsing to a remote file share, the default explorer will open to your homedir or drive root typically on your system drive.

    2. Re:Bugs in Win 7 UI by CreatureComfort · · Score: 4, Informative

      No previous Windows has ever done anything so mindlessly wrong.

      That is just factually incorrect. The list of mindlessly wrong things previous versions of Windows have done is worthy of it's own miniseries.

      `

      --
      "Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
      Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
    3. Re:Bugs in Win 7 UI by jones_supa · · Score: 3, Informative

      I can confirm that bug in Windows 7 and I have seen it in Windows 8 too. It has occasionally happened to me after deleting all files from a folder. One of the files remains in the folder view, even though it has been deleted already. The view seems to not be refreshed properly.

    4. Re:Bugs in Win 7 UI by HideyoshiJP · · Score: 3, Informative

      Explorer always waits on lower-level file functions to gracefully complete before letting you interact with it. In your case, it's probably still in the "calculating" phase and will wait on that subtask to complete before it reverts everything. I commonly deal with servers with several million files (bad software). Its a pain in the neck when explorer waits on things. Don't get me started on loss of connectivity when explorer has a mapped drive. Sure you're just trying to go to "C:\," but explorer is too busy flopping around as if you've stabbed it in the back.

  4. Re:Ah, Damnit... by bmo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Obviously there's a machine performance benefit too, when you take things like transparency into account.

    No, it's not obvious. These days the video card takes care of all that. And whether the alpha channel is 0 or 255 the value is going to be read anyway. The performance hit is nil.

    --
    BMO

  5. Re:If users complain about Windows X icons... by Warbothong · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's a classic case of Bike Shedding.

    "These icons look crappy"
    "Thanks for the feedback. What do you think about the switch to user-mode signed driver binaries?"
    "No idea. But these icons look crappy"

  6. Re:Do it like Linux by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'll throw some screenshots here so people can compare easily.

    - Windows 3.1
    - Windows 95
    - Windows 7
    - Windows 10 new icons from the article
    - Windows 10 new Recycle Bin and Control Panel icons

  7. Re:If users complain about Windows X icons... by dissy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well to be completely fair, there are a TON of very nice features being put in Win10, on top of a ton of things fixed that they broke in Win8.

    No GUI requirement similar to the choice of installing xorg (I believe introduced in server 2012?), a powershell version of apt-get using the windows tailored chocolatey package format, fixed the stupidest of GUI changes from Win8 such as no desktop by default and whatever they call the app tiles thing, improved filesystem and network file sharing (the latter bringing a HUGE speed boost, both being more parallelized), etc.

    They are trying out a different (and IMHO better) upgrade path, and hopefully all that is claimed about the new IE will come true which will finally begin closing the huge gap between it and pretty much any other browser.

    Sure there is still plenty of time between now and release day to drop the ball on for anything above, but I dare say direction under their new CEO has been pretty damn positive so far, and leaps and bounds better than when under Balmer (though I admit that is a pretty low bar anyway)

    As someone who hates Windows mainly due to being forced to support it and its bullshit for the past 20 years, even I am quite impressed with the changes between Win7 and Win10, and don't have much to complain about. We will see if that still holds true after release of course.

    But I can't help but agree, a lot of the serious problems are being or have been addressed.

    We only complain about the icons and lack of theme support to fix them because Microsoft asked us, petty as that may seem.

  8. Re:Do it like Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    For completeness, some other mid-to-late '90s era icons:

    BeOS
    Amiga OS 3.5
    NeXT
    Mac OS 8
    GNOME 1
    KDE 1

  9. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by Carewolf · · Score: 4, Informative

    They're more in line with current gui design. They want to appear a bit more modern i guess.

    They look like hires versions of early 1990s icons to me, not modern in any way.

  10. Another one bites the dust by duck_rifted · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  11. Visual Studio by BradleyUffner · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  12. Re:Biggest Problem by MagickalMyst · · Score: 3, Informative

    With Linux you can customize your UI and just leave it like that. You also have different options for UI. With Windows you get what you get - like it or not.

    --
    Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.