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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.
...there is nothing seriously wrong in that OS (to be fair).
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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.
The same one the Mac OS got hit with in the most recent release.
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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.
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."
Atleast getting the delete file error is quick.
I continue to be amazed by the slowness of some other common file operations,
1. Select a lot of files and directories.
2. Drag them to another folder to start copying.
3. Wait a few seconds and cancel.
4. Wait 15 minutes while a window shows "Cancelling...", during which you can't really do anything.
Why does it take so long to cancel file copying? It has to delete a single (partial) file at most.
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If I had to guess its because Microsoft isn't just pursuing change for its own sake here. It's icons. On new modern seriously high DPI screens. I think they're trying to future proof themselves.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
He's right, Explorer doesn't always clear its dir cache correctly. Happens more often to me on network drives than local drives, but when it happens, I can open other Explorer instances, navigate to that dir, and they all think the file is still there too. Prevents me from recursively deleting directories sometimes.
No, I have seen it happen in normal folders.
Yes they are. The new style of design allows for less borders between boxes which makes screens more efficient in how they use space. Being able to visually comprehend more on a screen occupying the same physical space is an upgrade.
Moreover once you introduce touch and thus have an inaccurate pointing device borderless works far better since you want the pointing device to be closest center not border and except for circles that's not going to be the same thing.
If this means nothing can ever get changed...
Change just for the sake of it is stupid. Are the new icons in any way better (they let people do their job faster, for example) ?
Change just for the sake of it is marketing. It's the same thing as mutating the taillights (and in the 1950's, fins) of a car just so that everyone will know that you couldn't afford to go out and replace the perfectly good car you already had.
I disagree. Marketing is studying what potential customers actually want. More and more I see business do things to the contrary and try to tell you it's "better" and "you will like it when you get used to it". Most people seem to find these things. like the "ribbon" UI, to slow them down.
It may all be part of a bigger plan to manipulate the market, but they surely have not asked what the people want.
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.