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Users Decry New Icon Look In Windows 10

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-sir-I-don't-like-it dept.

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.

88 of 516 comments (clear)

  1. If you hate Change so much...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    why did you vote for Obama? Twice??

    1. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by itzly · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You'll get used to it..

      Wouldn't it be easier to get used to the old ones ?

    2. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by itzly · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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) ?

    3. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by RabidReindeer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
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    5. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by camg188 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's certainly different, but i don't see the issue.

      The issue is that some people like to bitch... a lot... about anything.

      From the linked article: "Then, there's pluizebol, who says that, because of the icons, he removed Windows 10 from his computer."
      Ridiculous. It would've been easier to change the icons. What next? Don't like a default font or default color scheme? Remove the entire OS!

    6. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They still look very unprofessional. Even if they wanted to do Modern UI style icons, they could have done a much better job.

    7. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

      why did you vote for Obama? Twice??

      Well after the first time we hated the idea of a change

    8. 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.

    9. Re: If you hate Change so much...... by jd2112 · · Score: 2

      I would say Windows 8 looks like it was designed in a Communist country but even the North Koreans have sence enough to copy Mac OSX.

      --
      Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
    10. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by dbarron · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think you're right...I also think they did a poor job of design. Todays video capabilities are so much more..that they shouldn't look so flat and boring.

    11. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by jbolden · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    12. Re: If you hate Change so much...... by Carewolf · · Score: 2

      I would say Windows 8 looks like it was designed in a Communist country but even the North Koreans have sence enough to copy Mac OSX.

      And OS X is pretty damn retro these days. Still looks like early 2000s.

    13. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by organgtool · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The difference, of course, is that you didn't have to constantly interact with the taillights and fins of the car to operate it.

    14. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I just want to interject an opposing point of view here. It's very easy to think that icons don't matter, and that the only thing that matters is some kind of 'objective functionality'. Like, "Windows boots up, it runs the things I want, it has the features I want, therefore icons are irrelevant." I can think of few reasons, off the top of my head, why we shouldn't be so dismissive of design.

      First, design matters for the sake of clarity. In the example of icons, you want to make sure that it's clear which image is an icon, and which is some other design element. Which images are clickable? What does that image represent? Those questions are important for UI design. Further, it's important that icons are distinguishable from each other.

      As much as possible, you want icons to provide a cue to the user as to what will happen when you click on that icon. If you're going to have one icon for a folder that contains music, and another for a folder that contains images, you don't want them to look close enough that they can be confused. Going further down the line of thinking, if you're going to use the "folder" metaphor, then you probably want to make all 'folders' have folder icons, and have no applications have icons that look like folders. Consistency is also very important in making a UI intuitive and usable.

      But all of that is still a bit in the realm of 'practical' and 'functional', and I'd want to make an additional argument that it matters whether a UI is 'pretty'. In short, you have people sitting in a chair looking at these images for 8-12 hours per day, and design aspects of the interface have to have a psychological impact on a person. It would be subtle, in that I would bet small changes have essentially no effect, but still important, in that I would bet that a drastic change in UI 'prettiness' could have a major impact on a person's mood and even productivity over time.

    15. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by skegg · · Score: 2

      I helped a friend with Win 8 printing problems, and I was initially lost. It took me 5 times longer to resolve their problem than if they had Win 7. (Or Vista. Or XP. Or 2000.)

      I plan to use Win 7 until it's EOL. I would like to say I'll dump Microsoft and move to another OS, but the truth is I use a lot of Windows software and will therefore be lumped with Microsoft operating systems for many years to come. For this reason, I resent Microsoft and their atrocious UI decisions of the past few years.

      Microsoft is obviously feeling the heat from Apple, but in trying to force a touch UI upon everyone (even those with non-touch devices) they are also annoying a heck of a lot of other people. Some of those may even think: if I'll need to re-learn the interface, I may as well take the opportunity and move to another OS. (Ironically, most likely Apple.)

      I hope Microsoft does hemorrhage customers, and learn how to refine their UI without drastically impacting on people's productivity. And with all the flip-flopping Microsoft has done over the past decade, I wouldn't be surprised if they do.

    16. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by itzly · · Score: 2

      No, it's a way of saying "change that offers no advantage to the user, even if you get used to it"

    17. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    18. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by jader3rd · · Score: 2

      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) ?

      Sadly, they learned that if they don't change some user visible items, many people won't consider upgrading because "Why would I upgrade, it looks exactly like the existing one, so it must be the same thing".

    19. Re:If you hate Change so much...... by brantondaveperson · · Score: 2

      If there's one thing we can agree on about icon design, it's that no-one agrees about it....

  2. When the Revolution Comes... by CaptainOfSpray · · Score: 3, Funny

    Microsoft's UI designers will be first up against the wall...

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    1. Re:When the Revolution Comes... by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 3, Funny

      Microsoft's UI designers will be first up against the wall...

      Except they'll have designed the guns, and so you'll have no idea how to shoot them. You'll probably have to end up strangling them with some newfangled "ribbon".

  3. Finally by Kvathe · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  4. Amateurish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Those icons look like someone's first pixel art experiments. It seems that Microsoft has fired all of its professional graphics artists.

    1. Re:Amateurish by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Funny

      Actually, these icons were designed by Clippy the AI.

      After he was fired from Windows Help Services, he retrained as a UX technologist and has been leading Microsoft's more recent innovations, like the Windows 8 start menu, the ribbon interface and now a complete revamp of the icons used in Windows.

      He's pretty much Microsoft's Jony Ive these days.

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    2. Re:Amateurish by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 3, Funny

      Actually, these icons were designed by Clippy the AI.

      Nope. He was the graphics lead developer - till he got promoted to director of human resources. All icon design is now open source. Open sourced (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) to galahs. It used to be monkeys which they fed peanuts. But peanuts, and monkeys are expensive - so they were replaced with galahs that are fed crayons. Sort of avian Pollock - but much, much cheaper.

      It's tough being a galah living on crayons and crapping on desktop for a living, so the poor bastards work nights designing web interfaces for online banking sites.

      Ever wondered why those sites need a dozen different javascripts pulled from different sites? It's because galahs fed bad acid don't care much about security - they're too busy implementing flash advertising overlays and inserting Facebook/Twitter buttons (sigh).

      [Steve Balmer monkey dance] Shareholders! Shareholders! Shareholders! (the root of all evil).

    3. Re:Amateurish by Dogtanian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Those icons look like someone's first pixel art experiments. It seems that Microsoft has fired all of its professional graphics artists.

      The problem is that- in terms of style- either they can't make up their mind what they are, or they're trying to have it both ways.

      They're neither sufficiently clean and flat to match the current style of graphic design (which they went for with Windows 8), but nor do they work particularly well as 3D or prettified icons, or any other style in their own right.

      The end result is that they just look like horribly underdesigned versions of "old school" icon design circa XP to Windows 7. And some (e.g. the warning "!" triangle and error "X" circle) just look badly designed full stop.

      The colours are also far too bright to be used in large, solid blocks like that. It's probably no coincidence that the "flat" trend in general was accompanied by the rising use of *slightly* less fully-saturated colour (see here for an example); not dull by any means, but more tolerable for solid blocks than (e.g.) #FF0000 red etc. (*)

      I grew to hate the use of bland gradients of the previous design trend (early Web 2.0 and later) and the glossy 3D effect started to get overdone (and cheesy) when adopted by every man and his dog. So I'm a fan of the flat look when it works. The problem (which I figured out at the start of the trend) is that if it's not done well, it can easily come across as being simply underdesigned or crude, and as it becomes more widespread it's likely to become adopted by people who can't tell the difference.

      (*) Mind you, that was also a trend elsewhere, e.g. in clothing.

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  5. Ah, Damnit... by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
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    1. Re:Ah, Damnit... by operator_error · · Score: 5, Funny

      I predict one day the UX/UI trend will be glossy, even glass-like; what with reflections, highlights, shadows, textures and all.

    2. 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

    3. Re:Ah, Damnit... by binarylarry · · Score: 2

      flat and ugly like your sister, trebek!

      Sorry, couldn't help myself.

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    4. Re:Ah, Damnit... by Jerry+Atrick · · Score: 5, Insightful

      UxStyle can do other styles if you don't like XP.

      The key thing is older styles properly emphasise the boundaries between UI elements and the active surfaces of control areas. Something vanilla Modern look if fscking awful at and consequently harder to use.

    5. Re:Ah, Damnit... by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except that a lot of people really like the flat look. That's why Google, Apple, and Microsoft have all adopted it. They're not ignoring customer feedback, they're chasing after it.

      No, I think people are wanting "something different" more so than "flat look".

      Because you know what the biggest complaint about iOS 6 was? The UI was "dated" and "looked the same".

      It never was about usability - it's people thinking that something that looks different is a good thing - that every year things must look different and things must be better because of it.

      If you don't change your look, people think you're dated and "not innovating".

      Basically it's change for the sake of change. Because otherwise people don't think anything's changed.

  6. 8bit by jklovanc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They look like they are from the seventies and using an 8 bit colour pallet.

    1. Re:8bit by dissy · · Score: 2

      They look like they are from the seventies and using an 8 bit colour pallet.

      Except even in GEoS from the seventies with a not-quite-8-bit color pallet was still capable of showing the differences between each type of GUI widget, and between widget and non-widget.

      Win8/10 (and iOS7+, and Unity) fail to differentiate buttons from drop-down menus from checkboxes from radio buttons from text input fields.
      You can only tell widget from non-widget by the different square of color, which can and does happen frequently between different areas in a non-widget background image as well.

      It more reminds me of those "item hide and seek" point-and-click games where you mainly just click on everything in the image until the game tells you everything has been found.

  7. 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.

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  8. Is it just me... by cs96and · · Score: 2

    ...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).

    1. Re:Is it just me... by Racemaniac · · Score: 2

      design and fashion is always such a cycle. I don't know why you feel these are " 256 color, flat, windows 3 style icons". They look far better than the old windows 3 icons do. To me they just look like the next evolution.
      And seeing people freak out over icons that pretty much look as expected seeing current gui practices... yes, it makes me feel people are just opposing change. To me they look like a nice new set of icons, and if you prefer another set, put that on your windows :).

  9. If users complain about Windows X icons... by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...there is nothing seriously wrong in that OS (to be fair).

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    1. 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"

    2. 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.

  10. Goodbye skeuomorphic... by itsdapead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  11. 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.

  12. Bad usability, man by Misagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  13. HiDPI by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  14. 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.

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    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 mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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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    3. Re:Bugs in Win 7 UI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    4. 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.

      `

      --
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      Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
    5. 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.

    6. Re:Bugs in Win 7 UI by jones_supa · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No, I have seen it happen in normal folders.

    7. Re:Bugs in Win 7 UI by jrumney · · Score: 2

      You're probably still stuck at step 1. Another problem with Windows 7 is that it seems to take forever just to open an Explorer window compared with earlier versions of Windows. I've seen the behaviour described in the GP a few times in the last couple of weeks. I'd never seen it before that though, so maybe its a recent Patch Tuesday bonus.

    8. Re:Bugs in Win 7 UI by reboot246 · · Score: 2

      First, don't ever use Windows Explorer. Get a better file manager.

      Second, don't ever use those stupid Libraries. Just put your stuff where you want it. I hate anything and everything labeled "My ____ ".

    9. 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.

    10. Re:Bugs in Win 7 UI by beanpoppa · · Score: 2

      I think it's a problem with some of the file preview code. When you click on a folder, Explorer scans each file to get preview info- picture date, resolution, length for an mpg file, etc. If I delete the folder while this is being done, I will get errors that the file is in use, and that can persist for several minutes.

    11. Re:Bugs in Win 7 UI by thegameiam · · Score: 2

      But how long does it take to copy a 17MB file?

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  15. So Windows is getting hit with the Ugly Stick by wiredog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The same one the Mac OS got hit with in the most recent release.

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    1. Re:So Windows is getting hit with the Ugly Stick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You are right, the Ugly Stick has been busy beating the shit out of the latest OS GUIs, but I still think Gnome-3 is the worst of all of them.

  16. "a fresh and modern look" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  17. Re:Do it like Linux by johanw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Windows 95 looked much better than windows 8 and leter. Heck, even 3.1 looked better. This seems more like a 1980 design to me: it had to be what they now call "flat" because the hardware could not handle anything better.

  18. That can't be the final by Crookdotter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  19. Fits right in by TACD · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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  20. Silliness by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.)

    1. Re:Silliness by Kvathe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Easy, people are less likely to pay for a new product if it looks just like the old one.

    2. Re:Silliness by itzly · · Score: 2

      The only reason many people get new windows is because it comes with the computer. And they get a new computer because the old one broke, or has too much malware on it. They won't see the icons on the desktop until they get it home and turn it on.

  21. 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

  22. Isn't constant GUI changing bad design? by swb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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."

    1. Re:Isn't constant GUI changing bad design? by jfbilodeau · · Score: 2

      Have you noticed that Microsoft loves to tell developers how their Windows application need to look, but break their own rules with Office, VS and other products of theirs. Constant change and inconsistency is the modus operandi of the day.

      --
      Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
  23. 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

  24. Re:Do it like Linux by Mr+Foobar · · Score: 2

    I must be maybe one of about remaining four people who -still- prefers the nice boxy greyness of old beloved OS/2 2.1

    http://www.classic-computers.o...

    And maybe I'm one of the last two people who loved programming OS/2 apps, or at least remembering doing so.

    Probably the reason I try to shoehorn FVWM onto Ubuntu...

    --
    -> I dislike sigs...
  25. 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.

  26. Which icons? by hyperar · · Score: 2

    You could at least add a link to check the icons out OP.

    1. Re:Which icons? by jones_supa · · Score: 2

      OP here. There's a screenshot in the article. :)

  27. Biggest Problem by MagickalMyst · · Score: 2

    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.
    1. 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.
    2. Re:Biggest Problem by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Tell it to the people who upgraded to Gnome 3

  28. Mac heretic here by Muad'Dave · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  29. Re:Flat Look may be ugly, but it is useful by gbjbaanb · · Score: 2

    Ah but that was then. I imagine these are more vector graphics than bitmaps. When you get your new 4k monitor, you'll understand why they have to change.

  30. Minority by astro · · Score: 2

    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.

  31. 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.

  32. Why? by toonces33 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Why? by xystren · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I couldn't agree more (and I will likely be call an 0ld-Ph@r7 and a progress Luddite that hates change). How long has it been since they started with this "ribbon" crap (2006? 2007?) and still to this day I long for the old simple, intuitive, efficient, File, Edit, etc., menu. What has it been? 8 years now? I think that is plenty of time to "get used to the ribbon" like I was told when it started. Like you said, it still creates aggravation with no upside.

      I have no problem with change.... It's just: If it ain't broke, don't fix it > change for the sake of change

    2. Re: Why? by timmyf2371 · · Score: 2

      The old fashioned menu UI is hardly efficient and intuitive. For a start, it doesn't allow in-line changes to things such as cell formatting or easy selection of graph/table design options.

      And as for why some settings are under a completely unintuitive menu name, I have no idea.

      However, that's my opinion. Yours differs. :)

      --

      Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
  33. Modern, flat, tabletification of everything by AbRASiON · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Modern, flat, tabletification of everything by dbIII · · Score: 2

      It could be worse.
      There could be no icons at all but somehow you are expected to know to go to the corner and then they will pop onto the screen.
      Oh, that bit of stupidity is already in use isn't it?

  34. People hate change by bravecanadian · · Score: 2

    News at 11..

  35. Flat icons and 'touch' by PPalmgren · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.