Microsoft Tries Another Icon Theme For Windows 10

jones_supa writes: Back in February, users decried the new icon look in Windows 10. In response to that feedback, Microsoft has implemented a new icon pack in build 10125, which was leaked early but expected to arrive soon for Technical Preview testers. Screenshots show what the final version of the OS could look like when it goes live this summer. The new icons go all-in on a flat approach, following the same design cues as the rest of the operating system, but the "pixel art" style has been abandoned. Once again, Softpedia asked for user experiences, and this time the comments have been mostly positive.

Comments

They look like they could be

[PsyMan]

very iconic.

Screenshots?

[ArcadeMan]

Those "screenshots" are only 600x375. They're more on the side of being huge thumbnails than actual screenshots.

Unless of course you're still using a 640x480 display, in which case you're seeing an article from the future. Hello from the future! Buy these things called "Bitcoins", they'll be worth hundreds of dollars some day!

Re:Screenshots?

[TWX]

Those "screenshots" are only 600x375. They're more on the side of being huge thumbnails than actual screenshots.

Unless of course you're still using a 640x480 display, in which case you're seeing an article from the future. Hello from the future! Buy these things called "Bitcoins", they'll be worth hundreds of dollars some day!

Heh. Given how the icons are looking more like icons did in the days of Windows 3.1, maybe having a low-res screen is next. The Hipsters will love it!

Re:Screenshots?

[houstonbofh]

I was doing 1600x1200 on my CRT with Windows 95. Which, actually these icons look sort of like...

Re:Screenshots?

[CronoCloud]

And 640x480 was still the standard resolution for set-top boxes until around 2007

Define "set top box", since both you and I know, that both the PS2 and the original Xbox were capable of putting out a 1080i signal.

The PS3 was released in 2006, it's a set top box, when using HDMI by default it outputs the highest resolution your display supports up to 1080p.

Now admittedly, if you're you, and you're babysitting kids in the early to mid 2000's with a SNES/PSone/ or perhaps a PS2 attached to an SDTV, you might not realize the HD revolution is passed you by. Sony was selling nice little 15" 720p HDTV's in the early 2000's if I remember correctly, I think they cost about $550 - $600 or so.

They were better before

[tom229]

Sorry, but they were. I'd rather simple and clean.

Re:They were better before

[Njorthbiatr]

Why not include both?

Re:They were better before

[mister_playboy]

Because the concept of "choice" is anathema to UI designers circa 2015.

Re:They were better before

[iampiti]

Exactly! Seems like the motto is :"One true,flat,ugly way".

Re:They were better before

[westlake]

Because the concept of "choice" is anathema to UI designers circa 2015.

"Choice" --- as the geek defines it --- has never been a big part of Microsoft's success in its core markets. The same can be said, of course, for Apple.

Re:They were better before

[DocHoncho]

It's not ugly! It's modern and elegant!

You know, unlike all those other UI designs that were modern and elegant. They're all old and busted now. UI design has more to do with fashion trends than any sort of objective basis in usability.

Re:They were better before

[sootman]

The other motto is "hide everything, because we don't understand the difference between 'actually making something simple to use' and merely hiding complexity."

Dear Mozilla (and everyone else), fuck you. This shit is RETARDED. "Look everyone! We got rid of all those confusing menus! Now there's just one button! ... Which spawns a bunch of menus.

Oh, and the regular menus also all still exist.

Oh, and we have TWO buttons like that, because we are in full-on shithead mode. Why hide everything behind one button, when you can force user to FIRST choose from one of TWO buttons! Mwa ha ha ha ha! One looks like a fox, the other looks like a hamburger. NEITHER has ANYTHING to do with what lies underneath! Hey, "New Private Window" is pretty important... put it in BOTH! But only put "new tab" in one. But make "new tab" a menu, and put "new window" underneath it. Got all that? Good. I need another drink. It's almost 10am!

Seriously -- I couldn't make this shit up. There's a special spot in hell waiting for you douchebags. You are collectively wasting YEARS of people's lives with this monkey shit.

Re:They were better before

[chrish]

Gather 'round children, and let me spin a yarn of the old days when human-computer interface guidelines existed, and were created using actual science instead of fashion trends...

Looking better

[Ol Olsoc]

Much better.

I wonder if people get too hung up on system icons however - same thing happened with OSX Yosemite. I can change icons in a few seconds rather than beyatch about it.

Now if I just don't have to go to the web to find out how to do things I've done for years, in their other Os's, we might be talking here.

Also, I hope they've put POPmail back into the system mail program. It's not like half the world uses it or anything.

Re:Looking better

[Gadget_Guy]

Good lord, do people actually use the 'built in' email provided with Windows?

Of course they do. Most people in the world will have never heard of Sylpheed, let alone know what it is for. It is pretty arrogant to think that people don't use the built-in email simply because you don't.

Re:Looking better

[QuietLagoon]

...I wonder if people get too hung up on system icons...

The icons are the first things the user sees when the desktop loads. The icons are what is shown when the notebook or PC sits on display in a store.

.
The icons are the visual "come hither" for the operating system. An OS with unappealing icons has to work harder to appeal to customers.

Re:Looking better

[Dutch Gun]

It's not "beyatching", it's feedback, and Microsoft is ASKING for feedback regarding Windows 10. As a beta user and long time customer, it's perfectly reasonable to let them know I think their icons look horrible. I've given feedback for more substantial improvements, but I make sure to let them know about any aesthetic issues I see as well.

Is it really a major deal? No, not really. Part of it, though, at least for me, is the notion that all the way up the chain of command at Microsoft, there isn't one person who looked at those icons and said "My God, those are hideous! Someone fix those damned icons!". It just feels sort of pathetic, I guess, in a "King's New Clothes" sort of way. The designers that made a mess of Windows 8 have apparently convinced everyone that ugly is the new sexy.

Re:Looking better

[SpankiMonki]

What's so great about Sylpheed that I should care?

Sylpheed's primary advantage over all other e-mail clients is its inability to send HTML formatted mail.

Isn't that awesome?!?

flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[etash]

I (genuinely) don't understand this tendency with flat buttons and interfaces, they do look slight of "90-sh revamped". Generally speaking through the years, changes in the UI have been positive and IMHO they were at their peak with Windows 7.

What's the sudden (the last year or two) appeal with the super flat GUIs all over the place ?

Change for the sake of .. UX experts...I apologize, for the sake of change ?

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[ArcadeMan]

The problem is, it seems companies are letting designers do the job of the UI experts.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[itzly]

No, we'll end up with beautiful icons that are hard to use.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[Ol Olsoc]

The horror!

We may end up with intuitive and user-friendly software, oh no!

Like Windows 8?

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, let me know when that happens... you idiot.

'Flat' design means 'designers' are attempting to design user interfaces, when they clearly have NO CLUE on how to design a user interface, let alone improve the current one we have. Windows 7 was perfection, but some idiot at Microsoft is actually paying people to RUIN their own company - hello? Jensen Harris anyone? 'The Ribbon'? Metro? Microsoft lost hundreds of millions of dollars because they couldn't admit they were wrong, and they couldn't leave things as they were - because some assholes' jobs depended on changing everything.

What is 'intuitive and user friendly' about buttons that no longer look like buttons, so the user has to GUESS what is and isn't a button, by mousing over every bit of text in the program?

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[ArchieBunker]

Change for the sake of change. Programmers can't grasp the fact that maybe there is an ultimate end design. A hammer made today still looks like a hammer from a century ago. There is a reason for that.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[gstoddart]

We may end up with intuitive and user-friendly software, oh no!

You know, if people are actually doing proper user interface design, that might be true.

But having seen Metro on a Windows 8.1 box ... that's not what is happening.

Graphic designers focusing on pretty, but with no understanding of functional are producing shitty interfaces which, while they might be fine for a tablet or a handheld, are complete garbage for a desktop machine with no touch screen and operated with a keyboard and mouse.

So, I don't care which shade of pastel and crayons the useless interface is. I want to turn off the useless interface entirely, because it provides nothing in the way of utility.

Windows 8.1 is fast and stable, and has nice features. But it's only usable as a desktop once you install something like Classic Shell and turn off the crap that these "designers" have put in.

They're spending all the time tweaking the wrong things.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[jones_supa]

What's the sudden (the last year or two) appeal with the super flat GUIs all over the place ?

It's the move to fully scalable UIs. Cool graphics have not yet arrived at that scene. Making everything flat and simple is the easy way out.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad but true. Metro apps have thrown all GUI design guidelines into garbage can. Everything looks like a hacky mess of colorful 's splattered all around.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[Gadget_Guy]

We may end up with intuitive and user-friendly software, oh no!

But the problem is that you don't get an intuitive and user-friendly system. You might get a clean system without clutter, but then have to figure out and dragging from the top of the screen to the bottom is the way to close a program. Or that clicking in the space that used to have a design element (but is now just blank) was the way to bring up the start screen. Or that things that look like they are just decoration are actually active buttons, but you only know this (and what function they perform) by blindly clicking, dragging, swiping over every part of the screen.

Even when you do this, you still have to face the final insult when you find that the function you are looking for was removed from the software because it was deemed too advanced for modern users - even though Windows has been able to perform that function for decades up until now.

Modern user interfaces have absolutely nothing to do with intuitiveness. I looked at some really old software recently and found it so pleasant because I could tell exactly what functions were available and how to perform them simply because they used textual buttons and menus. It was so much better than being faced with a bunch of similar-looking graphics with no mouse-over pop-ups to explain what they were for.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[ArcadeMan]

What is 'intuitive and user friendly' about buttons that no longer look like buttons, so the user has to GUESS what is and isn't a button, by mousing over every bit of text in the program?

The same thing happened to OS X and iOS. What once was clear and easy to understand is now pretty and mostly useless.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[ArcadeMan]

Even an interface that requires mouse-over pop-ups to understand is a fail in my book.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[Imazalil]

Well about the only thing all the "UI experts" in Redmond have managed to do in 15-odd years is the Windows snap functionality (or whatever it's called - win key + arrows).

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[TWX]

We may end up with intuitive and user-friendly software, oh no!

So, I don't care which shade of pastel and crayons the useless interface is. I want to turn off the useless interface entirely, because it provides nothing in the way of utility.

Windows 8.1 is fast and stable, and has nice features. But it's only usable as a desktop once you install something like Classic Shell and turn off the crap that these "designers" have put in.

They're spending all the time tweaking the wrong things.

I think it's hilarious when Windows 95 icons are more intuitive than an OS that'll literally be twenty years later from the same company. That was with icons that only had the basic sixteen ANSI colors available to them at-launch. It required an update to enable 256-color icons. If anything, limiting designers to those sixteen colors and requiring a common faux-3d paradigm ensured that all of the icons had a design consistency about them that made it difficult for others to copy, so one could usually tell if a program was a Microsoft one versus a third-party.

There's been a lot to dislike about Microsoft over the years, but historically their user interfaces were legitimately not on that list. These 'advances' are changing that.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain the presence of Metro on Windows Server 2012.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[gstoddart]

Yeah stupid people making UIs for end-users and not for programmers!

Wow, nice either or.

In between clueless people who want to access the intertubes and programmers is pretty much everything else computers are ever used for.

And business software users do not gain a damned thing from Metro. They gain a clunk interface which is useless to them.

So, while Metro has its place for some people ... it is completely unsuited for the tasks of what many many people do with computers.

So Microsoft (and idiots like you) can keep pretending that Metro is a suitable interface for everything. Or Microsoft (and idiots like you) can actually realize that "one size fits some" isn't going to cut it.

You sound like a whiny graphic designer who still doesn't understand that a GUI which doesn't suit the task is fucking useless.

Yes, for many home users Metro will probably do everything they need. For for people with more demanding tasks, and most people in business ... Metro is utterly useless as a UI.

I can assure you, Metro is not all of "simple, clean, aesthetically pleasing, intuitive, and functional" ... it's anything but, in fact unless you're doing fairly trivial tasks on a tablet.

With a keyboard and mouse, on a large screen with no touch ... Metro is a completely fucking useless UI.

So you can boo hoo about how the graphic designers will save the day. But if all they have is eye candy which impedes function compare to existing UIs ... all they're doing its making pretty garbage.

But people who use computers for grown up things will simply not benefit from Metro. Because it's the completely wrong interface paradigm for many things, and Microsoft (and idiots like you) whining it's the wave of the future doesn't make it a good universal UI.

This isn't about the interface for normal people and programmers ... this is about the entirety of human computer interface design, and is much more sophisticated than your clueless reductionism.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[Hognoxious]

I totally agree like sixty million percent times.

It's like houses. Who needs architects? If the door's in the wrong place and it's too narrow who cares, so long as the colour looks nice with the curtains.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[Kjella]

The same thing happened to OS X and iOS. What once was clear and easy to understand is now pretty and mostly useless.

Strange how so many people around the world choose to use these "mostly useless" products. I'm not saying it's all for the better, but the "OMG I can't use this app it has a ribbon" people really should find some kind of job frozen in time where nothing will ever change. Funny enough, this place is crawling with all sorts of new languages yet very few go like "OMG I must learn a whole new syntax and standard library", then it's like change and multiple skills is no problem at all. Whatever they throw at me I'm sure I'll find a way to work with it...

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[I'm New Around Here]

I would love to hear a rational explanation for that one.

I just installed Server 2012 for a client, and it was my first view of it. Also, I don't use Windows 8, so am not used to the Metro crap either.

Trying to find the usual server configuration tools is ridiculous now. It's not that they are completely hidden like it Win8 (move mouse to random corner, something useful may appear), but trying to use them without having to escape from the metro tile field first is a nightmare.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they "borrowed" it from Xerox, the same place that Apple did.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[itzly]

Change just for the sake of change is stupid, especially if the change is a step backwards in functionality.

Re:flat as a pancake: invasion pending

[Anonymous Coward]

The changes in OS X and iOS are not even close to the clusterfuck that is Modern apps and abandonment of human-interface guidelines at Microsoft.

The only red-hot mistake in the Apple camp is the attempt to throw out Save/Save As... for Keep/Discard file management that nobody can get their heads around. Fortunately, Apple isn't trying to push that very hard. The rest of it is just aesthetics... the appearance hasn't change THAT much (be honest) and the functionality stays pretty much the same.

At Microsoft, you've got THREE different interfaces: traditional pull-down menus (most 3d-party software), Ribbon with File as a menu (stock apps like Wordpad), and full Ribbon (Office apps exclusively) where File isn't a menu or a tab - it takes over the whole window making your document disappear.

Oh, wait, then there's Modern apps, so that's FOUR, FOUR different UI interfaces.

and yes, iOS apps may work under Windows 10, so that's FIVE, FIVE different UI interfaces.

Not even Linux is as insane as this... in spite of innumerable UI toolkits from Xlib to Motif to GTK to KDE, Linux has never sent users on some weird hunt for the charms or how do I quit and get out of this?

Re:Windows 10 is for cows!

[ArcadeMan]

Moo-moo, moo?

Signed,
the Cow King.

Fiddling while Rome burns?

[gstoddart]

So, instead of trying focus on what kind of user experience we're going to have (which sounds like they think the tablet interface is what people actually want for everything) ... and focusing on making all of that good and usable ... why does it sound like throwing out new sets of icons means someone has lost the plot and is focused on the eye candy, and ignoring the fact that for a desktop machine Metro is a completely garbage interface?

I like my Windows 8.1 machine. But it was really only useful once I basically removed all of the stuff that Microsoft thinks they innovated or that was valuable.

Metro on a 23" non-touch screen monitor is a pathetic interface for Windows. If Microsoft is going to think everybody is running everything on a touch screen interface, instead of a mouse and keyboard ... they're doing a shitty job of knowing what people actually use computers for.

But, hey, we've been working diligently on the icons. 'Cuz, that's what people really want.

Re:Fiddling while Rome burns?

[hey!]

I believe the metaphor you're looking for is "re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic".

Re:Fiddling while Rome burns?

[MyNicknameSucks]

For the record, I also don't like Metro on a desktop PC.

That said ... Metro was optimized for touch and keyboard (but definitely not mouse). Type to search is usually faster than drilling through the Start menu with a mouse if you go more than a menu or two deep. Old-school shortcuts like alt-tab to switch windows and alt-F4 to close the current window are still there. If anyone cares, here's a list -- http://windows.microsoft.com/e... . We're going back 30 years or so, but I believe that some of those shortcuts go all the way back to WordStar (ctrl-c to copy, for instance).

FWIW, I don't think it's Metro that MS bungled, but rather how the plain old desktop, Metro, and settings were intermingled, especially in 8.0. Metro is fine for what it is: a UI designed for single / double-tasking media consumption. The default full-screen view is slick for Netflix and YouTube, while the default Mail and Calendar apps are good enough for my mom, but horrible for work needs. My biggest gripe is that the default apps for image viewing, the calculator, user settings and so on were all Metro apps -- even when launched from the desktop. One of the absolute stupidest things I've ever seen on a PC was day 2 or 3 with 8.0. I was writing an email in Outlook and wanted to double check some math. I fired up the calculator and was presented with a 22" fullscreen 4 function calculator that completely obscured the numbers I wanted to check.

Throw in how some OS settings were only available in Metro ... and, yeah.

But my issues with Metro were, by and large, focused on how I kept on being punted into it even when I most definitely did not want to be.

As for the icons? I think MS is simply going for consistency across the different flavours of device (phone, tablet, desktop). As 8.1 stands right now, it has two sets of icons, one for desktop, one for Metro. With 10's move towards windowed Metro apps, it doesn't really make much sense to maintain multiple sets of icons -- that lack of consistency, in and of itself, I believe, is poor UI design.

Re:Fiddling while Rome burns?

[Hognoxious]

That plus painting the bike shed.

Crazy idea

[itzly]

Why not simply let the user choose what they want ? Personally, I don't really care what they look like, but once I'm used to a set of icons, I would prefer to keep it.

Re:Crazy idea

[blind biker]

Why not simply let the user choose what they want ?

Because the user would choose Windows 7, and Microsoft can't allow THAT!

Yuck

[QuietLagoon]

Probably one of the most unappealing set of icons that I've seen in a long while.

No difference

[ArchieBunker]

It still looks like flat Windows 8 icons. What am I supposed to be seeing? Looks about as good as FVWM did in the 90s.

Re:No difference

[I'm New Around Here]

???

You think vi and emacs are only 20 years old?

Noob. :^)

Make a new windows 7

[CrAlt]

You know what would make the most people happy?
Just make a new version of Windows7. Why would I want to re-learn how to do everything...again?

Going from Win95->Win98->Win2K->XP->Win7 was easy. People stuck with windows because they knew how to use it. Companies stuck with it because re-training was easy. It kept people from jumping ship to OSX/Linux/ChromeOS.

Going from Windows 7 to Linux Mint is easier then going from Windows 7 to 8.

Microsoft spent 20 years teaching people how to use their UI then just throws that all out for no reason at all.

Re:What's that saying????

[crunchy_one]

Probably needs both. Lean in for a kiss, and oink, what a smell.

Why not test? I just don't get it.

[dpbsmith]

People used to do real tests with real people, in controlled situations, measuring response time, counting errors, videotaping what they were actually doing, finding out where people are getting stuck and using that feedback to redesign and try again.

This was common all the way back to the 1970s. People like Ben Schneiderman were doing formal research and writing textbooks in the 1980s.

Why do I no longer hear about any of this being done? Why is it all about the visual tastes of individual designers?

There's nothing wrong with beauty--the original edition of Inside Mac, 1983, said in so many words "objects are designed to look beautiful on the screen." But beauty and style are not the same as usability.

All of the insane "mystery meat" UI of today, in which you cannot find an affordance unless you already know where to click to make it visible, cannot possible be usable, even if some people enjoy developing the necessary skill set.

Without real testing, you always get the same things: the personal taste of the manager in charge, who is sure that what is natural for him is natural for everybody; or, the personal taste of the developer, who is sure that what is natural for him is natural for everybody.

New floppy disk icon for the modern age.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing says "modern" like that new floppy drive icon.
Progress!

Re:Arc of deception

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's an old shooter for DOS which predates the console versions and that mail client by decades.