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Microsoft To Revamp Windows 10 UI With Upcoming 'Project Neon' Update, Leaked Images Show (mspoweruser.com)
Microsoft plans to revamp the user interface on Windows with an upcoming update called Project Neon. Chatter about this new update has been doing rounds for quite some time, but now first images of where Microsoft is going with the design changes are here. According to MSPowerUser, Microsoft will introduce a new component dubbed "Acrylic" to the overall Windows 10 design, which will serve as a method for developers to further customize the appearance of their universal apps. Project Neon also focuses on Microsoft's efforts with 3D and HoloLens, tweaking UI elements in places where you interact with a mouse pointer.
Just give us back a proper start menu you wanktards!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Has the title bar expanded an inch or two? Why so much wasted vertical space?
The same idiots who subverted 30 years of UI research at Microsoft are still at it with their inane attempts to enforce a hipster UI on us. I don't need buttons that get lost because they are not clear, multi-colored and where I expect them. I don't need monochrome, abstract icons. I don't need menus IN ALL CAPS.
Stop changing stuff I've become accustomed to, stuff that makes me productive.
Give them superficial inaneness. Microsoft's time-honored tradition and trademark.
When Windows 10's underlying data harvesting infrastructure has fundamentally broken users' trust in Microsoft and Windows 10, why bother with trying to make Windows 10 look prettier?
I always see people like you going "it's new therefore it's awesome and the only people that have a problem with it are aged-out old people that can't adapt to new stuff" but I have not once seen a single person with this attitude explain their position in detail. I am of the opinion that this is because people with this attitude either don't do much with a computer in the first place (a browser icon and a file manager is all you need to satisfy you) or fall into the same elitist fanboy class that some Mac users paint themselves as, considering "new" to be a valid measurement of the value of a tool. "Just get on board and stop whining" makes you sound like such a person.
Please get back to me with your specific functional arguments in favor of the Windows 10 Start menu over the Windows 7 Start menu. If you have valid arguments for the changes you feel are so superior, it would be quite helpful to the discussion for you to contribute them.
It's reminiscent of how carburetor mechanics hated fuel injection and OBD-II when they started shipping in cars, but both are objectively superior systems and are easier to work on once you have the basic tools needed to query the computer because the computer can tell you what it sees going wrong and avoid tons of unnecessary effort, only in this analogy you're a dealer mechanic who works on locked-down cars with tons of non-user-serviceable stuff going "cars the user can't work on are newer than those old unlocked cars people could fix themselves, therefore they're certainly better than cars that users could work on!" Please feel free to prove me wrong.
Microsoft plans to revamp the user interface on Windows with an upcoming update called Project Neon. ...
Microsoft can try to dress up the UI of Windows 10 all it wants, but until the egregious data harvesting stops, Windows 10 will continue to suffer from a lack of trust.
Notably, I have already "learned something new" as I have been using Windows 10 for quite some time already, so on that note you may feel free to shove your condescending manner where the sun doesn't shine. The onus is on you to prove that your beloved new shiny interface is better than the one it replaced because you made the original claim of superiority. You have refused to back that claim with specific points, so we can safely assume you don't have any points to raise in favor of your position. However, my position is easily defended, so I will gladly do so now...not for you, but for other readers that are actually interested in a discussion on this subject.
Windows 7's Start menu consists of two columns. The left column contains frequently used and user-pinned programs, with optional sub-menus to open recent documents and perform common tasks associated with that program. Windows 10 has replaced this with pinned tiles and a "frequently used" section at the top of the full program list. The sub-menus for common tasks and recent documents are completely gone. Recent documents are now accessed via File Explorer and the view of these files cannot be grouped by associated program at all.
Pinned tiles take up a large amount of screen space and are the most distant items from the Start button, increasing the amount of movement needed to reach the desired application. This is worse on low-resolution screens since less pinned tiles can be shown and the user may have to scroll in addition to moving the mouse over more distance. While the tile target size is somewhat larger than a pinned Start program in "large icons" display mode, the extra distance and two-dimensional layout cancels out the benefits of the larger target due to requiring a longer (and therefore less accurate) motion to reach.
Pinned and frequently used programs on Windows 7's Start menu can be changed from to "use small icons," increasing the density of what can be pinned there without reducing target size horizontally. Pinned tiles reduced to the equivalent size are reduced in both dimensions and lose their text labels completely, reducing target size to 1/4 (requiring more focus from the user to accurately hit) and forcing reliance on the icon alone to quickly select the desired application. Icons are hard to get right and only enhance usability under specific conditions and "A user’s understanding of an icon is based on previous experience. Due to the absence of a standard usage for most icons, text labels are necessary to communicate the meaning and reduce ambiguity." Hovering over the tile will reveal the label via a tooltip, but this is not sufficient as each tile would have to be hovered over by the user to read all of them whereas displaying text labels for everything enables the user to scan quickly for the name they're interested in.
Windows 7's Start menu has a customizable right-hand column which comes with these (mostly sensible) defaults: User's home folder, Documents, Pictures, Music, Games, Computer, Control Panel, Devices and Printers, Default Programs. The lack of the Downloads shortcut by default is problematic, but the ability to add it exists in an intuitive location. The utility of some options is highly debatable but since they're fully customizable the user can choose new defaults that are more sensible to them. Regardless of what programs (the left column) a user might want to use, all but the most novice users will inevitably need to reach their home folders, the Control Panel, and internal, optical, and external storage media under Computer (aka This PC on Win8+) on a regular basis. Windows 10's Start menu does not provide any of these as first-level shortcuts. Windows 10 provides by def