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.

Comments

When will it end

[Big Hairy Ian]

Just give us back a proper start menu you wanktards!

Re:When will it end

[The-Ixian]

All I saw in the screenshots were the Groove music and the Mail apps... the Windows UI appeared to be the same as it is currently.

Re:When will it end

[ckatko]

I love how you act like "removing all the universal apps" is some easy, not-annoying task. Try doing that on a hundred new computers.

If it's easier to Google "Windows Classic Shell" (a third-party application) than it is to make your start menu usable. You officially suck.

Re:When will it end

[Fire_Wraith]

Of course it's easy. You just reformat the hard drive, and then install Windows 7 (or your other preferred flavor). Easy as two simple steps!

Re:When will it end

[TheRaven64]

When Windows 95 was introduced, a load of Windows users really hated the Start menu (you shut down by pressing start? WTF? And the icons are so small and hard to hit, plus you need to go through loads of layers of menus if you have a lot of apps installed!). 20 years later, and I wonder how many of them are the ones complaining that it's gone.

Re:When will it end

[The-Ixian]

Try doing that on a hundred new computers.

One way to handle this is get the start menu how you want on a single computer, then use PowerShell to run Export-StartLayout. Then on the 100 computers, you script the import using Import-StartLayout.

Re:When will it end

[nctritech]

Well played, sir, well played.

Re:When will it end

[tbuddy]

If you have 100+ computers that need the same thing done and you have to do it manually to more than one to set up the script and a few to test it then it is you that officially suck. Try googling "start menu active directorty" and see where that lands you.

Re:When will it end

[wicka_wicka]

What? Have you even used Windows 10? The new Start Menu is infinitely more useful than the old one...

Re:When will it end

[Gr8Apes]

Of course it's easy. You just reformat the hard drive, and then install Windows 7 (or your other preferred flavor)

Linux Mint?

Re:When will it end

[nctritech]

There will always be some people resistant to change because they have to learn how to do something a little differently. The thing is that the Windows 95 Start menu was objectively superior to Program Manager. No UI can be perfect but Start forced some useful hierarchy onto Program Manager's groups and placed really important stuff like Control Panel or the Run box front and center so they couldn't get lost in some minimized Program Manager or deleted from Program Manager by a careless novice user.

The problem people have with the loss of the traditional Start menu in 8.x/10 is that the most important fundamental benefits of Start were thrown out again. The Start screen in 8.x completely discards a layered hierarchy in favor of a two-level "pinned OR absolutely every shortcut in the entire Start shortcut pile" and in 10 the replacement "Start menu" crams the hierarchical stuff into one thin column in favor of searching for everything or (once again) "pinning a tile" instead. It's a half-hearted bone thrown to people who wanted the utility of Start back to shut them up. In the Anniversary Update they REMOVED the ability to use a keyboard to navigate the leftmost column with Power, Settings, File Explorer, and the user icon.

Most of the changes to the Explorer user interface since the advent of Windows 8 have been severely regressive unless you use a touchscreen with no other input devices, a use case for a typical computer which is a niche specialty rather than the norm. It's nice not to worry about fat-fingering on a tablet, but when the thing isn't in "Tablet Mode" or some sort of option that enables a subset to that effect, it should not have the huge UI elements needed by the grossly inferior input device that is a touchscreen.

Re:When will it end

[DickBreath]

It doesn't end. Have you ever had a dream, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream user interface and the real world user interface?

What if in the dream OS everything you did was phoned home to the mother ship?

What if every time you had acclimated to the most recent user interface, a new user interface was inflicted upon you?

A user interface not based on three plus decades of human interface research, but based on the whims of some hipster design wanker whose only skill is photoshop. What if the only purpose of this new UI was a lame attempt to get you to like the vendor's failed phone products?

Re:When will it end

[QuietLagoon]

... a load of Windows users really hated the Start menu (you shut down by pressing start? WTF?...

You confuse "really hated" with "mocked". The original Start menu was mocked because in order to shut down the PC, you had to click on Start. (you have to admit, that really was a goofy way to word it...) The load of Windows users were making fun of the poor wording in the UI. Aside from that mocking, the Start menu was relatively well received.

Re:When will it end

[unixisc]

Just download Classic Shell, as someone above suggested. You can make it look like 7, XP, NT or whatever

Re:When will it end

[unixisc]

No, the bulk of applications are hidden, and the new settings is a lot tougher to navigate than the old one

Re:When will it end

[ArchieBunker]

When using Windows 8 I genuinely had no idea the full screen start menu was able to scroll. There are no bars or any indication it can move. I installed Office and couldn't locate any of the icons. There is actually a knowledge base article on this exact problem! Talk about a broken UI.

Re:When will it end

[ArchieBunker]

Gotta agree with that. Went looking for a way to change my IP address and only found a large switch letting me turn airplane mode on or off. Really fucking useless on a desktop.

Re:When will it end

[MightyMartian]

Except it's still vulnerable to the underlying XML files going for a shit. When the Start menu was simply a filesystem-based construct it was far less prone to the kinds of failures that the Win10 start menu is. Why they went the complex route is beyond me.

Re:When will it end

[MightyMartian]

Classic Shell is nice in theory, but our experience with a limited testbed roll out was that it was horribly unstable, with frequent lockups that either required restarting the shell or outright logging out and logging back in again. It's probably good enough for home users, but in an enterprise environment I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

Re:When will it end

[MightyMartian]

Until the underlying XML files go for a shit, and then you're left with a flaky start menu. The Win10 start menu issues are greater than simply having to learn some new things. It is unstable.

Re:When will it end

[HideyoshiJP]

Philemon, is that you?

Re:When will it end

[fox171171]

Classic Shell is nice in theory, but our experience with a limited testbed roll out was that it was horribly unstable, with frequent lockups that either required restarting the shell or outright logging out and logging back in again. It's probably good enough for home users, but in an enterprise environment I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

Anecdotally, as a home user, I have had it for about three years on my Win8.1 machine, and it works great.

Re:When will it end

[Calydor]

New Computer Purchase Application point Cowards Pay Less?

Re:When will it end

[freeze128]

If I wanted to TYPE what I am looking for, I would just install DOS.

Re:When will it end

[freeze128]

It was still better than OS/2, where it wasn't obvious at all how to shut down the OS.

Re:When will it end

[freeze128]

I like to click on the start button, then type "view network connections". This brings you to the old Win 7 networks window.

Re:When will it end

[freeze128]

Suppose the auto industry kept changing the user interface for cars? Sure, the early ones has pedals and a steering wheel, but then they switch to a series of levers, and then a joystick, and then two ropes and a broom handle. It's not "INNOVATING", it's screwing up standardized control interfaces!

Re:When will it end

[johannesg]

It was always a load of BS, and everybody knew it. The use of the word "start" wasn't all that bad a design choice - people looking at a computer the first time get a powerful hint where to... start. So where else could you have put the "shutdown" button? Consider the options:

1. Permanently allocate screenspace for a second button, with only a single function: "stop" (or whatever you want to call it). That makes no sense at all: the start button takes up a lot of valuable screenspace, but offers a huge amount of functionality as well. The stop button uses the same amount of space, but offers only a single function, so you're both making it easier to trigger by accident, and eating into the space available for window tabs - which wasn't actually all that great to begin with, given the resolutions available at that time.

2. Rename the start button to something more neutral, like... "stuff"? "control"? What exactly could you put there that is both concise, and a powerful affordance for a first-time user? Eventually they settled on an icon, which I feel is a step back: it works only if you already know what it does (which you do largely because you were trained to look for that functionality in that spot by the earlier start button); just by looking at it you have no way of figuring out it is more than mere decoration. But yeah, it got rid of the mocking at least. Congrats, everyone who ever made that stupid joke... ...or...

3. Stick the functionality under the start button. Considering that it is the central control panel for the entire OS, adding this one important function here makes a lot of sense. Once you realize the start button actually does a lot more than merely start programs, it makes sense, and people will notice the function here anyway so while it might look a little odd at least they will be able to find it.

Oh, and we could look at what other operating systems do of course. Under Linux it's probably something like "well, you first set the library path to include libshutdown.so, then you open a bash shell with admin rights, and then you can type a simple command like 'sysctrl -fs now up -f4d34ab', but with your macaddress substituted and if that does not work here's a kernel patch..." - I kid, I kid... And on Mac - well, I have no idea really, but I'm guessing it's something like dragging your computer into the trashcan. Am I right?

My Amiga had a power switch. If you wanted the computer to be off, you pressed it and it turned off. And to turn it on you actually had to press the same switch again. In the old days people weren't bothered by that kind of ambiguity, one switch to do two very different things... Of course it wasn't actually labelled "start".

Re:When will it end

[nine-times]

Yeah. One of the things I find really annoying is connecting to VPN using the built-in Windows VPN. You used to be able to click on an icon on the task bar, find the VPN tunnel, and click "Connect". Done.

Now it's the same process, but when you click on the VPN tunnel, it opens the window for VPN settings. You then have to locate that VPN tunnel again in that window, and click on the tunnel name, and then click on a button that says "Connect". Then you have to close that Window.

Why on earth did they change that?

Re:When will it end

[Rhipf]

I think you may have some other problems. I have used it since upgrading to 10 with no problems. I have also installed it on client machines when Windows 8 rolled out (why they removed the start button then is beyond me) and they haven't had any problems with it.

Sure this is just my experience as well but from other posts here it looks like your experience is in the minority with respect to Classic Shell performance.

Re:When will it end

[Ayanami_R]

Why don't you let the end users decide that, a lot less work.

If you absolutely HAVE to use GPO's.

Re: When will it end

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a special kind of stupid ;)

Re:When will it end

[The-Ixian]

Screw the right-click business. One nice thing about the Windows UI (just like most Linux UIs) are the keyboard shortcuts. Meta+X is the way to get the admin menu on 8.1 and forward.

But yeah, I agree with you about the start menu. Every time I go back to an XP era (still have a couple 2003 boxen) start menu, my blood pressure rises...

The Windows 8 full screen start menu is annoying, but I will take that over XP/2003 any day.

Re:When will it end

[The-Ixian]

If the box was just command execution (like the Run box) then I would agree with you. But it is more than that. It is a mixed search/command execution box which is really super handy as far as efficiency goes. Meta key > type 1 to 3 characters > enter, is much more efficient than Meta key > P > up/down arrow > right arrow > up/down arrow > enter. If you are just using the mouse then the efficiency is not quite as pronounced since you have to switch back and forth.

Re:When will it end

[phantomfive]

Why on earth did they change that?

It's Agile.

Re:When will it end

[The-Ixian]

Isn't it funny how UI design on mobile devices is back to basically using Program Manager? What's old is new...

Re:When will it end

[CaptainDork]

I'd like a non-GUI DOS machine for basic work functions like Lotus 123, Dbase3, Wordperfect, etc.

That shit would scream.

Re:When will it end

[CaptainDork]

I never Meta key I didn't like.

Re:When will it end

[johannesg]

Gotta agree with that. Went looking for a way to change my IP address and only found a large switch letting me turn airplane mode on or off. Really fucking useless on a desktop.

Did it at least transform into an airplane when you pressed it?

Re:When will it end

[AmiMoJo]

It's amazing (to me) that no-one has managed to come up with a really good way of organizing and launching even a moderate number of applications in an OS. The Start Menu system quickly gets overloaded with too many sub-menus, forcing you to navigation through multiple small targets. The various desktops (Windows, iOS) quickly get cluttered and force you to remember where things are or organize them by hand.

The Android app drawer is probably the best, just an alphabetical list and a search box. At least recent versions of the Start menu/screen have had search boxes. Even so, the problem with search is that you need to remember the name of the app, and because the internet ran out of names a decade ago they are all stupid and forgettable.

Seems like tagging would really help. I want to edit a document, so show me all my office apps. I want to take a photo, show me all the camera related apps.

Re:When will it end

[yuriklastalov]

The way we solve such problems in the $CURRENT_YEAR is to just use an arbitrary icon/symbol and expect users to intuitively understand what it supposed to mean.

On the plus side, users get the exciting experience of playing "Lets guess what this button does" Russian roulette and hope they don't shoot whatever app they were using in the head.

Re:When will it end

[AmiMoJo]

Back then we thought it was funny that you even had to shut down your PC. We were used to just hitting the power button on our Amigas.

Re:When will it end

[lgw]

You just reformat the hard drive, and then install Windows 7 (or your other preferred flavor). Easy as two simple steps!

fdisk, format, re-install
doo-dah doo-dah
patch without the phone-home calls
oh the doo-dah day

Win10 stuck in a big mud hole
doo-dah doo-dah
Cant touch bottom with a ten-foot pole
Oh the doo dah day

Gonna patch all night,
Gonna patch all day,
Same old story, different day
Oh the doo dah day

Re:When will it end

[Puls4r]

I'd like to correct your first sentence. If every company in every facet of your life took that view point, you would spend your entire life re-learning how to perform nearly every task on a yearly basis. Many people like myself are resistant to change because we have other areas of our life we need to focus on. For products with a longer life-span, say an automobile, this isn't such an issue. I am not forced to buy a new automobile every year or two. Even smart phone manufacturers have figured this out. Almost every popular OS / launcher functions in a similar manner with similar characteristics. Because people may want something a tiny bit different, but don't want to relearn the system. In addition, phones are like cars in that way - they are a fun 'toy' to show off to your friends etc. A computer operating system is none of those things. It isn't fun. It isn't something I want to 'show off'. It's not something I want to constantly be forced to relearn by updates every year or two. As a technical user I have better ways to spend my time, as do most non-technical users. Microsoft needs to stop fucking with things that work. Seriously.

Re:When will it end

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is stupid because there is a scroll bar when you mouse over that section of the start menu.

And is there a valid reason for the scroll bar to disappear when you're not moused over it? Is there super-important fine print instructions on how to defuse a bomb that might be hidden if they let the scroll bar stay on the screen instead of making the user go on an easter egg hunt for it? No?

THEN WHY TF DOES IT DO THAT??

This is an example of why logical, intelligent people can't stand the Windows phone/tablet/desktop/laptop all-in-one 'experience'. But that's not their target demographic...

Re:When will it end

[lgw]

Is there even a GUI way to shut down Ubuntu?

Re:When will it end

[dunkelfalke]

If I remember correctly it was a context menu entry for the desktop. Long ago, though.

Re:When will it end

[Luthair]

Its worse in every meaningful way. The new one is noisy, has low contrast, sluggish search (e.g. half the time I start typing it misses the first few characters), can't go back to the menu from search, poor keyboard nav, prefers shitty metro applications to real ones.

Re:When will it end

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to add to this...

Just installed Linux Mint for on an older laptop I'm donating to a 15 yro who I'm donating it to.... I am VERY pleased and the Linux Mint (Cinnamon..?) interface and design. Easy to navigate.

As a long time Linux user(Gentoo) who has tried a multitude of WM/DE's, and other dists over the years... I will say Mints' (Cinn..) default desktop environment is very nicely refined. Kudos to the Linux Mint team there. I'm glad to see a Linux dist. exists out of the box, that didn't go off the end with the user experience.

Install? I'm pretty sure I could have left the install to the 15 year old and have him get through it without issue. Being as he is a non-techie, I think that's a considerable statement. IMO, if ANYONE wanted to try Linux on a whim, I'd point them to Mint 1st and foremost.
- As I actively run no less than half a dozen different Linux dists' between work and home, with a mix of WM/DE's and just shells, and still having to touch the occasional Sun box... I 100% stand by my Mint remark there and its ease of use from the gate.

Re:When will it end

[nctritech]

It doesn't need correction; it needs clarification: there will always be people who are resistant to change regardless of the merits of that change. I'm in general agreement with you. Change is always a balancing act. The benefits of the change must significantly outweigh the pain that it will cause, otherwise the change will be worse than the status quo no matter how much more enlightened the changers think their ideas are.

The Program Manager to Start menu change is an example of a change with a great enough benefit to overshadow the complaints of people who just happen to be used to whizzing around in Program Manager: it provides a drill-down hierarchy that is easy to understand and scales far better than program groups ever could, and it has excellent discoverability (an extremely important factor when making a significant change to how an interface works!)

The Windows 8 Start screen is the ultimate example of a terrible change and a complete lack of regard for the most basic requirements of a good user interface design. Taking over the entire screen eliminates all points of reference. No scrollability hints, no borders around anything, awful contrast between UI elements, and abstract monochrome icons that are difficult to understand at first glance (which ironically is half the point of an icon in the first place.) The Start button changing to an invisible "hot corner" is difficult to remember for a new and elderly users. The charm bar suffers the same problem with its hot corners, plus its behavior lacks consistency; if you use a hot corner to pop it out, it'll vanish if your pointer slides away from it by a single pixel, but hitting WIN+C makes it stick around until you click away from it, and the Settings panel within the charm bar is so terrible and inconsistent that I don't think we have time for me to discuss it.

All of these changes were a solution in search of a problem and were done despite extremely loud protests from inexperienced and expert users alike. Of course, some people liked the changes, though I have yet to find anyone who liked the changes in Win8 that could explain the things they liked other than how it was new and different and referencing nebulous aesthetic concepts like "clean looking." The reality is that basic UI design concepts were chucked out the window in favor of trend-chasing and building a corporate image of "forward-thinking-ness." The changes in Win8 rendered vast chunks of all Windows users' existing skill sets useless, but the only benefits brought to the table were "it's easier to use on a touchscreen device, something that the vast majority of computers don't even have!" and "we made it boot faster...sometimes!"

Alas, there are fools that actually believe that newness in technical stuff is a merit like it is in car buying, as if Start is a set of tires that will wear out. If they were to all be struck dead right now, nothing found stored on their computers post-mortem would be of any value to society. It's easy to not care about the crappy Windows interface changes when all you do with the machine is masturbate to online pornography and bang out moronic condescending comments on Internet forums. All these idiots care about is "where's the blue E? And where do I type Redtube dot com? And what is that midget doing to that unicorn?" and that some computer dude somewhere told them that they can hold the power button for five seconds to turn the computer off when they're done.

Re:When will it end

[nctritech]

I hate to break this to you, bro, but "accidentally trigger it to find out it's there and hope you can figure out what you did to trigger it in the first place" is not one of the core tenets of a functional user interface design. What was your point, exactly? YOU knowing it's there and how it works doesn't help anyone else to find and understand it.

Re:When will it end

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Why did they go the complex route?

Potential income from advertising!

Re:When will it end

[nctritech]

Thank you. That is helpful. It also illustrates my point: how was I supposed to know that without you, Anonymous Coward #9805234894 on random Internet site I complained at, telling me about it? Every Win10 version prior just required an up arrow; the inconsistency from Microsoft is absurd. (I really do appreciate the info though.)

Re:When will it end

[Dutch Gun]

And on Mac - well, I have no idea really, but I'm guessing it's something like dragging your computer into the trashcan. Am I right?

Heh, nice guess, but no. For Mac, you click on the Apple menu that's always in the upper-left corner of the screen. And I know you're kidding about Linux, but with most distros, it's similar to Windows or Mac, with a simple shutdown menu accessed via a prominent place on the desktop. All three OSes have command-line options to do this as well.

If you want obscure shutdown techniques, then Windows 8 probably took the prize, in which you had to somehow intuit where to direct your mouse (to an unmarked corner of the screen), then click "Settings" (wtf?), then under "Power", you could shut the computer off. Microsoft was rightfully mocked for this absurdity.

Re:When will it end

[nctritech]

Please substantiate your claim of "infinitely more useful" with specifics. You have failed to do so everywhere else I have asked, so I don't expect you to start rationally backing your apparent fanboyism now, but there's always hope.

Re:When will it end

[UnknowingFool]

There will always be some people resistant to change because they have to learn how to do something a little differently. The thing is that the Windows 95 Start menu was objectively superior to Program Manager. No UI can be perfect but Start forced some useful hierarchy onto Program Manager's groups and placed really important stuff like Control Panel or the Run box front and center so they couldn't get lost in some minimized Program Manager or deleted from Program Manager by a careless novice user.

One of the main issues I have with 8 and 10 is their bipolar nature. It's not optimized for touch UI and it's getting more terrible for regular desktop UI. Yet MS thinks it can marry two fundamentally different philosophies into a single UI design. For example the settings are not easy to change as it could be in Settings (Metro) or Control Panel (WinXP). Sometimes it might be in both. For organization, it moved away with a coherent menu driven approach to access your files and applications for a Search bar that isn't obvious and expects you to type everything. Or you can search pages of tiles.

Re:When will it end

[nctritech]

In fairness to Microsoft, the schizophrenic nature of Windows 8+ is because a lot of software relies on the "legacy" Windows framework. For example, if you have a touchpad and want to change the palm rejection sensitivity, that's under a tab in the classic Mouse control panel; the Windows 10 Settings for a touchpad doesn't seem to have a universal control for this yet, so you have to use the vendor-specific legacy control panel tab to change it. A lot of stuff has gone missing from specific control panels and has not come back in Settings and that's a big problem; a prime example that really pisses me off is the ability to switch Public and Private network types, where I'm currently having to go to the Settings panel for networks and drop into the HomeGroup panel to be able to pop out the control and change the network to a Private type.

Re:When will it end

[thegarbz]

Gotta agree with that. Went looking for a way to change my IP address and only found a large switch letting me turn airplane mode on or off. Really fucking useless on a desktop.

I don't understand:
Windows 7: Right click the network icon, click open network and sharing centre, click Change adapter settings
Windows 10: Right click the network icon, click open network and sharing centre, click Change adapter settings

Or via control panel:
Windows 7: Click start, Click control panel, click network and sharing centre, click Change adapter settings
Windows 10: Right Click start, Click control panel, click network and sharing centre, click Change adapter settings

Actually Windows 10 wins all around for speed: Right click start, click network settings.

For a version of windows that is so very similar to previous versions of windows you seem to have a lot of problems doing quite basic things.

Re:When will it end

[lgw]

Yeap, Use the mouse to push the power button. duh!

Well played, AC.

Re:When will it end

[arglebargle_xiv]

And how can this monstrosity be described as an upgrade? It's the same shit look as Windows 10, which is somewhere below that of the Windows Vista Basic UI that was activated in Windows Vista to punish people who'd pirated it.

Re:When will it end

[johannesg]

I've never used Windows 8, and just watched a video on youtube to see how you shut it down. Suffice it to say, I'm flabbergasted...

Re:When will it end

[Agripa]

Suppose the auto industry kept changing the user interface for cars? Sure, the early ones has pedals and a steering wheel, but then they switch to a series of levers, and then a joystick, and then two ropes and a broom handle. It's not "INNOVATING", it's screwing up standardized control interfaces!

Suppose? What about Chrysler?

Re: When will it end

[mcswell]

Guess that's why I installed Classic Menu when I moved from a Win7 computer to Win10.

Re:When will it end

[mcswell]

Are you Hyper?

Re:When will it end

[ConceptJunkie]

KDE 3.5 had the best menu system for apps ever. I've been doing a similar thing for about 20 years in Windows, too.
You organize the start menu yourself. I use the following categories: Converters, Development, Editors, Games, Networking, System and Viewers.

Re:When will it end

[AmiMoJo]

When you install an app the OS should ask you for tags. You could then tag each app with "development", "editor" or whatever and all the organizing would be taken care of. Throw in some smart searching ("editor" == "editors" etc.).

Re:When will it end

[thejynxed]

It doesn't do this automatically, but I am wondering if you could use app metadata and some clever Powershell scripting to accomplish this on Win 8.1 and Win10 much in the way one would tag and sort downloads of various files/archives/pictures, etc into appropriate folders

TBH this sort of thing should be submitted as a feature request not just for Windows, but pretty much every OS.

Re:When will it end

[A Friendly Troll]

In the Anniversary Update they REMOVED the ability to use a keyboard to navigate the leftmost column with Power, Settings, File Explorer, and the user icon.

No. Just press Tab.

Re:When will it end

[nctritech]

I found that out in this thread. The point is that the arrows no longer navigate there where before the update they did. They also provide no hint that you must use tab instead. A fundamental rule of good UI design is consistency and this is just one of many violations of that by Microsoft.

Re:When will it end

[PingSpike]

On option 2: What about "Action". Anyway, I agree complaining about the word start prior to shutdown is just whining about details.

Why are the win buttons set so low?

[BenJeremy]

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.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer: Touch screen UI.

(It's not a satisfying answer for those of us that hate phone-UI on desktops, but it's the reason.)

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear. I knew before I clicked on it that it would be more 'flat' nonsense. Atrocious 'design', these idiots haven't got a clue about user interface design - we already had the most beautiful interface ever made, in Windows 7. Just WHY are the window buttons not at the top right of the window? Why is there no title bar? Why is there no visible border? Why is there no shadow - so you can see which window is on top, instantly? Why don't they just allow the user to CHANGE all of these things to our own liking, which is the whole point of software?

Because they KNOW that most people won't like what they've come up with, so they are terrified that we will all change the look of things and thus prove that their designs are dreadful.

(CAPTCHA: 'annoyed')

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but this 'touchscreen' UI isn't any use on touchscreens either. Touchscreens need visible, 3D buttons (only larger) just as much as a desktop environment does. The answer is "bunch of amateur idiots with no UI skills whatsoever blindly copy Apple's stupidity and think they are being 'cutting edge' and 'modern' ".

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[ckatko]

Oh god, that looks terrible. Good catch. It's an ENTIRE UI based on iTunes for Windows.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[wicka_wicka]

Yes, let's never make any progress and just keep things the same way forever...

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[Gr8Apes]

Yes, let's never make any progress and just keep things the same way forever...

Change is not necessarily progress, if you define progress as "moving forward in some sense".

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[JBMcB]

Has the title bar expanded an inch or two? Why so much wasted vertical space?

This +1000. I understand the need for whitespace on a touch UI, but why is everything spaced so far apart on my desktop? I have a giant HD monitor so I can fit a bunch of stuff on screen at the same time (not a fan of multimonitor, I'd rather have one huge monitor) With a 2" border around everything, I'm going to need a separate monitor or a 34" 4K monitor just so I can have a media player in one corner, Notepad++ in the other corner, and an IDE open on the side.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[Archangel Michael]

Why don't they just allow the user to CHANGE all of these things to our own liking

They are fighting two different markets: Corporate (Monoculture) and Home (Individual)

In a corporate environment, you want everything to look/feel the same on every computer in every location. It makes for faster training and much easier to support. On the other hand, it sucks for people who want to have things setup for them and the way they work. If you allowed "change" then it would fuck up the Corporate Workstation. If you don't allow change, people like me who customize their systems for three days before they can actually work well on a new computer.

Granted, I can actually work on a standardized workstation easy enough, but if I get on someone's workstation, and they have customized everything to shit, I find it hard to get shit done. My problem with every change to the UI, is the stupid changes that don't make any sense, except for moving shit around to confuse us all. Moving the login/logoff/shutdown bits from the lower left corner to the upper right (Win8) was for what reason? After 25 years?

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[nctritech]

Yes, copying Apple, who is notorious and under a lot of fire for still not releasing a single Mac with a touchscreen. Copying THAT for your "touch-friendly OS." They're really smart up there in Redmond. Do I really need to place a sarcasm tag by that?

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Change for the sake of change is not progress.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, let's never make any progress and just keep things the same way forever...

Trolling, aren't you?

That, or you're rather dumb.

Or both.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[RoccamOccam]

Just WHY are the window buttons not at the top right of the window? Why is there no title bar? Why is there no visible border?

Hopefully this might address the problem that I have. When I'm using the touch interface on my Surface Pro, I do have problems using my finger to select between minimize, maximize, and close. I don't know what the solution is, because I use both the mouse interface and the touch interface quite a bit.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[TheFakeTimCook]

Oh god, that looks terrible. Good catch. It's an ENTIRE UI based on iTunes for Windows.

No, actually based on OS X 10.5 Leopard, from 2007. It was the first UI to feature Blur and Transparency. But now Apple has had a DECADE to get those two UI elements right. That means that MS should have a mature UI using Transparency and Blur around 2027.

But don't worry; they will continue to play musical paradigms and the Transparency and Blur will be gone in a revision or two.

...and we all thought that Google was the ADHD one...

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[ckatko]

> It was the first UI to feature Blur and Transparency.

Uh... Windows 98 had bit-masked transparency with apps like Winamp 2.x or 3.x.

compiz came out in 2006.

Windows Vista with Aero was completed in November 2006, and released to the general public in January 2007. Almost a full year earlier than Leopard.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[unixisc]

I have non touchscreen laptops - both of them. But if I had a touchscreen one, I'd give it a matte surface before touching it

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[fox171171]

Yes, let's never make any progress and just keep things the same way forever...

Yes, and in cars make the brake and gas pedal opposite. Put the steering wheel on the ceiling, and the horn button in the headrest. And the wiper controls in the trunk/boot.

It's not progress, it is change for the sake of change.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[dbraden]

And they couldn't figure out a way to put the window controls into the actual corner? Maybe they just couldn't get their CSS to work the way they wanted.

That top space does look terrible, and you're right, such a waste of screenspace.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[TheFakeTimCook]

> It was the first UI to feature Blur and Transparency.

Uh... Windows 98 had bit-masked transparency with apps like Winamp 2.x or 3.x.

compiz came out in 2006.

Windows Vista with Aero was completed in November 2006, and released to the general public in January 2007. Almost a full year earlier than Leopard.

Win 98's Transparency was like GIF transparency. Either yes or no. No "percentage". Hardly equivalent .

Compiz is a toy add-on to X11, and doesn't count.

Leopard and Visturd were obviously in development concurrently. And the only reason Visturd was rushed-out in January (half-finished), was because MS was under obligation to a zillion VLA customers to release at that time, or be in default of their part of the agreement. Or did you conveniently forget that little detail?

But since your "challenge" made me think of OS X's Quartz composition engine, which had variable transparency (and likely blur), and has existed in OS X since AT LEAST the beginning (10.0.0 "Cheetah", release to public in March, 2001) up to today, I got looking around. Guess what? There is a nice Screenshot of Cheetah on Wikipedia, clearly showing use of variable transparency for Menus (and I now remember it was used for other UI elements, like "sheets" (Dialogs).

So that's March, 2001, Release To Public, for FULL-ON, VARIABLE TRANSPARENCY use in an OS in a general-purpose "UI Element" sort of way. And quite frankly, I believe that the OS X Public Beta, released in September 2000, had it too, but I can't find a screenshot to prove it.

Apple is STILL first, and by a wide margin.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[Waccoon]

Has the title bar expanded an inch or two?

It's already annoying how every web site on the Internet does it (and everybody complains about it), so now the desktop has to, as well.

Wake me in 10 years when all this trendy bullshit finally dies and we go full circle to reasonable design, again. Hopefully.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[Agripa]

Answer: Touch screen UI.

(It's not a satisfying answer for those of us that hate phone-UI on desktops, but it's the reason.)

It is also not satisfying for those of us who hate glossy screens.

Re:Why are the win buttons set so low?

[mcswell]

Amen, preach it!

I'll put a word in for Winaero Tweaker, which at least makes it possible to make the title bar change colors depending on whether that window has keyboard focus. (Although I don't know whether it works with MsOffice 2010+, where it was impossible to tell by looking whether it had focus even under Windows7. The reason I don't know is that I hate MsOffice's Ribbon, so I have LibreOffice installed instead.)

The way I would describe the diff between Win7 and Win10 (I've never owned a computer with Win8) is that if my computer were Indiana Jones, Win7 would have Harrison Ford and a bunch of other good actors, while Win10 would have Legos characters.

I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[DatbeDank]

Ok, partially. I put classic shell on to it and really haven't looked back. I'm too busy to learn a new UI. It's pretty decent for the gaming and work that I do on it. Works a lot faster than my previous Windows 7 installs (never tried 8).

Shutup10 took care of my privacy concerns.

If Microsoft wanted to engender positive feels on Windows 10, they'd release a UI start menu that matched Windows 7 and keep themselves from changing their damn UIs every other release. Overall, i'd give this a B grade as a tech product.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[johannesg]

If they didn't change the UI every release, how would you even know it was a different release? And extrapolating from there, how would you get the masses to buy a new Windows version if they couldn't tell the difference?

In terms of features, OS'es have been 'finished' for a long time, with only minor polishing and arcane features that have no relation to anything 99.9% of the market actually does with computers left on the to do list. Yet somehow, people must be convinced to buy these things...

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[Gr8Apes]

TBH, I don't think there's a way to fix Win10. Where OSes need to be is not where Win10 is going.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[Gr8Apes]

You know what's funny? I've been through 10 versions of OSX. In that time,

• the way I interact with the OS to start apps etc has effectively changed: 0 times. (However, I did switch from QuickSilver to just Spotlight in 10.10)
• The way I configure the OS and apps has changed: 0 times.
• The way I setup networking has remained in the same place with only minor changes overall to address new options (ip6, new wireless pieces, new bridges, etc)

Now, some setup pieces for code I run has changed significantly, especially given that launchctl has evolved and the security clamp down that continues to evolve in the last 4 releases, but most of those are relatively minor and usually the result of either the app ignoring recommended practices or some fundamental change, like Java now being an Oracle product instead of the Apple version.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[mrbcs]

I call Bullshit. The only reason that it seems faster is that they make it look like shit so they don't have the graphic processing.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[nctritech]

Please explain what it is about the Windows 10 Start menu that is "SO MUCH BETTER than the old style." Be specific about the FUNCTIONAL elements, not a simple aesthetic appreciation which is not what is being discussed. For example, in what ways is the new Start menu:

1. More discoverable (new features can be found without someone telling you they exist)?
2. Better organized?
3. Faster to use for experienced users?
4. Providing better keyboard shortcut functionality?
5. Integrating better features that help the user's workflow?

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.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[unixisc]

Just introduce a new wallpaper every release. No need to tinker w/ the things people already love and which work well

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[squiggleslash]

When I hit the Start button on Windows 7, it comes up instantly.

When I hit the Start button on Windows 10, it usually takes between 2 and 10 seconds to appear.

I'm not noticing any other performance "improvements" either.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[ArchieBunker]

Programmers can't seem to grasp the fact that a design can reach a pinnacle and anywhere else you go is down hill. Do we keep getting new designs for hammers or pliers every year? No pliers from the 1800s look the same as they do today.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[tepples]

If your PC shipped with Windows 7, then the old one is better because the old one costs $0 to you (because you are already a licensee) and the the new one costs $119. What makes the new one worth $119?

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[Gr8Apes]

Actually - it's pretty simple to train spotlight to load apps in the same manner as QS. The differences after 10 minutes of configuration and training, including figuring out how to remove a bunch of options in Spotlight I don't want, which makes spotlight almost as fast as QS in starting apps. I use the Cmd-Spacebar combo, which was what I used to use for QS. I used to have to change Spotlight's hotkeys on every new OS install (I used Ctrl-Optn-Spacebar) so QS could use the Cmd-Spacebar. For what it's worth, in System Preferences -> Spotlight I remove Mail & Messages, Contacts, Events & Reminders, Images, Bookmarks and History, Fonts, Other, Bing Web Searches, and uncheck "Allow Spotlight Suggestions in Spotlight and Look Up". I also have Applications as the #1 return. That appears to remove all network access by Spotlight and significantly improves the performance of Spotlight overall. You can obviously remove a lot of other options if you wish, but those greatly improved my Spotlight usability.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[nctritech]

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

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[nctritech]

Oh man, what a well-reasoned argument you have there. I could never possibly argue with such an enormous set of totally not fallacious and logically sound points. :^)

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[Holi]

You really do sound like a two year old with your little tantrum there.

You made a claim and you refuse to back it up? Fine, then you should understand that people will see that as an extremely childish position and ignore you in the future. Now finish your peas and go to bed.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[Joshs922]

Programmers can't seem to grasp the fact that a design can reach a pinnacle and anywhere else you go is down hill. Do we keep getting new designs for hammers or pliers every year? No pliers from the 1800s look the same as they do today.

Exactly. My computer is a tool that works well. Change for change's sake doesn't help me use it, it imposees a neverending burden of learning curve as I am forced to re-learn how to use the tool over and over again. At least I used to be before I switched to Linux years ago now, where I have the freedom and choice to keep things that work looking and acting the way they do.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[squiggleslash]

That is out of the ordinary. You've probably got some kind of bloatware installed that is causing it. You need to investigate why it is so..

On my PC at work, on the PC I built for myself at home, on my laptop, and on my tablet? Oh, and on the demo PCs I've tested at Best Buy, Staples, and Wal-Mart? I find that improbable.

But then again, I'd be wasting my time...

Yes, you would, because you're lying about 2-10 seconds for the start menu to appear on Windows 10 being somehow unusual.

Grow up. Your favorite operating system isn't perfect, stop pretending it is.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[nctritech]

Apologies; I'm getting things off my chest to some extent. I know about the key combo; I do the same (I just type a backslash which does the same thing, and WIN + E also opens an Explorer window.) The problem is that nothing tells you that you can do any of this stuff; you have to accidentally trigger it, take a shitty guess, be told by a random comment on the Internet, or go searching online to find out how to do it and wade through a thousand Microsoft "Please kindly clean boot your computer to see if this fixes the issue" type garbage posts to find what you want to know.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[Dutch Gun]

I'm going to wager that it wasn't "programmers" who wanted to make these changes.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[thegarbz]

No, you explain to me how the old one is better

Wow, talk about an arse backwards approach to everything in life.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Nobody knows about Win-E ? It's been around since at least Windows 2000.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[Dusty101]

I can't agree with this at all. Apple has arbitrarily changed a bunch of the interfaces for things like printer and networking set-up in recent versions, generally hidden menu options and made the user interfaces less informative and intuitive (iTunes is a prime example of this). On a more basic level, the default scrolling direction was reversed, they changed the way Spotlight looks and works (in my experience, for the worse), and have repeatedly changed the way that Spaces looks and behaves. Default information provided by the Finder has gradually been reduced, scroll bars have been hidden. The look and feel of the default browser and the mail client were changed for no other reason than to more closely mirror their iOS counterparts (despite the fact that the pre-existing layouts were more efficient for my use in a non-touch desktop). And on and on in goes...

Every time I get a new Mac, there are more poor OS X design changes that I have to work to try and undo.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[fox171171]

Programmers can't seem to grasp the fact that a design can reach a pinnacle and anywhere else you go is down hill.

When your job is to make a UI, you keep working at it, making it better with each version. Eventually perhaps it is perfect. Do you quit your job? Or do you try to justify your job by continually changing it, even though it is not actually making it better? I think the latter is what is happening.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[bluegutang]

If only I could mod this higher than +5...

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[Gr8Apes]

Note that this is the way I use the OS.

The scrolling direction is settable. I didn't use spotlight regularly until it 10.10, so I have no idea how it changed before that. I only use itunes on the rare occasions I must. I don't use Spaces as it's a massive waste of time IMHO, and I configured Finder, Mail, and the browsers to operate how I wish, none of which have ever been standard.

So for me, the way I work has changed very little across 10 versions. Certainly less than between two consecutive release of Windows. And in case you're wondering, I currently have systems running 10.6, 10.8, 10.10, 10.11, and 10.12. I have no issues switching between any of those and getting on a new network, setting up printers, or just using the machine. Same hotkeys work and do largely what I need. I can't say the same for XP, Win7 and Win10. I totally skipped Win8 as that was a dead end on delivery.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[nctritech]

None of those things matter when you can't walk into a store, buy a new computer, and have things feel AT LEAST as fast as they were on Windows 7. It's like selling someone a car that has variable valve timing and a turbocharger, yet doesn't have the pep of the car it's replacing. Features under the hood don't generally matter to users. A good example of something I've had trouble with that makes all those technical improvements look irrelevant is that Windows 10 often refuses to safely eject my external hard drives even when I've gone into Process Explorer and force-closed all file handles that are locking the drive. I have to run sync and unplug or shut the entire computer down. Frankly, I don't give a shit about ASLR, DEP, memory allocation guards, etc. when such a fundamental user-visible problem is interfering with my workflow and no one at Microsoft has bothered to fixed it. I have no such problems on Windows 7.

I, for one, am not an "anti-MS troll" which is an ad hominem fallacy and a non-argument anyway. I am a programmer who understands that a computer is nothing more than a tool used to assist in accomplishing the goals of its users. Every platform available has problems, but the ability to work around those problems makes them livable. Not ejecting USB hard drives is not something with a workaround; the filesystem is marked as dirty and has to be checked on each subsequent use, plus there is an increased risk of data loss. There is absolutely no excuse for this problem existing in Windows 10. Forums are full of people with the same issue. As usual, Microsoft's Indian paste-a-canned-script tech support people have no solutions other than "please kindly try a clean boot, please kindly try system restore, please kindly reinstall everything on your goddamned computer."

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[tepples]

It'd be easier if holding the Windows key for a second brought up a list of what all Win+letter commands do.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[mcswell]

Here's why it's better:
----
----

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[nctritech]

Oh, here comes another stuck-up arrogant jackass techno-weenie. We can all tell by the "you need to educate yourself" horseshit. Third party drivers and filesystem filters eh? Oh, well guess what? Those aren't an issue on my system because I know how to see them. I'm a sysadmin and a multi-platform programmer, not a moron that can't find the "any" key.

This is a widely reported problem.

Feel free to take your condescending attitude and spaces before exclamation points and shove it all forcefully up your asshole. :^)

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[A Friendly Troll]

It's not improbable. It's just not true.

The start menu in Windows 10 comes up instantly. I have it on three computers, and just for good measure, I talked to three of my coworkers (one has a corporate install, the two installed it on their own; perks of working in IT).

Guess what?

The start menu in Windows 10 comes up instantly. Just like I said.

There is no need for you to lie.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[nctritech]

Cheaper computers do have significant delays in Win10 Start menu appearance and response. Not everyone owns a brand new or expensive computer. Software developers have a tendency to have expensive high-speed machines on which they do most or all development work. It's not unusual for two software-identical machines to perform very differently if (for example) one has an i7 + huge 7200 RPM hard drive while the other has a Celeron + mediocre 5400 RPM hard drive.

It's easy to forget that one of the "perks of working in IT" is access to good equipment and more knowledge than an average user about how to make a computer not run like crap. I've dealt with thousands of computers owned by non-technical individuals that don't have an IT department guy to ask for help from and there are plenty of them that have serious performance issues even after they've been cleaned up (mostly because of the hardware being cheap and slow as previously mentioned.) Just because you haven't seen or heard of it doesn't mean it isn't a thing.

Re:I admit it, I like Windows 10.

[A Friendly Troll]

One of my Win10 computers is a 1.8 GHz Core2Duo with a regular HDD. Bought it in 2006 or early 2007.

The start menu comes up instantly.

And the crowd goes mild

[Ol Olsoc]

Looks like they are copying recent OSX features. Oddly enough, the ones I can do without. I was never too much into UI animation either. First time you might say ooohhhhh! Then it rapidly becomes boring.

In the end, more features to turn off.

Re:And the crowd goes mild

[TheRaven64]

Animations serve a useful purpose in a UI. Humans are really bad at spotting things that have changed, so having changes move smoothly can draw your attention to the correct bit of the UI. Unfortunately, a lot of developers rush into the 'ooo shiny' approach, in much the same way that some managers add PowerPoint animations to everything.

Re:And the crowd goes mild

[bondsbw]

UI animations like the ones in the Groove app aren't there to wow you, but to make the UI more coherent.

In Groove, once the user starts scrolling (obviously now more interested in the contents of the scroll area than in the contents of the description pane), the top part of the UI collapses so that the description goes away. The animation keeps it from being so jarring. Simultaneously, it ensures that the smallest scroll action only moves the content as far as expected (instead of suddenly having a different button under your mouse... something I've noticed that Google is screwing up in some of their UIs as of late).

Re:And the crowd goes mild

[Ol Olsoc]

UI animations like the ones in the Groove app aren't there to wow you, but to make the UI more coherent.

In Groove, once the user starts scrolling (obviously now more interested in the contents of the scroll area than in the contents of the description pane), the top part of the UI collapses so that the description goes away. The animation keeps it from being so jarring. Simultaneously, it ensures that the smallest scroll action only moves the content as far as expected (instead of suddenly having a different button under your mouse... something I've noticed that Google is screwing up in some of their UIs as of late).

So if a person finds it jarring, or annoying - they are wrong?

Re: And the crowd goes mild

[bondsbw]

No statement of right or wrong was made or intended.

When you can't provide substance

[OneHundredAndTen]

Give them superficial inaneness. Microsoft's time-honored tradition and trademark.

Lipstick On A Pig

[QuietLagoon]

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?

Re:Lipstick On A Pig

[Opportunist]

It is on topic. The whole data mining bullshit is the huge white elephant in the Windows 10 room that won't go away.

Re:Lipstick On A Pig

[QuietLagoon]

...use some of your other accounts and TOR to mod yourself up like you usually do....

I only have one account here. For probably nearly 20 years. I've not had any other account here. So you really shouldn't be casting aspersions.

Re:Lipstick On A Pig

[QuietLagoon]

...what you had to say had nothing to do with the topic....

It had everything to do with the topic. Microsoft revamping the UI while there are other fundamental data harvesting problems with Windows 10.

Re:Lipstick On A Pig

[Joshs922]

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?

Exactly! All the lipstick in the world will never convince me to install that "OS" on any computer I ever own or manage, at home or at work.

Re:Lipstick On A Pig

[thegarbz]

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?

Because it hasn't. The vast majority of users really don't give a shit about the typical Slashdot user's altruistic approach to privacy.

Ironically enough these are the same people that complain about UI changes that don't fit their use cases.

Now I get it!

[jenningsthecat]

Clearly, Microsoft programmers got solidly behind the concept of ramming Windows 10 down everyone's throats, just so they could force their freak-show visions of user interface experiments upon the largest possible number of rubes. The data mining and potential ad revenue were just a bonus.

Neon?

[Dragonslicer]

So Windows will finally have a good UI?

Acrylic

[godatum]

Acrylic is cheaper then traditional glass Windows

Re:Acrylic

[drinkypoo]

Acrylic is cheaper then traditional glass Windows

And it scratches easily, and tends to discolor with exposure to sun...

Re:Acrylic

[godatum]

And if you run a KDE gear over Acrylic it cracks.

Not this flat design shit again

[nctritech]

Microsoft has gone insane. They've taken their already-flat design and ironed the crap out of it. Hey assholes, when I hit the Windows key on my keyboard, why can't I hit the up arrow to get to the power button or settings cog anymore? Why don't you have hotkeys for the folder icon views like I used to get with ALT, V, and the view's corresponding letter key? Stop fucking with the "ooh shiny" user interface stuff until you fix the really basic stuff that you broke. It would also be super nice to have some of the fundamental UI design best practices brought back in from the streets where Microsoft chucked it and the baby and the bath water.

Also, has anyone noticed that a huge number of Microsoft Support forum posts are "solved" by someone with an Indian-looking name going "Kindly try a 'clean boot'. Kindly try System Restore. Kindly let us know if that fixes it." Then a huge pile of people go "NO, that generic reply didn't fix it and I have the same problem!" and the MS helpers go dead silent and absolutely no one at Microsoft gives a damn?

At least with "archaic" Windows 7 nearly every problem has a discoverable solution at this point. The way that Windows 10 problems have been handled by Microsoft under Satya Nadella indicates that they really don't care about delivering a decent product anymore. They were never even close to perfect but they at least had a few really sharp people on staff that both gave a shit and had the power to help or fix problems. Now it's the best company that H1B can cheap out!

Re:Not this flat design shit again

[Calydor]

Also, has anyone noticed that a huge number of Microsoft Support forum posts are "solved" by someone with an Indian-looking name going "Kindly try a 'clean boot'. Kindly try System Restore. Kindly let us know if that fixes it." Then a huge pile of people go "NO, that generic reply didn't fix it and I have the same problem!" and the MS helpers go dead silent and absolutely no one at Microsoft gives a damn?

"Would you kindly ..."

Re:Not this flat design shit again

[MichaelRudner]

totally agree +rep

Re:Not this flat design shit again

[thegarbz]

You use a keyboard? What are you one of those old bearded unix people that we've read about? Where did you even get a keyboard? Was it handed down as a family heirloom from your grandfather?

Didn't you get the memo? Why can't you wave your hand in front of your computer and sweet talk Cortana into launching an app for you like a normal person. It's about touch, and wireless, and neon. And it's oh so pretty.

Re:Not this flat design shit again

[nctritech]

Cortana was busy getting a pedicure and didn't have time for my grey-beard plebian ass.

What DID they do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like they missed the obvious improvement of fixing the borders around buttons so that you know where you're supposed to click. They didn't add a border around the window so you know where to put the mouse to resize windows. No border to separate the title bar so you know where to click and drag to move a window or access other title bar options. The taskbar is still flat and ugly and looks like it never went through the late 90s. I'll just take a leap of faith and assume that the start menu wasn't fixed and the adware and spyware wasn't removed.

It doesn't look like they fixed anything.

Will it end the spying?

[Opportunist]

If not, why do you wake me?

Look, MS. You can paint the turd, you can put a cherry on top of it, you can even dress it up and pretend it can tap dance, as long as you sell a turd as chocolate ice cream, people will still puke on your feet once they ate it. No matter how you sugar coat it.

This is why I stick to Mint w/Cinnamon

[HalAtWork]

The UI is going to stay the same by design, and that's a promise the devs keep living up to.

*Gigantic* titlebars

[Junta]

While I think a lot of the looks are improved compared to the rather ugly steps in Windows 8/10, there is a massive amount of wasted space.

Re:*Gigantic* titlebars

[eepok]

So much this! A massive portion of Windows users have more than one window open at a time. Sometimes, they need to have these windows parallel to each other. Massive empty/whitespace eliminates the ability to multi-task. At the very least, give the option to re-skin!

They should vall it winOSX

[scorp1us]

Because that's what it looks like.

Re:Botch or cash cow?

[mrbcs]

This whole Windows 10 fiasco continues to make me money. People hate it, so I uninstall it for them. Not to mention the wireless bug.

I was ok with 10 for about 6 months. After about the 4th time of failed update installations, I said screw it and went back to 7.

I now think that it's a steaming turd. I won't go back. I still us XP for my accounting software.. so I should be good for another 10 or 12 years...

More Toy, Less Tool

[BrendaEM]

Transparency is not very useful.

How about fixing the Bluetooth File transfer?
How about making mounting cellphones more reliable?
How about giving easier fixes for non 4K compliant programs?
How about giving us more than 2 power management options at once?
How about fixing your photo program that won't leave Irfanview's associations alone?
How about building some audio system like core audio or Jack Audio Server, you know, to help the musicians that make your music.

 

Groove

[unixisc]

They should add the capability to play music videos from Groove, so that that can be put in playlists

Re: Groove

[unixisc]

The video is available in a related app called Movies, where one can play movies and TV. Problem in using that w/ music videos is that one can't organize them into playlists. So if one is driving, then either a passenger has to manage it, or one has to get distracted and change tracks when one comes to an end.

Re: Groove

[unixisc]

A laptop would have been easier. Use Windows Media Player to organize the movie playlists and run them via the car's bluetooth and navigation system. The guy you saw was probably tweeting some fake news about you

Lipstick On A Pig

[QuietLagoon]

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.

Yay! ANOTHER UI Paradigm Shift!

[TheFakeTimCook]

What is that, like FOUR in as many versions?

Way to demonstrate "Persistance of Vision".

Say what you will about macOS; but Sierra looks and works a HELLUVA lot more like Mac OS 1.0 than Windows 10 looks like Windows 1.0

Sigh.

Continuing a terrible trend in UIs

[FellowConspirator]

Microsoft, Apple, and even to an extent the various Linux desktops, are all moving to UIs that use lots of negative space, and removing visual cues as to the type and mode of interaction with the visible elements. Buttons are flat, sometimes swipable, sometimes not. Things could be buttons, text fields, drop downs, etc. and you don't know until you give them a poke. The whitespace is getting so big as to spatially break up things that should be grouped, etc. It's terrible. Even the window borders no longer exist, losing context when they don't contrast with those behind...

Re:Continuing a terrible trend in UIs

[Ayanami_R]

We must be looking at things differently, even in flat design, I can tell a text field from a button. I have never met a swipeable looking button that didn't respond to both gestures swipe or tap either. whitespace is only a problem in applications that simply have no reason to fill an entire landscape or portrait display.

Apple Called, and wants its UI Features Back

[TheFakeTimCook]

Hmmm. Blur and Transparency. HOW many years ago did Apple do that with OS X?

Oh, wait! It was introduced in 2007, in OS X 10.5 LEOPARD, which was STILL BACK IN THE POWERPC DAYS!!!

I guess "Redmond, Start Your Copiers" still applies...

Windows 10 is the last version of Windows

[MrLogic17]

Remember when we were told that "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows"?

Ya, and this move is exactly what I expected. Windows will keep changing, complete with random, pointless UI changes. Nothing in the update schedule has changed.
Mark my words - at some point "Windows 10" will change it's name because of sales & marketing pressure. Forced updates and user-hostile changes will continue unabated.

Turd polishing

[jez9999]

Some real furious turd polishing going on right there...

No deal until I can disable all telemetry and prohibit forced reboots.

Finally going to Win10

[codeButcher]

Finally Microsoft changed it's operating system to something that I can live with. I'll be switching soonest.

Not.

Re:Alphabetical menu

[hackwrench]

I just use the alphabetical menu. Don't know if there's a way to make it the default view though.

Re:Why your advice is poor:

[hackwrench]

http://lmgtfy.com/?s=b&q=lazy

there is one thing I like about it...

[gosand]

I am a linux user... have been exclusively at home since 99. At work I use windows.

I have been using Win10 for a year now at work, and I have to say that I don't really care for it. I have a touchscreen laptop, and I have disabled the touchscreen feature. But all the icons are still like I am on a tablet. I have been living with it. For the most part, I don't like much about it at all.

One of the features of the start menu that I use, and like, is the type-search. I open the start menu, and can start typing the name of the application I need, and it quickly narrows down the options. I find it useful because I can do that from the keyboard alone, which is helpful.

My one caveat is that I use this feature all the time because I really don't like the way the menu works in general. When I am searching for an application that I don't use all that often, it always takes me a second or two to find the "all apps" link, then it opens up that stupid alphabetically sorted list. That is why I have lots of apps pinned on my menu bar. It's a workaround at best.

At home I use Mint XFCE, and it has the search for apps in a very similar fashion, but WITH a very usable nested menu structure. I love it so much more.

Re:there is one thing I like about it...

[TodPunk]

I have been doing the [ Winkey->"type first few chars of application name"->Enter ] system since I believe WinXP SP3, and I never really see much of the start menu features in any of the different UIs across the years.

In addition, you may find that shortcut keys for a lot of common things beyond the typical "alt-tab" to be useful to your workflows. The UI is largely for the typical non-tech. Getting efficient in Windows is just as easy and customizable as it is in Linux, but with the advantage of Gnome not fucking it up every time they think they know better how we should use our desktop (I know I'm assuming Gnome usage in this, just run with me for a bit).

I personally like working in both windows and linux for different things, but the UI is never a reason I give a damn about my OS. The configuration of my workflows, the applications available to me, and the upgrade processes are what matter to me. Both have their advantages in different spaces for me because of that preference.

Sprucing up, but hardly a revamp.

[Ayanami_R]

I wouldn't call it a revamp, the basic design tenets are the same, this is just some polish and bling truthfully. At least that's how it looks right now. I doubt they will stray far from this though, it makes no sense to me to shake things up much, the basic ideas they have are good on the surface already, this just brings some more eye candy.

A change is not "always exciting"

[Joshs922]

The author says "a change is always exciting." Really? How about when a hospital is running life-saving applications on Windows and the latest forced upgrade introduces an "exciting change" and now the nurse can't figure out how to launch her application?

Re:Botch or cash cow?

[Joshs922]

I still us XP for my accounting software.. so I should be good for another 10 or 12 years...

Same here. Why upgrade?

Wow

[hackel]

The biggest change I'm immediately noticing is a whole bunch of empty whitespace where the titlebar is suppose to be. This is an improvement? I'd be confused, if this wasn't Microsoft Windows. Continuing to get less and less relevant every year.

The problem with MS.........

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with MS is that they never finish anything. Every OS gets SPs or patches until it is sort of stable and then releases a new version because there is no profit in patches, the same is true of applications. Every new version gets a "new" UI to give the illusion of improvements when its the same old shit with a new way to access it and a passel of new bugs. Wash rinse and repeat, another piece of shit software until SP6b. The bottom line is the bottom line, users be damned they don't matter and are only a resource to coerced manipulated to enhance the bottom line.

There already is a Neon OS

[vandamme]

And it's free, and safe, and pretty.

https://neon.kde.org/

Re:Botch or cash cow?

[mcswell]

What's the matter with you, don't you want tail fins on your car?

Re:Oh, Great a new UI

[mcswell]

"Can we get a new layout for the RIBBON": Here's a suggestion for an improved ribbon. First, assign text labels to each icon, so the user doesn't have to guess what they mean. Then allow the user to hide the icons, so only the text labels appear. And underline a character in each label, so you can get to a menu choice by typing keys, if you prefer that over using the mouse. Finally, place the text labels in vertical stacks at each level of the hierarchy, and when there's a further choice to be made at any given level of the hierarchy, let a new stack of text labels start to the right of the current one (or to the left, if there isn't room to the right). Oh, and instead of having the "Backstage" page, which users find confusing, put that functionality into a set of text labels like other commands; maybe call the top-most label in this new set "File".

Re:If GM were like MS

[mcswell]

You forgot the tail fins. Oh wait, GM actually did that...

I've been holding onto vista

[holophrastic]

Still stuck with vista, I've been refusing windows 10 because it lacks aero glass. I don't want windows 3.1 graphics again, thank you. So this is very hopeful for me!

Looks awful

[fox171171]

Looks awful. Glad I am not on Win10. (Win8.1, but I did fix most of what it wrong with the UI. Boot to desktop, disable touch, and thanks "Classic Shell"!)

I despised Aero. I see no useful reason to see through stuff, and found it distracting and pointless.

I set up my Start Menu (Classic Shell) like XP's (I don't like 7's, but to each their own). XP's could be a mess on its own, but I always customized it myself, as I do now. After clicking on the "Start" button, everything I use is 1 or 2 clicks away and easily found.

I find the search box a pain. I type a few letters, stuff pops up, I go to click on what I want, but it moves out from under my cursor as more stuff pops up and I click on the wrong thing.

Wife has 10, and I despise using it.