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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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]

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?

[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".

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.

[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.

[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

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.

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?

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!

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.