New Windows Look and Feel, Neon, Is Officially the 'Microsoft Fluent Design System' (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this year, pictures of a new Windows look and feel leaked. Codenamed Project Neon, the new look builds on Microsoft Design Language 2 (MDL2), the styling currently used in Windows 10, to add elements of translucency and animation. Neon has now been officially announced, and it has an official new name: the Microsoft Fluent Design System. The switch from "design language" to "design system" is deliberate; Fluent is intended to define more than just the appearance, but also the interactivity. Though visually there are common elements, the system is designed to work across virtual/augmented reality, phones, tablets, desktop PCs, games consoles, using mice, keyboards, motion controllers, voice, gestures, touch, and pen, with the interactivity and input optimized to each particular form factor. Fluent is described as having five "fundamentals": light, depth, motion, material, and scale. "Light" means that the interface should avoid distracting and strive to ensure that attention is drawn to where it needs to be. With "depth," Fluent apps will make greater use of layering and the relationships between objects and interface elements. Fluent will use "motion" to indicate relationships and connections between elements, establishing context. Microsoft is using "Material" to mean making best use of the screen space and giving room to content. "Scale" means building interfaces that can go beyond two dimensions, and go beyond the size of a screen, to embrace new form factors and input methods as they arrive.

Comments

Groove

[mwvdlee]

The preview images are of an app called Groove.
I have no idea what it currently looks like, so I have no idea what has changed.
Guess I could start it up, since I have Windows 10, but... meh.

No no no NO NO NO NO

[the_skywise]

Though visually there are common elements, the system is designed to work across virtual/augmented reality, phones, tablets, desktop PCs, games consoles, using mice, keyboards, motion controllers, voice, gestures, touch, and pen, with the interactivity and input optimized to each particular form factor.

1000 times NO - you cannot use the same definition language across different input strata. You either end up with a least common denominator of interactivity or you sacrifice one for the utopian goals of the idealogy (That is to say Windows 8 and Metro). Its always a grand idea in theory because you immediately think "It's just buttons and scrolling.. how hard can that be?!". It's not - it's text and selection and finding the items you want vs need vs trying to recall the interface paths to access them plus the needs of the input device you're working with. A VR system isn't going to acommodate the subtleties of a touch screen (though they'll try) and a touch screen drops the finer gesture control of a pen which is simillar (but not the same as) a mouse interface. You need a CUSTOM UI and access strategy per device type that interfaces to the underlying control scheme. That's why the iOS is DIFFERENT than MAC OS and not a one-size fits all strategy like Windows 10 which does NOTHING well (and don't even get me started on that craptacular Xbox One UI)

Re:No no no NO NO NO NO

[mikael]

A mouse has two or more buttons that send press and release events, and also sends out motion events. A trackball will do the same, so you can do things like hover over buttons and not press them. A touchscreen will have multiple fingerpress and fingerrelease events. Then these can be combined into gestures like double slide, single slide, two finger zoom, two finger pinch, two finger rotate, two finger translate. These could go up to any number of events, such as the screen swipe with the palm of your hand to capture a screenshot. But there is no concept of hover. Something is either pressed or there is no event. You can add delays and timeouts but that's about all. With VR and AR, you can do gestures like head tilt to move or turn in different directions, various button presses using the headset buttons or stare and select. If you have a VR glove or set of globes, then there are all the hand gestures that could be made. It's easy to map these onto classic mouse events, but hard to have a single event handler for everything.

Re:No no no NO NO NO NO

[Hognoxious]

A mouse has two or more buttons

Old Mac ones didn't.

This is because the kind of people who own Macs would press the wrong one.

Re:No no no NO NO NO NO

[Anubis IV]

Indeed, we fundamentally interact differently with a 10-foot UI that's indirectly controlled via a remote than we do with a touchscreen that's directly controlled with our hands. The same goes for traditional computing environments that are indirectly controlled at a distance somewhere in between and VR environments that are...sort of a weird mix of all of those.

The notion of having a unified "design system" that can span all of them is a nice ideal to have, to be sure, but in practice neither Microsoft nor anyone else has gotten even remotely close to making that breakthrough yet. In much the same way that Microsoft was throwing anything they could think of at the wall to see what would stick with tablets and smartphones back before they were popular, but weren't able to execute until others showed them the way, they're thinking ahead here, but are delivering something that's worse than what we already have. And, as before, I suspect that until someone else figures it out (assuming it even can be figured out), they'll keep throwing UIs at the wall in the vain hope that one of them will stick.

This is VERY frequent

[evolutionary]

Okay M$, increasing the frequencies of your "news" articles will not distract anyone from the fact that Windows 10 is a spyware "OS" with features that actually work AGAINST the user. I'm starting to think that MS is spending more time doing PR for this POS OS than development.

Re:This is VERY frequent

[Opportunist]

This whole stuff reminds me more and more of one of those Soviet speakers who keeps talking about the successes of Communism and how glorious our athletes, our space stations and our heavy industry is while the average worker wonders when he might get some butter and toilet paper.

Whatever

[Opportunist]

Can we get an update where we get to decide when to reboot our machines and what info to send to Redmond? Just 'cause you paint the turd in flashy colors doesn't make it smell better.

More like "effluent"

[OrangeTide]

Nearly all design languages that are pushed out through a marketing department as a form of PR is a lot of ego stroking crap.

The most apt name for this new crap is: The Microsoft Effluent Design System

Paint the turd.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shiney new shit all over the shop, but File Explorer STILL cannot handle the files with long paths *that it itself creates*.

It has had this problem for over a DECADE FFS !

Fix the broken windows. Then polish them !

Captcha: "systemic" as in "bugs"

Deep inside Redmond

[Imazalil]

mid-level manager 1: I love what google is doing with this material design, they cribbed some of our metro stuff but took it to a whole new level.

mid-level manager 2: true dat, but I prefer the soft and smooth translucency Apple has in iOS and macOS.

mid-level manager 1: hmmm...

mid-level manager 2: hmmmm...

mid-level manager 3: why not both?!

mid-level manager 1: but won't we be accused of just copying their stuff?

mid-level manager 2: just throw in some bull about holo-lens and synergy, and everyone will be distracted thinking about drawing dongs in 3d.

mid-level manager 1: genius!

Re:I'd rather not have a new "look & feel"

[JohnFen]

Agreed. While I'm very well used to the ribbon, that doesn't make it suck any less at all.

And it looks like Microsoft is doubling down on a few of the worst aspects of the Win 10 look and feel. It's like they're going out of their way to make the UI as annoying and difficult to use as possible.

UI Approach

[n329619]

The most optimized way to create a UI that works on all the different input devices is by using an always random well placed UI.

It'll ensure that the users will always be highly interactive as they literally have to search the right buttons everywhere every time and avoid muscle memories.

Also, remember to switch the "OK" and "Cancel" UI every other times. This will greatly stimulate the user's emotion.

For the best results, swap the UI functions opposite to the UI, like "Cancel" is actually "Submit" and "Close" means "Restart and Upgrade". Oh wait...

What for?

[jbmartin6]

"elements of translucency and animation"....I hate it already. For a while there, it looked like MS was starting to understand that people use applications, not the OS. The only goal of the OS is to make it easy to use applications and stay out of the way otherwise. They sort of got the hint with the Vista fiasco. Looks like everyone who got it has retired and the latest shiny thing crowd is back in the saddle.