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Microsoft's Designers Are Now Working Together on the Future of Windows, Office and Surface (theverge.com)
Microsoft has changed the way it approaches design. The new Office icons unveiled this week are the first glimpse at a far bigger design overhaul that's going on inside the company. Windows is also getting its own icon changes, but the bigger change is a collaborative effort going on between the Windows, Office, and Surface teams. From a report: "This is definitely a cross company effort," explains Jon Friedman, Microsoft's head of Office design, in an interview with The Verge. The company's design leaders -- Friedman with Office, Albert Shum on the Windows side, and Ralf Groene for Surface -- all work together now. "We operate like an internal open source team," Friedman says.
"So we're all openly sharing our design work, critiquing the work, working on it together. What we've found is that the best way to develop our Fluent Design system is to truly open source it internally. What's happened is that we're getting the best of everyone's work that way."
"So we're all openly sharing our design work, critiquing the work, working on it together. What we've found is that the best way to develop our Fluent Design system is to truly open source it internally. What's happened is that we're getting the best of everyone's work that way."
What is it with Microsoft and their continued exercise to keep making their products worse and worse.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
Microsoft has changed the way it approaches design.
When they're done, we'll be hearing this, "Hey! How do you print in Word?"
"And how to save a file with a different name in a different directory?"
What do new icons have to do with a different development approach?
-Dave
Like the anus of a goat.
...as announcing a new "mission statement"
I had missed the whole new "Fluent" design thing from Build (I normally try to pay attention to what they talk about but was too busy this year).
So I dug down a bit and finally found the Fluent design guidelines. There are some interesting things going on there, like use of light and focus in different ways depending on screen distance (viewing something on a TV screen vs. on a screen right in front of you), probably worth going over to incorporate good ideas into your own UI work...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Woah. Who knew that Microsoft's competitive internal teams and closed-source development was counter-productive?
Insert witty saying or aphorism here.
AKA Msoft post-Win7
OMG! what an innovative idea! Next you are going to say they have this new fangled thing called Scrum and they sprint, and there are user proxies, ....
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Intercompany effort?
Multiple teams involved?
The end result will be even uglier and dumber than current office....
"to truly open source it internally"
Only Microsoft can truly come up with such a contradiction in terms without blinking.
How about you make your command-line switches for activation consistent:
#Windows Software Licensing Management Tool
cscript slmgr.vbs /skms exampleKMSHost:1688 /ato
cscript slmgr.vbs
#Office 2016 Client Software License Management Tool
cscript ospp.vbs /sethst:exampleKMSHost /setprt:1688 /act
cscript ospp.vbs
What a great idea! Smart icons! Now icons can get the status of media straight from the file system without going through the inefficiency of having the OS refresh the status of the icon.
It's the future of operating systems! Random UI elements bound straight to the underlying hardware drivers. What could possibly go wrong?
Sickening seeing a bunch of MS hating Slashdotters akin to racists not based on merit and effort
Copy Apple.
Office for Mac has historically been developed as a separate codebase by an almost Pirate-Like Division at MS called the "Mac Business Unit" (Mac BU).
So, what does all this "redesigned methodology" mean to the independence of Office for Mac and the Mac BU?
BTW, MacBU is actually one of the more profitable Divisions in Microsoft.
Will the "new way" be as successful as the "new way" Microsoft implements Quality Assurance?
There's a lot that needs cleaned up there.
Seriously that's all I and my Mother want from the computer at this point. It was bad enough going to 7 with the changes they did and confused the hell out of her. Windows 10 really threw her for a loop and now she's going to have to go through this again which means I'm going to have to go through questions and after questions of "Where are these?" or "How do I get to my email now?" or "Why is this trying to get me to sign up for that?" and even more fun "Why did they change this?"
So, I get how the Office and Windows Dev. Teams can collaborate; those are both SOFTWARE products.
But then what is the SURFACE team doing in this clusterfuck of endless meetings and even greater corporate infighting?
Are they trying to imitate Apple, and get their Software and Hardware offerings more "integrated"? Unfortunately, that model doesn't work for Windows, because it must work on widely-disparate Hardware. So, there is only SO much hardware/software "integration" that is practical.
They can't even COPY Apple's business-model correctly. But then, they have about 40 years of trying and failing in that regard already.
You'd never think it with the mess that Windows 10 is.
That's a "write it off" case.
Changes to Windows is a train that will never stop. They need change simply to show them doing *something*. Some of it is good. Most of it is lateral. Some of it is even backwards.
Inside scoop is that they're going to replace Windows with Linux + Windows-lookalike WM.
... so they are working on Linux? That is the future of Windows as I'm concerned. At least on my machines.
It's becoming more apparent why Valve is migrating to Linux. The writing is on the wall - soon, games will no longer work on windows. They appear to want everything stored in "the cloud", and most games won't run well or at all unless they're on a local drive. And they may just say that the M$ store is the only store allowed, and programs like Steam and GOG won't work anymore.
Having fixed issues with deleting user data, excessive CPU and disk I/O during updates, poor-to-nonexistent control of installing updates, user preferences regarding information density and screen resolutions, Outlook handling large mailboxes gracefully (especially with non-o365 servers), Access being super picky about version compatibilities, Sharepoint being an utter disaster, most of the newer Exchange server controls being exclusively Powershell applets, Hyper-V shadow copies being temperamental, convoluted licensing models, and coming to terms with the fact that consumers simply don't want to be locked into a vertical Microsoft ecosystem like Google or Apple...I'm glad they're finally able to spend development time on making prettier icons.
My next computer will have a non-subscription OS just like it does now.
I'm glad they're really focusing in on the things that truly make software great, like new icons and ever-changing UIs and the ability to constantly call home. It's about time they stopped wasting resources on superfluous things like having a quality assurance department and making sure updates don't delete customer data.
The reason Microsoft keeps doing this is to trick people into thinking they are getting a changed product since after all it "looks different".
They keep making their products worse and pissing people off with unproductive design choices in order to keep people wanting upgrades that fix issues invented by Microsoft.
A desktop shell and office suite that are productive, not ugly as fuck and annoying to use does not sell upgrades. The idea is to have users perpetually keep wanting what Microsoft intendeds on forever intentionally withholding.
I mean come on do you really think after all of the feedback about Metro they persisted with it anyway because people wanted it? Do you think the bait and switch over start button vs start screen was an accident? Do you think anyone at Microsoft really thought making menu items in ALL CAPS or loading interfaces up with crummy 80's era CGA vector art or hidden "gesture" based interfaces with hidden corners that do magical things was improving the product? Nobody is that stupid. NOBODY.
Wait, wait, I got a wonderful new idea. How about, get this, its gonna knock you over, a whimsical side kick to Bob? Some sort of cartoon character that is animated, lets call that Clippy!
Its gonna take the world by storm. Yes siree Bob!, no not you Bob, didn't call you. Shh. clippy. shh.. shut up. get lost clippy.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Are they trying to imitate Apple, and get their Software and Hardware offerings more "integrated"?
Short answer is yes. And it's probably the right thing to do (from Microsoft's perspective) for their Surface products.
Unfortunately, that model doesn't work for Windows, because it must work on widely-disparate Hardware.
Which is why Microsoft has started designing and selling their own hardware. Then they can control the stack and it also helps keep third party vendors from getting too crazy. There is no principled reason Microsoft cannot sell a tightly integrated device similar to Apple.
They can't even COPY Apple's business-model correctly.
Lately Apple has been having trouble with Apple's business model.
Snark aside, Microsoft seldom really copied Apple's business model, even on occasions when perhaps they should have. I'm not really sure why people persist in thinking Microsoft slavishly copies Apple. Their business models are quite different and their products are typically markedly different as are their customer bases. They compete but they cooperate a fair bit too. Yeah Apple accused them of "copying" the Mac GUI but one only has to use Windows for about 10 seconds to realize the similarities don't go very deep. Yes they are both GUIs but the interfaces are wildly different and always have been.
Windows is also getting its own icon changes...
For the love of God, who gives a flying f*ck about new icons? Give us back a working Start menu!
I work on multiple versions of Windows and Windows Server every day, and I am constantly hunting for things. Do I right-click or left-click the Start button?
I used to be able to get to anything I needed by drilling down through a menu or two. Now I resort to the search functionality constantly. Not to mention that settings for related things must be accessed in completely different places. Network-related settings are a good example:
Want to edit network settings for a VPN connection, or authentication details? Two completely different places. I was recently trying to get rid of a remembered WiFi network in Windows 10 and I had to Google how do it!
It's a complete mess.
n/t
on a pig.
THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL INCOROPORATE A BULLET INTO YOUR BRAIN FAGGOT
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
And the more recent 'design' changes like 'all white and grey icons' or 'cards', well, I just ignored that unrecognizable garbage by using another OS. ON. THE. DESKTOP.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
...out of control. Smushing distinct products together does not equate to "a good thing". You failed to do this with the Xbox M$, and now you will fail with this. In other news, sky is blue, water is wet and Microsoft still fucking sucks.
Microsoft's Designers Are Now Working Together on the Future of Windows, Office and Surface
The Future of Edge = Chrome = Firefox
The Future of Windows = Linux
The Future of Office = LibreOffice and / or Google Docs
The Future of Surface = Android and Chrome Tablets
Resistance is futile.
I do hope they spend some time working on win7 before they make their design choices. Vista and 8 were quantum leaps backward and 10 was a little step forward. But it's still awful in terms of usability. I STILL run win7 in a VM for all my development and productivity apps because I'm simply MORE PRODUCTIVE when I have an extremely responsive UI, keyboard shortcuts, and less bloat holding me back.
I appreciate Slashdot headlines posting forwarded me emails from the Microsoft PR outbox. That's 4 today I believe.
This is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic as it goes down.
Microsoft is self destructing.Nobody gives a shit about icons when the OS has become unusable. Decades of work down the tubes.The operating system has been so effectively destroyed I have to wonder if it is corporate or national sabotage.
Microsoft is a miserable place to work. Employees there want everyone else to be miserable, also. That's one theory.
A reliable sign of someone (or a company) who is incompetent at what they supposedly do is a misplaced desire to fix something that isn't broken.
I have to give them credit though: after so much of Windows did work at some point and since has been deliberately broken, finding the not broken parts is starting to become a challenge.
with no boost in productivity to show for it. Thanks again, MS!
Please give us Windows 7 back. It was good. Nothing wrong with it.
A ton of wonderful ideas ðY'
New Windows Cobalt
Good ideas are grate but keep a clear path.
The Mac would have died in the late 1980s without Microsoft Word and Excel.
The problem with Windows is NOT the icons and such. The problem is TRUST.
The last version of Windows that I personally trust at all is Windows XP (which I never hook to the internet). All more recent versions of Windows spy on the user, and that spying is more intrusive and pervasive with each version.
Give me a rock-solid Windows that NEVER spies on me and NEVER phones home, and I will buy a new copy for every PC I have. Until then, I have transitioned most personal systems and my entire business to a mix of BSD and Linux.
"Microsoft" "Designers"
I highly doubt it. They got rid of their QA years ago. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The 'designers' at Microsoft are a bunch of idiots, who wouldn't know a good user interface if it bit them in the ass. Since the Ribbon debacle, and Windows 8's tiles, both of which are atrociously bad designs, they have made Windows 10 even worse than you would think possible, by almost completely getting rid of buttons, so you have dialogue boxes with random text, all of which you have to mouse over before you can see which is and isn't a button. This is stupidity of the highest order.
Has anybody at Microsoft invented any NEW user interface elements over the past twenty years? Ones that are actually better than anything that went before?
>> Microsoft's Designers Are Working on the Future of Windows
Call me when Microsoft's Designers Are Working On The Future Of Linux
Then it will be relevant news.
aaaaaaa
Focusing on the outside appearance instead of making functionality work better is a misstep for MS.
1. Fix bugs .net Core long term support versions - forced upgrades on MS's schedule instead of the customer's schedule .net such as referencing assemblies in web.config or in the code with a USING statement, remove the one which is less direct to keep the code cohesive .net application make it much harder to support and forward develop
2. Reduce the complexity and not by smart menus or dynamically hiding things I rarely use
3. Reduce the chrome, flashing, nuanced graphic effects - *cough* Excel's scrolling of a cell when it is recomputed - which are cool for the first 5 minutes, annoying for the next 2 days and headache inducing thereafter
4. Have support lifespans aligned with business needs - no more 3 year start to end of life for
5. Provide a roadmap of what will be set to pasture as open source and what will not for the next 7 years
6. Clean out and remove the use of COM and registry entries by most MS software and go with a directory based installation with nothing in win32/windows directory
7. Find a way to retire active directory and not replace it with something equivalently costly
8. Focus on Azure basic: Hosted SQL Servers and hosted web sites; de-emphasize the dozens of soon to be maintenance problems of niche Azure technologies
9. Provide a 7 year statement of direction for desktop software development technologies beyond minor tooling for WPF. Now, there is no direction other than MS is retiring from active development of WPF and you are on your own if you build/support desktop applications.
10. When there are 2 ways to do something in
10a. Importantly, it's lost on MS that the many many ways of indirection in a large
10b. A thousand of cool, this saves 2 lines of code micro optimizations, means there are thousand different gotchas for each developer to know
11. Give timeline when .net Core will fully replace .net including when the win32 APIs are removed / replaced with a different MIT/BSD licensed kernel
Make Microsoft Less EVIL again! (MMLEA)
1. Remove all creepy spying. It sucks, we don't want it and you're forcing us to have it. STOP IT.
2. Remove the advertising ID from our O/S. ITS EVIL. We DONT WANT IT.
A product we paid good money for should NOT WORK AGAINST US. STOP IT.
3. Get rid of the new UI. The old UI worked. The new UI is not only stupid, it takes more time and more clicks to do something. It's stupid. STOP IT.
4. Drop having so many identifiers in the O/S. 2019 has 3 identifiers, come on.
5. Stop forcing crap down users throat. i.e It's EVIL to install software on peoples machines when they didn't ask for it and calling it a "feature". STOP IT
6. Listen to your users. Users to you are like cattle and you're dictating to them. You'll get more respect from users if you stop F'ing them.
7. You can still make an f-load of money and still have happy, unspied and unforced upon users.
PLEASE LISTEN TO US AND STOP BEING EVIL. Really.
The Mac would have died in the late 1980s without Microsoft Word and Excel.
And there wouldn't be a GUI Microsoft Word or an Excel AT ALL if it weren't for the Mac.
Study your history before being revealed as ignorant.
MS Word existed ONLY as a text-based (DOS) Application for something like TWO YEARS after the first version of MS Word for Mac (which of course WAS GUI-based) shipped.
Excel existed ONLY for Macs for at least the first 2 or 3 Versions before being ported to Windows (as a GUI Application). In fact, Excel actually caused a bit of Mac-Envy among early Wintel-Users.
And oh, by the way, Even WITHOUT MS Word or Excel, the Mac was doing JUST fine in the 1980s (MacWord, WordPerfect (IIRC), and Lotus 123 (and later, Lotus Jazz), were also very popular at the time with Mac Users. Only the poor management of John Sculley, who never met a Project he didn't like, caused Apple to temporarily internally lose its focus.
The Mac at launch was a disaster. Several feeble applets where all there was. Microsoft rescued the Mac from oblivion, and made a ton of money in the process.
When Excel launched, nobody really cared, Lotus 123 was the ruling application in business. It took time for that to change.
The Mac at launch was a disaster. Several feeble applets where all there was. Microsoft rescued the Mac from oblivion, and made a ton of money in the process.
When Excel launched, nobody really cared, Lotus 123 was the ruling application in business. It took time for that to change.
Bullshit.
The Mac at launch CAME WITH MacWord and MacPaint, hardly "feeble Applets". And guess what? NO completely new computer platform has much in the way of software at launch. So, nice try.
And similarly, no new program, like Excel, starts out with much of a following, How could it? But it quickly dethroned Lotus 123. Buf even then, it was a few YEARS before Excel appeared for Windows.
Want to add to this:
8. The Microsoft store is only used for evil. Let us have our freedom of NOT having to ID ourselves to you to install a free program.