Posted by naves 1 day ago
Moreover, there isn’t much in the way of alternatives. Everyone likes to hate on MS —for decades this has happened and nothing came of it.
Also, the AI smell in this article is just too much.
Jobs, Musk, Edison, whoever.
Someone who will enforce their design decisions, get stuff done. And take the hit when they are wrong.
Updated apps look fine, but the majority aren't. And with that bizarre "Show More Options" nesting in the Windows 11 context menu it almost seemed like Microsoft is no longer capable of upgrading old components in place.
From a user's perspective, I don't really see where the problem is. All my apps look like Windows apps to me, and I also think that includes apps that do their own thing and look their own way. For as long as Windows has been around we've had apps that just don't follow the rules, from RealPlayer to WinZip to iTunes to Spotify.
This idea that all applications must be consistent with each other on one platform is generally a good idea but the downside of not having it that way is not very tangible to most users.
E.g., Steam looks different than every other Windows app. Same with Spotify and Slack and Discord. How does that negatively impact users? Well, not really at all. The consistency is within those apps themselves. I'm comfortable with Steam because I've been using it for 20 years and it's evolved on its own terms.
I could see it being an accessibility problem, but can't figure out any other potential downside.
I also don't think any other platforms have this figured out. See the window corners in macOS Tahoe. Remember how Mac Catalyst apps first looked when that came out? They didn't follow OS conventions at all. Remember when Final Cut Pro 6 didn't look anything like a Mac app? Or GarageBand etc. and their skeuomorphic looks? Linux is no better with a mix of desktop environments, Wayland versus Xorg, etc. Then we look at mobile apps and it's one of the least consistent environments imaginable: you've got a mix of native and frameworks like React Native and Flutter and the rest.
Windows and Mac in the 90s had very consistent GUIs with such consistency in things like keyboard shortcuts that apps could easily be learned. The term “intuitive” was king in the realm of UI design.
Then the web hit and all that died.
If you really enjoy worse Windows XP UX with hamburger menus in recent versions then by all means go ahead, it does function.
I could use Konqueror, I guess, but its ad blocking plugin (and plugins overall) seems to never have progressed much since KDE 2.
Well yes, I do agree with this. Internally it's mostly consistent, at least more so than Windows. Never analysed its UI structures though.
> I don't want my desktop UI to dictate how an app draws its UI (or games would be impossible).
As a platform, ensuring applications running on top of it stay consistent to varying degree is the job of the desktop/OS IMO. To what degree depends on the context, https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/#con... is a great read.
Even games need it, missing input field features has plagued PC games for decades and can be crippling for input method users, Skyrim's console needs mods to support copy and paste. Custom mouse acceleration curves is the reason everyone disabled it, zero acceleration is the easiest way to make different games handle mouse input consistently.
A shame Linux isn't standardised enough.