Microsoft has made several adjustments to its design language over the last few years, starting with Windows 8 and evolving into what we now know as “Microsoft Design Language 2” or MDL2 in Windows 10. With MDL2 being the current design language used throughout Windows 10, Microsoft has plans to begin using a much more streamlined design language with Redstone 3, codenamed Project NEON.
No matter how many times you refine or change your design language, it won’t magically make your apps stop sucking.
It certainly wont help if you allow your own internal teams to ignore them and do what they want anyway. I’m looking at you, Office.
I would argue that the design – or rather the absence of it – make those Windows 8 apps REALLY suck.
I personally find the Windows ‘modern’ UI (or whatever they’re calling it this week) to be quite hideous. That being said, I generally care little about cosmetics, but won’t complain if they make it not so… flat.
I remember how people complained at the introduction of Luna, Windows XP’s themeing support, because it so looked like plastic toys.
What is the perfect balance ? Translucency like in Windows Vista or 7 ? It would be me, it would be still Windows classic ~A -la 2000, because everything is quite clear and consistent.
But yeah, it is not… modern.
Definitely. If that theme was still in Windows 10, I’d still be using it. But I have it tweaked to look kind of close.
http://winaero.com/blog/get-windows-xp-look-in-windows-10-without-t…
http://www.howtogeek.com/133405/how-to-get-classic-style-themes-bac…
http://sagorpirbd.deviantart.com/art/XP-Themes-Final-for-Win10-5203…
Everything since Windows 2000 has been a step backward in my opinion. And starting with Windows 8, Windows is now so sophisticated, it _can’t_ do the “Classic” UI any more.
Windows 8/10 is the least customizable version of Windows I’ve ever used, and its default look (that horrible, ugly, visually indistinct “flat UI”) is awful.
Microsoft made tremendous advances in UI design in the 80s and early 90s and since then have thrown out most of the good stuff they learned.
ConceptJunkie,
The first windows 8 beta actually did include the classic UI. At that point Microsoft had left itself the option to keep the classic UI. After learning of all the complaints and resistance to metro, they doubled down and removed classic windows all together.
Many people wonder why MS was so adamant that customers could not have what they were demanding. The reason was that MS wanted a cut of 3rd party developer income just like apple was doing with the vendor locked iphone store. However, there is no technical way to do that with win32 software, at least not without breaking compatibility with 100% of windows software already on the market. For MS, the answer to this dilemma was Metro, which MS pushed extremely hard for years even though consumers were balking the whole time.
Edited 2016-11-30 18:20 UTC
Actually, it is more likely the classic theme was dropped because Windows 8 removed the support for disabling the DWM. While doing that they most likely also removed the pre-uxtheme.dll theme code.
Being the lazy people they are, they never bothered porting it over to their XP theme engine (when developing XP, Vista, and Windows 7).
If it ever came up on a meeting for Windows 8, I’m sure the Metro people would have vetoed creating such a theme. Hence they just removed the support altogether as they wanted to get rid of the old Windows 95 theme code.
I think that’s being generous. The “modern” parts of Windows 10 look like something hastily mocked up by a programmer during the very early stages of development.
You think the look is bad, try using these so-called modern crap-chutes via the keyboard. It makes the ribbon look like a paragon of keyboard usability, and that is saying something.
IMHO, MS is fiddling while their empire crumbles.
There are far more serious things to sort than this.
Your update system still sucks
Why do your updates remove all the tweaking I did to the start menu?
I don’t want the Modern UI ever. It [redacted]
As for the Ribbon…. even after all this time your efforts at trying to be smart leave me speechless. UI’s as with keyboards are all about consistency of operation. As far as I’m concerned, the Ribbon is the opposite of this as it makes things harder not easier.
YMMV though.
Come 31st Dec, my last Windows system will be wiped and replaced with Linux (CentOS). I’m voting with my feet and moving on.
Keep on with that Fiddling MS.
You mean replacing Windows servers with CentOS, that’s fine and noble.
But desktops? Is there any application you’ve been using that are Windows only? If you have been using cross-platform applications then you should be fine with an alternate Linux designed for desktop, but not CentOS.
I am perfectly fine with Modern UI: it looks highly consistent in its own right, and it renders the look of Windows quite peculiar – in a good way IMHO. However, what I would really like would be to see it used properly, and scaled at higher control density for proper desktop applications (Modern Windows Explorer, please!!).
And most of all, what I would like to see from MS would be API consistency: make UWP [and WPF] feature-complete and do not support anything else for development (keep runtime compatibility with older MFC / WinForms / Win32 apps, of course). Elect one single toolkit as the one for Windows and invite all developers to do so…
fashion should be left out of computers