I was hoping for Windows 11 to finally have a consistent look, not have two settings, and merge the Win32 world and the UWP world… Alas, from the screenshots[0] it looks like the split continues :-(
I mean, it's an early leaked build. I predict that the file explorer specifically will be completely replaced, which is why it hasn't been updated at all.
(I work at MS but not on Windows and I haven't tried 11 at all.)
> I mean, it's an early leaked build. I predict that the file explorer specifically will be completely replaced, which is why it hasn't been updated at all.
I really hope that _replacement_ will be as feature complete and useful via keyboard as the current explorer. UWP UI components tend to be unnavigable via keyboard.
For example I really like old Win32 listview behaviour to just type in the item name to select it.
Explorer isn't exactly good compared to other file managers of this era, but honestly if Microsoft would rewrite Explorer in this time - you could be assured it would be utter garbage.
FWIW, we also had early leaked builds of Vista and Win8, everyone complained about those, and precious little was changed between those early looks and the final release.
It is a terrible situation now, but if I could decide, I would boot UWP to hell. For how long does it exist? Must be nearly half a decade. I still did not use one useful UWP app. Nevermind their design is quite lacking. The new setttings are an abomination. I don't want weblinks everywhere that are completely useless...
This has been upgraded from "screenshots leak" to "he entire Windows 11 OS has appeared online". The reporter of the article has it running, and is sharing more details as they discover them.
Whenever I hear of a new UI design for software I use, I'm terrified. I
seriously can't remember a case when that was good news.
From Win95 to Gnome to KDE - they never became better. Just more colorful
and more resource hungry. The new Firefox is a total shitshow. Windows
8 was a disaster (and 10 didn't get much better). What is wrong with
having windows title bars which clearly show where the focus is? Why
does everything has to be white?
From Windows 11 I expect the worst and I'm sure I will still be
disappointed.
Some people are just resistant to change. I've switched to Sway and live the simplicity of a tiling Window manager. If I wasn't open to change I wouldn't have ever tried it out and found a bunch of other awesome stuff in the process.
I'm always open to self-induced change. There was a time I tried every
window manager on X11 and it was fun but now I have found my place and
I'd like to stay there. When the UI-change is just for the worse and it
disrupts me in my flow, it's just a burden.
Yes of course, what are you expecting here? Do you think the UI
designers of Firefox or Windows make their decisions based only on
scientifically approved facts?
They probably have "UI scientists" who analyze and tell how to make the
perfect UI but next year they are replaced by new experts and then we
have to deal with the next best UI-trends.
No thanks microsoft!
I`m happily using the same kind of interface for most of my IT life... win95, 98, xp, currently linux with LXDE. And i don't want your new startup sound.
Translucency? You mean like the Aero Glass visual language that has been part of the Windows design book since Vista? Rounded window corners like XP? Come on. The worst you can say is this redesign is nothing new for Windows. This idea that they're always copying macOS is as silly as it is persistent.
Almost all UI blur effects are Gaussian blurs. It’s the same approach used in Vista. In Vista, they just used another layer to make the surfaces seem “shiny.”
I wish they would bring back simple directory bookmarks instead
of these "smart" links that detect when I rename the target
directory (so annoying!) and that you can't even give a display
name. After upgrade to Win10 I suddenly had 5 useless links
named "tmp".
I really wish that UX designers would stop the insanity of over-simplify things into near-uselessness. People need to do real work in an operating system including organizing, sorting and arranging files. The basic functionality of the Windows OS "Detail" file view hasn't gained significant NEW functionality in nearly forever.
Rounding corners and harmonizing colors is nice but it's not what I care about. I wish they'd demonstrate their awesome design skills by working out a reasonably intuitive UX to do nested sorting. And do so without losing any existing functionality.
Another example is Firefox. Almost every UX change in the past two years has made the browser noticeably worse and requires serious users to hack CSS under the hood to fix. They keep taking things away and rearranging deck chairs while not adding obviously missing functionality like a non-right-click menu UX to manage sidebar lists.
In my experience a lot of the UX Research (separate from UX design) is completely ignored and PM’s / developers / UX Designers do whatever they feel is best anyways. I see this trend increasing more and more in the industry.
If there were no UI changes then designers and product managers would be out of a job.
This is why I enjoy owning my own small software business. I can just build something great at the start, and sell it forever, without needing to worry about continuous improvement nonsense.
I agree so much on this. The biggest problem for me is dumbing down the file browser when using MS office products. I used to have a workflow of quickly organizing files directly from office. But the modern file browser is so much less efficient and the extra clicks frustrate me a lot
How far back do you want to go? Windows 3.0 file manager is now open source and readily available from Microsoft directly![1] I’ve personally found it a joy to use even on a modern OS like 10.
I feel like a lot of software is designed primarily for marketing screenshots and only incidentally for people to use. Especially with "power users" being a shrinking demographic, I can't remember the last time "mainstream" software has gotten a redesign that actually made it more pleasant to use.
I use Linux 98% of the time so this particular assault on people's workflow doesn't affect me but I can hardly get around phone and browser updates (though recently I've found Vivaldi quite pleasant)
The problem is that those UX designers only think about colors and rounded corners. This is what the "design" is for them. Making things usable is not part of their design.
I'm pretty much convinced now that Microsoft will be giving up on desktop soon and we'll just end up with a Microsoft Window Manager for Linux where they'll build some compatibility layer to run Windows apps on Linux. Some people will say it will never happen but it is clear to me that they can no longer build anything original and actual innovative at this point.
I don't see them ever doing that. If they want to abandon the core Windows API then the most likely way they will offer backwards compatibility is by running your win32 apps in Azure.
The main problem with MS isn't that they cannot build something new and innovative...the problem is that they keep trying.
Most people don't want that.
Most people just want refined, faster, smaller of the same old Windows they had back in NT4 days.
Let Apple and Linux go their own way and change things every couple of years.
I want Windows to be stable and boring.
I don't think stagnation is the answer either. Refined, faster, smaller are all great things but you don't need to keep things the same in order to achieve that. I love my fast small stable Linux distro, but there is a lot of new things with it and it is constantly getting updated. I have choice in window managers, but I prefer Sway... I have a choice of launchers, but I prefer a simple solution like wofi... I have a choice of "start menus" but I prefer Waybar. This is innovation. Windows just keeps adding more junk, more telemetry, rounded corners, forced OEM updates, online accounts, etc that they practically force on you. Customizing a Windows install is a huge PiA. It is like they are incapable of coming up with new lighter weight solutions on their own, even if the kernel is updated and the OS gets new functionality like WSL. That is why I seriously think they will adopt Linux at their core and build a Windows compatibility layer around it.
I'm certain they are losing a descent market share to Mac and Linux as is, especially their developers who are now creating applications for other operating systems and not just Windows. In a short time they've adopted containers, WSL, a new terminal with Linux-like functionality, etc.
Microsoft needs to go and redo the windows api at some point. Part of the reason why windows is such a terrible experience for developers is that it's so different from the posix-like apis available in macos and linux.
Maybe they should go all the way and make windows a layer on top of Linux.
I'd actually love if more OSes standardized around capability-based apis, like fuchsia.
This will probably never happen. The killer feature of Windows is backwards compatibility. It can run apps that are 30 years old. A less than stellar developer experience isn't as big of a concern for Microsoft.
We have seen them attempt to ease some of the pain with COM and .NET, but under the hood the old APIs always live - many remaining bug compatible to keep existing apps working.
If Microsoft didn't care about developer experience, they wouldn't be working on WSL. And as someone who interned at msft several times, I can say for certain they cared about developers.
Everything Microsoft is doing for developers at the moment (WSL, Terminal, VSCode, etc) is there because they need developers onboard to sell Azure services. That these things might be useful outside of Azure is a happy coincidence.
The Windows Terminal is just awful! Slow! Bad UI, feels like a touch-based UWP app. Has absolutely no concept of Windowing, everything just feels awful because they follow the UWP design guidelines!
That is what UWP was all about, due to the way it was mismanaged the whole Windows dev community said "No way!", and Project Reunion was born.
Plus we don't need the POSIXfication of Windows, WSL is there for those dev that buy Apple laptops instead of supporting GNU/Linux OEMs, so that they buy Windows laptops instead.
As unpopular as it was, I like the Win8? start menu for letting me neatly lay out and categorize all my frequently used programs using my full screen real estate.
Now they’re turning it into a single app list that utilizes only 15% of my screen real estate, and is now fully redundant with my task bar in function and utility. A horizontal iPhone Home Screen sitting on my desktop.
get ready to be dismayed with just about any decision any UI/UX people make. They like to design interfaces, good ones and bad ones, and they like it when people use them, so they make sure they're adopted and used. UX people don't give a crap about what you like. They like what THEY like. And they LOVE empty space and constant meaningless change.
I suspect that by the time this reaches "release" status, it will have had some feedback incorporated and a few small changes made as token gestures. Whoever designed this will allow nothing more than that, and they'll get their stupid, undeserved raise, and then things will calm down for a while, and sane changes will again be made.
It's really strange to me that there's so much antipathy for UX designers on HN when their job is literally the opposite of "liking what THEY like." Undeniably some people employed in the field disregard designing for accessibility and usability, but in that case you're not referring to UX designers, you're referring to bad UX designers.
the thing is UX people aren't even responsible for a lot of these messes. Look at Reddit and tell me that wasn't designed by some A/B-maximizing staple-counting corporate robot trying to bump up their "engagement" stat by 1/1000th of a percent. Their site is pretty much the parable of the Paperclip Maximizer AI. I refuse to believe any human was involved in their new design.
if ui/ux were based on anything scientific, each iteration would bring us closer to some ideal UI in a particular scenario.
we don't see that. we see wild changes which break large portions of spatial and muscle memory, over and over and over again.
we would stop seeing changes pretty soon if we measured and tested and honed in on the ideal UI for a given site or tool. changes happen MORE frequently and are more disruptive than ever, it seems.
Windows 8 Start Menu was pure crap. It had half of the features the Start Menu has now in Windows 10. Features like named groups, collapsible folders, tiny icons, transparent tiles etc. were added long after Windows 10 release. Not to mention the Start Menu in Windows 8 was bugged as hell, like not working at all if more than 256 "apps" (actually files in the Start Menu folder) were installed.
But yes, by now, the Start Menu of Windows 10 is the best of all Start Menus of all Windows versions. There're a few features that I miss from the old times (like the full "All Apps" list not supporting subfolders, or lack of the "tiny icon with long text" size), but overall it's never been better, especially for crazy people like me with hundreds of apps.
It'd be really stupid of Microsoft to replace something as massive as this, which has been improved over many years, with a joke of UI with more "breathing space".
The classic Win 95 bottom left Start button location has the advantage of being an 'infinite mouse target': rapidly flicking the mouse down-left always gets you there instantly because you can't overshoot the target, nor can you miss, neither to the left nor to the right. With the new centered placement you now must perform a slower aiming task.
Except if you installed Office and it added its keyboard language toolbarlet, then the taskbar becomes a few pixels higher once more and if you click the bottom row Windows moves you cursor up a few pixels and you still miss the button.
Microsoft just stinks at this, its all over Windows 10 as well with windows that are almost maximized to full screen, but for the top row. So if you click to the top right of the screen you close the window behind the one you wanted to close.
It's called Fort's law in the usability research. It is very basic usability principle. Not following it means designers are either idiots, as you learn this on the first university course, or make design for the sake of design.
Assuming you mean the linked "Fitt's law", I don't see how this would apply here. If the icon size and the distance are the same, this law wouldn't differentiate between the button being in the middle or on the left of the taskbar.
It does: if it's in the middle of the taskbar, the area is infinitely long only on one axis, you still have to move your mouse on the correct place on the X axis (as determined by the icon size).
If it's on the far left, the target area is infinitely large on both axes, just throw your mouse somewhere down left and you'll land on target 100% of the time.
Microsoft did not follow it when they designed Edge. They copied Chrome’s leftmost tab spacing, but didn’t copy how Chrome counts that as a clickable target for the leftmost tab.
Rounded window borders has to be one of the dumbest decisions ever. When I maximize windows, I don't want awful groups of 5 or 6 pixels in every corner showing the colours from what was under it. Same when I snap windows next to each other. Honestly I have a pretty strong negative reaction to just this.
Maximized windows have non-rounded corners. This has been the case for all themes designed by Microsoft since Windows XP when rounded corners were first implemented.
Some apps may override system chrome with pretty rounded nonsense and not bother with implementing non-rounded maximized state, or mess with proper maximization of windows, or you may install bad non-Microsoft skins. These are app-specific problems though, Microsoft can't do anything about it.
Well, this is Windows 8 all over again. A start menu that doesn't make any sense. Why did the separate out search from the start menu? Why get rid of the folders? It's gotta be organized somehow. File explorer now has way more whitespace (because touch).
If someone can get the designers to understand that Windows doesn't run primarily on touch devices, that would be great.
Maybe one day the designers will think of a way to automatically pin all your programs in a logical order. And what if you could access them by quickly and imprecisely moving your mouse to a corner, clicking only once and navigating through a tree of folders. Maybe programs could even specify subfolders if necessary. Perhaps it could be integrated with Explorer. Oh wait! I'm thinking of the Start Menu!
By the way, let's further destroy any remaining metaphors. The Start Menu shouldn't be connected to the Start button. There should be no indication whether clicking a button does something or surfaces more actions. And let's also force the user to assume the boundaries of a scroll page and make them scroll for no reason.
That's my rant, and here's an opinion of mine:
It's true some programmers don't care about UI but it's also true that some do. They are the ones most qualified to be designing these sorts of interfaces as there are typically parallels between abstractions in the code and abstractions in the UI. What I see over and over these days, at multiple companies, is a designer/etc. type gets involved, thinks about a concept in a very local context, and comes up with something that looks good there. If they don't trim the fat I'm convinced we're witnessing the death of Windows. But what will replace it?
Apart from the awkward centered dock, the screenshots look amazing. Would gladly try B00merang's skin [0] in a GNOME install, once it becomes available.
When my Windows 10 computer goes to sleep from inactivity, it first removes the monitors from the hardware list, so all of my active windows end up back on the primary screen when I log back in.
I've looked a good bit and not really found a fix for this blatant usability issue (I think it's worse with DisplayPort?).
Dell has some app that will remember which screen stuff is on and move it back, but it doesn't work very well, and it's jarring, and so on.
I wish the people building systems and interfaces really used them.
The window-snap layout menu is neat but I wonder why snapping features always seem to prefer screen halves/quarters. It is always more useful to me to have something like 1/3 or 2/3 and I think it should be there.
Also, there just isn’t anything attractive to me about the space-wasting layout of Ribbon in Explorer windows and I hope there are plans to fix it. (It’s still there in these screenshots.) It is easily one of the lowest content-to-chrome ratios I have seen.
I feel like it makes sense to be configurable to fit different resolutions and screen sizes. You might ewant to tile four windows across on a 32" ultrawide, but only two on a 15" laptop screen.
I pretty much hate the rounded corners thing, and I actually prefer Windows to Mac OS X and Linux these days. It is so unnecessary and yet creates UI problems for many applications that might want behavior incompatible with rounded corners, such as graphics applications that draw to a window. It also pretty much creates a border inside the window that you need to avoid.
I’m tired of things just getting changed by undisciplined designers. The other day, my Google Meet updated. I mentioned it and people asked how it was different. All I could say was I didn’t really know, it just looks different with different buttons, placement, and style. I needed to relearn where stuff was. What a pointless change.
>All I could say was I didn’t really know, it just looks different with different buttons, placement, and style. I needed to relearn where stuff was. What a pointless change.
I'm no UI/UX expert, but it's perfectly possible that the new layout is more intuitive to NEW users (I don't actually know, just consider that angle).
And that's not a bad thing either, making computing more accessible to significantly more non-tech people at the cost of slightly annoying experienced/power users is okay.
Rounded corners are an invisible mask on the application windows that the application has to go out of its way to detect, they existed in XP which these days is hailed as the pinnacle of design, how are they an issue? Apart from that it looks different from straight corners. How do you expect Microsoft to sell a new Windows version if it looks exactly the same as it did before?
I'm disappointed by what I'm seeing. We were promised a push for low end devices with Sun Valley, and instead we're getting elements of Windows 10X with HTML views everywhere and eye candy (both meaning more resource consumption).
I just want a simple OS that includes the essentials and gets out of my way. Every "app" and feature (like the stupid weather in the taskbar thing they just launched) should be opt-in and turned off by default. Damn, I really miss the simplicity and usability of Windows 2000.
106 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] thread[0]: https://twitter.com/goranmoomin/status/1404856884767592451
(I work at MS but not on Windows and I haven't tried 11 at all.)
I really hope that _replacement_ will be as feature complete and useful via keyboard as the current explorer. UWP UI components tend to be unnavigable via keyboard.
For example I really like old Win32 listview behaviour to just type in the item name to select it.
I really doubt that, Explorer is a big application with a ton of extensibility and features that apps rely on.
From Win95 to Gnome to KDE - they never became better. Just more colorful and more resource hungry. The new Firefox is a total shitshow. Windows 8 was a disaster (and 10 didn't get much better). What is wrong with having windows title bars which clearly show where the focus is? Why does everything has to be white?
From Windows 11 I expect the worst and I'm sure I will still be disappointed.
That’s a personal opinion — I for one appreciate the improved information hierarchy.
Yes of course, what are you expecting here? Do you think the UI designers of Firefox or Windows make their decisions based only on scientifically approved facts?
They probably have "UI scientists" who analyze and tell how to make the perfect UI but next year they are replaced by new experts and then we have to deal with the next best UI-trends.
> improved information hierarchy
What do you mean?
> Why does everything has to be white? Possibly for higher contrast > outdoor use > portable/touchscreen devices
I wonder if you can still replace the entire shell on Windows? I haven't done that for over a decade.
Apple used to make fun of it
Oh boy does Explorer look like a mess. I see that I still can't edit the sidebar to contain the items I want.
And that help icon is still present. I wonder if anyone ever actually clicked that.
Explorer is the least offensive part of Windows 10 IMO.
You say that as if it's a good thing. In my opinion an overhaul of Explorer is long overdue.
I just did. Guess what happened: It opened Edge and searched "help for windows explorer" in Bing!
Rounding corners and harmonizing colors is nice but it's not what I care about. I wish they'd demonstrate their awesome design skills by working out a reasonably intuitive UX to do nested sorting. And do so without losing any existing functionality.
Another example is Firefox. Almost every UX change in the past two years has made the browser noticeably worse and requires serious users to hack CSS under the hood to fix. They keep taking things away and rearranging deck chairs while not adding obviously missing functionality like a non-right-click menu UX to manage sidebar lists.
This is why I enjoy owning my own small software business. I can just build something great at the start, and sell it forever, without needing to worry about continuous improvement nonsense.
[1] https://github.com/microsoft/winfile
I use Linux 98% of the time so this particular assault on people's workflow doesn't affect me but I can hardly get around phone and browser updates (though recently I've found Vivaldi quite pleasant)
I'm certain they are losing a descent market share to Mac and Linux as is, especially their developers who are now creating applications for other operating systems and not just Windows. In a short time they've adopted containers, WSL, a new terminal with Linux-like functionality, etc.
Maybe they should go all the way and make windows a layer on top of Linux.
I'd actually love if more OSes standardized around capability-based apis, like fuchsia.
We have seen them attempt to ease some of the pain with COM and .NET, but under the hood the old APIs always live - many remaining bug compatible to keep existing apps working.
Also as a user of WSL, it's great, but I think it's goal was to keep people on their platform, which I think has worked out pretty well.
And extremely buggy as well!
I think there would be a future for a better system interface that has all upsides of the win32 api, and none of the downsides.
Plus we don't need the POSIXfication of Windows, WSL is there for those dev that buy Apple laptops instead of supporting GNU/Linux OEMs, so that they buy Windows laptops instead.
As unpopular as it was, I like the Win8? start menu for letting me neatly lay out and categorize all my frequently used programs using my full screen real estate.
Now they’re turning it into a single app list that utilizes only 15% of my screen real estate, and is now fully redundant with my task bar in function and utility. A horizontal iPhone Home Screen sitting on my desktop.
I can’t fathom the reasoning behind this.
I suspect that by the time this reaches "release" status, it will have had some feedback incorporated and a few small changes made as token gestures. Whoever designed this will allow nothing more than that, and they'll get their stupid, undeserved raise, and then things will calm down for a while, and sane changes will again be made.
we don't see that. we see wild changes which break large portions of spatial and muscle memory, over and over and over again.
we would stop seeing changes pretty soon if we measured and tested and honed in on the ideal UI for a given site or tool. changes happen MORE frequently and are more disruptive than ever, it seems.
But yes, by now, the Start Menu of Windows 10 is the best of all Start Menus of all Windows versions. There're a few features that I miss from the old times (like the full "All Apps" list not supporting subfolders, or lack of the "tiny icon with long text" size), but overall it's never been better, especially for crazy people like me with hundreds of apps.
It'd be really stupid of Microsoft to replace something as massive as this, which has been improved over many years, with a joke of UI with more "breathing space".
Instead of making the click target extend to the corner, MS chose to move the cursor a few pixels when a click happens in that little corner.
Microsoft just stinks at this, its all over Windows 10 as well with windows that are almost maximized to full screen, but for the top row. So if you click to the top right of the screen you close the window behind the one you wanted to close.
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/fitts-l...
If it's on the far left, the target area is infinitely large on both axes, just throw your mouse somewhere down left and you'll land on target 100% of the time.
Some apps may override system chrome with pretty rounded nonsense and not bother with implementing non-rounded maximized state, or mess with proper maximization of windows, or you may install bad non-Microsoft skins. These are app-specific problems though, Microsoft can't do anything about it.
If someone can get the designers to understand that Windows doesn't run primarily on touch devices, that would be great.
Not only whitespace, but also look at the size of the search, and path!
By the way, let's further destroy any remaining metaphors. The Start Menu shouldn't be connected to the Start button. There should be no indication whether clicking a button does something or surfaces more actions. And let's also force the user to assume the boundaries of a scroll page and make them scroll for no reason.
That's my rant, and here's an opinion of mine:
It's true some programmers don't care about UI but it's also true that some do. They are the ones most qualified to be designing these sorts of interfaces as there are typically parallels between abstractions in the code and abstractions in the UI. What I see over and over these days, at multiple companies, is a designer/etc. type gets involved, thinks about a concept in a very local context, and comes up with something that looks good there. If they don't trim the fat I'm convinced we're witnessing the death of Windows. But what will replace it?
[0] https://github.com/B00merang-Project
I've looked a good bit and not really found a fix for this blatant usability issue (I think it's worse with DisplayPort?).
Dell has some app that will remember which screen stuff is on and move it back, but it doesn't work very well, and it's jarring, and so on.
I wish the people building systems and interfaces really used them.
Also, there just isn’t anything attractive to me about the space-wasting layout of Ribbon in Explorer windows and I hope there are plans to fix it. (It’s still there in these screenshots.) It is easily one of the lowest content-to-chrome ratios I have seen.
I’m tired of things just getting changed by undisciplined designers. The other day, my Google Meet updated. I mentioned it and people asked how it was different. All I could say was I didn’t really know, it just looks different with different buttons, placement, and style. I needed to relearn where stuff was. What a pointless change.
I'm no UI/UX expert, but it's perfectly possible that the new layout is more intuitive to NEW users (I don't actually know, just consider that angle).
And that's not a bad thing either, making computing more accessible to significantly more non-tech people at the cost of slightly annoying experienced/power users is okay.
I just want a simple OS that includes the essentials and gets out of my way. Every "app" and feature (like the stupid weather in the taskbar thing they just launched) should be opt-in and turned off by default. Damn, I really miss the simplicity and usability of Windows 2000.
A chef who worked this way might “improve” bouillabaisse by adding ice cream to it.