

Coding Horror Strikes Again (RE: Windows 7 UI) - tdavis
http://www.yafla.com/dforbes/Coding_Horror_Strikes_Again/

======
michael_dorfman
I nominate _"Coding Horror is an entertaining, sometimes even educational
blog. Be careful diving in headfirst, though, as the technical depth is
generally so shallow you'll be hitting the bottom before you've even broken
through the surface tension"_ for Quote Of The Day.

~~~
silentbicycle
"I don't think you should get too worked up about what Atwood says. He's like
the Rachel Ray of computer science." - icey
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=400916>)

------
fr0z3nph0n31x
I don't really know when this flame war started but what I got out of Jeff's
article was that sometimes users don't realize something changed inless there
was a visual improvement and modification. Makes sense to me, why do you think
dreamweaver and photoshop look slightly different each version. The visual
adjustments indicate adjustments under the hood.

~~~
jwilliams
Also - there is something to be said for consistency... If you had an
Operating System where every app had a different L&F, and a different UI
metaphor - that would be a pain to use.

OS X is pretty good on this count (even for non OS apps). (To grossly
generalise,) Linux does well in some areas, very poorly in others. W7 bringing
it's UI into line seems like a good win.

~~~
potatolicious
Linux does _extremely poorly_. Every distro has its own UI guidelines (if they
have one at all) that very few projects follow. How can you blame them?
They're cross-distro apps that run just as well on Ubuntu as Suse - there's
absolutely no distro-specific UI.

So what you get is a mess of apps that each do what they think is the best
UI... except consistency is one of the keys to usability.

~~~
rbanffy
That's odd. I find Gnome apps mostly consistent and the occasional differences
are there mainly when it makes good sense to be different. Not to say there is
no occasional weird app that is less than usable, but, for the most of my
time, they all get high marks.

~~~
silentbicycle
Yes, BUT, __that's within Gnome__. Gnome is a unified desktop environment of
sorts. If you go outside of that (or KDE, XFCE, etc.), things are more ad-hoc.
Some things use GTK, some use Qt, some old stuff uses Athena widgets, etc.

~~~
rbanffy
While using Vista, one experiences programs that expose Vista controls. Some
others show XP-ish controls, while some others still look a lot like Windows
95/98/2K and, still, there are others that break away completely (Office 2007,
Nero) and present a completely different user interface with weird shaped
windows and menus that look like nothing else in the OS.

OSX is somewhat better organized, but, still, programs, even Apple ones
(Safari? iTunes) have a variety of looks that get presented without much
coherence. Apple is too guilty of this.

------
aneesh
> _"To many, Vista was 99% visual changes and 1% detrimental functional
> changes. But at least it brought the unwashed masses a calc.exe that had
> shaded buttons and a translucent title bar!

Conversely, a lot of the excitement about Windows 7, relative to Vista, is
that it fixes stuff "under the hood" (better, strong, faster.)"_

In reality, it's almost completely the opposite. Vista had a lot of under-the-
hood tweaks. I've installed the Win7 beta, and most of the noticeable changes
are in the interface.

~~~
potatolicious
To me, Vista was about visual changes that didn't matter, and visual non-
changes where they should have been changed. What's under the hood did not
affect most users.

The login screen was improved, but the XP one wasn't bad either. But for some
reason those god-awful balloon popup notifications were not scrapped like they
should have been ages ago. Your system tray will constantly plead for
attention for the most inane, least interesting news, like a puppy wanting
attention.

Great, thanks. Fix what ain't broke and don't fix what is.

------
ojbyrne
"Anyways, Windows 7 will invariably make a big impact, so I do plan on taking
a look at it soon. But I'm certainly not motivated because calc.exe got some
minor changes."

And suddenly I flash back to the hosting-reviews.com story.

------
fx
It's funny that how author simply ignores the massive underlying changes in
Vista such as UAC, integrity levels and outcome of all these changes. and
believes that Vista was mostly about GUI.

~~~
rbanffy
They didn't say that. They said it was mostly GUI with a few detrimental
changes under the hood.

While UAC and integrity levels may be a step forward, it's only so because
Windows XP is so horrible when you look it from under the GUI.

And, of course, it's quite unremarkable from atop the GUI.

~~~
andygeers
In fact, they didn't even say that - they said that many people _perceived_ it
as largely about GUI changes

------
seant
I've solved this problem once and for all with a permanent personal boycott of
coding horror. His content is a waste of my time.

~~~
andygeers
Wow, your time is obviously a lot more precious than mine! I find that even
things I disagree with or find 'shallow' are great for getting me thinking. I
found the debate itself about fundamental under-the-hood changes versus
superficial but easily noticed ones very fruitful, even if the article itself
wasn't perfect.

~~~
seant
I don't mind reading things I disagree with. But it's a waste of time reading
opinions that a trivial amount of thought reveals are obviously simplistic if
not downright wrong.

Just because I avoid this particular blog doesn't mean I don't get thought-
provoking discussion elsewhere. We all filter what we read. Repeated posts
that are mostly trollish traffic generators, prodding me into time wasting
discussions of no value (<http://xkcd.com/386/>), have convinced me to filter
this one.

