
Windows 10 Design: Getting the balance right - mpalme
http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/04/29/windows-10-design-getting-the-balance-right/
======
brianpgordon
> We want to deliver an experience that flexes elegantly across a continuum of
> devices

And there's the punch to the gut. Just like with Windows 8, if you want to use
Windows 10 on the desktop your experience is going to be degraded by
sacrifices made for mobile. I was really hoping that Microsoft would learn
their lesson, since DirectX 12 is going to be exclusive to Windows 10 and I'm
going to have to upgrade.

They're killing Windows on the desktop (where they have 91% market share) for
the sake of Windows on mobile/tablet (where they have 2% market share). Again
and again I think how much more attractive Microsoft would be if they
decoupled their titanically-successful cloud/enterprise world from their
depressing, clueless consumer arm. Microsoft shareholders shouldn't be paying
for Nokia, the red ring of death, or the Windows Store.

~~~
Aleman360
The Windows 10 UI framework is resolution-independent and built-in controls
are responsive. App devs have everything they need to provide a good UI for
every device type. Or you can use HTML/JS.

disclaimer: I work on Windows 10

~~~
brianpgordon
Resolution independence is nice. Has Microsoft figured out how to scale legacy
apps on HiDPI displays for Windows 10? I found Windows 8.1 unusable on my
Retina MacBook Pro because so many apps didn't use the new fonts/rendering
framework (even many built-in Windows tools like the MMC) and text was
therefore horribly disfigured. I don't have such problems with any
applications anymore on OS X.

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joshuapants
Here's a bit of analysis by Paul Thurrot on this piece:
[https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/3226/microsoft-e...](https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/3226/microsoft-
explains-the-windows-10-design-changes)

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coldtea
> _We started by exploring concepts to push the boundaries of our design
> system, going from mild to wild variation, trying out new patterns and
> controls, new type treatment and using color in bold fresh ways._

...and we ended in the smallest possible variation from an unimaginative
merging of the classic start menu and the Metro style blocks...

~~~
joshuapants
That doesn't necessarily mean they made a wrong or otherwise bad decision,
though. In a way, being _too_ imaginative was what made Windows 8 perform
poorly.

~~~
coldtea
Too imaginative? Again there all they did was add some blocks, as the minimal
way to have touch targets for running apps and display info.

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dvcc
For some reason since the release of Windows 8, I have not been able to shake
this feeling that all Metro+ adaptations are unpolished. The original Windows
Phone release, although lacking features, felt like a product that was well
designed, with a clear philosophy. Since then, each adaption seems to bloat
just a bit more. Slowly going back to what had already existed, it's a bit
disheartening to watch.

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wahsd
I'm going to lose it if Win10 does not integrate automatic time zone
adjustment like OSX. What, does no one at MS mind having to manually change
the time zone with 7 clicks every time they travel? Why is it not just two
clicks to change the time zone at least? Maybe something like right-click
time, select from list of preset "favorite" time zones. That doesn't even
requite a time network, let alone being able to read time stamps on
surrounding wireless networks.

Or there is no Outlook global search or no message threading.

That's not new or challenging stuff, Microsoft. WTF?

Can you think of anything else basic that is annoying as heck about Windows?

~~~
cturner
PDF viewer. Chrome is the only non-awful PDF viewer I've found for Windows.
Requires third-party install.

Copying and pasting text causes weird characters to be carried around (e.g.
emdash), and I haven't found a reliable way to sanitise it.

Does notepad handle \n separated lines correctly yet?

Something about excel breaks the behaviour of the alt+tab stack. (if you have
multiple documents open)

Also, it's annoying the way that - by default - excel wants to open everything
in the same parent window. Why why why why why would you want it to behave
like this?!

Apps that minimise to the small-icon part of the start bar (next to time)
don't go to the back of the alt+tab stack.

A bunch of NTFS features are not exposed to the user interface.

Not quite in the spirit of what you're asking, but I think Windows file
locking is a bad design. You can't copy that excel file (in pscp), because you
have it open in excel.

It'd be useful to be able to mute an application from the OS interface, and to
see an indicator for audio activity ion something like the task manager.

No strong answer to sshd.

No TCP-check tool in the standard install. Why on earth did they get rid of
telnet in the standard build? If anything we needed a better TCP-check
mechanism - they got rid of the only trustworthy one that was in.

Similarly with shell scripting - they actually neutered a bunch of features
that were in NT in subsequent versions. Previously you could (just) ship a
single bat file that would act as a self-installer for binary content. I
imagine they disabled this to discourage malware. But - how is a bat
particularly different than an exe?

I think it's a shame Windows doesn't ship with devtools out of the box, also.
If it came with devtools, would be one less hurdle to getting newbies into
programming. Offer good tools at every level - an assembler, a C compiler,
c#-level tools, javascript debugger, visual basic. Microsoft's grew from a
successful devtool company.

They should bundle a python API to windows and a recent version of python
also. Make it easy to create and ship python on Windows. A community would
just grow around this, with no further effort from them.

Would be good if you could choose a filesystem that had strong performance
with git. Either make git+NTFS fast, or else offer a well-support FS that git
does want to work on.

Weak scheduler, init mechanisms. (from user perspective)

There's no nice IPC mechanism available for casual development. Cmd kind of
has pipes but they're horrible.

This is kind of evil, but if I was Microsoft I'd be tempted to make Access
more accessible (i.e. ship with base office). As soon as users hit a certain
level of scale they'll find themselves needing SQL Server. Access has huge
lock-in to the Microsoft world. Much like the way a manager will create a
microsoft word or excel document, and then suddenly you find yourself stuck
with sharepoint everywhere - ugh.

~~~
pjmlp
UNIX file locking is broken. Requiring all processes to play along. It
suffices one process to ignore fcntl calls to corrupt files.

All non-POSIX OSes with proper file locking use the same approach as Windows
does.

You can install telnet via the add features option from the control panel. Who
wants to have such insecure program available anyway?

Commercial UNIX systems were know to charge at least $2000 for their SDKs,
something that made many join the effort to improve GCC back in the day.

Windows NT family has had multi-threading since the day one, even at the
kernel level. Which took ages for UNIX systems to catch up.

The only UNIX that matches Windows IO completion ports is Solaris.

The init is so bad that part of its design has been copied by UNIX systems,
instead of using spaghetti init scripts.

~~~
nandhp
> You can install telnet via the add features option from the control panel.
> Who wants to have such insecure program available anyway?

There's no security problem with the telnet client, unless you're using it to
log into remote hosts without encryption. But OP, and presumably many other
people (like me), use telnet as a simple TCP client for troubleshooting. On
Linux, one can use netcat (though I never remember to type nc, and always try
telnet first), but of course Windows doesn't come with netcat.

~~~
pjmlp
There are better GUI tools for such purposes.

~~~
cturner
It's important to have something to be installed by default, and not require
admin privileges. This is what you need need if you're supporting people over
the phone. That is - something dependable that you can use to check that they
don't have TCP obstacles for whatever they're trying to do.

Telnet-for-Windows was a terrible interface for this purpose (if it succeeds,
you get left at a meaningless command prompt) but it was possible to talk
people through that, and that was enough. (You can't trust the proxy
configuration of their web browsers.)

~~~
pjmlp
Back when I was doing UNIX (big boys UNIX, not GNU/Linux) I remember there
were lots of tools that weren't available on those systems.

And even the common ones lacked lots of useful options from the GNU land.

All comparisons of GNU/Linux distributions with Windows, have the fallacy of
comparing a distributions with an OS targeted originally for consumers.

Normal users just don't go telnet into their local networks.

Server editions usually have the proper services in place.

------
mhomde
I'm a bit skeptic about the direction of Windows (Phone) 10. It's not that its
bad, it's just that it isn't great and they've missed the opportunity to but
in substantial UX improvements.

Also having the same interface for Phone/tablet/desktop is a dangerous idea if
pushed to far, jack of all trades, master of none. Of course they should share
some common ground but they risk sacrificing an tailored experience for each
on the altar of standardization.

They haven't made any greater strides in addressing thumb ergonomics on larger
screens. Sure at least the buttons are at the bottom again but to make it
truly next generational they should have utilized more gestures.

My guess is they don't dare make Win 10 "too different" for risk alienating
developers from other platforms and "mainstream users". That might be the safe
choice but it doesn't make for greatness. It feels more like design by
committee.

There was certainly room for improvement, the old interface was a little too
stark, but they're changing course instead of refining.

I also call bullshit on "people are circles" argument. The "old" metro was
more about full bleed pictures which IMO is more timeles, the circles thing is
just being influenced by a current design trend and makes WP less unique. Each
to their own I guess.

~~~
freehunter
I hate gestures, especially on larger screens. It 100% ensures I will need to
be using two hands, at which point I might as well just have a button.
Occasionally I'll try to swipe and find there is a smudge on the screen or
maybe the humidity has gone up and my hands are a bit more grippy and whoops,
there goes the entire phone out of my hand. On something the size of an iPhone
5, it's fine. On an iPhone 6+ (where you have less of a hold on the phone one-
handed anyway), that's a big deal.

~~~
mhomde
That depends on what kind of gestures you use and where. The closest edges for
instance are more easily accessible. Also gestures doesn't necessarily mean
swiping.

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jszymborski
"People aren't squares"... ergo they're circles?

~~~
pavlov
If you ask a 4-year-old to draw a head, it's likely that the base shape is a
circle.

~~~
coldtea
Head, people.

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paulojreis
UX-wise, this an extremely basic (to avoid saying _lousy_ ) article. I ended
up with the impression that their source of data is pretty much the feedback
from beta users (which is great but highly skewed - to the technocentric pole
- data).

I would like very much to know more on how they are working with end-users.
Are they using ethnographic methods? Observing how Windows is used in the real
world? How are they addressing cultural diversity? Are they having focus
groups, interviews? What kind of telemetrics they gather? What have they
discovered from their huge user base (and huge funding for their design
project)?

This would be much more interesting - even to the layman, I think - than empty
phrases such as, say, "people aren't squares".

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fredgrott
Or: Killing WindowsDesktop..WE HOPE YOU DO NOT NOTICE

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ksec
Are there no Redesign of Windows Media Player in sight? I love MPC-BE, but i
see no reason why Microsoft cant improve their Media Player.

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kmfrk
I love the vertical menu bar in landscape mode.

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hubridnoxx
Big fan of all caps bold headers.

