Going past windows 7 the trend moving from graphical/textured UI chrome to minimalist/hidden elements, scrollbars has been one of the big 'casualties' for me. When it's just a solid gray there's very little to distinguish it from the content, and it doesn't help readability if the bar is meant to show what proportion of the whole document you're viewing. As much as some people hated it, going back further to winxp where they had color in the UI made contrast better again (and you could customize the theme in the win3.x/9x windows), or third party themes if you were prepared to lightly mess with OS files.
It's kind of hard to tell how real your problems are without knowing which environment you are talking about, but it would be helpful to know where you have encountered these problems. I haven't seen them in any of the apps or OSes I regularly use (Windows, macOS).
On both Windows and macOS, windows are clearly delimited by drop shadows. You have to go out of your way as a malicious app developer to explicitly disable that.
I haven't interacted with a scrollbar in decades. Its purpose in 2024 is a visual cue.
It's the minimize/maximize/close buttons. Inactive windows draw them ever so slightly in gray compared to active windows drawing them in black. Calculator has them in black.
As for Powershell/Terminal, assuming the screenshot wasn't timed deliberately, there is no caret which implies it's not the active window.
The new windows GUI framework used for the windows on the screen seems to be worse in this regard, as normal windows get their titles greyed out which is quite obvious and is a more natural place to look at than the control buttons
>On both Windows and macOS, windows are clearly delimited by drop shadows.
I disable window shadows with extreme prejudice because I find them visually painful. They obscure something I should be able to see without meaningfully highlighting what I want to see, which instinctively strains my eyes.
What the sincere hell was the problem with a simple, thick window border?
>Its purpose in 2024 is a visual cue.
Yes. They are practically non-existent in most environments.
Hell no:
I can't tell what is and isn't a button.
I can't tell specific areas apart from others (no borders/shading).
I can't see or use the scroll bar, assuming one is even present.
I can't tell where a window begins and ends.
I can't tell which window is active.
I can't tell what a window is for.
I can't tell what the fuck these Nouveautian Hieroglpyhs from Uranus (aka icons) mean.
I could go on, but I digress: Are we in a pretty good place? Hell no.