We have seen earlier that Microsoft’s designers are working on a new Start Menu for Windows 10 (not Windows 10X) and now Panos Panay has posted a video celebrating 1 billion Windows 10 installations which appears to confirm that the changes and more are on the way.
There’s finally hopefully going to be a modern replacement for Explorer, and context menus seem to be modern and thus consistent too. The already mentioned updated Stert menu is coming, too.
“not having any address bar”
I hope they will reconsider that.
Is it going to hang with empty window like other “modern” apps?
Of course it will.
flecht,
Man, I use that address bar all the top to copy/paste paths.
Instead of getting rid of it, they could do what dolphin did on KDE and transform into a text box on clicking it. This way it’s very unobtrusive until you need it.
Also, on windows I always enabled full paths. It’s so damn annoying when they don’t show paths and you have no way of knowing where you are. And what’s with this whitespace fetish? It’s happening, interfaces designed for mobile devices are taking over on computers and it’s making computers less efficient.
As long as I can still get at it by hitting F4. Of course, with this recent fetish against keyboard shortcuts in modern/metro/UWP/whatever-you-call-it-now apps, who knows.
100% me too & agree. The behavior actually reminds me of Trump – doing something stupid or intentionally making something worse, then wanting applause for fixing it or reversing the decision.
Are you trolling on purpose? This article had literally zero to do with politics. Get a life.
I only use Windows at work, where I use it for software development and automated testing. Personally I think Windows is getting a bit harder to use all the time. I loved Windows XP and Windows 7. Windows 8 was a complete disaster because I could find anything at all. Windows 10 also appears to be hiding/losing functionality that I need.
I would like to see a full address bar at all times, the old XP search side bar come back, one single control panel, and the ability to hide libraries and cloud integration.
Meh.
Another terrible whitespace-focused “modern” app designed by artists rather than HCI experts. I sure do miss Human Interface Guideline documents.
This new ui looks clean and pretty. I don’t know what you all are complaining about.
Probably because we’re worrying much more about UI usability than UI aesthetic ?
One man’s clean and pretty is another man’s f—ing ugly. I mean look at the size of those icons, FFS.
Give it a couple of years. And the same people who are bitching about this one, will be praising it when the “new” one comes out and wonder about the good old days. It’s always the same, and at this point is comical.
I occasionally see people make that claim. I never actually see anyone living it. The comedy is happening at a higher level – I heard it on the internet so it must be true so I’ll repost it as fact.
GNOME3 has been out for years and I still bitch about GNOME3. Because GNOME3 is still unusable, fugly garbage.
You certainly got a point with gnome 3.
Pretty? What’s pretty exactly?
A ton of white space?
Interface elements which need to be discovered because they are either cryptic or hidden?
Dull/grey confusing colors everywhere?
Here’s the file explorer UI that works for 99.999% of users of out there without any training: https://www.tug.ca/articles/Volume12/V12N2/W95Fig2_explorer.gif
Here’s the start menu that doesn’t suck: https://itkb.csulb.edu/download/attachments/8225061/worddav15c1c6983bcb7451b64b80d69bdb0e96.png
The new Windows Plasma Desktop looks great! /s
I get that everyone copies from everyone, but this looks like where Plasma has been in the recent 5.x series. I feel like Windows has been chasing the Plasma deisgn aesthetic for awhile now.
Looks a lot more like GNOME3 to me.
Unfortunately.
I’d have to disagree. That design aesthetic looks very Plasma Desktop. And I use Gnome in it’s stock form. It takes some getting used to, but once you do it feels totally natural. I’ve also used Plasma and it’s well done and feels much more like Windows than Gnome.
I agree that Plasma is very Windows-like, but no, the new huge icons, minimal widgets, and low-contrast design for Windows shown here is very GNOME3. GNOME3, especially but not exclusively in its stock configuration is “natural” in the same way that “natural scrolling” is “natural;” you can’t credibly use that adjective unless you prefix it with “un-“.
Each to their own, but I’m afraid to me, GNOME3 is unusable, fugly garbage. I shouldn’t have to change ten kinds of sh*t just to get it semiusable, or have to go through brainwashing so that I come out feeling there’s anything “natural” about possibly the worst UI design on Earth.
I concur that Gnome 3 is garbage in and out.
Greyish low contrast icons, buttons, everything – designed specifically to make your eyes bleed.
Absolutely unintuitive uniscoverable UI.
Tons of white space.
Must have been designed by people who have everyone else.
That new start menu takes up even MORE real estate than before. I’m not looking forward to this and the lack of an address bar in the File Explorer, as I like a detailed vies for files including extentions, not eye candy. Its counter productive for me.
I might seem to be trolling but I think this is all crap. In the rare occasions I have to use win10 these days I always launch everything with win+s and win+r and been using totalcommander for file management since it first came out. I shouldn’t care how these gui changes look, but still, I can’t not look at them 🙂 so I have to say, honestly, it looks awful. Lack of imagination, does not improve usability at all, in fact it seems to work hard on reducing it, and for f’s sake, either adopt kde/plasma entirely or stop picking random elements until you screw up everything. If I could just slap mate – well, even plasma – on top of win10, I would and I think it would improve win10’s usability a dozen times over. It really would. Stop screwing us over and spend time on debugging your system updates instead <— I have to say, I keep repeating this line for so many years now that it sometimes actually reminds me how old I am. Really. It might just take them another 20-30 years to get their update tech sh*t together.
Completely agree.
Gigantic UI elements, more whitespace, less features.
Sounds about right for the post-Windows 7 Microsoft. They never recovered from the impact mobile devices had.