Microsoft’s Fluent Design System threatens to make Windows look good | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft’s Fluent Design System threatens to make Windows look good

arstechnica.com

33 pointsnnx20 comments

Many of the apps shown have a humongous banner element that does nothing and take up nearly a third of the screen space. This might be unintentional and not part of the design language, but the fact that it wasn't caught before press release doesn't fill me with confidence. That and the fact that every single MS UI has sucked really bad and in very obvious ways ever since XP.

Some first party windows app currently do this on the front page (front window?) but once you get to the content (e.g. open an email) they adapt by minimizing the dead space.

Works pretty good but must be really hard to code.

Giant banners draw the eyes to exciting things. It's not really "dead" space: it's alive space that brings the eye to what's happening or what's new/fresh or what's about to go on.

You see it plenty on the web.

Just like you often see on the web when used this way, the spaces change as you interact with them: they disappear as you navigate deeper into the site, they shrink as you scroll a bit down, etc.

(They aren't that complicated to code in either XAML or HTML/CSS, the two markup languages used for this.)

This is a bad idea. Not only is it useless and take up a lot of space, it now moves as I interact with the page, further distracts me from the content that I'm interested in. Especially egregious on mobile if it pops back up again when I scroll up, then sort of bobs up and down if I press and hold at just the right spot.

>it's alive space that brings the eye to what's happening or what's new/fresh or what's about to go on.

That's the misalignment of interest right there. The devs would love to have their users focus on "what's new", i.e. ads and self promotion. The users give on average zero shits and just want the functionality they came for. I guess we all know which side MS is on.

It's not necessarily a bad idea, but it is something that needs to be used responsibly. Obviously not every app/website needs something like, but they can be interesting when used to good effect.

Certainly I know examples I like and examples I hate, and I think everyone has a different preference, but it's not the worst design tool on the block.

«The users give on average zero shits and just want the functionality they came for.»

Groove also uses it to front-and-center feature artist information and album art of the currently playing song or some album you are looking at it. There are links in those banners to start playing something or otherwise interact with it.

As a design tool it's neither good nor bad, user hostile nor user friendly: it's merely an option in the palette of design choices for an app/website and its up to the designer how they want to use.

>Groove also uses it to front-and-center feature artist information and album art of the currently playing song or some album you are looking at it.

Front-and-center is not the way I would describe it. They're squashed to the left, leaving huge swaths of empty.

Notice how the actual functional buttons in the banner are tiny, have no frame around it and no hint that they're clickable. They're tucked away in a corner and almost an afterthought. Also, definitely not touch-friendly. (I suppose that paradigm is dead now.) Looking closer, I especially like how there is an 'additional functions' button at the end even though there's plenty of space to put more buttons.

Most of the space is just wasted on a pointless gaussian blur that would get old real fast.

Also note how the actual functionality (in the article picture for groove) is to display icon lists of albums, and there are certainly more than can be fit on the screen. The humongous banner comes at the cost of reduced functionality.

>As a design tool it's neither good nor bad, user hostile nor user friendly

The way tools are implemented and marketed can either push third-party devs towards user friendliness, or away from it, e.g. by making certain choices easier/harder or by promoting certain reference designs. The message I'm seeing so far is definitely not towards encouraging user-friendly UI.

They need to reserve that space. Without banners, their would be no where to put banner ads.

Did you even read the article?

> One example of this is collapsing, dynamic headers, which are, again, common already on the Web. The Groove Music app already uses such a header; when viewing a particular artist, the header is shown with biographic text and a large picture. Scrolling down through the artist's songs shrinks the header, removing the text and using a small picture.

See other discussion in this thread.

Can only wish they have their ducks in a row with regard to trademarking the design language.

That said, hope there is less wasted space than in the material design card motif.

And as always, just glad no one is taking a cue from Kai's power tools's design language.

Cards are easy to implement in design. The bordlerless MS-stuff might be more problematic for less simmilar blocks (e.g. more dynamic text-length and not all details always shown)

From what I've heard they definitely did the pattern search before arriving at "Fluent" this time because they didn't want a repeat of the "Metro" problem. (Rumor has it that the project name of "Neon" also didn't pass a trademark search, though I'm not sure they would have contemplated that as a final name because I'm not sure it fits well with what they've released.)

I must be in the minority but I think the design looks too empty. I really don't understand why so many UI designs fear putting in some depth or color to demarcate where certain elements begin/end. Mind you, I prefer subjectively uglier UIs like Windows 95/98's or Mac OS 9. I just think GUIs should look like something even if that something doesn't exist anymore.

But is it going to be applied consistently to all MS products like material design at Google?

From your fingers to Nadella's eyeballs, but Microsoft will probably move 65% of its stuff to this style before moving on to the next big thing.

I think it looks cool, but I'd want to see Computer Management done in this style in a way that doesn't aggravate administrators. Mockups are nice, but I'd like to see a design language that works just as well for those who have information-dense needs.

65% randomly distributed sounds about right. Whenever I am using windows 10 I am surprised that they still haven't cleaned up the control panel.

I think they've passed the point where the majority of things to control are now easily accessible in Windows 10's Settings app. Certainly I've switched my habits to start there when looking for a setting and very rarely ever see the Control Panel, but I know it will take a while for everyone to pick up that habit.

It's getting better but I don't understand why they still haven't converter everything. It can't be that hard to rewrite some dialogs.

You see all the developers out there complaining that Microsoft will take ancient Win32 from their cold dead hands and complaining about how hard it will be to port their darlings to UWP?

It took a decade to develop all the applets in the Control Panel in the first place. While I don't think the conversion is as hard as some developers like to complain it is, it's certainly not as easy as just clicking a few boxes in a 1998-style Wizard to convert from old dialogs to new ones.

> ... consistently ... like material design at Google

Even if you limit material design to the top bar and the hamburger menu I would say only half of Googles own apps correctly follow the MD design recommendations.

Case in point: in some google apps the hamburger menu slides out below the top bar, in some above it.

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