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This takes too many design cues from so-called "modern" web and mobile apps. What's with the lack of scrollbars in all the windows/dialogs? I can't tell that content has been truncated when a dialog opens up with the overflow ending on whitespace between two elements. There's also no fade or shadows, so everything is just suddenly cropped where a window ends. It's not even clear which elements have their own viewports and which are scrolled together (so I missed extra elements in the settings toolbar/toolbox on the left). All the windows open up very small (too small to fit their content) even though there's room for bigger.

(All tested on the online demo here: https://web.dahliaos.io/#/ )

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The lack of scrollbars on desktop is a modern trend that annoys me

Desktops aren't short of width, so why try and hide the scrollbars all the time, but programs seem happy to pack everything into navigation bars at the top where height is limited.

The functionnality of a scrollbar is provided by the touchpad, mouse with wheels , pageUp/Down and search tools so I have never missed it.

Your touchpad or mouse wheel doesn't tell you where you are in the document. Your touchpad or mouse wheel doesn't allow you to immediately, without any delay, go to the start or end of a document / list / etc., and Home/End keys are often not accepted by modern touch-oriented interfaces to allow for it. Neither your touchpad nor your mousewheel allow precise and quick navigation to a specific point in a long document. All of these missing features make me frequently feel lost in modern UIs.

I don't know a single UI accessible with a keyboard that do not accept Home/End.

What about “middle”? That’s the point of the bar, you can go to any place with a click. And you can see where you are.

PC monitors don’t lack width, these changes ate just blindly applying mobile trends to desktop while disregarding their differences.

Theres is much innovation to be done in desktop UI design, but blindly following mobile is not the way. Mobile screens are usually smaller and have the opposite high:width rate, and you use touch vs mouse+kb. Different design patterns should apply.

Removing scroll on mobile makes sense, few usage on a very limited width. On desktop width is a commodity that is mostly left unused.

In some programs those keys will move the cursor to the start/end of a line of text horizontally (text editors, web browser when you type in a form, etc.).

On those very same program (vim/neovim) come to my mind there are specific shortcuts to go to the start/end.

Do you know that not all keyboards have home/end?

My XPS might as well not because they're placed horribly, MacBooks don't, and my Chromebook doesn't have the physical keys but maps them to hotkeys that some applications use so the behavior is inconsistent. My tablet and smartphone keyboards also don't have a way to send home/end with their native keyboards.

Didn't know that, never came accross one. Not sure I understand the reasonning about adapting an UI for shitty hardware though. Vote with your wallet damit.

On macOS:

Home: Fn + Left Arrow

End: Fn + Right Arrow

It's also a visual indicator of where you are on the page. How far through you are, and how much is "left" to go.

It's annoying on phones too. I have a modern phone with a small display, and I've occasionally missed options in dialogs because of zero visual feedback that there is more content.

If I'm lucky, then a line of text will be half cut off and I can tell that way. Otherwise it's impossible.

This is why I adopted the habit to try to scroll in many places. Just to see whether there might be something else.

Well they did get at least one thing right: actual discreet window title bars with usable controls.

Hopefully removable. I find window title bars to be a waste of space.

But how do you know what application you're looking at without a title bar? /s

You’re joking about the lack of a title to tell you the name of the app, but not knowing which window has focus (thanks to titlebar shading) is a real problem. Microsoft completely disabled the coloring of the active window in Windows 10, then caved and re-added it as an off-by-default option. I can’t live without it on.

And in taskbar is the same issue. It's like some people like to suffer when using window systems.

Well, in my admittedly limited experience of Windows 10, sometimes windows that look active, down to the blinking cursor, don't actually have the focus. So if all windows look the same, maybe people will get in the habit of clicking 10 times where they want to type, just to be sure.

I'm thinking mostly about the UAC window asking for a password.

I don't really understand why you would want to click to have focus on a window.

Isn't that how focusing windows on Windows works? As far as I know, it doesn't have focus-follows-mouse.

Windows 10 oddly introduced focus-follows-mouse for scrolling (scroll wheel or touchpad) but keyboard input remains directed to the last-clicked window/element. It’s not a bad compromise (because primarily keyboard-centric users might not care where the mouse is and it lets you do things like scroll a background document for research while typing in a foreground document without losing the focus so long as you don’t click).

I don't know I don't use it.

I don’t understand why you’d want to risk typing into the wrong window or add such a cognitive burden (“where is my pointer now?”) with every keystroke rather than have the window that receives keyboard input be very clear and consistent. At least, as a heavy keyboarder, that’s how I see it.

I use a thin high contrast border on my focused window.

> I find window title bars to be a waste of space.

Here's a possibly controversial take: why couldn't we do the opposite of mobile "notches" but for the elements of title bars that actually matter?

So instead of having 20% of the window width be taken up by the title (which might as well act as a draggable window handle or allow opening window menu) and another 10% by the action buttons with 70% remaining empty, why couldn't we simply cut out the 70%? Sure, that might complicate the UI of some apps and you'd certainly need to consider how to not create awkward layouts (allow the titlebar to automatically be hidden until hovering over the edge of the window, like some panels do at the edge of the screen in XFCE and other *nix DEs), but surely we can have the best of both worlds?

That's basically what apps like Chrome that have "no titlebar" (at least on macOS) do. They incorporate the title bar controls into the window itself which allows them to render other things (like tabs) on the same row.

It’s inherently non-standard/non-unified though, and requires each app designer/developer to figure out how they’re going to do it (or more likely, how they’re going to screw it up). A slim, system-provided title bar avoids all that. Seems like a small and very acceptable price.

Does BeOS/Haiku do something like this (screenshots at https://lowendmac.com/2001/user-interface-mac-vs-beos/)?

Actually the elements popping out upwards is a pretty good approach as well!

Now, it might be a bit problematic when the windows are aligned with the top of the screen (in which case either the window would need to be moved or the title elements would just overlap the contents and be expanded downwards, much like tooltips would).

But yes, that's definitely one way to go about it!

Agreed with the scrollbars - they should absolutely be there. I would also like to see a light-theme version, at least I need to squint a lot more with this dark theme.

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