Windows 8 kills off “dated and cheesy” Aero | Hacker News Reader

Windows 8 kills off “dated and cheesy” Aero

extremetech.com

23 pointsevo_939 comments

I have a lot of time for the concept behind Metro- that we should move beyond trying to represent real-world concepts in the digital space, and instead should make a "digital native" experience. It remains to be seen how it works out, but just playing with the Win8 preview, the UI is considerably better than Apple's "leather-bound" address book.

I understand what you say, even if I don't agree, but does this apply to the Windows 8 desktop? (Optional) transparency and gradients are not more or less digital than solid colors, so far this looks like a skin of Windows 7 to me.

Of course the changes are going to be evolutionary, incremental. MS probably has the Longhorn fiasco in fresh memory. Bringing revolutionary changes is extremely prone to failure.

Windows 8 is a huge, revolutionary change though. They completely scrapped the start menu, start button, traditional software delivery, etc.

It was more that the transparency and gradients were attempting to replicate 'glass'. Why? What purpose does that serve? For a long time people cited user familiarity (I'm sure why Apple has made the skins they have) but I think it's time to move beyond that.

It was more that the transparency and gradients were attempting to replicate 'glass'. Why? What purpose does that serve?

In the case of Vista, it was to show off the snazzy new GPU window compositing. In Window 7 it was inertia.

Ah, no, but no practical purpose from the user's point of view. In fact, it actually looks pretty gaudy. I'm glad someone at Microsoft agrees.

But does anyone really think of glass? How would glass help with familiarity? Lots of hardcore digital people always had their terminals set to transparent. Microsoft (following Apple^) did the same and add a blur for usability reasons.

If MS suddenly declared that the solid blue shapes in Windows 8 are solid-colored origami paper, would the same interface suddenly be worse because it was skeuomorphic?

(^ I'm not talking about the mirror Dock in 10.5, but about the transparent modal dialogs with a blur in 10.5+(?), and the old 10.4 Dock.)

Yeah, it's interesting to see Microsoft actually moving the UI forward in a real way. The whole "authentically digital" thing might be too high-brow for consumers though. While Apple has consolidated on what works well for them and their users recenty, Microsoft actually seems to be looking to the future. I have to respect that, even if I still like the Apple stuff better than the Metro UI so far.

I find the metroized Destkop a bit reminiscent a Whistler era, which I liked a lot before the final bump'n'shine XP theme was introduced.

flat, square, whitespace, larger typeface [sometimes]

http://www.winsupersite.com/content/content/127352/reviews/w... http://www.winsupersite.com/content/content/127352/reviews/w... http://www.crystalxp.net/news/img/38.gif http://www.winsupersite.com/content/content/127352/reviews/w... http://www.internews.hu/pic/cikkek/whistler_b2410/2410per_00... http://www.winsupersite.com/content/content/127352/reviews/w...

The source article- http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/18/creating-the-w...

"We do not view the desktop as a mode"

...Isn't that what it is, in Windows 8?

No, it's more of an Application. Like the Browser is an app which is a portal to applications, so too is the Desktop in Windows 8.

What's the difference to a user since (afaik), the desktop is the only app shown when it's being worked with?

I really wish they'd get rid of that awful 'ribbon' in the file explorer. It's very practical in Office applications, but for a file explorer it's just a bit too much, imo.

The ribbon can be hidden so it's not too bad. The interesting part is the reason why they chose to introduce it in explorer. There was a Microsoft study (can't find the link atm unfortunately) which showed the majority of users couldn't cut and paste or 'select all'. The Ribbon is meant to expose more functionality to the end user which I guess us keyboard shortcut users take for granted.

I have difficulty believing such studies, especially since I could copy & paste files in Windows Explorer, using the mouse right-button shortcuts, ever since my parents got me a computer in 1995. I also do not live in the Valley or in the US for that matter, and having non-technical friends down here is the norm, rather than the exception. I have never seen one that could not cut/copy/paste files in Windows Explorer.

The only thing I noticed is that some people don't understand the difference between "cut" and "copy", or why the mouse drag&drop sometimes produces the former, while other times it produces the later. But these are separate things entirely that can't be solved by ribbon shortcuts.

Yes, but can your /parents/ copy & paste? Mine use computers but barely understand files. Folders are beyond them.

Having worked at a library providing computer tutoring and assistance, I can absolutely believe such studies. You say "using the mouse right-button shortcuts" - the vast majority of people don't know these exist, or if they do, no idea how to use them (or what a "context-sensitive" menu is). When I guide my grandmother through something over the phone, I often have to specify whether she needs to click or double-click something - which I find so obvious now as to not even think about. Go figure.

I did not know this, that's reassuring so thanks :)

I can also believe that most users can't do select all or stuff like that; I've seen far too many regular folk copying one file at a time.

It'll be interesting to see if it achieves that goal. In my experience of watching my parents interact with a computer too many buttons translates to "complicated and scary". I think a more reserved approach might have been a bit better than the nuclear option of bombarding the UI with as many buttons as there are options in the current menu.

I think this is the article you were thinking about.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/26/improvements-i...

Like in MS Office applications you can hide the ribbon in the new Explorer.

I certainly never felt that way about it.

Windows XP, on the other hand, felt "dated and cheesy" out of the box. (Perhaps not dated, at the time, but cheesy certainly. It always felt like a fisher-price UI unless you used the brushed-metal green/silver theme.)

The default theme that shipped with XP was awful, but there was a massive skinning community that constantly produced superior designs. You just had to know to look for them.

While I didn't find Aero "dated and cheesy", I found it very confusing and cluttered (in its default configuration). Because the window decorations were almost completely transparent, different (partially overlapping) windows kinda melted together visually. Distinguishing active windows was also unnecessarily difficult imho. I usually toned the transparency down to almost completely opaque, which helped usability. And of course there was the infamously thick window borders.

So I for one welcome the change.

Unfortunately, still no where near as good-looking as the Win 8 concept posted on The Verge.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/24/2822891/windows-desktop-ui...

IMO, it's Metro done right. Microsoft's version of Metro seems to be blindly designed according to a spec, instead of with a natural and intuitive understanding of visual design. For example, when I see a screenshot of Metro, text just seem to be all over the place with no rhyme or reason. Like most modern designs, I'm sure they're using a grid, but I'm just not sure it's the correct grid. Also, solid colors are harsh, which is why designers only use it to evoke a very specific reaction. That's fine for a "Swiss" typographic poster, but as a foundation for a user interface, it's simply wrong.

I rather liked Aero and I never really found it to be cheesy. Compared to Win95 or XP it actually looked great! And this is what MS is about to do, go back to the "old" look without adding any value to it (and I have a hunch it won't be easier on the system resources too).

Microsoft isn't going 'back to the old look'. They're moving toward a simpler, flatter, more "authentically digital" look. The Windows 8 desktop doesn't look like the Vista desktop, but it looks even less like XP or Windows 95.

I think this will be a good thing if it means there will be a little more cohesiveness between metro and the legacy desktop. It still feels like two different operating systems mashed together.

This is odd, only because every windows version since 2000 I have removed all skins and fluff. Optimizing the interface for best performance.

But I know I'm not the targeted audience.

i liked aero... :(

Me too. I use Mac fulltime now, but I really like Aero Glass.

Of course they remove one of the actually good things.

>>The second answer is much more direct: Microsoft is simply trying to save on CPU and GPU cycles, thus making Windows 8 devices faster and more power efficient. <<

I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft uses these saved CPU/GPU cycles for some other wasteful processes, resulting in a bloated, processor-intensive OS akin to Vista and Windows 7. I have always had bad experiences using "modern" Windows builds on old hardware.

Oh, that's weird; an OS that is built primarily for normal PC users doesn't run well on dated hardware? Who would have thought? Windows 7 is less bloated than the version of Linux I just installed (and removed) On my new desktop.

Out of curiosity, which Linux distribution?

You can probably guess; Ubuntu. I wanted to check out Unity. I ended up going with Mont though. Windows 7 doesn't come bloated as far as I can tell, but I built the PC myself and installed an OEM version, so no third party bloat ware. I realize this is atypical.

Ubuntu isn't bloated, really. It certainly has less bloat than Windows 7. However, it does feel very bloated when you initially install it, simply because it has to fetch so much stuff from the network.

How are you defining bloat? Base install size? RAM usage? Startup speed? System responsiveness? Pre-installed applications?

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