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Comment by bpye | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know if I miss grey UIs, but I do miss the consistent design language and how easy it was to tell if something was a button, scrollable, etc.

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My settings on macOS (and partly iOS):

Accessibility -> Display:

  - Reduce Motion
  - Increase contrast
  - Differentiate without color
  - Show window title icons
  - Show toolbar button shapes

Appearance:

  - Show scrollbars: always

Keyboard:

  - Keyboard Navigation  (use space, tab, enter)

Aren't we at a pretty good place with that stuff, though? It's rare to see the abominations that used to roam, especially in the Flash era. Web designers generally follow mostly the same principles and design language. Windows is the only place where it's still a bit wild west.

>Aren't we at a pretty good place with that stuff, though?

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.

I use EMWM and a Motif theme for QT5 because of that. For GTK, a nice one it's 'backwater', good enough. Not Motif, but it blends well.

Check my post a few minutes ago to fix most problems. Also, install HazeOver to dim (or hide) inactive windows/apps.

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.

> On both Windows and macOS, windows are clearly delimited by drop shadows.

https://www.threads.net/@roblillack/post/DBYOuivOPFV

Looks like the terminal but can't zoom in on mobile, I guess UsabilityNightmares for threads too

IIRC it's the Calculator. :(

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.

It's shading, but the worst kind of shading.

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

Most of those are immediately apparent in at least Windows, macOS and GNOME.

>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.

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.

Also: offending Fitts's law and pseudomaximized windows.

And on top of all that is the terrible (IMHO) UX design pattern of getting rid of Apply/Cancel buttons, particularly in settings panes.

I don't think so. One example: on Windows, vscode changed the behavior of scroll bars -- something that has been a standard since the mid-80s. They changed the paging behavior and removed the end buttons. Unbelievable.

End buttons on scroll bars are a remnant from when scrolling was new. macOS has done away with them entirely. It's been decades since I interacted with one, so no, I don't miss them at all.

So, I'm not denying that the situation on Windows is inconsistent when you factor in UIs that Microsoft is trying desperately to update, but the design language around scrolling in modern UIs just doesn't seem to be a real problem (outside of accessibility, obviously, which needs special attention regardless).

> design language around scrolling in modern UIs just doesn't seem to be a real problem (outside of accessibility, obviously, which needs special attention regardless)

This is another difference between the mentality today vs. the mentality back then. Accessibility should not need "special" attention. It should be baked into the product. Enough users lack the ability to comfortably drag while clicking, that you don't want to first release a product that doesn't work for them, and then later fix it as a bug. You need to consider Accessibility from day one, during the early design. Just like you need to consider security vulnerabilities and user privacy from day one. They're not things that get tacked on at the end.

But this example isn't even about considering Accessibility holistically. The devs just flat out -removed- the scroll end caps from the product! This wasn't an oversight or some UX over-eager designer accidentally going overboard. They deliberately went out of their way to remove a standard control.

I don't know about Windows 11, but on Windows 10 end buttons remain standard. Do you also think that diverging from consistency with the host platform is acceptable?

mobile is an UX / accessibility abyss though xD

I use Edge as my browser, but I think Chrome is the same: The scrollbar is hidden while I'm not scrolling. There's an option to always show the scrollbar, but it's still this tiny little sliver that doesn't match the system scrollbar.

Someone at Google, and someone else at Microsoft, probably think this is good UX. I beg to differ.

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