Spring is all about new beginnings, but it could already be lights out for Windows' Fluent Design Windows has sported different looks across the decades – translucency in Vista and 7, and flat design in 8 and 10 – each driven by different guidelines and ideas about pixel placement. As we head into the third iteration of Microsoft's Creators Update, Spring, Microsoft is pushing "Fluent Design". The Fluent Design System is …
Whilst I agree with everything written, I should say that after playing with the very latest W10 build, for the first time since W10 was released I'm genuinely impressed. Actually works and window dressing which was sorely overdue has made a positive impact.
Shame it's practically irrelevant
Good news that flat is dead. Flat with depth is an obvious nod to googles material design. If you didnt happen to have a windows 3.1 background, flat ui was like where have all the buttons gone? All them millions of pixels and none used to help you work out what was clickable or swipeable or prodable.
This post has been deleted by its author
....."When we talk about why we're upgrading the Windows 10 install base, why is that upgrade free? MS CFO asked during a meeting with Wall Street analysts. These are all new monetization opportunities once a PC is sold. Microsoft's strategy is to go low on consumer Windows licenses, hoping that that will boost device sales, which will in turn add to the pool of potential customers for 'Advertising'".....
....."CEO Nadella has referred to the customer revenue potential as 'lifetime value' in the past -- and did so again last week during the same meeting with Wall Street -- hinting at Microsoft's strategy to make more on the back end of the PC acquisition process. The more customers, the more money those customers will bring in as they view 'Ads'".....
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2917799/microsoft-windows/microsoft-fleshes-out-windows-as-a-service-revenue-strategy.html
Cut that out. That quote isn't relevant here. It's a useful and revealing quote, which is why we all read it when they said it. Those who didn't see it have seen it in these posts on the comment threads. It's somewhat relevant to things that discuss microsoft's data slurp. It would be irritating then, too, because we have seen it already, but it's even more so here because their data slurp is not related to how and where they put stuff on the screen. No relevance at all. Also, you're making us dislike you. Please stop.
I can see from the downvotes that my dislike for the repetition of this is not shared by others. However, I would like to hear from one of those, if they can, why it is relevant here, as there isn't any privacy or security-related element in this post? I'm not trying to say the spirit of repeating this quote is wrong, but that it still seems irrelevant to the topic at hand. I also have seen it on about twenty other windows 10 posts, as well, and despite my minority-of-one status, I am willing to not see it on each proceeding post as well.
You're right, it's not relevant here other than it related to Windows 10 and Microsoft's current practices.
This said, as a developer and as a user, I now HATE Microsoft with all my heart because of all they have been doing lately to both groups. So, from this perspective, I won't downvote repetitive posts like that (didn't upvote it either, perhaps I should).
All I can say is that it is a shame there isn't really a viable alternative to Windows (Apple is even worse than Microsoft and Linux is still for techies): Microsoft would then be forced to suffer the price of abusing their monopolistic position and of their blatant disrespect and contempt for the needs and wants of developers and users alike.
As for the article itself, this is typical Microsoft going after whatever they think the latest fab is. It will be dropped as soon as the 'next big thing' comes up, and wow to anyone who still believes in Microsoft and adopts this, they will be left out to dry, as usual. Microsoft has no vision and no leadership, it floats with the tide.
At least before they still worried about backwards compatibility - one of the major reasons for Windows being as popular as it is, the other being that it was never the closed garden Microsoft is now trying so hard to turn it into. These days they just get rid of 'old technology' (by 'old' read 'no longer the current fab') as if they were throwing away an old filthy rag, and to hell whomever believed in them and is still using it to make a living.
Maybe if you'd given five years of your life working for MS Support you'd understand.
The Packaging is the deal, how they con you into continuing with the brand, "ooo shiny".
People are starting to get that they are the product, and even though they're still staring at their cellphones, soon the drones will awaken to the dystopia they have participated in creating.
"Features"?, Who cares? Just make it work faster with a smaller ram/cpu footprint.
No, jam pack as much bloat/spyware as you can and sell it to us and make it look like it's a favor.
Once All my WIN7 boxes get turfed off what's left of the free internet (an illusion) we'll be tossing them out.
MS obviously still don't understand that aiming for a "unified design" across different devices just means gimping everything down to the weakest feature set.
The differences between interacting with a tiny touch screen and a full desktop with keyboard/mouse are so fundamentally different that trying to unify the pair of them will only ever result in at least one set of users getting a terrible experience.
I don't how understand how they can be so thick that they haven't realised this yet.
"I don't how understand how they can be so thick that they haven't realised this yet."
Me neither, but there comes a point where one just has to accept it as an experimental result and defer the explanation until later.
(We do need to keep in mind that the puzzle of "how can they not see this" only applies to senior execs in a position to change it. It could be that most people at MS actually get this, but they are either riding out the tail end of their careers and hoping for a quiet early retirement or they are planning to abandon ship at a time of their own choosing rather than getting sacked.)
Absolutely... Small to medium touch (mainly consumption) vs keyboard & mouse (mainly content creation) need different GUIs. TVs need a 3rd GUI. Larger tablets need easy to use with touch window management (certainly even 8" rarely wants multiple application windows at the same time.
But also transparency and ESPECIALLY flat are just a GUI disaster on ANY platform. The bare minimum is two highlight lines and two shadow lines with convention of top left light. Then its obvious if something IS a GUI element and if "latched" or not and easily momentarily showing if "clicked".
Text links without buttons must always LOOK like a hyperlink or a menu item. They should only exist without a menu if they are actually merely hypertext (i.e. NOT action buttons or menus, but simply a new page with "back" and no change of anything. This is why Web Forms had button elements, not purely links. Links need not be HTML/Webpages, but should NEVER action/change state or be menus, but "go in". We had hyperlinked documents 10 years before HTML and websites.
"Modern" Websites and GUs are breaking every sensible 40 year old GUI convention (based on REAL research) purely for cosmetic reasons. Graphic designers only fit to design paper documents with NO understanding of document navigation and GUIs and no understanding of Menus, Actions etc vs document navigation and display.
Do not hide GUI elements or minimise them automatically, except maybe toolbars at edges of screen or Window.
Ban flat monochrome icons. Worse than photographic skeuomorphic stuff, which is also silly (distracting, some abstraction is good).
"But also transparency and ESPECIALLY flat are just a GUI disaster on ANY platform."
Windows Vista/7 UI theme is wonderful, it still looks fresh and yes transparency works fine there. But these ugly as butt flat UI from Windows 8/8.1/10 with colors selected by colourblind "designers" in Redmond is hell. In alternative reality, a new MS CTO reverts back to Win7 UI and user mode code and keep the kernel mode part of Win10 (except the hardcoding slurping in network driver) - but staying with Win10 user mode codebase is a showstopper (UWP needs to die, WinAPI for the win) and it's getting worse by the minute.
Windows Vista/7 UI theme is wonderful, it still looks fresh and yes transparency works fine there.
For you it works fine. For me it is exhausting, and that is why I hate transparency in any form. The thing is the stuff underneath is noise that my brain works to filter out constantly. I don't know any way to avoid it. I'm glad for people who don't have this problem, but I sit in front of an UI all day every day, and it is absolutely horrible to have transparent stuff. What works best for me is the windows 2000 ui. or classic in XP or Win7. Ofc, it isn't my problem these days as I don't even use Windows anymore, and I have full control of the UI now.
Windows Vista/7 UI theme is wonderful, it still looks fresh and yes transparency works fine there. But these ugly as butt flat UI from Windows 8/8.1/10 with colors selected by colourblind "designers" in Redmond is hell.
Personally, I'd rather see the design last seen (by default anyway) in MSWin 2000. Up through MSWin7 you could simply disable the "Themes" service, and you'd get a clean display back without all that cutesy-puffy stuff they started with XP/Aero.
Then again, I'd prefer if they brought back customizable/replacable desktops like they had up through MSW 3.11 (if you remember Norton Desktop, for example). Then we could just port Cinnamon to MSWin, and have a GUI that doesn't suck.
I still say the best UI is Ui Hirasawa, but that's not relevant here...
Some things can work well, for example if you know the physical screen size you can then select an appropriate stylesheet. But even this basic technique has lacked support from system vendors, who have never demanded screen size to be a standard piece of system info.
Bake that into everything, so plugging your smartphone into a 52" TV will automatically pick up the new size and update the choice of stylesheet - with UI-integrated user override if that was not what you wanted, of course - and things could move forward.
In my dreams :(
I think Google's Material Design has some excellent stuff that works across a range of devices but it's main benefit is a consistent metaphor for information design and feedback. The user is also very much the focus of the guidelines. It feels more like a solid UX framework then anything "magical and revoutionary". And, while it is mobile first, they've also worked hard to provide a good toolkit for both native and web work.
But basically, people won't buy the stuff just because the design language is particularly but they will moan and stop using it if you get it wrong: there are other problems that need solving first.
MS obviously still don't understand that aiming for a "unified design" across different devices just means gimping everything down to the weakest feature set.
ACK
From article: "wants to discard the multiple, disparate user interfaces of the past for a single, focused, and attractive user interface"
Doing this on 2D FLATSO Win-10-nic ain't it. Not only are they putting lipstick on a boar, they're putting lipstick on the WRONG end.
not very attractive, yeah.
israel_hands: "I don't how understand how they can be so thick that they haven't realised this yet."
Microsoft have many degrees of crapness, which they have demonstrated to the world hundreds of times over the last 30 years. Stupidity is not their weakness; but obsessive greed and lust for dominance, which frequently drive distasteful levels of corporate deceit, most certainly are their signature vices.
So I'd respectfully suggest that they are not being stupid per se: they are being greedy and lazy in (a) trying to persuade us that One Size Fits All and (b) consequently selling themselves the same shit: repeat a lie often enough and you start to believe it.
But of course, it remains absolute nonsense. Sure, phones and tablets are getting ever more powerful. But so are laptops. So are desktops. So are servers. The CPU power, RAM, storage and GPU steroids you stuff into each one are even more different in scale than the size of the devices. Even more critically, given the UI is so important, the available display scales in the same way. The idea that the software you'll run on 16 cores of Xeon, fed by 32Mb of RAM and displaying UHD on a pair of 28" screens would be the same you're using on a fingerprint-smeared ten-inch tablet at breakfast, or worse still, the battered five-inch phone you're squinting at on a crowded train ... is simply bonkers.
It isn't just UI issues. For non-trivial processes and jobs, the way you design your code varies from one platform to another: the priorities you set, the compromises you make, the features you sacrifice, the MustHaves vs the Nice2Haves, the security you implement, the transparency you apply, the level of prediction and automation, the way you expect your users to navigate, concentrate, shortcut, multitask, copy, paste, foul up, screenshot, print, typo, wait, react to dialogs, manage verbosity, get distracted ... I could go on, but my point is surely made: the way you architect these things, guide this experience, and how you engineer code to make it all happen, is unlikely to be the same for User Slobb emitting two days' worth of BO in front of a panoply of workstation silicon, as it is for User Fragrant, who's checking the server's up while she waits for her artisanal coffee.
The whole UWP spiel is about reducing MS's workload, simplifying its delivery, saving money, reducing headcount while conning the users into actually believing that One Size Fits, and that this experience—where every platform's software and UI will necessarily be infected by compromises meant for all the others—is better.
It simply isn't better, it really couldn't be, and unquestionably MS knows, deep in its rotted corporate soul, that this is a dirty trick to foist cheapened inferiority off on to the users. But those same users didn't abandon the platform for the Vista garbage; or when Win8 took a monumental step backwards; or when profoundly dishonest attempts were made to force users to "upgrade", thereby ruining many systems' productivity; or when Win10 inflicted a worse UI than any since Win7 while also stealing data in a wholesale invasion of privacy; or any of the other shoddy crap that MS has shat upon them ... so a judgement has been made and is probably engraved on SatNad's bathroom mirror: The Mugs Will Accept Anything.
It's pretty straightforward -- MS executives think that THEY JUST KNOW BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE. Two examples:
1. Steve Sinofski was responsible for the disaster which was Windows 8. The idea was to "unify" touch and mouse -- something almost any brain-dead idiot could have told him would be a disaster. But no, Steve was right -- until the marketplace told him otherwise -- and he was fired!
2. Julie Larson-Green was responsible for "the ribbon" in Office 2007. Most users of Office that I know wondered what was wrong with the menu system which had been used (notably in MS Word) since around 1990. Well -- there was nothing wrong -- but MS had to do something to drive more licence revenue, and the ribbon change was just the thing. Once again, an MS executive knew much better than peons like me, people who actually had to use the product! (PS She also had a hand in the Windows 8 screw up -- why am I not surprised?)
3. I don't know who the "brains" behind Fluent might be -- but it's a penny to a pound that there's YABE (yet another brilliant executive) driving this standard towards an early grave.
Win32 support is the only thing people buy Windows for and Win32 apps are the only Windows apps worth writing. If you are starting fresh as a user, you have a choice of Android, Linux or some Apple-y offering, depending on your tastes and budget. If you are starting fresh as a developer, you'll target a platform like Android or "the web", both to target those fresh users and because the Google or Apple app stores are widely used and convenient for startups.
Tying Fluent to UWP pretty much ensures zero adoption, but apparently MS have copied Apple's Reality Distortion Field and so their execs can no longer see this.
Tying Fluent to UWP pretty much ensures zero adoption, but apparently MS have copied Apple's Reality Distortion Field and so their execs can no longer see this.
The view that SatNad and crew have from inside the Redmond Distortion Field (aka Bubble) is so different from the rest of us that to me, it is just getting rather sad and depressing.
The "Nanny Microsoft knows best" attitude that they have really gets peoples backs up. The guy doing my bathroom at the moment is tearing his hair out (what little he has left) because as a sole trader, his life is on his Laptop. The lastest Windows 10 update borked it totally. I spent several hours yesterday rescuing his emails and client data from it (thanks to a Linux USB stick). Today we are going to try to re-install W10 and the plethora of updates and hope for the best.
The sad thing is that this is not the first time this has happened since he was 'persuaded' to buy the thing from PC-World (cue sighs all round) six months ago.
SatNad and co really do need to get out into the real world and see that all this 'Fluent Design' shite is just fiddling while Redmond burns.
The message that a new design language every year (UWP, UWP + Fluent, PWA) and rolling out OS support for them in an agile way is developer hostile has to percolate up first. Who on earth is going to be able to aim for a target moving like that? The only constant is Win32, the only API worth using is Win32, therefore the only one that developers will use is Win32.
Developers might package software up for the Windows Store if they're badgered by MS enough, but that's about it.
Agreement from me.
Historically, MS have tried to unify third-party developers' offerings by publishing guidelines. Guidelines which, as the article states, change with each new release. Given the development time for a full application, it seems incredible that Fluent Design (leaked only a year ago) is already on the drop list for non-adoption and the next new thing is around the corner. And very credible that the majority of developers are ignoring it.
As Dan 55 says, it's easier to just keep going with Win32. At least it is consistent, low-risk and almost the IBM of APIs, "No-one ever got fired for choosing Win32." As with most truisms, that will timeout eventually, but at the developers' (AKA customers) pace, not from Microsoft CEO declarations.
Moreover, most developers of complex GUIs will have their own commercial, free/open source or custom made Win32 controls for many different needs. Asking them to replace them just to use a new UI you may not feel compelling at all for several reasons, is akin to commit suicide.
It could be easy to convert simple applications with a simple GUI - but MS itself has dumbed down many applications in the process - Windows 10 Mail application is almost unusable but for very, very simple needs.
But as soon as an application need a more complex GUI, the new approach looks overly complex, with no benefits. Most commercial application don't need materials, animations, and fancy effects - they just need to allow the user to complete her tasks quickly with no errors.
Adobe may repackage Photoshop Elements and Adobe Reader for the Store, but everything else is going to require Adobe CC, and Adobe also has to care about having a similar UI on both Windows and Mac - I think it's very little interested in a Windows-only UI.
Surely by now developers are sick and tired of the moving target for Windows UI design, by the time their app would be written the guidelines would have changed. Haven't they been burned too many times already by Microsoft?
Also as a user, who would want a constantly shifting UI. I think its an indicator that Microsoft has run out of ideas. Just like Office, Windows is now so mature that the only way to keep selling "new" updates is to shuffle the icons and redo the UI.
"Microsoft has run out of ideas"
Microsoft has run out of GOOD ideas. fixed. you're welcome.
They apparently have a LOT of VERY BAD ideas in a closet someplace, and every once in a while Comrade SatNad pulls one out of his as, uh, CLOUD, and floats yet another "new, shiny" feature like some kind of trial balloon in a weather experiment.
I've been unfortunate to work with a person who come in late to a project, then sweet talks the boss into doing something stupid, which he does while I strongly object, and then gets the PREDICTED bad results, while 'sweet talker' has NOW successfully wrangled his way into being the new BOTTLENECK in the process as a result of the sweet talking, and so you can't EVER get it fixed right... even in a startup company, THIS can happen. And I like startups because THIS kind of crap doesn't happen nearly as often. So $customer had to shell out $xx,xxx for some fancy proprietary software, instead of using the $,$$$ version he already had a license to, a proprietary package I did not own and required Windows to run, basically TAKING OVER the computer so that you really can't use it for anything else, and so add $,$$$ for a dedicated computer JUST! TO! RUN! THAT!, and then "design changes were made" that BROKE what I had done, against my strong objections. THAT kind of thing.
It was EASILY avoidable by NOT going with the "sweet talking" in the FIRST place.
So, I wonder _WHO_ it was that did the 'Sweet Talking' over at Micro-shaft? The inventor of the RIBBON maybe??? The former CXO? The same one that [allegedly] GOT SINOFSKY FIRED???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larson-Green
I suspect it is so. OK I wasn't there so I don't know the details about how ideas like 'The Metro' and 'The Ribbon' and 2D FLATSO propagated through the design decisions at Micro-shaft. I have MERELY a suspicion, based on past experience. But I suspect I'm right.
I too prefer the Win7 UI but Win10 can be persuaded to look and feel pretty much like Win7.
As a pure developer, my preference is for a solid colour desktop with no icons except the handful I put there to perform different functions with the same basic program. The couple of hundred programs installed on my Win7 box are easiest reached from the Start button.
In Win10 all my tiles have been removed, starting with the animated Live Tiles.
Flat is good because I've always disliked the 'pretty' icons of WinXP compared to Win2K as I prefer plain and frugal. Same with transparency. Bah humbug!
Flat is good because I've always disliked the 'pretty' icons of WinXP compared to Win2K as I prefer plain and frugal.
Same preference here, but Win2K was NOT flat.
It started with the completely unwarranted animations and had icons everywhere leading to iconfests (not to mention iconed tabfests) that were not particulary helpful as I recall.
I too prefer the Win7 UI but Win10 can be persuaded to look and feel pretty much like Win7.
Using ClassicShell with MSWin10 is an absolute must. Hopefully the open-source community can get up to speed on it (now that the code's been opensourced) before some imminent MSWin release totally borks it.
It's not about what YOU as an individual prefer...
It's about the CHOICE to turn off or on things YOU find inconvenient.
I hated the WinXP Gui, but I could switch it down to 2000/NT.
When Aero came out I was all for it until I worked with it, locked and bogged down UXtheme.dll.
Well we got around that and modded the heck out of it.
Windows 10?
I don't do 1984 on my SSDs and neither should you.
>copied Apple's Reality Distortion Field and so their execs can no longer see this
Slight difference. Apple bamboozles its customer fanbois. MS tends to bamboozle itself into thinking it's clever. Until they quit whatever they are promoting in a huff.
Another abandonware framework coming up?
Upvoted lots of common sense comments on this thread, but not this OT one.
Apple's customer fanbois as you put it, choose a UI that's invariably consistent, they CHOOSE to use MacOS for a reason. Usually because they are parting with hard cash for it. CMD-S saves a file, ALWAYS, whatever app it is, written by anybody.
So ask yourself, what does CTRL-S do in every Windows App? A - sometimes it saves, sometimes it doesn't. Windows UI sucks, guidelines are made to be ignored or broken.
Free OS upgrades for the life of the product? Apple yes, MS, not on your life, or anybody else's for that matter, there's a share price to prop up.
I don't disagree with what you said, wrt to Windows and its lack of consistency.
I mostly like Apple myself. But I also tend to see it as having many fanatical followers who never see anything wrong with what they do. The Reality Distortion Field does sometimes happen, but, as I said, it affects its customers, or rather the subset of Apple customers who have unquestioning loyalty.
Me, I'll buy them as long as I prefer them to the alternatives, despite their rather extortionate pricing. But I am totally open to switching to Linux in the future, if pre-built hardware offerings suit my needs.
(Really nothing wrong with Linux. I am just lazy and want out-of-the-box hardware configuration, Bash and Posix compatibility and apt-get type of open source software access. I feel I get these from macOS, but Linux could work for me too).
btw, if one wants to poke fun at Windows consistency, no better place to look at than the hoops you need to jump through to find out which version of Windows you are running from the GUI. Basically, to know where to look, you already have to know which version you are on 8-/
http://whatsmyos.com/ (not everything there is correct, uname -a works well on Linux for example.
http://whatsmyos.com/ has gone a bit overboard on identifying Windows. As they mention a few times, to find out what windows version you're on you use winver in the run box. The run box is accessed using the Windows+R shortcut. This works for all versions of windows from 95/NT 4 on (winver is also available on earlier versions of windows but the run shortcut isn't), the rest of the methods provided are redundant.
uname -a on the other hand only tells you the kernel you are running. e.g. on ubuntu I can find out I'm running ubuntu but not that I'm running 16.04. I'm not saying that Windows has an especially consistent GUI, it doesn't, Windows 10 isn't even consistent with itself, but finding out what version of windows you're running is easy and has been the same for over 20 years.
Apple's customer fanbois as you put it, choose a UI that's invariably consistent
Apple's had its own share of fucking about with the UI. Remember all the skewomorphic shit? As a result it dropped the ball and has since been playing catch up with Google: notifications, flat, etc. Worth noting that Google was clever enough to adopt some of the Metro ideas with value such as tiles but to subordinate design to use case, which is why tiles became cards.
"Win32 support is the only thing people buy Windows for and Win32 apps are the only Windows apps worth writing"
It has always been that way with windows (except when it was Win16 applications). The platform was defined by the applications you could run on it, and the things that application writers could accomplish by using the API.
"Tying Fluent to UWP pretty much ensures zero adoption"
Micro-shaft needs to stop trying to *DRIVE* the market, and go back to first principles: the CUSTOMER is always right! And, not to forget, "Developers Developers Developers Developers". Right, Steve?
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