[bronlund]

I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.

[pjc50]

Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system.

Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs.

> in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab

Pet peeve of mine in Windows where the line is at most one pixel now. They also took away the coloured distinction between title bars for the active window, so you don't know where keystrokes are going to go.

[abanana]

> Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research

Too many developers nowadays don't know this. On any HN discussion of UIs, I've been noticing a growing number of younger devs insisting that usability is entirely subjective (their words, not mine). It's not just that they don't know about cleverly thought-out things such as safe triangles in nested menus or all the affordances/signifiers espoused by Don Norman et al. The bigger problem is that they don't know what they don't know, and they come across as being unwilling to learn.

It does make UX discussions frustrating and meaningless when they could, and should, be interesting and a learning experience for us all.

[exe34]

> safe triangles in nested menus

I did not know about this, but I did notice my own menu-rage every time a submenu disappears!

[jonhohle]

I was trying to use Orca Slicer (which itself is intractable) and it had a combo button whose menu was disconnected from the button. The menu would disappear as soon as the cursor left the button boundary, but because it was disconnected, there was no way to get to the menu without leaving the button boundary, traveling a void, and then getting to the menu. I’m unsure what incantation allowed me to finally choose the right command, but forget how it looks, it was if no one even tried to see if it works.

[embedding-shape]

Most fun is when the menu opens both on button hover and on button press, but if the menu already opened, clicking the button closes it instead, so the first 2-3 you use it, you end up opening the panel and closing it immediately.

Not sure how stuff like this gets deployed in the first place, guess we're just a few people left who test things we develop before we push them to the public, I'd rather believe that than that people just don't care anymore...

[exe34]

I feel like the modern web/app ecosystems have forced developers onto a red queen type treadmill, so software never really matures. They often build up to 70% of the features they want, the codebase gets intractable because of all the crap they have to deal with and they start over.

I love software like Gimp, Blender, Inkscape, etc, that matured over decades and kept their soul.

[exe34]

Potentially keyboard arrows?

[washingupliquid]

> Too many developers nowadays don't know this.

Guess they've never been on the phone with an elderly relative in tears because she can't figure out basic tasks on an iPad anymore after years of learning how.

That's when you realize you, as a highly-skilled technical person, can't either, because they've moved, hidden, or otherwise obfuscated them.

Yesterday I learned there are two icons in the Files app called "..."

Yes, two.

Incidentally I was looking for how to delete a file, which is now deliberately missing from the object's context menu, and intentionally hidden under one of these.

[senko]

A few weeks ago I was co-hosting a live coding session (in front of a crowd, it was pretty collaborative, back-and-forth).

I had to authorize something with Firebase, for which I had to auth with Google, for which I had to do a MFA with my (Pixel) phone.

Usually it's "are you trying to auth" and finger-to-the-scanner, but around that time this particular way didn't work. It also didn't want to send me a text or a call to auth me.

No, I had to find an OTP code. Easy, right? Wrong. The instructions, and the docs, don't match where it was in that particular version of Android, and there were a bunch of blind alleys that were named basically the same.

It took me like 10 minutes, on stage, browsing my phone (thankfully, not casted to screen) to find the friggin' option. Thankfully the cohost was doing the presenting at that time, but it was pretty lousy.

And this is using Google's OS on a Google phone doing a Google auth flow for a Google property. And I'm a techie who's been using Android for 15+ years now. And I did the exact same dance a few weeks before that - also so roundabout I had no idea how I stumbled on the correct page.

User experience my ass.

PS. The regular "are you trying to sign in?" flow works again. No idea what happened - wasn't me.

[bombcar]

Even with screen sharing, I've said "click the three dots" and then "no, not those, not that one, wait there's another one, no that's the wrong one ..."

[xp84]

But if we didn’t use ••• menus everywhere then some parts of the UI might be cLuTtErEd!!! The worst sin of computing.

To think that we used to trust mere mortals - without even a signing certificate or developer membership - with the power to customize every toolbar in a Microsoft application, and to set every font and color for the whole UI of the system. People made their computer environments ugly in some cases. And it was fine, because they owned those freaking computers, so who the heck has any business telling them not to?

Sorry, clearly it bugs me a lot how much we’ve lost.

[bombcar]

It's not just what we've lost, it's an incredible disservice to "non-nerds" - old DOS programs may have been annoying and cluttered, but everything was right there and more importantly, it didn't change so you could learn what you needed and just work with it.

We could go back and forth on things like "the ribbon" being better or worse, but the fact that it changes depending on window size is an incredible sin. Hello, everyone! Learn how to click a tiny 5x5 pixel arrow or lose your menu items forever!

[titzer]

The UI wouldn't be cluttered if the keys on the...keyboard...did stuff. Now that vibe-coding has broken me out of my decades-long irrational fear of GUI programming, I've recently been circling back on all the UI patterns I have just accepted. One missing one is all those F1...F12 keys. I remember those doing stuff in the DOS days. I fantasize about a computer where the menus are at the bottom of the screen and line up with the Fn keys on the keyboard. I know...it might be possible for even grandma to figure that one out.

[gf000]

There are still UX research. It's just that the collective "we" has changed and we can/may build on some existing design decisions.

You are always designing something with a target audience in mind, and the next, e.g. mobile phone will very likely be used by someone who has interacted briefly with a similar device, so you may re-use some already learnt patterns.

The very early UXs built heavily on desktop metaphors (like folders), but at this point many (and an increasing number of) people are more familiar with OS UI n-1 than a typical office setting.

So I don't think jumping to this conclusion is correct - there are well-designed software, it has just become much much cheaper to create new ones, so the average quality has necessarily went down.

[washingupliquid]

> This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs.

Steve indirectly had a hand in this, by emphasizing the humanities. That, unfortunately, backfired as a sort of positive feedback loop.

Someone hired a few underemployed artists onto the team, and the artists invited all their friends and soon took over the department.

People that in an alternate timeline would be smoking weed whilst sculpting wood in a derelict loft somewhere are now the lead designers, using our software as the canvas of a perpetual avant-garde art piece.

They also need to look productive to justify their jobs, so the need to change things is constant.

That's why in 2026 you could have a PhD in CS and still need to watch a YouTube video to learn how to change the volume.

Can anyone name a single substantive UI improvement in the last 20 years? They're simply hiding or moving stuff around at this point while no one has even touched accessibility.

[xp84]

You are so very spot on with this. All of it. Literally nothing is better in the UI world in the past 20 years. Zero. We already had multitouch scrolling on laptops back then.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that most of the problem can be traced back to the transition to Mobile first design. The motivations were arguably pretty innocent in general. If there were no downsides, it’s nice that there isn’t a separate code base and an entirely separate set of capabilities for desktop and little 5-inch phone screens. However, the way that we have achieved that - nearly across the board - is by lobotomizing the experience everywhere.

And because of fashion (those artists who control the UX can’t resist it), even in places where that doesn’t even make any sense because there is no mobile version (say, B2B SaaS products that only get used on a desktop), they still feel the need to cosplay as a mobile app by using all the same stupid design elements (the ••• and “hamburger” menus, the giant grids of “tiles” that should have been a table, etc.

[liendolucas]

> And because of fashion...

That's basically the curse. Fucking fashion. If that human concept wouldn't exist, UIs today would be way way better. But no, we have to keep changing it forever and with each iteration worse and worse. UI enshittification at its pinnacle.

[engeljohnb]

> Can anyone name a single substantive UI improvement in the last 20 years?

That thing Windows has where you can drag a window to the top of the desktop and it pops up a few quick options for resizing. I would love it if KDE Plasma had this.

[washingupliquid]

I'm fairly certain (an earlier iteration of) that came out in Windows Vista which is nearly 20 years ago. It was called Aero Snap.

[engeljohnb]

I didn't know that. I actually used Windows until 2019 and only learned about this feature last week. Well, that does it: UI has only gotten worse.

[jackvalentine]

you can also hold down the windows key and use the arrow keys to position the window left/right top left/top right/bottom left/bottom right.

And Windows-shift-up to make a window fill the vertical space of the screen without changing its width.

[lproven]

Released November 8 2006, so not yet 20Y old... quite...

[anthonypasq]

idk, i think your underestimating the ubiquity and resources behind stuff like A/B and usability testing nowadays. Certainly a much more sophisticated way of determining whether people are able to find what they need.

[caspper69]

What good does A/B testing do if both options are shit?

[lproven]

> a single substantive UI improvement in the last 20 years?

On the desktop? No.

In human-computer interaction? The multitouch UI using a capacitative touchcreen, as used in the iPhone (2007, so 19 years ago) and iPad (2010).

This redefined how UIs work, so yeah, it's vastly significant.

The trouble is that now there's a whole generation of developers and desighers who literally grew up with it and its imitations, and they're trying to apply its "simplicity" to desktop WIMP GUIs. In the process they are removing things like, you know, the "M" of WIMP (whether it's "mouse" or "menu") because they don't see it as important.

[AlienRobot]

For the brief time I used Windows 11 the amount of times I placed a window over another and then clicked on the wrong window because I couldn't tell at first glance where one started and the other ended was absolutely ridiculous.

I'm afraid that the core of the problem is something far more simple and fundamental.

The people designing desktop apps today simply never learned the conventions that make desktop applications good. They grew up with smartphone apps, web apps, electron apps, games, etc.

In fact, you can observe from things like JavaFX, Flutter, WPF, etc., that the trend has long been about the ability of easily creating custom widgets like you could with Javascript (or Flash), rather than the convenience of having a library of widgets that look and feel exactly the same as every other widget in the system.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

"I couldn't tell at first glance where one started and the other ended "

Sometimes I am starting to feel like how my dad looked many years ago when I tried to teach him how to use Windows. He simply couldn't see the window borders. With the latest designs I am reaching this point too. I am struggling moving and resizing windows because I can't tell where the border is.

[doubled112]

> couldn't tell at first glance where one started and the other ended

This was even worse in an RDP session. No drop shadows. I'm not sure who thought "everything should be flat and white" was a good idea.

[zozbot234]

> I'm not sure who thought "everything should be flat and white" was a good idea.

It's just the old Windows 2.0 look.

[dspillett]

Windows 2 had plainly visible borders, with decent contrast depending on your colour settings, so you could see what ended where.

[hulitu]

The UX designers copied the look, minus the colors, and without functionality. Whoever thinks, that an 1px border for a resizable element on a 4k display is ok, is insane.

[gf000]

> look and feel exactly the same as every other widget in the system

Which is what? Windows natively has like 4 official looks. You can click around the 2 (!) settings programs and pop open windows for basically every framework windows has created (and deprecated) in the last 2 decades.

[hecifato]

> Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system.

I have a lot of thoughts on things like PC usability today. You're right that UX research would have heavily contributed to the design on these older systems. As computers moved from the warehouse to the living room they had to be easier to use and understand for people without CS degrees. I think it is fair to assume *some* things about what people these days are familiar with when it comes to the desktop GUI, but usability should receive more focus now even if it slightly hinders aesthetic. A friend of mine has been teaching a college program for video editing and she has students who needed her to explain what files and folders are. This is not the first time I've heard of things like this.

Smartphones and tablets have obfuscated so many basic functions and features that it is actively harming people's understanding of how to use a computer. Things like window sizing, executables, how apps know where things are, and how programs are installed. Android does allow users to peek behind the curtain more than iOS but Google has been going down the path of locking down Android. I haven't been in an elementary school classroom for like 17 years but I remember having computer lab time where we would learn how to use Windows 95/98. I think what has benefited my friends and others my age (~30) is that we grew up when computers were in the home and were usable enough for us to log in and intuit our way around but there was enough friction that made it so we would have to figure things out on our own.

[tom_]

If you haven't tried it already, I've found it useful to get Windows to use the accent colour in the title bar and window borders: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/personalize-your...

[roelschroeven]

Absolutely, but there are many programs that don't use that accent color, making it less useful than it should be.

[chiph]

Thank you for posting this. I have enabled them at home and work. I am really tired of having to look for a window's shadow to resize it. Which is problematic when you run a black desktop.

Having to resize a window by grabbing it just outside the visible border is so wrong.

[skydhash]

My pet peeve is spacing. My usual resolution is 1920x1080 (scaled or not) and it feels I could cram more information in an old 1024x768 desktop. You have to maximize most windows to get it to show enough information.

[hecifato]

This drives me crazy. Even looking at these old screenshots you just know that these systems we outputting a display resolution lower than 1024x768.

When I was checking out the MacBook Neo a while back I was disappointed that the resolution is not natively x2 scaled. It uses fractional scaling when macOS handles fractional scaling quite poorly. I've set the resolution on my M1 MBP to 1280x800 so it was x2 scaled and clarity improved significantly. But I also sacrificed usable space because apps don't adjust, everything is just made larger.

[tom_]

Over 75% (well... just...) of the screenshots are 1024x768 or greater - though admittedly typically not by much. Over half (well, again: just!) are 1152x864 or larger.

[hecifato]

I meant more that those systems at the time would have likely been paired with lower resolution displays.

[phkahler]

>> You have to maximize most windows to get it to show enough information.

At work I use 1 or 2 monitors plus the laptop screen (on Windows). At home I just use a single 55" 4K TV for my monitor and place apps center, left, right, and up top for rarely used stuff (on Linux). The desktop metaphor always wanted a big display but you're right - most Windows apps expect a full 1920x1080 for themselves.

[jsrcout]

Same here. The Teams meeting page layout pisses me off on a regular basis, with way too much useless space around everything, tons of unhideable icons and crap filling half the screen, and all the actual content crammed into a little box. I'm sitting here with a 4K 27" monitor and all that space and resolution is just wasted. Yeah you can work around it, but what a PITA.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

"Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer"."

With desktop OS I feel a lot of designers don't know how to use them. They grew up with phones and never use a desktop OS outside of work.

[andai]

Chesterton's fence! Don't delete something unless you know why it's there in the first place.

[titzer]

> based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system.

It's worthwhile to note that this was not just research in a vacuum, but a lot of user studies where they literally watched and studied people using the software and how they were confused, found or didn't find functionality, etc. Lots of interviews, talking to people, boiling things down to how actual people struggled with the software.

[radiator]

One example of a UI being a result of research seems to be Windows 98. Much of the surface is gray, and a lot of the text is black. It might look boring, but that is how you get to use a little colour for things that need accent, and it will make a difference. Also in a factory, the walls are gray, but the fire extinguisher is red so that you can hardly miss it.

[xnx]

> opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them

The latest design of interfaces is designed by people who have barely used a desktop computer and have no idea of the conventions or advanced usage. They create terrible UIs because they have no idea what a good UI is and they often don't even use the product they create.

[kps]

‘Took out usability features to make them "look nicer"’ is exactly how Steve Jobs gave us the double-click, undiscoverable and timing-sensitive.

[dspillett]

Double-click came out of Xerox's research park. Apply might have been the first to put that into a popular desktop PC solution, but it wasn't their design any more than the rest of the system they copied. There are arguments that a second button was a much better idea, but that would still not be immediately discoverable and even with many buttons in modern solutions we _still_ have double-clicking.

[rahoulb]

Minor correction - Xerox knew they could not commercialise their invention so they wanted someone to take it off their hands. So Apple didn't copy - they paid for it (in stock, not cash) - and if you've ever used a Smalltalk environment you'll know that what Apple actually shipped (in the Lisa and then the Mac) is a _lot_ of work done over the top of what Xerox had.

[graemep]

Everything I have read about this suggests it was Apple. e.g. https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html

[kps]

It may have been Tajo (XDE) though a quick search doesn't find any documentation of multi-click _older_ than Apple's.

Star definitely didn't have multi-click.

[abanana]

I've always heard it came from Xerox PARC, but even if it originated at Apple, it would have been one of their OS devs. It's nuts how the cult of Steve Jobs leads some to label him as the inventor of everything.

[Anonyneko]

And something my older relatives have trouble with to this day, no matter how much I adjust their double-click timing settings...

[graemep]

I have most things set .to single click to activate.

[BoppreH]

We also lost clearly identifiable buttons, loading bars (replaced with throbbers), status bars that tell you what you're hovering over and what the program is doing, stable UIs to develop muscle memory, etc.

But we did gain some nice things!

- Tabs.

- Titlebar buttons and other space-saving measures.

- Document editors remembering unsaved changes.

- Forms that validate on focus lost, instead of submission.

- Ctrl+P menus to fuzzy-search all actions and settings (we need more of those).

- Easy syncing (if I open Spotify on any device I'll see the same playlists, my clipboard is shared between phone/desktop/notebook, Immich integrates local and remote media, etc).

- Program-specific URL protocols, so that you can click on a link and have it open in a separate program (like `steam://open/games`).

- Map widgets, a small miracle we take for granted.

- Package managers/app stores that cleanly install and uninstall applications.

[thesuitonym]

Titlebar buttons are actually bad. The titlebar exists (or existed) for a reason, so you'd have somewhere you could grab to manipulate the window. Now it's kind of a guessing game with every app on where you can grab without causing the app to do something you didn't want.

[BoppreH]

If that's a problem for you, you have much to gain with better window management shortcuts. On KDE I have the Windows key + left click set to drag a window from anywhere, and win + right click to resize depending on the quadrant the cursor is on. It's incredibly satisfying not having to hunt titlebar empty spaces or thin edges.

[dadoum]

My main interaction tool with the system is the pointer. Reaching out for the keyboard is something I do when I want to type, but for example when I am consuming content on my computer I just keep a single hand on the mouse or the trackpad. In that case shortcuts are just plain annoying.

On KDE, something nice is that if you have a maximized window and a panel on the top of the screen, I can drag that panel to grab the window (or maybe it was a setting of Latte dock or something). And since window titlebars nowadays can be cluttered with buttons, it is a predictable way to grab those windows only using the mouse.

[xerox13ster]

But do you see that title bar buttons are bad explicitly because you have to hunt for title bar edges?

That you were more or less forced to adopt these KDE shortcuts so that you could work around the fact that they had cannibalized the title bar for a purpose it was not designed for.

You were forced to change your workflow and everybody else is having to be forced to adapt because they changed a metaphor that has remained stable on the desktop for over 40 years

[breakwaterlabs]

The arguments in this thread-- amounting to "it's a good general practice because I happen to like it" (rather than "it is a sane / discoverable / usable default") are precisely demonstrating why these issues exist.

UX design is treated as a subjective matter, as if it is equally valid to clearly label UI elements as it is to have magic, nondescript UI pixels that serve as vital control surfaces.

Go watch videos of the research Xerox did on UI/UX and HCI in general, and weep for what we have lost...

[xerox13ster]

I already weep deeply for what we have lost, and what we cannot imagine, and what we can imagine and build but nobody would use because they are too ignorant to learn and adapt.

My argument for the titlebar is that it was at least researched UI/UX convention done by Apple/IBM/Microsoft at the nascence of personal computing. These are the primitives that arose from that research.

It is not out of what I happen to like that I argue this. I personally am deeply frustrated by cursor-y window controls. I much prefer a tiled interface with a top menu bar and copious keyboard shortcut compositions. I, if I could, would Never use the mouse, and if I needed axial control for a 3d environment would prefer to use an analog stick of some sort. Unfortunately those are not the conventions we have for general computing, especially in the workplace.

We are in general forced to use the conventions given to us by the major OS providers. One of those used to be the titlebar, with which you could use the cursor to control the window. The insistence of the current tech industry to shove any button they like up there without regard for these conventions that have been set for decades (and were in many cases of this sin set by their company: M∫/M$ --the integral symbol is a slop 'S') is causing real economic harm in terms of lost productivity from broken muscle memory and wasted actions

[c-hendricks]

I wasn't forced to adopt tho, these shortcuts go back to when Windows had chunky borders in XP/7. It was just something that a lot of Linux WMs did and it's incredibly useful so I found ways to do the equivalent on all operating systems.

Also KDE seems pretty staunchly _against_ client-side decorations with buttons other than the window manager buttons.

[BoppreH]

> You were forced to change your workflow and everybody else is having to be forced to adapt because they changed a metaphor that has remained stable on the desktop for over 40 years

All of the "positive" items I listed come with drawbacks. I didn't realize I might be in the minority for this one, since I genuinely prefer the new workflow.

[mixmastamyk]

The old ways supported both keyboard and mouse workflows, on purpose. There was no reason to collapse the titlebar except for the unfortunate time when 16:9 monitors were forced on us and vertical space became precious. A time thankfully that is over.

Today I have one 3:2 and one portrait monitor so compacted titlebars are particularly poor design.

Thankfully KDE for the most part does not indulge in that, and let’s you fix window borders, but they have other failures such as hard coded button order in dialogs.

[phkahler]

The reason they have to put all that crap in the title bar is because of all the other bad UI decisions that used up all the screen space.

[carlosjobim]

There's a lot of mouse centric workflows, where you don't want to keep switching between mouse and keyboard all the time.

[thesuitonym]

fwiw, when I'm on an OpenBSD desktop, I use cwm which doesn't supply titlebars, and I use Meta+click to move windows. That's great...On OpenBSD. But sometimes I'm using a Windows computer. Sometimes I'm using a Mac.

...And sometimes I'm using OpenBSD, so titlebar buttons introduce a titlebar I didn't want, and didn't need, which doesn't match the rest of my desktop customizations.

It's just a bad paradigm.

[zozbot234]

If they do it correctly there's plenty of free space in the titlebar for grabbing. That's how it works in GTK+3 and later for example.

[lproven]

But it causes cognitive overhead: you need to think about which bits of the title-cum-button bar are safe to grab, as opposed to which overloaded and do other things, which are possibly useful.

I use Firefox. I also use macOS a lot. Firefox assumes your tabs are horizontal. Mine are not (using a built in feature).

So it doesn't use the title bar much. So there's an option to turn it off. It's off by default. Result, the actual top bar is a cluttered toolbar and it's hard to move the Firefox window.

[zozbot234]

If there'a a visible title label, that's obviously safe for grabbing. Firefox is probably doing it wrong by not leaving some visible space for users to grab at things.

[lproven]

> Firefox is probably doing it wrong

Up to a point -- although Mozilla added vertical tabs about a year ago, it's pretty clear nobody uses them, same as nobody left at Microsoft is competent enough at customising a Windows desktop to know how to use vertical taskbars, so they removed that option from Win11.

But saying that, although I do not like GNOME, I review the new version every 6 months, so I do try it. I find the same problem with GNOME CSD apps.

It is not confined to the problem of moving windows. The GNOME developers are clearly obsessed with gestures -- even the welcome tour contains instructions on trackpad gestures, and my machines have the trackpads disabled. I use mice, because I prefer them.

With a mouse on Linux, the middle-button has 4 main functions:

1. Open web links in a new background tab.

2. Middle-click the title bar to push the window behind other windows.

3. Middle-click in text to insert the currently-selected text at the cursor.

4. Close browser tab.

I do these things hundreds of times a day. Literally, no hyperbole.

GNOME has removed functions #2 and #3.

From this it seems apparent to me that the GNOME developers do not really know how to use mice effectively, and mainly use laptops with trackpads.

[xerox13ster]

> Titlebar buttons and other space-saving measures.

This has been net negative. Now everyone thinks it’s ok to shove every control up there and there’s nowhere to grab a window to move it that isn’t also a button. But the OS interprets button click and mouse drag as cancel the button click.

I wish people would stop doing this.

We HAVE HI DPI screens with large resolutions and even 640x480 had title bars!!!!!

What space could possibly need saving?

[ninjamar]

On a small macbook that I use for programming, every bit of my screen has been meticulously prepared by me to cram in a lot of functionality

[spider-mario]

> Forms that validate on focus lost, instead of submission.

Not always positive. The form briefly loses focus for two seconds (while you open your password manager or whatever) and you are shouted at to “PLEASE ENTER A VALID USERNAME” in red.

[BoppreH]

Sometimes I see it complaining _on every keypress_. Certainly annoying, but much better than the old "invalid field" red text at the very bottom, leaving you to scroll back up and guess what's wrong.

[spider-mario]

Incidentally, I’ve just come across this: https://www.threads.com/@miraklemax/post/DYRiyECFq2e

[renox]

> - Tabs.

Tabs aren't really new: look at BeOS which could "tab" windows..

That said I agree with you that tab are really nice, especially the way VSCode manage them with the vertical list of opened files (I switched from vim to VSCode due to this feature).

[lelanthran]

> loading bars (replaced with throbbers)

There is a very practical reason for this; most GUI apps are webapps (whether local or not is irrelevant), and the fetch API was so poorly thought out that it was not possible to get an indicate of progress - all if gives you is inprogress or done (nothing in between).

As a result the loading indicator can only indicate in-progress or done.

There might have been worse ways to design the fetch API, but off-hand, I can't think of any - what came before it was immensely better for a user experience.

[BoppreH]

With a better API we could have a progress bar that goes through the TCP/IP stack: advance when the domain is resolved, when a handshake is finished, when the request is sent, when the response starts streaming back, when the response finishes.

It'd be a very jumpy bar, but it helps develop intuitions. "The first part is always slower on this machine", "when it gets stuck on this spot I need to reset my router", "this part will be slow because the request is large", etc.

[mlhpdx]

Perhaps an aside, but the things we do to compensate for the warts of TCP are staggering.

[lelanthran]

This isn't a TCP problem, though. It's a fetch API problem.

Even if fetch ran over UDP, or a direct serial connection, or IP over Avian carrier, it'd still be a poor API that doesn't allow progress indication.

[zozbot234]

Most of the time you're fetching multiple things in parallel and you could show a progress of how many of those are done (perhaps weighted by estimated size). That's essentially the way many progress bars work.

[hulitu]

> As a result the loading indicator can only indicate in-progress or done.

We used to have the cursor indicating this in the good old days.

[reaperducer]

As a result the loading indicator can only indicate in-progress or done.

This is a failure of whatever framework the web dev is leaning on instead of actually programming the computer.

It is perfectly possible to get real progress information other than yes/no. Web sites had it for years before lazy spinners took over.

[lelanthran]

>> the fetch API was so poorly thought out that it was not possible to get an indicate of progress - all if gives you is inprogress or done (nothing in between).

>> As a result the loading indicator can only indicate in-progress or done.

> This is a failure of whatever framework the web dev is leaning on instead of actually programming the computer.

No, it's a failure of fetch.

[reaperducer]

But we did gain some nice things!

None of the gains you list have anything to do with user interfaces. They would all or mostly be possible in any of the older desktop environments shown.

[BoppreH]

The screenshots in the post include many old applications, sometimes jarring to modern sensibilities. I think it's fair to have a discussion here about the evolution of application UI too, no?

[alberto-m]

I appreciate this balanced take! Let's hope one day we'll get the best of today's and yesterday's era.

[andai]

There was a brief moment in history where we had the best of both worlds.

I grew up with Windows XP. We had most of these (except the titlebar buttons — although on second thought some custom Windows Media Player skins did have that, haha).

We all carried USB sticks around. So you always had your files with you. The computer itself was interchangeable, for the most part. (Which also led to my interest in portable apps.)

[andai]

...and of course, Portable Apps require a relatively stable ABI...

https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-stable-abi/

>Win32 is the only stable ABI on Linux

Though macOS I think has a similar issue.

[kps]

> - Tabs.

Should have been a generic window manager feature.

[phkahler]

Apparently Cosmic will even let you combine different apps in the same tab group. I read that but haven't confirmed.

Web browsers had to innovate because OSes, DEs and GUI toolkits stagnated. Tabs and better sandboxing came from web the browser.

[garaetjjte]

BeOS sort-of did that.

[evandrofisico]

fluxbox have been doing that for over 20 years

[skydhash]

> Ctrl+P menus to fuzzy-search all actions and settings

Wasn’t that in Emacs for decades?

[isityettime]

Yes. The macOS menu bar is also searchable, which is cool. Unity on Ubuntu also had this back in the day.

Most people haven't experienced "addressable interfaces" like Emacs and don't know what they're missing when they only have visuospatial navigability. I would like to see searching and jumping make bigger impacts in mainstream UX design.

[c-hendricks]

KDE's global menu also has a search function like macOS/Unity. Tho only on Wayland for some reason.

[isityettime]

Well, I guess it really is time for me to switch to Wayland, whatever the downsides.

[BoppreH]

Probably! To quote William Gibson, "the future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed". I'm sure you can find some of these features all the way back in The Mother of All Demos, the difference now is that they're more common.

[pibaker]

I don't miss the loading bar. The progress in the bar never seems to correlate well with the actual time taken. It's not uncommon to have a progress bar breeze through the first half in seconds and spend minutes on the later half or vice versa. It's misleading to the point I recall "progress bar stuck on 99%" became a meme before people started calling them memes.

Just give me the option to view a log of what is happening under the hood. Tell me which step of the process you are at, what files are you copying etc.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

"- Document editors remembering unsaved changes."

This can be really annoying when I don't want to save these changes

[saw-lau]

One of my biggest bugbears is losing the OK/Apply/Cancel concept with dialog boxes or settings windows. If I have a window with lots of settings that I want to experiment with then I've no problem with that setting taking effect immediately, but please give me the ability to back out all the changes I've tentatively made via a Cancel button.

[nogridbag]

I have a feeling you're in the minority. I've been using computers for 35+ years and I feel like I still don't understand OK/Apply/Cancel buttons. I still click Apply before clicking OK even if I know it's unnecessary.

Plus, I don't believe Cancel reverts changes the user made if they clicked Apply already. So your suggestion would go against how the UX of OK/Apply/Cancel has historically worked.

[abanana]

Yeah, me too. The Amiga had a good idea with its Preferences programs (i.e. settings or options) - a "Use" button, which only saves to memory, separate from the "Save" button, which also saves to disk. So even if you make a mess of it, just reboot. Of course, in those days we were used to rebooting often, so that wasn't an issue. But if the idea had caught on, then by now we'd probably also have a "Revert" option that copies from disk to memory and activates it.

[chuckadams]

My favorite is when I click a button to cancel an operation and a confirm dialog pops up where clicking “cancel” cancels the cancel.

[bartread]

I agree. There's something about those 80s and 90s interfaces with their visible affordances, grab points, etc., that just makes them instantly comprehensible. Many of them are also beautiful.

The absolute peak, for me, though are those early releases of MacOS X. Cheetah and Puma were both incredible, both in appearance, and in use. They looked fantastic but they still had all the affordances and comprehensibility of earlier interfaces.

One thing that's also very noticeable to me: title bars are title bars and nothing else. It's just easy to grab windows and move them, resize them, etc. Nowadays I really struggle sometimes to find a place in (what should be) the titlebar to drag a window in many application.

We have lost indeed.

[julenx]

In Mac I use:

   defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool true

in order to enable dragging windows via `Cmd + Ctrl + Click`.

[bartread]

YOU are awesome - thank you, that's a great tip!

[infinet]

It is very difficult for people with impaired vision to find the scrollbars, buttons et.al. on windows 11. The scrollbars are too narrow and often auto hidden. The buttons are flat and not easy to separate from normal text. Tell one window from another is also quite challenge.

[CalRobert]

I still want alt+underlined letter for menus.

Ubuntu is great for resizing - alt + middle click anywhere on the window. If only other OS'es could do the same.

[lelanthran]

> Ubuntu is great for resizing - alt + middle click anywhere on the window. If only other OS'es could do the same.

Not Ubuntu -specific. On all my setups alt+LMB moves, alt+RMB near any edge resizes that specific edge.

No need for pixel-perfect grabbing.

[Measter]

Microsoft's PowerToys did add that in (I think) the last version. Alt + Left click moves, alt + right click resizes.

[c-hendricks]

Oh my gosh they actually did!

https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/pull/47024

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/powertoys/grab-and...

[andai]

Yeah, this is the one thing about Linux I constantly miss when using anything else.

I wonder how hard it would be to make a thing for that...

[isityettime]

Here's a maintained fork of one I used to use in another life: https://github.com/RamonUnch/AltSnap

[Liftyee]

I'm curious - how often do you use the scrollbar? For me, almost never (or only as an indication of progress through a document). I'm scrolling only with wheel or arrows or PgUp etc.

Perhaps though this is learned behaviour from scrollbars being tiny. I'd rather have the extra screen space. The scrollbar is usually a nuisance when I accidentally touch it (touchscreen) and the page jumps away.

[foobarbecue]

When reading a document in a browser, I rely on the scrollbar to know things like: how long is it? Where am I in the document? How much of the document is on my screen right now?

This is critical for decisions like: "Should I read the whole thing?" and for building a mental map of the whole document.

I use the scrollbar to scroll between parts of the document if I need to flick back and forth quickly, say between the data and the interpretation, once I have that mental map and know where things roughly are.

While reading, I'm dragging or wheeling.

[saltcured]

Yeah, I could literally accept a non-clickable "scroll gauge" to be there all the time that will not be a click/drag target.

I can generate scroll events or use keys like HOME/PGUP/PGDN/END or even search forward/back via keyboard to jump around. And I also suffer when a slightly misplaced click causes a disorienting scroll instead of hitting some other interaction target near the window edge.

[criddell]

You can do interesting things in the scroll bar. Some coding editors (like Visual Studio) cram a lot of useful information into the scroll bar.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/how-to-tr...

[bityard]

For mouse users, clicking and dragging the scrollbar is the fastest and most intuitive way to scroll through a large document or list. (The scroll wheel, if you have one, is much slower.)

[red_admiral]

Until some dolt decides to build "infinite scroll" - I've seen dragging the scrollbar with the mouse cause JS exceptions to be thrown on some pages. One for the UI hall of shame.

[abanana]

I don't think I've seen a JS exception like that, but it drives me nuts when I'm dragging the scrollbar down for a quick scan of the page contents (especially if it's images or huge product tiles), and at some point it suddenly loads more in, scrolls down a chunk further before I can let go of the mouse button, and then I don't know where the hell I was.

[roelschroeven]

For scrolling large distances in large documents, that's an important use case to me. As an indication of progress is another important use case, but also as an indication to show the size of the document relative to the viewport.

[hulitu]

> I'm curious - how often do you use the scrollbar?

Almost every time. Scrolling with the mouse has bugs in Windows (focus on the active field) and fine grained scrolling is not possible with the mouse.

[arjie]

I don't think we've lost these things so much as our preferences have now become a minority where once we were the majority. It seems completely normal. With the barrier to entry dropping, designs now match what is appealing to the largest number. Linux DEs are still quite customizable, and we're fortunate that niche desires can still be met there.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

Just finding a drag able area of the window to reposition it is a huge pain.

[Unai]

Have you been unable to find a DE or a DE theme with that type of UI/UX? I haven't looked into it, since I don't have these issues and prefer a more modern look, but surely there must be options out there if that's what you want.

[dijit]

I think the parent is lamenting the lack of this in a commercially viable DE, like MacOS or Windows.

As much as it pains me to say it: custom Linux distros are not often deployed en masse. Especially not the ones that “look old”.

[zozbot234]

SerenityOS is the most well known but it's a fully custom operating system of its own. For Linux you can install the chicago95 theme (includes a widget set for GTK+3) and the b00merang GTK+4 theme (doesn't help with excess padding unfortunately, but it still has proper high-contrast 3D for the widgets and color for the headerbar. The mobile-friendly responsive UX of new GTK+4 apps actually works great with the traditional 3D look.)

[red_admiral]

The latest KDE with a suitable theme actually comes quite close.