Late last year we reported on Project NEON – the upcoming UI upgrade for Windows 10. Recently we managed a closer look at Microsoft’s internal plans for Project NEON and the future of Windows 10’s UI (user-interface). Right of the bat I don’t want readers to be fooled by those who suggest this is a major or a complete overhaul of Windows 10’s design language. In fact, it’s a fairly minor update that builds on the current Windows 10 UI (aka MDL2).
Nevertheless, change is always exciting, so here’s an early look at NEON.
Project NEON will heavily focus on animations, simplicity, and consistency – essentially bringing back Windows 7’s Aero Glass and mixing it up with animations like the ones from the Windows Phone 8/7 era.
This won’t be the final design that makes it into Windows, but still – they should really fix that ridiculous border around the titlebar widgets. Other than that – it seems they want to make it less bright and colourful than Metro, which I guess a lot of people will be happy about. Question remains though – there are barely any Metro applications worth using today, so will this change anything?
I mistook the top image from one of the most recent OS X releases. It has that same frosted-glass appearance, and heavy use of separate columns.
Doesn’t look bad, although I really hope that they aren’t going to pushing that expanding-top-bar effect that I see in the animation (and that some websites have) when you scroll down. I utterly despise that, and I actively remove those using the browser’s inspector or an adblocker if possible.
please microsoft, fire that idiot who is pushing flat design for the windows-gui…
I tend to dislike totally flat design as well, but I’m more concerned about the loss of the titlebar as we know it.
Roger that. I loathe the flat look. I know it’s all the rage these days – look at Apple’s Sierra, but I really think we’ve gone too far.
Sure, I can get it all back, but it means hacking around the OSes, which with all the kernel protections in place these days, is difficult and may result in a vulnerable or unstable system.
Why can’t they give us a choice (those BeOS icons wre SO beautiful)!
The Cutter
The biggest problem is probably not the flat look, but rather the lack of contrast. This is also not limited to Windows, but is generally a part of the flat look-syndrome. It is true for other systems and for many websites.
Flat look + light grey + off-white + white. Result: I cannot see the UI-elements. Particularly input boxes and scrollbars disappear.
ms goes even further:
in many windows (like the one for updates) they fade out the scrollbars when the mouse isn’t over its scrollable content
The actual screenshot of Groove in action doesn’t have the huge borders. The images with the huge borders appear to be mock-ups, and almost definitely won’t be in the final version (And, based on the Groove screenshot, not even the current version)
Naming lawsuit, KDE Neon.
Will this be the Metro naming fiasco all over?
Well… After M comes N and then O.
They could try with Oxygen? 😛
Obnoxious
Do KDE have the trademark for that? Do they also have the money to push through that lawsuit?
It’s not unique enough to be trademark material (at least, in the US it isn’t, and I’m pretty sure that most other countries hav similar situations).
Also, you forgot about the ARM SIMD instruction set…
From 2016:
Kubuntu founder Jonathan Riddell to announce project Neon at FOSDEM
http://www.cio.com/article/3027639/linux/kubuntu-founder-jonathan-r…
Edited 2017-01-06 22:13 UTC
I actually kind of like the mockups. The overall layout blends well with their ‘flat’ design, which has made recent versions of Windows look dull. At least this gives them some excuse to justify the flat design language.
So, they’re going to try to ‘fix’ the UI that everyone hates by small incremental updates…
Maybe they should look at the things that people actually care about, like for example:
* The dark theme doesn’t work at all in 99% of windows programs, and there’s no way to theme non-MDL apps anymore that allows you to get a similar effect (not to mention that the dark theme is mostly just inverted colors and should be called High Contrast instead).
* Flat UI design sucks. Not just here, but everywhere. I know multiple people on other platforms that force this UI style who have to turn on accessibility features to make the system usable (despite not being idiots and not being disabled), and Windows is getting close.
* Windows is the only major desktop OS that doesn’t support user editable system-wide shortcuts. This is actually one of the biggest reasons I refuse to take Microsoft seriously (that and stupidity like Office having it’s own graphics stack). 90% of people would leave the settings at the defaults, and the small few who changed things would likely change stuff that most other people don’t use (like the workspace switching hotkeys in 10).
I have not heard a single person complain about those aspects of windows 10. I kind of doubt those are the most common complaints.
I have heard these:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/troubleshooting-and-repairing-windows-…
Regarding just the UI, these are the most common complaints I hear that are not specific to one piece of software. The first and second (dark theme and flat UI) are admittedly more general complaints that aren’t exactly specific to Windows, but the third is a pretty serious one for a number of power users I know because Windows is running out of keybind options (All the workspace related stuff for example uses at least 2 modifier keys on a non-intuitive set of base keys) and they’re designed for people who have a very specific workflow (general desktop usage) which quite often isn’t the case for many people who actually try to take advantage of the full functionality they offer.
Yeah, I don’t think those are coming from average users. Average users I know, don’t really understand how to change themes or use modifier keys. Nothing wrong with them, nor are they not valid complaints, but honestly a small minority are complaining about those not the average user.
I’ll agree on that point, but many average users aren’t complaining about how the UI looks either, they’re complaining about other, much deeper issues inherent to the architectural design of Windows itself, and have been for years.
Do you mean like global hotkeys and such? If so, check out AutoHotKey. I know it’s lame to suggest a 3rd party tool for such tasks, but it is actually one of those utils that keeps me on Windows. Mainly because I can configure hotkeys on a per-application basis, to do whatever I want.
Edited 2017-01-07 05:42 UTC
I know about AutoHotkey (and I actually use it some myself), but my point was more that Windows is the only major desktop OS that doesn’t have native support for rebinding global hot-keys. Also, last I checked, you couldn’t use third-party stuff to override standard global bindings, so you couldn’t for example make Win+L do anything other than lock the screen (not one of the ones I would change, just the first thing to come to mind).
So it seems their newest theme got the same problem as half the latest designs on the web: Gigantic fonts, huge margins, lots of pictures.
It looks great when you show it to the bosses, but it is also quite terrible to use in practice. It turns a 24″ monitor into a 15″, forcing you scroll and scroll and scroll to see anything.
On the plus side, it is no longer as fugly as the stuff they’ve been doing since Windows 8.0.
Outlook looks a lot like the Enyo Mail app Palm was working on for the TouchPad.
In summary:
* Too much white space, huge margins, too little information
* Text is indistinguishable from controls
* Certain controls cannot be easily understood (like on/off state for check boxes)
* Everything in shades of gray
* Extremely awful fonts suitable only for HiDPI devices
* Cannot be controlled by keyboard
* Very little customizability if any
Sorry the Windows 10 “design” language has been shat and it remains shat.
Only mentally challenged people who create nothing can love this abomination. Go downvote my comment if you think it’s not politically correct. It’s not. Microsoft is not politically correct by trying to make us use this shat. I for one refuse. When Windows 7 stops being supported and if Windows $CURRENT_RELEASE is the same shat, I will just erase Windows from all my PCs. Thank you but no thank you.
Edited 2017-01-06 20:50 UTC
I don’t know which idiot over at Microsoft decided that a super flat, no shadow monochromatic look was the future but that guy needs to be fired! Sure, Aero was a bit much for some people but I found it to be very aesthetically pleasing and I know I’m not alone!