I’ll start by saying that GUIs have gotten a lot better since the 90s. Many people seem to think Windows 95 or 2000 was the pinnacle of the user interface design, but it was clunky and terrible and I much prefer literally any contemporary GUI.
I agree, but I definitely think we reached a high point a decade or two ago. Windows switched to that weird hybrid GUI with 8, and websites now are obsessed with whitespace, scrolling fuckery, and the like.
While word 2003 was probably the high point for that product, I don’t think that about windows, Linux, or the web.
I loved winamp. I’m still nostalgic for it. Honestly. Some of the buttons where questionable in size and function but generally I don’t think there is any better UI for a music player.
I wish I could listen to spotify through third party apps…specifically through winamp.
A lot more is understood about how users interact with GUIs and how to best make them, but this is often exploited for monetary gain rather than end user experience.
The current thing that’s annoying me is discords new paid for super reactions. Absolutely by design they have been put in the spot the regular reaction button used to occupy in order to trick you into pressing it.
I couldn’t agree less. All the GUIs since Vista, KDE4 and iOS are infuriating. Worse, the functionality behind them is often crippled and the user is infantilised.
I’m mostly a command line guy, but whenever I have to interact with one of them modern, simple GUIs I’m quite happy with how much thought they put into cleaning them up so there’s not a million icons and menus and stuff. I also like that there’s more space (to some degree, you can obviously have too much space), because space is a good visual separator and my eyesight isn’t getting any better.
Well yea there isn’t a million icons and options, because all of them are removed and all that’s left are the defaults.
What’s the logic that in Win95 (or even 3.x) you could customize every color of the interface, and in Win8+ you can only either use some of the predefined options or use the (often borked) dark mode?
How come that until W7, you could disconnect a Bluetooth device without having to turn off either all of the Bluetooth or the device, and from W8 you can’t?
How is it that until a certain version of iOS you could just send files to another device over Bluetooth and now you need to use their retarded proprietary bullshit transfers?
And how come that even with all that simplification, setting up keyboard and language combination in W10 is the most incomprehensible and broken bullshit?
Modern interfaces are cancer.
Ed: btw my eyes also aren’t the best, I’m very sensitive to light and as such have been suffering from terminal white backgrounds on everything for the last 15 years because some corpo decided that’s what we all have to do now.
Yeah those things do seem shit. Pretty happy here on Linux with the dark theme and Dark Reader extension on Firefox, can’t remember the last time I had to contend with a white background.
I’ll start by saying that GUIs have gotten a lot better since the 90s. Many people seem to think Windows 95 or 2000 was the pinnacle of the user interface design, but it was clunky and terrible and I much prefer literally any contemporary GUI.
I agree, but I definitely think we reached a high point a decade or two ago. Windows switched to that weird hybrid GUI with 8, and websites now are obsessed with whitespace, scrolling fuckery, and the like.
While word 2003 was probably the high point for that product, I don’t think that about windows, Linux, or the web.
I want you to take a look at the spotify UI
Right. At least WinAmp (actually XMMS, the theme compatible clone for Linux in my case) was kind of fun.
I loved winamp. I’m still nostalgic for it. Honestly. Some of the buttons where questionable in size and function but generally I don’t think there is any better UI for a music player.
I wish I could listen to spotify through third party apps…specifically through winamp.
You should probably take a look at Webamp then. Winamp2 inside the browser, Llama, skins and milkdrop included.
Webamp Github
It seems that there is an implementation that lets you interact with Spotify (I haven’t tried it myself, you’ll need Spotify premium)
Webampify - Github
A lot more is understood about how users interact with GUIs and how to best make them, but this is often exploited for monetary gain rather than end user experience.
The current thing that’s annoying me is discords new paid for super reactions. Absolutely by design they have been put in the spot the regular reaction button used to occupy in order to trick you into pressing it.
Discord is actually a great counterexample to my point, I hate that app.
I couldn’t agree less. All the GUIs since Vista, KDE4 and iOS are infuriating. Worse, the functionality behind them is often crippled and the user is infantilised.
I’m mostly a command line guy, but whenever I have to interact with one of them modern, simple GUIs I’m quite happy with how much thought they put into cleaning them up so there’s not a million icons and menus and stuff. I also like that there’s more space (to some degree, you can obviously have too much space), because space is a good visual separator and my eyesight isn’t getting any better.
Well yea there isn’t a million icons and options, because all of them are removed and all that’s left are the defaults.
What’s the logic that in Win95 (or even 3.x) you could customize every color of the interface, and in Win8+ you can only either use some of the predefined options or use the (often borked) dark mode?
How come that until W7, you could disconnect a Bluetooth device without having to turn off either all of the Bluetooth or the device, and from W8 you can’t?
How is it that until a certain version of iOS you could just send files to another device over Bluetooth and now you need to use their retarded proprietary bullshit transfers?
And how come that even with all that simplification, setting up keyboard and language combination in W10 is the most incomprehensible and broken bullshit?
Modern interfaces are cancer.
Ed: btw my eyes also aren’t the best, I’m very sensitive to light and as such have been suffering from terminal white backgrounds on everything for the last 15 years because some corpo decided that’s what we all have to do now.
Yeah those things do seem shit. Pretty happy here on Linux with the dark theme and Dark Reader extension on Firefox, can’t remember the last time I had to contend with a white background.