Microsoft's New W10 Design - A Bit More Info

[Guest Kloaked]

PLS CLICK LINK

 

Recently you may have seen/heard about Microsoft's redesign of Windows' UI called "Project Neon". We have a tad bit more info on what that entails and when it'll launch.

 

Spoiler: it's most likely not coming in the creator's update.

 

 

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The design refresh should extend to all Windows 10 devices including PCs and tablets, HoloLens, Xbox, and the few surviving Windows Phones, according to Windows Central.

 

 

Well now we know that they plan on updating the UI across all Windows platforms, including HoloLens for the entire handful of people who have a HoloLens device currently. I personally think that doing this is going to attract people's attention to Microsoft's other platforms again, but it may not sell people on the Phone - it'll take more than just a UI overhaul to get people to try Windows Phone again.

 

An Insider user shared this image, which is a newer showcase from what I've seen.

 

 

 

 

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As you can see, this isn’t a huge change, but the visual refresh gives Windows 10 a sleeker, more modern feel. The taskbar icons look a little more dynamic and bolder. Cortana is using the icon instead of the search box, though it’s not clear if this will be the default look. The clock on the taskbar is also bolder, and the usual notification area icons including the Action Center are notably absent. The open Groove Music window itself looks more polished and Aero-esque as well, with no title bar to be seen—just unobtrusive options in the app’s upper-right corner.

 

 

It looks like you'll have an entire light gradient theme option instead of the flat/glossy/slightly-saturated colors that you choose from currently. I think this is the right direction as it has a more pleasing minimalistic aesthetic than before with some more options.

 

 

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The impact on you at home: Windows Central says that some of the code for Project Neon is already available in recent Insider Preview builds of Windows 10; however, it’s unlikely the visual refresh will be ready in time for the massive Creators Update this spring. Microsoft is expected to share more information about Neon during the Build conference in May. The Creators Update is expected to roll out in late March or early April, followed by a second major update later in 2017.

 

 

I can buy that it won't be ready in time for the Creators update, but I have my fingers crossed. UI design is a lot more important than people think and I firmly believe this is going to be an excellent update to the Windows environment. This design language hearkens back to the early days where I first noticed Microsoft trying this type of design.

 

On 1/5/2017 at 7:45 PM, dalekphalm said:

Anyone else think that Groove now looks almost identical, UI wise, to Zune Desktop Player? Ahhh Zune... you were one of the best Desktop players out there for your time.

 

@dalekphalm posted this in the other thread from last month about Project Neon, and I have to agree. All (probably 5) of you who even know what Zune is can see a screenshot of it here from almost 10 years ago back when people still used iPods and had no clue what the hell a Zune was.

 

Zune: 

 

Groove (Project Neon Version): 

 

 

 

Zune had a very neat minimalist design. Groove does too currently, but the more matte color choices should make it a bit better in terms of choice and overall design language.

[NinJake]

Please keep my taskbar black. That would be great! Maybe they will allow us to add "darker" themes to most windows applications now. (windows explorer etc...)

[Guest]

Remember Zune media player? Ah... it's dead now

Also put spoiler in spoiler tag

[Guest Kloaked]

Just now, NinJake said:

Please keep my taskbar black. That would be great! Maybe they will allow us to add "darker" themes to most windows applications now. (windows explorer etc...)

You should have a wider range of choices on how your Windows theme looks with this update, which should include dark themes.

[NTDaws]

1 minute ago, deXxterlab97 said:

Remember Zune media player? Ah... it's dead now

Also put spoiler in spoiler tag

i had one of those lol.

[NTDaws]

1 minute ago, Kumaresh said:

Looks like a complete ripoff of certain Linux desktop environments......

I don't think so, there is so many versions of linux, you can't exactly compare all of them to windows 10.

[Nowak]

So they're changing their design language again?

[Guest Kloaked]

2 minutes ago, Kumaresh said:

Looks like a complete ripoff of certain Linux desktop environments......

Which?

 

3 minutes ago, deXxterlab97 said:

Also put spoiler in spoiler tag

Why?

 

Just now, Daring said:

So they're changing their design language again?

More like iterating/updating it.

[suicidalfranco]

[suicidalfranco]

6 minutes ago, Dawson Wehage said:

I don't think so, there is so many versions of linux, you can't exactly compare all of them to windows 10.

yes... i... can!

meet KDE Neon

neon.kde.org

 

[Princess Luna]

No interested, my first look at this grove music made me go ew... I deleted it already and am using Media Player Classic which I have been with since winXP...

 

since I also use the old windows photo viewer and classic shell the only meaningful thing they could do for me is bring a black/night theme/mode for windows explorer... now that would be neat.

[flibberdipper]

There had better fucking be a way to get the old UI back after this drops. That taskbar looks like they made it in Paint and called it good.

[Guest Kloaked]

Just now, Abyssal Radon said:

As long as they put the glass transparency effects back, I'll be happy. That was one of the many things I liked about Win. 7. Until MS removed the glass/areo effects which made the OS look pretty. 

That's what this is bringing back as an option I believe.

[samcool55]

Just wondering, WHY?

Yeah ok new looks might be fine but ffs at least give us the option to decide which design we want!

There is a theme choose thingy in W10, USE IT MS.

You created the damn thing at least use it properly!

 

They just keep pushing different themes through our throat and don't even give us the option to decide for ourselves. Let alone custom themes >_>

[Daniel644]

11 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

No interested, my first look at this grove music made me go ew... I deleted it already and am using Media Player Classic which I have been with since winXP...

 

since I also use the old windows photo viewer and classic shell the only meaningful thing they could do for me is bring a black/night theme/mode for windows explorer... now that would be neat.

dark theme was added in the Anniversary update several months ago.

 

 

 

overall I hate the look, just keeps getting worse with every update, I don't need a giant clock and I WANT to see all the crap I have running down next to the clock, I actually use that stuff to interact with those programs.

[Guest Kloaked]

2 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Just wondering, WHY?

Yeah ok new looks might be fine but ffs at least give us the option to decide which design we want!

There is a theme choose thingy in W10, USE IT MS.

You created the damn thing at least use it properly!

 

They just keep pushing different themes through our throat and don't even give us the option to decide for ourselves. Let alone custom themes >_>

You're still going to have options, mate. This update is just going to include more customization options. 

[Princess Luna]

6 minutes ago, Daniel644 said:

dark theme was added in the Anniversary update several months ago.

I do not mean it in here:

Spoiler

I mean it in here:

Spoiler

 

[Prysin]

i wonder if they will actually add anything good sometime soon

[LAwLz]

Just going to quote myself because my feelings have not changed since the last thread about this:

On 1/6/2017 at 2:17 PM, LAwLz said:

Things like these just make me want Windows 7 more and more. There are so many things wrong with it.

 

1) You can't keep changing the UI over and over and over. They have already made one pretty drastic UI change (with the anniversary update) and now they are making even more?

Changing UIs is very jarring for some users, and having the UI change one or several times each year will cause a lot of issues. It's also bad for developers which have to constantly need to redesign their GUIs if they want everything to look uniform. If you want uniformity then you need to make one design and stick to it. Not make one design, then change it, then add stuff to the changed design, and then probably introduce more changes later down the line.

 

2) The new GUI looks really bad. I was very vocal that the sterile style of Windows 10 looked like ass and wanted transparency and blur back, but not like this. The screenshot of outlook makes it look basically unusable. There is next to no contrast between the background and unselected text. Just look at the "sent items" text in the left menu. It's about as pleasant to look at as jabbing forks into your eyes.

 

3) Animations are shit, especially "smooth" ones because "smooth" is often code for "slow". I don't want transitioning animations which last for like a solid second, because it makes everything feels really unresponsive. Of course, I am just assuming things here, but since almost all "smooth" animations I've seen are just slow, I assume this will be too. That gif seems to indicate that it's rather slow too, but that might just be delays in the gif itself.

Or actually, this screenshot makes me hate it even more.

What the fuck did they do to the task bar? It looks completely unusable. The entire picture is burning my retinas out, and those black icons are really ugly and hard to look at. But even worse than the atrocity that is the bottom left corner, what the hell happened to the bottom right corner? Where are the notification icons? Where are all the useful shortcuts and information? Who thought it was a good idea to replace all the useful stuff with a really large and ugly clock?

Who designed this and why is he/she allowed to live?

[Dabombinable]

10 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Just going to quote myself because my feelings have not changed since the last thread about this:

 

 

Or actually, this screenshot makes me hate it even more.

What the fuck did they do to the task bar? It looks completely unusable. The entire picture is burning my retinas out, and those black icons are really ugly and hard to look at. But even worse than the atrocity that is the bottom left corner, what the hell happened to the bottom right corner? Where are the notification icons? Where are all the useful shortcuts and information? Who thought it was a good idea to replace all the useful stuff with a really large and ugly clock?

Who designed this and why is he/she allowed to live?

Windows 10 for my Lemon (laptop based around a shitty APU that never worked right), Windows 7 for my desktop where I do Skyrim modding and want the ability to play Skyrim at 1440p/4K without the 4GB vRAM limit of 8 and 10.

[mynameisjuan]

I actually really like the nice clean look of it.

[HelplmChoking]

Awesome, this looks really nice. The design of Windows, all versions, has always bugged me. It just never feels very polished or clean.

[Guest Kloaked]

36 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Just going to quote myself because my feelings have not changed since the last thread about this:

 

 

Or actually, this screenshot makes me hate it even more.

What the fuck did they do to the task bar? It looks completely unusable. The entire picture is burning my retinas out, and those black icons are really ugly and hard to look at. But even worse than the atrocity that is the bottom left corner, what the hell happened to the bottom right corner? Where are the notification icons? Where are all the useful shortcuts and information? Who thought it was a good idea to replace all the useful stuff with a really large and ugly clock?

Who designed this and why is he/she allowed to live?

I've been thinking about getting the insider version of Windows to get this update and see what all you can do with it. I'm like 99% sure a lot of these changes are going to be optional through the theme manager tab.

[LAwLz]

5 minutes ago, Kloaked said:

I've been thinking about getting the insider version of Windows to get this update and see what all you can do with it. I'm like 99% sure a lot of these changes are going to be optional through the theme manager tab.

I hope so, but knowing Microsoft and Windows 10 I doubt it.

[deviant88]

33 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Just going to quote myself because my feelings have not changed since the last thread about this:

 

 

Or actually, this screenshot makes me hate it even more.

What the fuck did they do to the task bar? It looks completely unusable. The entire picture is burning my retinas out, and those black icons are really ugly and hard to look at. But even worse than the atrocity that is the bottom left corner, what the hell happened to the bottom right corner? Where are the notification icons? Where are all the useful shortcuts and information? Who thought it was a good idea to replace all the useful stuff with a really large and ugly clock?

Who designed this and why is he/she allowed to live?

Actually the biggest problem with the UI is that they do not allow people and real UI designer artists create their own themes and share them freely, that and the fact that this "UI Update" is going to be for UWP alone and thats it. Imagine how terrible and frustrating it will be when you open some new UI modern UWP app with transparency do to whatever, and then go into old Explorer.exe to search for some file... the impact of that experience will trigger my OCD over and over again until ill break something.

Windows 7 is unnacceptable at this point,the UI is great, but installing stuff sometimes just halts or breaks completely, updates are impossible to install unless you have an updated .iso, and i dont trust the torrent ones.

Even if i hate MS im actually hoping for them to succeed, at this point we have no option.

Linux community is gone living in their own bubble, w7/8.1 is becoming severely outdated and unsuported largely because of MS agressiveness.

Microsoft is so so stupid, if they would actually implement again Aero theme for OLD UI, and once and for all implement all control panel options into Settings, and allow a bit of custom Aero themes, holy shit... Windows 10 adoption will skyrocket.

I really dont understand why they dont solve these little issues, and few more problems 10 has, wasnt their objective to reach 1Bil win 10 users, this is almost too easy, i dont understand, if apple or google would have such an obvious user pool left on the table why just why not take it? its like having cake on your plate.