Microsoft Is Working On a New Design Language For Windows 10 Codenamed Project NEON (windowscentral.com) 66
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Windows Central: Microsoft has made several adjustments to its design language over the last few years, starting with Windows 8 and evolving into what we now know as "Microsoft Design Language 2" or MDL2 in Windows 10. With MDL2 being the current design language used throughout Windows 10, Microsoft has plans to begin using a much more streamlined design language with Redstone 3, codenamed Project NEON. Cassim Ketfi at Numerama.com confirms our information and has heard Project NEON called "basically Metro 2." That designation refers to the first Metro design language (nee Modern) that harkens to Windows Media Center up through Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. Per our sources, Project NEON has been in the works for over a year internally at Microsoft. It builds upon the design language introduced with Windows 10, with its simple and clean interfaces, but adds some much-needed flair to the UI that the current design language just lacks. Details are still scarce, but we hear some of the new designs in the plans include adding more animations and transitions, with the overall goal of making the UI very fluid and "beautiful" compared to the current, almost static UI that is MDL2. One source familiar with Microsoft's plans described NEON as "Very fluid, lots of motion and nice transitions." Some more information about NEON reveals that it serves as a bridge between holographic and augmented reality (AR) and the desktop environment. It's a "UI that transports across devices" with a UX that maps to the physical world. It uses textures, 3D models, lighting and more.
Sounds like a waste (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds like a waste of time, to be honest.
The OS could use a lot more effort put into various places, instead of all of this effort on making Windows "beautiful".
Just my opinion.
Re: Sounds like a waste (Score:1)
imo, design does matter. There is a psychological effect when you use a well-designed and sleek looking program/OS/etc that gives you the feeling that it is not just junk. Somewhere along the line, someone obsessed over the details... that makes the program have a bit of art in it. This is a reason why freeware programs sometimes lack appeal. They're just ugly. Art matters, and influences us in more subtle ways. That being said, I am a Linux user. I enjoy how easy it is to change themes and layout - or vari
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strong design language
Ugh. :-p
applying real world physics to digital objects
That would make them fly away at the speed of light, because they have no mass.
Re: Sounds like a waste (Score:1)
I disagree. It is a good thing to improve all areas.
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like all the 2nd and 3rd level dialog boxes that are essentially unchanged since Windows 98?
I wish it was more themeable, perhaps even driven by CSS3. That could be interesting, ala csszengarden.
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It is a good thing to improve all areas.
That depends on what "improve" means. That word is bandied about a lot these days and seems to mean very different things depending on who's defining it.
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And probably CPU/GPU cycles. They'll inevitably animate a majority of elements, even things no other GUI animates, just to say they did it. Very little of this "beautification" will actually bring a net improvement to the experience.
MS design language used to be "shiny", now it's "flat", and soon to be "wiggly".
Re: Sounds like a waste (Score:3)
Too many animations ends up making the interface feel slow because the user has to wait for them after each action.
Windows phone was particularly bad at this, and UI experts and ends users alike tended to dislike it overall.
Re: Sounds like a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Normal people like flowy transitions and crossfades and such.
Actually most people find them annoying after the novelty wears off. Unless the transitions are very rapid, they're usually just time-wasting distractions.
First they're neat, then they become tiresome, then they're downright annoying, and finally they're just infuriatingly cartoony.
Almost everyone I know turns off all that flashy transition shit after a day or so.
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Everyone I know turns them off too. But then I know techies, and slashdot users and others who care about things such as efficiency.
Unfortunately most users don't. They don't even know how to control them, much less put the effort in to turn them off.
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Sounds like a waste of time, to be honest.
More like "about bloody time". The flat UI brain-rot that's infested most of the UI-wank community, jumping across from one vendor to another like a genetically-engineered plague, may finally be coming to an end.
Will it still send my data to third parties? (Score:1)
If so, I don't give a fuck.
Microsoft gets even farther out of touch... (Score:1)
from users. It's a shame with their number of employees that they just can't make good software.
Re: Microsoft gets even farther out of touch... (Score:2)
I don't think pay impacts that nearly as much as stack ranking.
Lipstick (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Throughout its brief lifespan, the product was widely derided as an example of Microsoft's embrace, extend and extinguish strategy of ruining standards efforts by adding options that only ran on their platforms."
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Yeah, but... (Score:1)
Resolution independence (Score:1)
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"More animations" = "More shit to disable" (Score:1)
I have a solid gaming PC and all that type of shit still gets disabled day 1 after a fresh windows install. Just put the windows up and take them away when I tell you to; you're an OS, not a movie.
(At least, in the past. Gradually transitioning to Linux Mint rather than taking the Windows 10 dick up my ass.)
Lipstick on a traitorous, deceitful pig (Score:1)
'Nuff said.
Windows 10's user-interface is still half-assed (Score:2)
What Windows needs in way of user interfaces are not more pieces of flair but actual improvements in interaction that would make it possible to use touch, pen or mouse and keyboard everywhere in the operating system. When Windows 8 came out, the support was half-assed for either.
They did restore the mouse and keyboard part a few bits in Windows 8.1 and then more in 10 because mouse and keyboard is what users were used to using and were yelling the loudest at Microsoft for.
But even now after the latest Wind
Project Neon? Don't they dare to call it Ubuntu? (Score:3)
Project Neon is the Name of a Linux Distribution for KDE. Stop stealing names!
Re: Project Neon? Don't they dare to call it Ubunt (Score:2)
I'm glad I wasn't the only one...