How UI degrades over time.
Top (Windows 95): great contrast, obvious shapes. Instantly readable.
Middle (Windows 11): shapes are still self-explanatory, but contrast is gone.
Bottom (Windows 11 Insiders): what am I even looking at? The only shape I can understand here is the Run button. Barely visible, though.
Then, on the left, there’s another something that says Run and has an icon. What is it? A window title? Another button? Why does it have to say Run twice?
... 1/3
... Shell:startup looks like a header but from what I understand is actually your previous command. Also, why is it aligned so poorly? Text to icon, bottom padding?
Finally, the text input. Do you see it? I don’t. But it’s there. The only hint is a barely visible white (???) cursor before the placeholder. How do we know it’s a placeholder? We don’t.
The original Windows 95 interface is _functional_. It has a function and it ... 2/3
... executes it very well. It works for you, without trying to be clever or sophisticated. Also, it follows system conventions, which also helps you, the user.
I’m not sure whom the bottom interface helps. It’s a puzzle, an art object, but it doesn’t work for you. It’s not here to make your life easier.
Bottom image source: https://x.com/phantomofearth/status/1996660509027062148
@grumpy_website
Usability/UX is hard. And Microsoft... well, I think every third or fourth decision they make is good, the rest is bad.
I mean... Start menu button in the middle? Why was there more than one person who thought that was a good idea?
And yes, I know. You copied it from macOS after Apple copied it from CDE.
Are you going to copy Liquid Gl... too?
If you want unreadable text, I can show you some places in Entra where the idea that a dark mode would ever be available was clearly too abstract for the developer working on it.
@wakame @grumpy_website There is a rather strong reason why a "Start" button ought not to be in the lower left corner of the screen (or in any fixed position).
The reason is that there are USB attack devices - usually disguised as very common, seen everywhere, flash thumb drives.
In the attack the thumb drive identifies itself as not only storage but also as a keyboard and mouse. Many operating systems would silently accept that claim. So the attack device would swing the fake mouse pointer to the lower left and generate a fake click, then the attack device would use its fake keyboard to open a command window and take type stuff into that window to take over the machine.
@karlauerbach @wakame @grumpy_website ??????
That's one of the most outlandish ideas I've heard, and it completely ignores a basic tenet of computer security: if an attacker has physical access to the machine, you're already fucked to begin with. There's literally no planning around this kind of scenario, except for blocking USB devices like most high-security-minded places should already do anyway.
@karlauerbach @wakame @grumpy_website Otherwise, what's the solution? ASLR for the Start Menu? Yeah, let's randomize its position after every click, so that the user has to play Windows Start osu! every time they want to launch an app.
And even then, you're forgetting that you don't need the mouse emulation at all. Just keyboard emulation will do: "hit" Win+R, "type out" the executable path (magically knowing which drive letter you'll be assigned) and then "hit" Enter. Bob's your uncle.
@IvanDSM @wakame @grumpy_website Yeah, physical access can go a long way.
Long ago - probably around 1978 - I was at a DoD site doing some stuff with early Unix ARPAnet networking with TCP. I was in Reston VA and the nominal controllers of the machine were in Champaign/Urbana at the Univ of Illinois.
I needed root privileges to do my job. The actual owners of the machine had no problem with that, but the Univ of Illinois people refused.
But I was standing next to that PDP-11. So I did a few "syncs", powered it down, and booted it back up in single-user mode (back that that meant an automatic root shell with no login.)
The Univ of Illinois folks were ticked off (that's a euphemism).
I suspect that things are a bit harder now - but I haven't had to do this for several years so my break-in skills are a bit rusty.
@karlauerbach Ahahaha that'd a great story! And hey, if it works, what's wrong with it, right? :)
Surprisingly there's still some pretty silly ways to go around privilege limitations. Until recently, one way to escalate and run something as administrator on Windows was to open the Character Map application, click a menu option to load a custom character and then put the path to the desired executable on the folder path textbox of the file picker and hit Enter. Boom, running as Admin.
Grumpy Website
Not a Spring Onion
Karl Auerbach
IvanDSM