I am still baffled by the whole Windows 8 drama. All they did was they replaced a menu with another one. Everything else was the same or better. Supposed power users freaking out about something completely inconsequential. What the hell is wrong with people

Windows 8 with Metro and Start Screen was practically unusable, with the desktop in a /desktop computer/ relegated to third-rate citizen status.

Any other Windows UI even as far back as Windows 1 is better than the piece of hot, useless garbage that was Windows 8.

This is exactly the mindless vitriol I had in mind.

Flow A: hit a button, a menu with text input and pictures shows up

Flow B: hit a button, a full screen with text input and pictures shows up

A is perfect, and B is "practically unusable".

Note how one flow literally erases everything else on the screen, disrupting whatever it was you were doing and disorienting any lesser-skilled users.

On a desktop computer. More than likely with (a) monitor(s) big enough to occupy an entire desk.

The Start Screen was fucking horrible all around, and its horribleness was proven with the immediate resurrection of the Start Menu and demise of the Start Screen in Windows 8.1.

Metro also met a similar demise because it forced a black-and-white, no delimiter UI upon desktop computers. Computers equipped with GPUs and monitors capable of rendering billions of colors with huge screen real estate.

Some of Metro's baggage is still with us, but I welcome Windows 11's slow move back towards a colorful Windows UI.

> Metro also met a similar demise because it forced a black-and-white, no delimiter UI upon desktop computers.

I recall when they did this to Visual Studio.

They completely removed all colors from all of the icons, making it impossible to pick out one from another and making once familiar icons by color a hunt-and-peck operation to find.

It was all just black and white. Then, due to feedback, they relented and put color back on all the icons.

It was madness.

On black and white, first Mac's where like that and people had no issues...

I remember :)

The problem with Visual Studio was the sudden removal of color changed people's "muscle memory" on where certain items were on a complex toolbar or menu system. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea, but some design team decided they were going with it, and they did.

When everything suddenly went black and white, it was impossible to quickly distinguish one thing from the next.

They reverted the decision and suddenly all the colored icons came back and it was once again easier to quickly pick things out.

I mean, people freaked out when they changed just the VS Code icon:

https://visualstudiomagazine.com/blogs/data-driver/2017/10/v...

It was confusing and forced.

The most sold app in their crappy app store was a 20USD classic start menu.

A keeps the context of what you were doing on screen.

B can yield a minor mental context switch, with no good reason for doing so.

I liked Windows 8. And still use it on one computer. The PDF reader app that used Windows 8 design principles has one of the most intuitive interfaces, IMO.

Now they’ve gone and half-baked that design in new software and it’s less intuitive, eg clicking file menu item and a whole new screen appears.

Metro was wonderful on Windows Phone and tablets . Garbage on the desktop. All Microsoft had to do to suppress the outrage was give people back the start menu on desktops like Windows 7 and allow a setting to turn on tablet mode if auto detection didn't work.

Instead, probably because at that time they brought in people with no history in the Windows org to manage the Window org, we got a 10+ year decline of Windows that has accelerated in recent years.

Your timeline is off - SteveSi/Julie/etc. were brought in to lead the Win7 effort. Win8 was not a significant leadership change.

> SteveSi/Julie/etc. were brought in to lead the Win7 effort.

And Win7 barely changed anything.

Windows 7 was just Vista gussied up, they didn't have leeway to change it.