vscode's settings are easily my least favorite modern pattern, and I am flabbergasted that it's spreading to other tools. The "it's one big scrollable list with a sidebar nav" is great in some ways, but everything else about it is downright awful.
And I hate that quite a few extensions have a vague "just set X in settings" in their README's where X doesn't show up in the auto generated UI, and is called something else in JSON
I still don't know how to switch to the JSON-only view the few times that I need it.
And I hate that quite a few extensions have a vague "just set X in settings"
This is a special category of hellish perfection. Thank you for this cursed yet useful information.
Everything can be searched in VSCode, not just the settings page. Just do CTRL+SHIFT+P and type. Like this:
https://i.imgur.com/w2sTSPA.png
Like tredre3 said there's also a button on the top right corner of settings, but I tend to prefer to start directly into json mode through the command palette.
Being able to find any sort of action with the palette just by typing is hands down the best UI design I've experienced in software. It's not new, Unity had it in the older Ubuntu distributions, but it's unfortunately not seen often enough and Ubuntu lost it when they moved to Gnome.
The palette search box also has the smart design of placing to the top functions you use the most through the palette, so if you open the json settings a few times it'll pop up at the top before you even finish typing the word "settings". After a while, your interactions with the palette make its UI feel very personalized to your needs.
But I've never used a sophisticated application that does most of its config via registry editing. It's for extreme edge cases only, where it's basically fine - it's a worse about:config, but it serves the same purpose, you only go in there when you already know what you need to do.
vscode, in contrast, puts common things into hand-edited-json-only config. I don't think I've ever had a vscode project that didn't require json changes to work correctly. That's ridiculous.
So the level of crazy is not the same as if your roku expected you to edit json.
JSON(5, with comments) as a config storage format? And optional editing UI? Oh heck yes, that's perfectly reasonable.
Requiring manual JSON editing, even with fancy autocomplete? Hell no. Turn that into a UI with the same info you show in the autocomplete. Obviously. WTF VSCode. WTF every tool that has copied this. This is not even slightly acceptable.
IIRC, Eclipse had all of that (or maybe all that except for import/export?) five+ years prior to VS Code's first public release.
And given that "Do a substring search through this huge-ass mess of options and switches and winnow down to the matches" is such a blindingly obvious thing to add in when you get so very many options in your configuration GUI, I'd be shocked if there weren't several things that predate Eclipse that did that, too.
And the same is true for the settings app. I never really use the Control Panel–specific settings, and whitespace doesn't bother me, so I'm not inherently opposed to the new app. But the execution just feels subpar somehow—if I had to guess, it's probably the latency whenever you click anything.
(macOS also has all kinds of weird UI bugs too, e.g. the Bluetooth and sound dropdowns in the top menubar are very finicky for me. And System Preferences proper isn't much better. It drives me crazy....)
Windows 3.1 is better than earlier Windows, but I haven't seen a claim that it's better than Win95?
I don't really think 3.1 is eye-searing, but I think the basic design is pulled forward from 3.0 which ran on mostly any video card, but feels designed around 16 colors. Wikipedia says 3.1 requires vga, but they didn't make things pretty by default until 95.
Of course, all this is a matter of personal preference—I just think that nostalgia plays an underappreciated role in these discussions.
For functionality. I prefer modern control panel over 3.x - and over Settings.
1) Settings has no applets I can pin to the start menu (ex: printers).
2) I can't be in two parts of Settings at the same time.
3) Commonly-used control panel options: In Settings they can be missing, neutered or moved+moved again.
4) Settings still reverts to control panel applets for some functions. Will those options still exist without a control panel? No one knows.
Linux is less being used by our customers and for my job less useful / WSL or Mac VM is enough.
#1: Stop re-running a file search on sort.
First commands I run on a new install/user.
:: Disable Web from Taskbar Search
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
reg add HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows /v DisableSearchBoxSuggestions /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /freg add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve
To enable the classic right-click menu :)
You're definitely sharper than me. I spend 2 seconds every time I encountered it.
Looks like it's time to audit the lists.
Then, there’s the Windows search. If you ever tried using Settings and search. Most of the time you end up getting Edge opened with an outdated link or unhelpful Bing search.
I just hope they won’t axe it until figuring out how they make decent settings.