Le 15/12/2013 17:13, Jim Henderson nous fit lire :
>> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>>> >> One thing I've observed over the years of Microsoft products is that
>>> >> they tend to aim for "good enough" rather than "perfect".  Sadly,
>>> >> that's the way of things in software creation - the companies that make
>>> >> technically excellent software - and groundbreaking software - tend not
>>> >> to do as well because they spend too much on development and not enough
>>> >> on marketing.
>> > 
>> > One of their biggest flaws is that they seemingly have this idea that a
>> > new version of their OS (or other software suit) has to look&feel
>> > different from the previous version, for the sole reason of
>> > looking&feeling different from the previous version, even at the cost of
>> > usability (and often even at the cost of breaking *their own*
>> > GUI design and usability principles.)
> That's certainly true.  I do wonder how much user acceptance testing they 
> did on their designs.  Most companies cut that corner when designing a 
> new UI.
> 
Back in the old days, Apple, Microsoft and even the Unix consortium
(well CDE) (no linux yet) all had rules books about their GUI
(specifying such thing as: "Quit" menu entry must be in at bottom of
first menu entry which must be named "File", and tiny details like all
the classical-to-be short-cut ). Of course the three did not used the
same rules, and it was rather recommendations than hard-coded rules.

It was a time of desktop and things were simple. Then Microsoft moved to
portable computer, then mobile phone and tablet, and then just forget
about the diversity of input devices (desktop have a mouse, portable
have a track-sensitive-device that is used to emulate a mouse, tablet
and phone have no mouse, but a full sensitive screen...), and the latest
bad move from Microsoft was: same GUI wherever you are (marketing ok:
user thinks it already know one when on the other; technically
brain-dead: I have not a 26 inches touch screen for my desktop, and
still no mouse on the mobile phone!)

For an historical evolution, look at the border of the windows: from
dead simple in 3 (at best one or two pixels), it went 3D-like/bevel in
95, and goes even further till XP. Then Vista/7 went with transparency
and other 3D round effect... to drop them dead, back to not even
decorated window in latest version (which is ok on mobile phone, as
every pixel is a rare resources, but not on desktop).

Same with the logo of the OS: b&w in 3, floating curve in 95...more 3D
in later and just ugly 4 rectangles showing a cross in latest.

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