OSDev.org

I know some of you code traditional UIs into your OSs because you like them. I'm not complaining about those because I don't have to use them. When I do have to use traditional UI, I always end up with major problems stemming from the many constraints traditional GUI places on the sizes and positions of UI elements. Here's the main text of some feedback I just submitted to Microsoft:

I'm attempting to add a folder to the path for powershell. I open up Environment Variables, edit Path under User Variables, add the folder using Browse, OK that, verify it's in the list, reboot, find it's not working, open Environment Variables, and find my change has mysteriously vanished. Then try it all again, feel astonished that this fundamental thing doesn't work, start to write this feedback, and finally realize that the Environment Variables window itself has OK and Cancel buttons and they are off the bottom of the screen. I can see slivers of the buttons if I drag the window up, but as soon as I let go, the window maximizes vertically, shortening the window so that the buttons can't be seen or clicked at all.

The only workaround will make it hard to read the screen. I have app scaling set to the recommended 175%, and text here in Feedback is so small as to be borderline uncomfortable. The text in the Browse thingy is not larger.

I was wrong about the recommended scaling factor; it was 150% but I had it set to 175%. Setting it to 150% made the text in Feedback Hub almost impossible to read. I was thankful I didn't have to use the browse widget at that size. Changing the setting didn't entirely fix the Environment Variables window, but it did make it possible to click the sliver of the OK button which was visible. At least, I assume it was the OK button...

In changing the scaling setting, I found Windows does again have a text size control separate to app scaling, but in the few years I've used Windows, I came to the conclusion it was best to leave it at 1.0. I always had problems when it was set higher. Given how flexible Gtk+ was as far back as the year 2000, I'm so very much not impressed with Windows.

Well, duh. Of course Windows is not terribly impressive. That's not its point. Linux tries to impress (although lately the only thing that impresses me is how that mess is even capable of booting), and MacOS does too, to some degree. But Windows can just rest on the strength of its market share. It is not necessary for it to innovate.

Funny that you refer to the year 2000, because that Environment Variables window has been the same since at least Windows 2000. The difference being that in Windows 10 they added a better editor for the PATH variable (that used to just be a string editor). Anyway, Microsoft is a bit stuck between a rock and a hard place there, because they cannot change anything fundamental about the UI, lest they be burned at the stake for heresy, but some things are just awful concepts from a bygone age that are not easy to understand for newcomers. So newbies or veterans, at least one group is going to be pissed off.

In this case, this concept of always clicking OK to confirm your choices, and only the final OK actually counts, is such an awful way of doing things. But just making the change take effect immediately (at least for new processes) is apparently just not the done thing. Oh, and making the user reboot. The joke used to be that "you have moved the mouse pointer. Please reboot to make the changes take effect." I mean, I get it, it is a quick and easy solution, but apparently in 30 years they have never thought if they could maybe find another way to reload their apps.