Jamie, I know you like text in your UI

That's why I thought of you when I read this:

"Windows and Windows Live is moving to a much more typographical driven UI over all ... The reason is that all the whitespace puts the spotlight on your content instead of the app frame."

The above quote is about Windows Live apps, but we saw the same kind of thing in the Explorer toobar from those leaked screenshots.

It's an interesting rationale. Whaddya think?

If this means that the fussy interface of the current Windows Live applications will be replaced with a more simple and clean look then I'll be happy. This is one area where Google's online services are better in my opinion.

I'm not so bothered about doing the same thing for Windows on the desktop because Aero has been executed quite well and looks nice as it is.

For the applications I'm developing at work, I've been doing something like this for a while now: instead of the classical menubar + toolbar (with no text), I've been using a hybrid approach: a single toolbar with the most common functions as separate buttons with an icon and a label, and the other functions in dropdown-menus on the same toolbar.

That's a beautiful UI.

Steve411 said:

That's a beautiful UI.

I can't really agree with this approach for several reasons:

1) I realize it's all about "content! content! content!", but it makes the interface look rather old-school, as if a text-based interface was quickly converted into a GUI.  A GUI without the G?

2) Users who are not that proficient in the language of their OS might have a harder time navigating around - certainly not rare for some companies to have foreign developers.  With a largely visual interface documentation on app/OS operation can be more easily understood when the elements don't change between languages, with a largely text-based interface the positioning and size of the elements will change radically depending upon the native language of the OS, presenting possibly difficulties if that worker goes home to his own OS.

3) Having an icon-based interface makes it easier to downscale that into smaller devices, like a phone.  You could reuse the existing art assets from your desktop OS and users would be instantly familiar with what each one does.

There's a big gap between bling and bland, and I think MS is going to far in the direction of bland, especially if they're trying to get more attention in the consumer market.  Consumers like nice pretty pictures, heck even the small smattering if icons in the current Live Wave 3 apps are relatively poor - they look like they could still be at home in Windows 98 in some cases, and certainly XP.

NitzWalsh said:

I can't really agree with this approach for several reasons:

1) I realize it's all about "content! content! content!", but it makes the interface look rather old-school, as if a text-based interface was quickly converted into a GUI.  A GUI without the G?

2) Users who are not that proficient in the language of their OS might have a harder time navigating around - certainly not rare for some companies to have foreign developers.  With a largely visual interface documentation on app/OS operation can be more easily understood when the elements don't change between languages, with a largely text-based interface the positioning and size of the elements will change radically depending upon the native language of the OS, presenting possibly difficulties if that worker goes home to his own OS.

3) Having an icon-based interface makes it easier to downscale that into smaller devices, like a phone.  You could reuse the existing art assets from your desktop OS and users would be instantly familiar with what each one does.

There's a big gap between bling and bland, and I think MS is going to far in the direction of bland, especially if they're trying to get more attention in the consumer market.  Consumers like nice pretty pictures, heck even the small smattering if icons in the current Live Wave 3 apps are relatively poor - they look like they could still be at home in Windows 98 in some cases, and certainly XP.

I think its a bad direction for them to move in, it makes sense visually for key functions to have icons, they're easier for the user to read that way. If they're really concerned about bringing focus to the content, there are other things they could do, like making the icons more minimal and monotone for instance. Look at the icons Google is using in Chrome and in Gmail. Microsoft needs to be a little more creative.

brian.shapiro said:

I think its a bad direction for them to move in, it makes sense visually for key functions to have icons, they're easier for the user to read that way. If they're really concerned about bringing focus to the content, there are other things they could do, like making the icons more minimal and monotone for instance. Look at the icons Google is using in Chrome and in Gmail. Microsoft needs to be a little more creative.

Minh said:

NitzWalsh said:

*snip*

My preference is as follow:

1) Command icon & text
2) Command text
99) Command icon

Even for a techie, I don't find a 16x16 icon alone all that useful. You'd memorize a few of them, but they're totally useless for discovery & such.