I find it’s weird to see this article, as if they just now discovered the effing ribbon ….

I had given up on more compact UIs and bought bigger screens: I can no longer work without at least 2. However lately I’ve been using a lot of large Excel spreadsheets, and am cursing the ribbon again. I need to use the “filter” control a lot, but it only appears on the “Home” ribbon when the Window is a certain size 😡. I don’t even know where it is the rest of the time, but it seems like whenever I want to filter a lot of data I need to start by adjusting window size until the filter controls appear.

Yay for “usability”, instead of a compact UI where things can be found in predictable menu locations regardless of window size

The usability has been plummetting with every single redesign for quite a while, though.

Used to be everything could be found and done in two or three clicks... now it's five minutes clicking and scrolling through the useless single windowed chaos of the configuration app looking for where the last update randomly moved it to (finding one or two options that are almost what you're looking for, but can't do what used to take just a couple clicks), five minutes looking it up on what's left of the internet while avoiding ads, spam, and hallucinating LLMs, only to find out this setting you and everyone you know had been using almost daily was removed by the last update “to improve usability”, and five minutes writing eldritch incantations into the registry, group policies, or powershell to finally configure the fucking setting...

The design has absolutely not “definitely” improved.

Yet do they use ancient copies of the software that broadly still performs the tasks people need of them? No.

Yes, actually—I have a VM reserved mostly for 16-bit software.

Do they theme their system to look like the oh-so-superior Win98? No.

Yes, actually—the Windows machine I'm forced to use for work restores as much of that aesthetic as practical, sometimes with the help of third-party software. My main home machine features a Linux DE whose appearance is largely the same as it was circa 2005 and whose development team is dedicated to keeping that look and feel.

Some of us do put our money where our mouths are, although I admit that isn't universal.

It's true that some level of padding is necessary in a UI, but the amount present in contemporary design is way too large for a system using a traditional mouse or laptop touchpad, which are capable of small, precise movements. Touchscreen-friendly design is best saved for touchscreens, but people don't want to do the work involved to create multiple styles of UI for different hardware. I've never encountered anything touted as "one size fits all", whether it be a UI or a piece of clothing, that actually does fit everyone. At best, it's "one size fits most", and I'm usually outside the range of "most" the designers had in mind. At worst, it's "lowest common denominator", and that seems to be the best description for contemporary UI design.

People spend lots of money to buy big screens, only for apps/websites to use a fraction of it.

I cannot control how every application or website I have to use looks, but where I can, I try to find solutions.

When I am occasionally on reddit, I use old.reddit. I use addons for youtube, to remove unecessary stuff, or open videos directly in mpv.

I use reader mode to make many sites easier to navigate.

Mastodon and Lemmy have a much better design than Twitter or new Reddit.

On the one windows machine I still have, I use the classic shell, to replace the start menu with something more usable.

I use Libreoffice, and many other Software with sane functional UI.

I don't want to use old software, because the older software gets, the more hostile the environment becomes for it.

A lot of UI decisions on the Internet seem driven by the need to create empty spaces to put advertising into, and with adblocker it looks just bad.

Yet do they use ancient copies of the software that broadly still performs the tasks people need of them? No.

This just means that functionality and interoperability criteria are more important than usability. They are - you can't just exchange docs with a person using a modern office suite, while you are using WordPerfect 8 for Linux.

This is the opposite of confirming your argument about UI\UX, because this means that UI\UX are order of magnitude less important in making the decision.

And it's obvious, I swear, some people haven't been taught that arguments are not intended to support their group or hierarchy, you can't do that with cheating in arguments anyway. They are intended to find out truth, make both participants richer than before.

Do they theme their system to look like the oh-so-superior Win98? No.

That's simply because they "theme their system" to look as they wish and they don't have to stop with Win98 or Win2K.

But in a "one size to fit all" situation those are still obviously superior.

Ergonomics is not a matter of opinions, there's plenty of research since the fscking world war two. Different controls should have different colors, shapes and textures. It's a scientifically proven statement. Proven with human error stats and time to do a task stats.

Padding controls and indicators with space can be a good thing, but no modern designer is doing it right as far as I'm concerned. Because it's not about making panels half the screen, it's about different groups of controls being clearly separated by that space and padded for focus, and space being used proportionally to importance.

They've all heard something of it, but haven't learned the actual thing.

Older UIs were usually (often, but not always) made with respect to ergonomics.

thank god modern UIs aren’t inconsistent, cramped and cluttered like this

Our ideas of all three things seem to be diametrically opposite. For me older UIs seem ordered, compact and correctly accented. In general, it's not always true - say, I like the appearance of old KDE (2-3), but not sure if I'd use it daily, for example (neither I would modern KDE).

These people have no idea what constitutes a good user interface. Just because they’ve taught themselves how to use the one from 1998, does not mean that grandma of 78 would find it as intuitive. Applications like this have to accommodate so many different types of people and somehow the neckbeards seem to forget that. Can’t imagine why.

• Laptop screens are now useless
• I used to use my iPad as an additional monitor but I can no longer fit even a useable text chat window on it
• I need my 27” monitor to fit the useable workspace that a laptop screen once had

In my experience working with Designers for web and app design, they always had trouble with dynamic stuff at all levels, from program flow and elements which dynamically collapsed or expanded to using animation to illustrate things or call attention to something.

Don't get me wrong, as a programmer I was like a toddler next to them when it came to even just awareness of the concerns related to merelly visual organisation, not counting all sorts of other concerns in a visual design some of which I'm sure I'm even not aware exist. It's just that when it came to dynamic elements their expertise was comparativelly non-existent and they have little or no tendency to use such capabilities, even in things such as apps where they're reasonably easy to do.