Nice! I missed this design language.

I love skewmorphism, personally, so I wouldn't mind a return to that paradigm. If it was pixel art skewmorphism, ugh, I'd be in heaven.

Windows XP's Fisher-Price interface beats the hell out of unreadable flat garbage.

You should be able to find the buttons you need. Giving them text, iconography, and color is good, actually. It's downright necessary. Most of your vision is peripheral vision, but when you look right at something, you wanna know what the fuck it is.

The only stage of this worth slandering is the Microsoft Bob / edutainment CD-ROM / Flash-only website trend, where the interface is like a photograph of a cluttered desk, and you have to guess that clicking the telephone opens your contacts. And that's mostly a problem of poor contrast and no labels.

Your UI should not be a puzzle game. That includes knowing which things are links, buttons, or menus, before you interact with them - and noticing they're available in the first place.

We're not going back to skeumorphic design are we?

I only fucking hope we are. All this other nonsense is just childish garbage