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submitted 2 months ago by dch82@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world

Why did UI's turn from practical to form over function?

E.g. Office 2003 vs Microsoft 365

Office 2003

It's easy to remember where everything is with a toolbar and menu bar, which allows access to any option in one click and hold move.

Microsoft 365

Seriously? Big ribbon and massive padding wasting space, as well as the ribbon being clunky to use.

Why did this happen?

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[-] NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com 20 points 2 months ago

It seems easier to find things for users. Probably part of dumbing things down.

My mom went through this last week with Libre Office. She said she couldn’t find anything because the ribbons from Word weren’t there. I found the option and enabled it and she said that was much better.

Whereas, I use Word 365 on a daily basis but I still know where things are from the classic menus.

But users want big pictures and less words, less menus.

So UI designers have done that.

You see that in the change between Windows 7 and Windows 8 in heavy ways. More buttons and less menus.

I fucking hate the dumbing down, especially on servers.

[-] oldfart@lemm.ee -3 points 2 months ago

Thankfully, the normies are moving away from computer and maybe the ecosystem will heal in our lifetimes 🤞

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

We can only hope. Unfortunately phones were headed that way too, but we seem to have maxed out how big a phone people are willing to carry. I dread the idea of folding phone screens, because people will use the same excuses to take up more and more space for fancier UIs (and ads), while decreasing usable screen space to push us into folding phones.

I’m sure it’ll be just like the guy above justifying wasteful UI because of “bigger screens”. No, the other way around: bigger screens became necessary because of wasteful UI.

[-] oldfart@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah, phones are a lost case.

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this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
262 points (83.4% liked)

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