Comment by overgard
4 years ago
The only consistency issue that really has bothered me is the constant mauling of the control panel. Windows 95 basically got it right, and every major release they just hide things further and further. And now the competing "Settings" thing is just an embarrassment. So now we have two competing ways of configuring the system, except the new one sucks and is incomplete, and the old one is kinda unmaintained.
I agree and am actually surprised that several years in there is still a bunch of stuff that is not configurable in the new Settings screen. I am obviously speaking without extensive knowledge of the underlying internals but surely it can't be that difficult to wrap some settings in a new UI if you dedicate a team to it?
I actually spent 15 minutes the other day trying to remove an additional keyboard layout that somehow found itself on my machine. I had to give up as I could not find the option in the new Settings screen and it seemed to have disappeared (or moved?) from the usual place in the Control Panel...
I had this too. I found and fixed the setting in the registry. They seem to have arrived at an UI design that cannot correctly represent the possible states of the underlying "real" model. Their current GUI for managing installed language keyboards is unfortunate. It appears to be optimized for a perceived majority of users only needing a single layout, in a way that makes it difficult to manage multiple layouts. Somehow their UI mix the keyboard layouts together with the GUI display language. I don't quite understand, why they don't just let the user manage a simple list of installed keyboard layouts (I believe it used to work that way, and behind the scenes it probably still does?)
Yep. It seems to occasionally add keyboard layouts if your region, language, and keyboard layout are different. Not handy if you live abroad. The new UI assumes it's more clever than the user.
It super frustrating to have to go on a treasure hunt just to find some options there.
To this day, every time I need to uninstall an application I still do: win+R -> control appwiz.cpl -> enter and it brings me to the place I want to be.
The SaaS version of exchange has the same problem, and the support people start by having you switch to the old menu because they don't know where everything has been moved in the new one.
The settings app completely mauls things as well, turning off static DNS will just completely remove _all_ DNS servers instead of using dhcp like adapter settings
I rarely use Windows but this is indeed ridiculous. I find myself guessing which button or link is hiding the dialogue that I really want. In almost all cases I just want the one from Windows 95, like display settings, but end up opening the wrong ones and seemingly going in circles before I finally crack the code.
I mostly agree, but if you use US English GUI locale there’s a shortcut — both new settings, and old control panel, have built-in search.
Very often I don’t bother opening either of them, instead using start menu search. For instance, to open the old “network and sharing center” GUI I press Win key, type “netw”, and press enter.
TBH I don't really see how the Settings app is an embarrassment at this point in time. This was definitely true in Windows 8 and early Windows 10 versions, but with the leaps and bounds it's made since, I feel like 'settings app suxx' is a meme that has overstayed its welcome.
I do not have much to do with windows these days, but if you try to cange advanced network interface settings or audio settings beyond selecting a single input, you stil need to find the link to the old panel hidden somewhere. Also, good luck changing WiFi settings from the fluid menu.
And lastly, while it always stays responsive, control of the background processes is also lacking. I spent quite some time restarting the download of a system language, just because I started it while having DNS issues (and to fix those... see above).
I personally don't mind the older designs being mixed in, especially since most of them look good enough with the updated buttons, but the settings panel is, in its current state, still a sidegrade at best.
I don't sit around configuring my machine so I can't really say if it's gotten better, but I know the past 5 years have taught me too look anywhere but there. There's never been a good reason to have two different overlapping configuration apps.
I've used it fairly recently and it still has only the absolutely most common settings you'd want to change. 90% of the settings are still in the control panel.
It will continue to suck until they've actually moved all the settings from the control panel into settings.