Microsoft pivots on Pivot, admits that yanking touch control from WinUI 3 toolset 'was obviously poor judgment' As Project Reunion - Microsoft's latest scheme to tempt developers back to Windows - lumbers closer to the finish line, the company has admitted it made a whoopsie in the deprecation of the Pivot control. The Pivot control was part of Microsoft's attempt to fiddle with the Windows user interface in the days of Windows 8 and …
There's an old saying that it's easier to ask forgiveness afterwards than for permission beforehand. It looks as if far too many big corporations are following this. What they've not worked out that this is almost inevitably used in terms of rolling out some extra item that was bogged down in bureaucracy, not breaking what was already there.
Except for a small number of niche apps, the world is either Web apps that either run in a browser, either in a mobile or desktop device, or as native mobile apps, perhaps the same web app with some layer atop. Outside office, photo, 3D/CAD and niche apps (of which are quite a few, but each one addressing a relatively small user base) nobody is interested in Windows user interfaces now. Games usually roll their own fancy UI controls anyway.
So Microsoft, please focus on making Edge, or whatever you want to call your browser now, fully compliant and performant. Windows apps are no longer of interest for the majority of developers.
It isn't really - the target is Windows developers for whom the Windows 7 UI is good enough. It's an attempt to hitch them to the Windows 10 train and the "modern API" (presumably so Microsoft can at some point kill off Win32) by allowing them to incrementally add new UI features without a complete rewrite.
The snag for developers is that if they do this they lose backwards compatibility (before Windows 10 October 2018 Update). The snag for Microsoft is that if developers just sit on their hands because what they have is good enough, Microsoft it going to be pretty much stuck supporting Win32 for ever because they don't really have much leverage.
Given Microsoft's history in this space, I suspect that the response from developers is likely to be "no thanks, we're good". If there were significant benefits to be gained from an API shift, Microsoft wouldn't feel obliged to push this halfway house.
Sorry guys, but the whole "Fluent Design" thing sounded to me like a mixture of gimmicks and flashiness from the start.
And underlying it appears to be Microsoft's attitude of "Do it our way because we know best".
I'm not a developer. Not even a proficient coder.
But I spent 30+ years helping people to use stuff.
And none of this helps
Organised menus help. So they introduced the "Ribbon" to get rid of them.
Easy location of programmes so that the less frequently used ones can be found according to function helps. So they made the Start menu into an alphabetical muddle that only the install programmes can manipulate (unless you are a techie sort and know how to get round it).
Having a sensible control panel helps, with functional sections and a reliable search system, so that the machine can be adjusted to match user needs and preferences without making any profound changes that render the device unusable. So they turned it into a dog's breakfast and have half the setting in a different less organised section anyway.
Being able to remove stuff that is simply hogging resources (with a way to restore them in the future if needed) is helpful. So they made loads of stuff unremovable ( like the fonts that only work in other alphabets for most users).
Having error messages that actually tell users what they need to do to resolve things helps. So tehy haven't improved these decades after Windows was introduced - they're still bloody useless.
And so on and so on.
Microsoft: "ooh, sorry about our poor judgement over a single UI control hardly anyone uses... we've spanked our collective bottoms until our virtual cheeks are red and sore!"
Customers: "Right. We weren't using it. We're still trying to find out what happened to WinForms. Anything to add about being sorry for every version of Windows since Vista, every Web Browser you've ever made, ruining all your dev tools through constant f**king fiddling, Teams, Sharepoint, being slower than Linux, Ballmer, Gates, constantly changing tack so no-one has a clue what framework or API they should be writing to week on week, Windows phone, and every software update, every product you've ever released except maybe Bob? Oh and making an iPad imitation even more expensive and even less functional than anything Apple would dare to bring to market?"
Microsoft: "...
...
Squirrel!
...
Look at our lovely pivot control!"
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