> Optimising for 800x800 resolution is counterproductive if 99% of users have at least HD screens.
I do agree there, but it's less that more functionality is being pack into menus today, and more that software is confused whether it should be trying to optimise for mouse and keyboard or a clumsy touch screen. As a result context menus get replaced with tabs and icons get replaced with large clickable tiles.
Another issue with modern UX is that it assumes far more of the user for the sake of minimalism. If you look at software from around the Windows 98 era the UX was designed to be as functional and clear as possible. The obvious examples of this might be how browsers back then had a button that actually said "Back" and Windows had a button that said "Start". Contrast that with today – my browser has a rotated triangle for a back button and Windows has button with four squares which you need to know is what we used to call "start".
These two trends combined imo are what causes most of the problems – the UX itself is often clumsy because it's poorly optimise for your device, and it's confusing because often UI elements aren't clearly labeled (or they're simply removed in a push for minimalism).
Windows is uniquely bad for both of these trends. Functionality which would have previously been easy to find with a textual context menu is now often on some randomly ordered tab panel behind a vague icon.
There are more clickable elements in that ribbon than there are in the classic menubars. They're also way more discoverable in that a lot of them are even named. There's more functionality in the ribbon here than the menubar.
I do agree there, but it's less that more functionality is being pack into menus today, and more that software is confused whether it should be trying to optimise for mouse and keyboard or a clumsy touch screen. As a result context menus get replaced with tabs and icons get replaced with large clickable tiles.
Another issue with modern UX is that it assumes far more of the user for the sake of minimalism. If you look at software from around the Windows 98 era the UX was designed to be as functional and clear as possible. The obvious examples of this might be how browsers back then had a button that actually said "Back" and Windows had a button that said "Start". Contrast that with today – my browser has a rotated triangle for a back button and Windows has button with four squares which you need to know is what we used to call "start".
These two trends combined imo are what causes most of the problems – the UX itself is often clumsy because it's poorly optimise for your device, and it's confusing because often UI elements aren't clearly labeled (or they're simply removed in a push for minimalism).
Windows is uniquely bad for both of these trends. Functionality which would have previously been easy to find with a textual context menu is now often on some randomly ordered tab panel behind a vague icon.