From Windows 95 to Windows 7, the UI fundamentally stayed the same, with a few details here and there, including, scroll bars, window title bars and borders.
Essentially, what changed is just cosmetic and mostly as a result of better hardware. Earlier versions of Windows were designed for 256 color displays, Windows XP fully embraced 24-bit color, and Windows 7 was designed with GPUs in mind. That's how we got from pixel art to shading to semi-transparency.
And I must admit I liked Windows 7 because it was both functional and pretty. A nice, modern for the time skin on top of tried and tested UI core concepts.
Windows 8 broke everything as an attempt to unify the desktop and mobile experience, and we haven't recovered since then. In fact, I think mobile killed desktop usability. We are in a conundrum that we didn't find a way to resolve: desktop and mobile are fundamentally different platforms, so they would need different UI paradigms, but there is an overlap functionality as many apps are present on both platforms, so it would be nice to provide the same experience on both.
To that, add the fact that the web is often third or a fourth option (mobile and desktop web), and the ability to use native controls in web browsers is rather poor, so people make their own, but then, you want the website to look like the desktop app. Same kind of problem.
From Windows 95 to Windows 7, the UI fundamentally stayed the same, with a few details here and there, including, scroll bars, window title bars and borders.
Essentially, what changed is just cosmetic and mostly as a result of better hardware. Earlier versions of Windows were designed for 256 color displays, Windows XP fully embraced 24-bit color, and Windows 7 was designed with GPUs in mind. That's how we got from pixel art to shading to semi-transparency.
And I must admit I liked Windows 7 because it was both functional and pretty. A nice, modern for the time skin on top of tried and tested UI core concepts.
Windows 8 broke everything as an attempt to unify the desktop and mobile experience, and we haven't recovered since then. In fact, I think mobile killed desktop usability. We are in a conundrum that we didn't find a way to resolve: desktop and mobile are fundamentally different platforms, so they would need different UI paradigms, but there is an overlap functionality as many apps are present on both platforms, so it would be nice to provide the same experience on both.
To that, add the fact that the web is often third or a fourth option (mobile and desktop web), and the ability to use native controls in web browsers is rather poor, so people make their own, but then, you want the website to look like the desktop app. Same kind of problem.