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tooki:
--- Quote from: ataradov on March 30, 2020, 12:50:59 am ---The flat UI trend is easy to explain. Graphics cards can draw filled rectangles really fast. So it is easy if UI is just flat rectangles.
Doing 3D control elements is also hard on 4K and 8K monitors, since your elements need to scale appropriately now. And again, filled rectangles scale easily.
--- End quote ---
I don't mean to be rude, but that is the most ludicrous, patently absurd thing I've read all week.
Our computers 20 years ago could handle complex, layered, shaded UIs with real alpha transparency, without a problem. Our GPUs today are hundreds of times more powerful, and have 20 times the VRAM. Scaling up a UI to 2x (i.e. 4x as many pixels) is peanuts to them.
You're talking as though this is some novel challenge, when in fact it's one we faced and solved decades ago. (I'm not exaggerating when I say 20 years: it was in early 2000 that Apple first released Mac OS X's Aqua interface, with its gratuitous alpha transparency and image transforms. It ran them surprisingly well in software (!), but they really came to life on machines that could do it in hardware, which was pretty much all machines released from that point on.)
If you encounter speed problems with high-dpi UIs, that is strictly a software implementation failure. But well-built GUIs have absolutely zero problem with this.
Remember, we now use GPUs capable of drawing millions of triangles per second, with complex math applied to them. You forget that that hardware is available to 2D applications as well, since 2D is merely a subset of 3D where the Z-axis is zero.
ataradov:
--- Quote from: tooki on March 30, 2020, 11:01:02 pm ---Our computers 20 years ago could handle complex, layered, shaded UIs with real alpha transparency
--- End quote ---
It is not about performance. It is about UI element design that scales well and does not get blurry.
Old Win95 style 3D buttons had 3 pixel border that created 3D effect. You can't see pixels anymore, so all those UI elements need to be designed to be adaptable to the display resolution. This is not an unsolvable issue, but turning everything into simple primitives automatically solved the issue.
I'm not saying that I like or happy about it, but it is what it is.
tooki:
--- Quote from: Whales on March 30, 2020, 12:47:13 am ---
--- Quote from: james_s on March 30, 2020, 12:28:59 am ---This same trend is the first thing I noticed about Win10 when my former employer moved over to it, everything was a just floating in a jumble on a sea of bright white, suddenly it was no longer obvious what was a clickable control, text entry box or background object. Decades of UI design and refinement thrown out overnight in the quest of being trendy and fashionable.
--- End quote ---
There were rumours that the MS UI design team was drawing the new UIs in powerpoint and then sending these off to the programmers.
--- End quote ---
I'm 100% sure they did that, because until just a few years ago, it was an extremely common way of doing low-fi prototypes. It's really only in the past 5-10 years that halfway decent UI prototyping software has come out and taken hold in the UX world. (Though IMHO, calling it "halfway decent" is being extremely generous. From a usability standpoint, those UI prototyping systems are atrocious. Oh, the irony…)
But everyone understood that the PPT mockups were not intended to be pixel-perfect final art, but just symbolic representations.
Me, when I was working in UX, I liked to work on pencil and paper as long as I could. That way, there was never any confusion about "but I don't like the color of that button" and such nonsense.
tooki:
--- Quote from: ataradov on March 30, 2020, 11:05:10 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on March 30, 2020, 11:01:02 pm ---Our computers 20 years ago could handle complex, layered, shaded UIs with real alpha transparency
--- End quote ---
It is not about performance.
--- End quote ---
Sorry, you can't claim you weren't talking about performance, since your post opened with "The flat UI trend is easy to explain. Graphics cards can draw filled rectangles really fast." That is unambiguously a statement about performance, and as such, it's just plain wrong. Graphics performance has nothing to do with the flat trend.
--- Quote from: ataradov on March 30, 2020, 11:05:10 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on March 30, 2020, 11:01:02 pm ---Our computers 20 years ago could handle complex, layered, shaded UIs with real alpha transparency
--- End quote ---
It is about UI element design that scales well and does not get blurry.
Old Win95 style 3D buttons had 3 pixel border that created 3D effect. You can't see pixels anymore, so all those UI elements need to be designed to be adaptable to the display resolution. This is not an unsolvable issue, but turning everything into simple primitives automatically solved the issue.
I'm not saying that I like or happy about it, but it is what it is.
--- End quote ---
Again, a problem that was solved long ago, albeit not as long ago as the performance side.
Apple and Microsoft both had solved that problem long ago. In the case of Windows, however, it took lots of apps a long time to unblur, because the apps were still using antiquated graphics APIs that were pixel-based, so the app was actually rendered at low res and then scaled up. That, however, has fuck-all to do with design choices, since even simple rectangles and plain text were blurry in such apps.
Whales:
--- Quote from: tooki on March 30, 2020, 11:07:17 pm ---Me, when I was working in UX, I liked to work on pencil and paper as long as I could. That way, there was never any confusion about "but I don't like the color of that button" and such nonsense.
--- End quote ---
"What's that, 2H?"
Gah, you're giving me anxiety thinking about it ;) Showing off website prototypes is always easier if you keep the colour scheme of the old website.
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