Why did UI’s turn from practical to form over function?

E.g. Office 2003 vs Microsoft 365

Office 2003

It’s easy to remember where everything is with a toolbar and menu bar, which allows access to any option in one click and hold move.

Microsoft 365

Seriously? Big ribbon and massive padding wasting space, as well as the ribbon being clunky to use.

Why did this happen?

  • @AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
    -1•2 hours ago
    • Laptop screens are now useless
    • I used to use my iPad as an additional monitor but I can no longer fit even a useable text chat window on it
    • I need my 27” monitor to fit the useable workspace that a laptop screen once had
    • @TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3•2 hours ago

      How are laptop screens useless? I’m using a laptop right now. Doesn’t seem useless to me.

      I have more than enough room.

      Laptops wouldn’t be the main form factor for doing PC work if they were useless.

      I need my 27” monitor to fit the useable workspace that a laptop screen once had

      Unless you’ve got scaling set super high for some reason, that’s very doubtful.

      • @AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1•3 minutes ago

        No wait, let me go with your example ….

        You believe a laptop window is useful because you can run a browser with 11 headlines visible

        My first work “computer” was a vt100 terminal: black and white, 80 characters wide (on the newer models), by 24 rows. I could and did have a reader that could display as many as 20 headlines on a single screen, and I could scroll and drill down much faster. Sure the UI was shit, but it had the functionality to do the task.

        Don’t get me wrong, I fully appreciate the usability and power of a modern graphical UI and would never go back. However the point is designers focus too much on eye candy and “doing it because they can” over actual functionality. Can you understand my frustration that a modern 1900x1200 screen with millions of colors is really no more functional than a 40 year old black and white character based terminal. I get that designers want to show off their UI, but I want the UI to get out of my way and let me do more stuff. I want there to be more focus on compactness and efficiency. I want at least some attention paid to using resources wisely

      • @AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1•39 minutes ago

        Wow, you can fit one whole browser window on it … with headlines.

        Even back in the CRT days, I could have a couple windows, such as email, text, and IDE

        • my email program now has huge wasted ui space so might take up the whole laptop screen, leaving me thing. Email is not work, but something on the side for communication that shouldn’t interfere with work
        • my text chat is no longer a tiny rectangle in the corner but has huge wasted ui space and wants to take up an entire laptop screen. Even that is sometimes not enough. Text is not work, text is somethign on the side that shouldn’t interfere with work
        • my IDE has huge waste UI space and no longer fits any useable workspace on a laptop screen

        Laptops are great for portability: I used to carry them to work from any loaation. It was great while it lasted. Now I carry it from docking station to docking station, and I’m back to the bad old days of dpneeding an office set up, so I can have usable monitors