Working directly with C API in Windows has not been a thing since Vista, as COM took the main role for API delivery.

The Windows SDK samples like Hilo make use of C++ with COM.

Android used to have a dedicated menu key that would always bring up a menu. It was removed to chase Apple's 100% screen design.

I am fairly bothered about that but the one that really gets to me is the inconsistency of user interfaces across applications.

This precisely coincides with the web developers being allowed to wrap stuff into "apps" in Electron and the like.

Although I started with 98, I think Vista / 7 was the peak. It was user friendly enough for newbies but didn't sacrifice advanced controls. Just organized them better to bring focus to the more used parts.

The war on scroll bars has gotten pretty senseless.

> we lost the menu bar and replaced it with "mobile first" designs

What does this mean? I use lots of apps that still have a menu bar.

Some apps eschew it, like browsers, but not because they are “mobile first”, but because they are trying to maximize screen space.

The Desktop GUI was perfected with NeXTStep in 1990. Though some might say Smalltalk in 1984 (modulo some nice artwork and colours).

We could even have unified desktop.mobile codebases, with different GUI layouts. 280 North's objective-J/Cappuccino proved this.

IDK what we're even doing anymore.

Windows 95 was the last release that had serious user testing in controlled environments. (They were also cribbing lots of notes from NeXT, which helped.)

Something fundamentally switched around 1998-2002 in how interface design was viewed and approached. I started my career in software as a design summer intern at a company that made a Windows “groupware” application in 1997. They took pride in following the platform’s guidelines and actually testing their designs with real users being videotaped trying to use it. The company’s UI design department was tiny, but employed both an industrial designer and a cognitive scientist.

Five years later, everybody I met in UI design was a graphic designer who was drawing glossy website mockups in Photoshop. The elder lore of science-based UI design was completely lost when Web 2.0 happened and app designs became vibes-based. Even Apple couldn’t resist the tide. (Indeed Steve Jobs’s return to Apple in 1997 was a major contributor because he had developed a taste for user-hostile skeuomorphism like the brushed metal QuickTime Player.)

The Menu + quick access bar was good for developers but terrible for users, at least compared to the ribbon.

Ribbon is absolutely an improvement for users but is more work for the XML layout and learning how to organize it.

I'm rather convinced that Ribbon is still the best way to organize quick actions, show their shortcuts (Alt to see keyboard shortcuts), and also have enough text to describe all the buttons. But it'd be nice if it were easier to make good Ribbons.

Menu was braindead easy, albeit through ancient process of .rc files and whatnot

> The desktop UI was perfected around the time of Windows 95

There’s no need to be hyperbolic or blinded by nostalgia. Yes, user interfaces have suffered several setbacks in the years since, but even if we concede every change was for the worse (they weren’t) it was by no means “perfected” and there was still plenty of area for improvement.

I agree with you generally but I don't think desktop UI is remotely close to perfected. Unless you mean the desktop as a skeumorphic concept than maybe.

I think we've actually completely stagnate on the human interaction side of OSes and only emacs has made any progress and then only for those willing to put the work in, not as a vanilla user ui.

> The desktop UI was perfected around the time of Windows 95 and has gotten worse with every iteration since then.

Well that can't be entirely true, the desktop experience on Windows 10 improved on Windows 8 by leaps and bounds.