Friday, July 15, 2011

Quality of Microsoft Windows UI

Recently I was investigating Microsoft Windows Control Panel applets and found an unexpected issue. Although most of contemporary applets look like they have identical look’n’feel properties, it is not true. Moreover, I suspect that there was no any common UI guidance for them. Look here, I took 3 random Control Panel Applets, placed them into a stack and compared left margin of main title. It is different in all applets!

Follow the red line:

Windows Control Panel

Let’s check vertical margins. Oh, no. The same picture.

Windows Control Panel 2

How this can be? The author of UI guidance for applications for Windows doesn’t follow their own rules.