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Comment by HWR_14 | Hacker News Reader

> The whole multiple design languages in the UI is insane and I can't believe they didn't fix it by Windows 11... rather they're poking at it slowly / poorly.

That's because MS's basic selling point is that nothing gets removed. I mean, obviously over time some things do get removed, but they're deprecation timeline is measured in decades.

Some of the things they deprecated in Vista they notified people they were going to deprecate when they released the new versions at the launch of XP. That's how long they gave people to shift over.

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I think the poking / changes they're doing in Windows 11 indicates that they are happy to change things. But they're just really bad at it / should have done it all or not at all until they were ready.

They seem to have finally picked some UI overlords to make decisions, but sadly they're bad decisions... and doing it bit by bit.

Are they actually updating some of the old UI this time? Usually they just add a new version of some UI, with less features than the original, so you often have to dig back through layers of Windows versions to find the option you want.

I feel like an archeologist, digging through a Win10 setting panel, to get to a Win7 style, that links down to an XP style dialog where I can actually change what I want.

You don't happen to have that chain documented, do you?

Usually, in the 'modern' panels, either scroll to the bottom or look for 'related settings' on the far right and go from there.

I am most familiar with the sound panel, as I keep having to tweak my inputs and outputs cause windows likes to forget I don't want sound coming out of the speakers, for example.

Right click on the volume widget in the tray next to the clock -> sound settings -> related settings pane, "Sound Control Panel". This gets you the tried and true sound control panel we know and love.

You can also short circuit this, by selecting "sounds" from the right click menu on the volume widget, as this brings you to the same XP era sound control panel, just on the sounds tab rather than playback or recording. Its all such a mess.

There are many. Here are a couple.

To Windows XP style

Settings -> Searching Windows -> Indexer Options -> Advanced Options -> Index Location [Select new]

To Windows 2k/9x holdovers.

Settings -> Network and Internet -> Ethernet => Networking and Sharing Center -> Network Connections -> *Any connection

At least from what I've seen I get the feeling they're trying to go towards a unified UI / eliminate as much of the X types of UI... sorta. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like they're making better choices.

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