Vista design being forced on XP?

[Mario F.]

I'm looking at recent software with a radical new layout on my XP machine. Recently I acquired Ranking Toolbox 6 and Hello Engines 6 from a deal with my web hosting provider. And I just now am trying the new version of Nitro PDF Professional.

These 3 applications are running on my beloved XP machine with that ugly, confusing, resource and screen real estate hog Vista layout. It's just unbearable that thing. Some may like it, I can understand that. But I don't.

So... what is going on?
- Is this thing switchable?
- Can I expect my sweet XP machine to slowly become crowded with this crap?
- Where is the closest Linux distro?

[Elysia]

Heh. I think the majority is interested in sweet, nice looking GUIs. But obviously some aren't.
Myself, I do have some mixed feelings. I like pretty GUI, but at the same time, the applications seems to become less responsive. And that's bad.

Though I do not know of the software in particular, my thoughts on the wole are:
- Nope, not switchable.
- Yep, more apps will become pretty.

[SlyMaelstrom]

I don't know these three applications well enough to say that there is no way to change the layout in their options. I would give it a look if you haven't... but yes, I would expect more applications to come out with the Vista style layout if they aren't going to offer Vista and XP versions seperately.

[Mario F.]

Hmm... But so far we haven't had that problem, Sly. The OS would render my screen according to my preferences. Not enforce me a design I didn't choose. EDIT: I reckon, there's only a handful of examples where unskinned software is distributed with such radical changes in layout without calling my XP controls, but instead some other library

I'm thinking this is just the vendors trying to be "cool" and I just stumbled upon 3 examples in a row.

[Elysia]

It's more of a trend nowmore. PerfectDisk had an Vista-esque GUI update for the 2008 version.
People like pretty GUIs. The majority of the XP users anyway. The casual users.
So companies respond to their desires and create pretty interfaces.
It's the future of the computer world. Eye candy.

[vart]

Winamp in version 5 has get back to its native 2.x GUI (as one of available options)

So there are product managers that do listen to their users and provide also functional interface in the next versions, when they see that the previos pretty GUI has failed

[Elysia]

...Which is a shame because there's nothing wrong with a pretty GUI. But eh... I don't use Winamp, so I don't really care.

[maxorator]

As long as there are alternatives to thiose pretty-looking-ugly-performance programs, the end of the world is not present yet.

[Elysia]

Let's hope people will start complaining about the performance next, but also start complaining if they remove the eye candy

[maxorator]

As much as I've seen some Linux distros offer a lot of eye candy without much performance issues. For example Compiz (formerly known as Beryl) has 3D stuff plus tons of 2D eye candy and it runs quite well on older machines.

So it's possible to add a lot of eye candy and still maintain good performance. Most of the developers are probably just too lazy to care about performance issues.

[Elysia]

Go Linux!
I'm going to have to look into some of those "distros" sometime.

[Mario F.]

I can't find anywhere on these applications where I can turn this thing off. Running in classic mode with the Themes service disabled simply doesn't do a thing to it. I feel trapped. These things simply aren't customizable. They must be using some library that renders controls like this. I say good on them, I won't buy.

Below is a snapshot of Nitro PDF (the other apps aren't much different). Look at the amount of screen working area that is being stolen. Meanwhile this is just a PDF reader/editor, but my processor fan is running nonstop and I'm being paged this way to hell everytime I use the program.

[indigo0086]

I hate that ribbon based bullsh!t on the recent microsoft office versions. It makes everything so unintuitive to find, moreso than a microsoft product should be.

[Wraithan]

Was in a IRC room helping a guy set up a spread sheet and I use open office but in the past that hasn't been an issue since it is similar enough to excel. Turns out the new version of excel has one of those vista-like interfaces and so my telling him to go to certain menus and such didn't work at all.

[Mario F.]

I hate that ribbon based bullsh!t on the recent microsoft office versions. It makes everything so unintuitive to find, moreso than a microsoft product should be.

Absolutely. It's just incredible how you are forced to change your habits every 5 years because the company said so. They try to develop, they say, user friendliness. But then force you to relearn the operating system every new version. Whatever.