A bad Micro$oft user interface example: Wi-Fi indicator

by Forrest Sheng Bao

I believe Microsoft has a long history of designing bad user interface. And they never know they have that problem. I just wanna give you an example, of a very important function. The time span is kinda long, from Windows 7 (maybe even as early as Windows Vista) to current beta version of Wndows 8.

Here is the snapshot I wanna crticize.

You see the stupid part in their UI design? To a network that has excellent signal strength (5-bar TTUnet here), indicator in the system tray and the indicator in the Wi-Fi list use two different color themes. If they use the same color theme, we would see 5 green bars on the Wi-Fi indicator in system tray. But we cannot. Stupid Micro$oft used two almost opposite color themes. Do you think gray is closer to white than green?


I noticed this problem on Windows 7 - didn't get a chance to even install Vista on any of my testbeds. Sadly, Microsoft hasn't fixed this problem in Windows 8 Developer Preview.


I cannot see what are the new underlying technology is been made into every new version of Windows after Windows 2000. All I see, are bad UIs introduced. They look fancy but not as so when you use them.