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Microsoft Operating Systems Windows IT

Microsoft Moves More Settings Away from the Control Panel on Windows 11 (windowscentral.com) 115

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft started shifting options from the Control Panel to the Settings app in Windows 8. The company has gradually moved settings away from the Control Panel since then. Quite a few options migrated over with the rollout of Windows 11, but a recent Insider build of Windows 11 moved a small handful of settings to the Settings app. Microsoft outlined the changes in the release notes of Windows 11 build 22509, which came out on December 1, 2021. The moves garnered attention from several outlets over the last week:

1. We have moved the advanced sharing settings (such as Network discovery, File and printer sharing, and public folder sharing) to a new page in Settings app under Advanced Network Settings.
2. We've made some updates to the device specific pages under Printers & Scanners in Settings to show more information about your printer or scanner directly in Settings when available.
3. Some of the entry points for network and devices settings in Control Panel will now redirect to the corresponding pages in Settings.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Microsoft Moves More Settings Away from the Control Panel on Windows 11 More

Microsoft Moves More Settings Away from the Control Panel on Windows 11

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  • The more of a cluster that windows becomes, the easier the transition to Ubuntu.

    We are switching to Web apps/ Ubuntu, and Citrix for occasional windows app usage.

    • So to get away from Byzantine configurations they should go to system D?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        So to get away from Byzantine configurations they should go to system D?

        There are Linux distributions that don't use systemd.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by jmccue ( 834797 )

          Correct, and the Linux I use at home is Slackware. But https://www.freedesktop.org/wi... [freedesktop.org] *seems* to be doing all it can to force the use of systemd and wayland onto Linux Distros. Never-mind the hurt hurling towards the BSDs. Slackware still seems to be fighting this trend, but more and more systemd items are creeping in.

          systemd itself I can deal with. But this trend bothers me because I do NOT like desktop environments, I use fvwm and to me that is the perfect environment. Freedesktop is forcing the

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by nagora ( 177841 )

            Correct, and the Linux I use at home is Slackware. But https://www.freedesktop.org/wi... [freedesktop.org] *seems* to be doing all it can to force the use of systemd and wayland onto Linux Distros. Never-mind the hurt hurling towards the BSDs. Slackware still seems to be fighting this trend, but more and more systemd items are creeping in.

            systemd itself I can deal with. But this trend bothers me because I do NOT like desktop environments, I use fvwm and to me that is the perfect environment. Freedesktop is forcing the use of GNOME3 and KDE onto to people using Linux.

            Hell, I would rather use twm than GNOME3 or KDE.

            Well, I agree with all that. I use WindowMaker on Gentoo at home. The work laptops are all Ubuntu but I regard them as disposable.

            It's not clear to me who exactly died and put the Free Desktop people in charge but by and large I feel their work has had an almost totally negative impact on the quality of Linux, including Linux on the desktop.

          • Hell, I would rather use twm than GNOME3 or KDE.

            There is also MATE. I run Gentoo/OpenRC/MATE on my personal desktop system.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by nagora ( 177841 )

              My wife uses Mate on the Gentoo box and is very happy with it. I use it on the work laptops and it's okay. Not annoying me is the bar a desktop has to get over, really. Anything after that is a bonus (not to say a miracle).

    • No way! Call me an emotional masochist but I love going on treasure hunts to find settings that Microsoft has decided to move. The more, the merrier! =)))

    • The more of a cluster that windows becomes, the easier the transition to Ubuntu.

      You're begging the question. How is migrating to one single place to get your settings "more of a cluster"? If anything with this announcement it's showing Windows 11 is less of a cluster than Windows 10 so if people haven't already migrated they won't do so because of this story / change.

      Windows 11 pushing people to Linux is even harder to believe in than the tooth fairy, or Santa, or unicorns, or 3080 Tis available for RRP.

      • If it takes less clicks to perform a task, it is a better layout. If it takes more clicks to perform a task, it is not.

        Burying settings many layers of menus deep is generally a worse overall experience.

        • Re:Use a simple measure (Score:4, Informative)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @02:39PM (#62091443)

          If it takes less clicks to perform a task, it is a better layout. If it takes more clicks to perform a task, it is not.

          False. If it takes less *time* to perform a task it's a better layout. Clicks are not relevant. By your account every setting should be on the same page since that would allow you get anywhere with just one click. But that is an objectively shit layout resulting in people spending a lot of time actually looking for what to click on. But let's pick some random example shall we? I had to change my IP address the other day for the first time in about 10 years thanks to our router shitting itself and not assigning DHCP addresses.

          Let's see if I can still do it the old way:
          Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change Adapter Settings (WTF I'm in a different window now) > Ethernet > Properties > IPv4 > Properties. Now I can type in my IP address, success.

          And let's use the interface you don't like:
          Settings > Network and Internet > Properties > IP Assignment Edit. Now I can type my IP address, success.

          Wow in Windows 11 it's 3 clicks, in Windows 7 it was 6 clicks across 2 windows and a 3 popup windows. You're right, Windows 10/11 has a much better layout not only by my metric, but by your own as well.

          • Control panel vs Settings, both on the same Windows 10 box;

            Control Panel > Network and Sharing > Select adapter > Change settings of this adapter (and here they all are - ipv4, ipv6, VirtualBox, Npcap, etc)

            Settings > Network and Internet > Change adapter options > Select adapter > Change settings of this adapter (and here they all are - ipv4, ipv6, VirtualBox, Npcap, etc)

            Maybe Windows 11 is different, and I'll give them props if they did not bury even more settings in harder to

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by EvilSS ( 557649 )

            False. If it takes less *time* to perform a task it's a better layout. Clicks are not relevant.

            I see you have never actually had to deal with this in a large setting before. The number of clicks absolutely matters to end users. It doesn't matter if the experience is more efficient, if the user perceives it isn't, it creates a negative experience for them. And yes, in the real world those types of perceptions matter.

            • The number of clicks absolutely matters to end users.

              No it doesn't. Being able to find something where they expect it is the only thing which matters to users. An organised way of getting there is important, number of clicks are irrelevant. Autistic IT nerds count clicks, users don't.

              By your accounts we should never have had a menu system in a GUI in the first place, because nesting makes clicks. Don't be stupid. Your "never actually had to deal with this" comment makes you look like you've never actually used a computer and are talking out of your arse.

              Go sp

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by EvilSS ( 557649 )

                No it doesn't.

                Yes, it does.

                Being able to find something where they expect it is the only thing which matters to users. An organised way of getting there is important, number of clicks are irrelevant. Autistic IT nerds count clicks, users don't.

                Again, more proof whatever job you have, it's insulated from the users, or you are just to dense to listen to them. Go ask your doctor next time you see them about what they do and don't like about the systems he has to deal with. #1 complaint is almost always "it takes too many clicks".

                By your accounts we should never have had a menu system in a GUI in the first place, because nesting makes clicks.

                Over-nesting of menus is a problem actually. You would know that if you had ever been involved in a large deployment (10,000+ user) beyond being a shit-heal sysadmin.

                Don't be stupid. Your "never actually had to deal with this" comment makes you look like you've never actually used a computer and are talking out of your arse.

                Oh go fuck yourself. Everything you h

            • If you're dealing with this in a large setting, you shouldn't be using the GUI at all;

              $ListOfComputers = get-dhcpserverv4lease -computer DHCP1 -scopeid 192.168.1.0 -allleases
              $Count=2
              $ListOfComputers | foreach-object {
              $ThisPC=$_
              Add-DhcpServerv4Reservation -Computername DHCPServer -ScopeId 10.5.4.0 -IPAddress "10.5.4.$Count" -ClientId $ThisPC.ClientID -name $ThisPC.HostName -Description "All GUIS suck. Including this one."
              $Count++
              }
               ...Or something

      • IF they consolidated the settings into an interface where you could find what you need to change, it wouldn't be a big deal. The issue is that not all of the settings are indexed in search, so if I need to change my IP address, "IP" does not show up in search. (just one easy example)

        There also needs to be a list of all possible settings grouped in whatever fashion they want where I can find detail settings without searching if I don't know the right term to search by.

        • so if I need to change my IP address, "IP" does not show up in search. (just one easy example)

          Funny story I had to do this for the first time ever the other day because my DHCP server went down. The setting was literally in the first place I looked and the exact logical place for it to be, no search required. In fact I got there and set the IP address so blindly that I missed something important and the system took issue with the fact that I wrote my netmask in as 255.255.255.0.

          That is a much bigger issue. People who don't know the difference between a netmask and a prefix may not realise that Windo

    • Wait, you're moving to Ubuntu because some Windows settings moved from the Control Panel to the Settings app? I'm guessing you were going to do that anyway, even if the settings didn't move.

      • No, I am moving because Win 11 continues to get worse, not improved. More data collection, less user control, controls re-designed because they want to, not because they are providing better functionality.

        I am also announcing this decision in the hopes that it influences people away from a dead-end path that is known as Win11. Operating systems are feature complete, so continuing to pay for new pretty things is not cost effective. Security patches and new device support are all that is needed. Linux pro

        • Yeah, I have a coworker who thinks like you. He likes things the way they were 10 years ago, and doesn't see any reason to move on. Personally, I do see advances being made in modern OSes like Windows, particularly in the area of collaboration, sharing, and redundancy.

  • I don't understand. (Score:3)

    by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @09:53AM (#62090329) Homepage Journal

    What makes the Settings app better than the Control Panel for this purpose?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Lonewolf666 ( 259450 )

      Nothing?
      Arguably it fits the overall GUI design better. But I have yet to see anything that would make Settings better in terms of usability. Change for change's sake.

      • Re:I don't understand. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Shadow of Eternity ( 795165 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @10:37AM (#62090507)

        It's not change for change's sake, it's a deliberate war on users. Everything microsoft does is with the ultimate goal of making computers less understandable and more user-hostile, they don't want you to feel you have any ownership or understanding of your computer. They want you to feel like it's a black box that needs to be left in the ownership and control of the "experts".

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 )

          Chrome did the same thing with web browsers. Their settings UI is a fucking nightmare. Just a single webpage that you have to scroll and scroll, and all those pesky privacy options are buried under expandos and other shit that's outright hostile on a PC interface.

          • Both the Chrome and Windows settings UI have a search field to filter the display. Although adding basic search to control panel would not have been difficult either.

    • I can see one reason, but I don't know if it applies: there is a good reason to move system-wide settings to something only the system administrator can change, and leave the user-specific settings somewhere so the user can change them. This is the way things work on my Linux system: as a regular user, I can change things that affect only me, but nothing that affects the entire system and all other users. In the case of my own laptop, there are no other users, but the division of power still works very well

      • Re:I don't understand. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Lonewolf666 ( 259450 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @10:03AM (#62090391)

        The classical Control Panel already has that, some functions are accessible to admins only and marked with a shield symbol. No need to scatter things over two different apps. But I guess 20 years from now Microsoft will have completed the transition. Then it will all be "Settings".

        • Re:I don't understand. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <voyager529NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday December 17, 2021 @10:28AM (#62090477)

          No need to scatter things over two different apps. But I guess 20 years from now Microsoft will have completed the transition. Then it will all be "Settings".

          You're way too optimistic!

          Windows 12, introduced in 2026, will introduce the "Buttons and Knobs" section. This will provide a new VR interface for themes and emojis and 101 places to accidently sign in using a Microsoft Account and upload everything to Onedrive. Over the next decade, Microsoft will transition half of the commands in half of the entries in Settings to Buttons and Knobs, yet still keep around Settings for "advanced users". The vestigial Control Panel will still exist and still be required for things like "installing drivers" and "getting rid of stored network credentials" and "uninstalling desktop applications", but it'll only be accessible by a Powershell command.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by blahplusplus ( 757119 )

      What makes the Settings app better than the Control Panel for this purpose?

      They're killing the PC as an open platform, this has been going on for 23+ years in the gaming industry by killing off local exe's. They want to lock down the PC and turn it into locked down consumer appliance with no file/program access eventually in the bid to kill piracy.

      This why Trusted computing was born. see here:

      https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja1... [cam.ac.uk]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sh0rtie ( 455432 )

        its working, back in the old days it was called Palladium and was widely rejected as the experts knew what their endgame was, 20 years later with a rebrand into TPM with enforcement baked in and its a resounding success, any hacker knows if it has Trust in the product name its anything but trustworthy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rhipf ( 525263 )

        Unless all you are playing are web games what games don't have a local exe file to start the game? Sure I'm not a big gamer but all the games I play (on a Windows PC) have an exe file to start the game.

        • Unless all you are playing are web games what games don't have a local exe file to start the game? Sure I'm not a big gamer but all the games I play (on a Windows PC) have an exe file to start the game.

          You don't grasp they are removing parts of the game files and code and moving it to another server so you're not getting a complete game, aka the idea of software "shutting down" is stupid unless you were sold a fraudulently coded piece of software.

    • Nothing at all. The Settings app is a pile of dumbed-down shit that is designed to obfuscate settings. It's all about removing control from the user, ala Apple.

      The appy app troll was right. Most apps are pieces of shit.

    • Re:I don't understand. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @11:03AM (#62090583)

      "It frontpages settings that our telemetry shows 90% of users exclusively use while serving up a mobile-friendly and uncluttered website-like experience."

      In other words, they take the information-dense, organized presentation of a computer UI and dumb it down, hide 90% of the shit that powerusers want, and force you to scroll for pages to find what you're looking for.

      • Yeah like .. why "mobile friendly"

        I guess if they mean some kind of tablet (2 in 1 etc) ok I guess but jeez... I am using a desktop OS .. windows phone flopped stop trying to be a dam phone OS and be a desktop os

        I already have to run OpenShell and StartIsBack to get back any form of usability on win 11 - at least those work .. for now...

        I know, I know.. get off my lawn... /grumble

      • And when you get there you often need to click on the skinny text link that says "Show Advanced Options" that brings you to the old Control Panel version. System settings even does this in Windows 10 now. So much white space to scroll through. It's so stupid.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ZeroPly ( 881915 )
      I guess the same thing that makes "Teams" better than "Groups" - the Microsoft marketing division. Once everything moves over to the Settings App, they'll have essentially reinvented the Control Panel.
      • Microsoft for nine years now has been taking a compact and user friendly Control Panel and turning it into a mostly white space scrolling headache. Management must think this makes them "cool"

    • "They" will say it's because of a consistent UI. In my opinion the ability to do a meaningful search is way more important, and the search really is better in the new UI.

  • I remember a time when ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @09:55AM (#62090337) Journal
    ... the biggest selling point of Micosoft was the consistency, backward compatibility and the stability of its UI and user experience.

    Then it crammed a full desktop UI on to 4 inch smart phones. Then stretched a five inch phone display to 20 inch desktops. Now flat windows, no demarcation between foreground and background windows, window top crammed with stuff, a mishmash of ribbon, menubar and toobars...

    All app developers design for full screen 5 inch displays. There is enough space on my 24" display to label a button "edit". But, no, it is huge faint gray circle with a fainter image that is supposed to be a pen with no indication whether it is clickable or not.

    Now, get off my greenish knoll on my desktop wallpaper ...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by oGMo ( 379 )

      the biggest selling point of Micosoft was the consistency, backward compatibility and the stability of its UI and user experience

      When was this mythical era? They've had different stuff basically every version, different trainwreck UI, fotm API, and the "stability" (or lack thereof) has been a running joke for decades. Though your post does apply pretty well if you replace "Microsoft" with "Apple," especially regarding the mobile/desktop UI stuff.

      • was this mythical era

        The 90's and early 2000's when windows was a local application, modern windows from 8 onward are the big push for the merger of hardware and operating system DRM. The whole industry was flirting with DRM proto-types like signed drivers in the server space for a while. The long term agenda was to kill piracy by taking remote control of windows OS and enforcing america's draconian copyright regime.

        They wanted to kill the infinitely copyable DOS16/win32 binaries of the 90's early 2000's. When PC games start

      • Re:I remember a time when ... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @10:22AM (#62090461)

        Well up until the 64 bit builds of Windows you could still run 16 bit programs from the 3.1 era. Pretty good run for backwards compatibility. Once you got off the consumer line and went with NT the stability vastly increased. Even then if you had problems it was likely due to bad drivers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        I'd say from Win3.x through 7 they did futz about and add apis and uis and mucked a bit with features, but generally in a compatible way. For example the control panel underneath was largely the same, Vista brought a different front-end to categorize the panels but the panels were fundamentally the same, causing maybe mild annoyance to people who mouse navigated rather than searched and didn't know which 'category' they needed to click to see the panel they are looking for.

        Then 8 came along with a 'every wi

      • Let us not confuse their "selling point", that is what they were promising to IT managers and other corporate clients with what they actually delivered.

    • Re:I remember a time when ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday December 17, 2021 @10:18AM (#62090449) Homepage Journal

      But, no, it is huge faint gray circle with a fainter image that is supposed to be a pen with no indication whether it is clickable or not.

      Sadly, incompetent dickface web designers created this trend, and all the major corporations have jumped on the train because they have no better ideas than copying whatever is in vogue. Google and Twitter are some of the absolute worst offenders. Clicking on whitespace should never, ever do anything on the web, but both of them make the entire text bounding area associated with each media element (videos in one case, tweets in the other) into a click region which takes you to the content in question. If you miss the like button by a single pixel then you are transported to someplace you didn't want to be.

      Remember when Google was incredibly competent at web UI and didn't have anything unnecessary or confusing on their pages? Not even Pepperidge Farm remembers, but I do.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )
      Absolutely. If they want to experiment with new shitty UIs like dark grey on line grey with no delineation, FINE, but give us an option that says "Use the old ugly deprecated Win2K UI for wimps" and we'll be happy. Anyway, I don't care anymore, this and 'the ribbon' is what pushed me to Linux full time in the early 2000s.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by lazarus ( 2879 )

      I remember how comically un-lilke Mac OS Windows 1.01 to 3.11 was. It was like they were designed by lawyers to avoid getting sued by Apple. Slowly it became more and more like its competition (I don't know for sure, but I suspect as they built up their portfolio of patents they felt like they could fight fire with fire if it came to that). The same thing seems to be going on right now. The Windows 11 "start menu" now looks like and defaults to the same position as the MacOS Dock. Now they are moving s

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by Shadow of Eternity ( 795165 )

        It's because they recognize that apple is way ahead of the game in terms of user-hostility and making their products defective by design, crippling their usability in order to browbeat users into accepting that they have no ownership of or control over their devices and should simply take what they're given. That's why apple has gotten away with flat out sabotaging perfectly working devices in order to force people to upgrade multiple times now.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      ... the biggest selling point of Micosoft was the consistency

      And you're complaining in a post on a story talking about how Microsoft is making Windows more consistent why?

      Then stretched a five inch phone display to 20 inch desktops.

      They did no such thing. Actually they did it on the calculator app, but otherwise they did no such thing anywhere else in the OS.

      a mishmash of ribbon, menubar and toobars

      Again, Windows 11 is moving in the direction of consistency. It's getting very hard to find a menu or a toolbar. You should be happy.

      There is enough space on my 24" display to label a button "edit". But, no, it is huge faint gray circle with a fainter image that is supposed to be a pen with no indication whether it is clickable or not.

      I sincerely think you should investigate that "Settings" app that ships with windows, because if your edit pen icon is any larger than the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      It's not just MS. Apple and others do it too. :(

  • In Win10, it used to be that the search function in the Start menu would not find anything in Settings. I switched to OpenShell which does this correctly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rhipf ( 525263 )

      I don't know which version of Windows 10 you are referring to but the 21H2 update lets you find all kinds of Settings things via Start Button searches. I can't try older versions since I don't have any older versions installed on any of my machines (and my time machine is in for repairs).

  • Linux used to be the fragmented one. Thanks M$. You are making this easy.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
      LOL there will never be a mass migration to desktop Linux, that's how shitty desktop Linux is.

      And I say that as someone who runs Linux myself
      • Yep, this. I've been slowly switching to Linux from Win7 for the past two years. Linux desktop does suck. But given time you can learn to navigate Linux and you'll be much better off for it. If you want "mass migration" to Linux desktop the easiest way to do this would be to completely clone the Windows 7 experience.

  • 3 ways (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Crowded ( 6202674 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @10:01AM (#62090373)
    I don't know what part of "three" that they are having a hard time with. The concept is simple, there should be three ways to do the same thing inside software (OS especially) in order to allow for a 'reasonable' "average" person to figure it out.

    1) Clicking on a CENTRAL menu - start menu if you've got it, but a general "gear" or configure - then choose settings
    2) SEARCH central picks it up - if you're super fixated on renaming stuff every build, index the old names for the last 10 years
    3) some other way that you USE FOR EVERYTHING

    I'm a "don't like change" guy, but I reluctantly move forward. For WINDOWS, the #1 thing they could do to maintain their market share, make people upgrade, and save companies money on training is NEVER CHANGING THE UI. Yes, better layouts exist, but changing something that everyone already know is just ridiculous.

  • Different smell, same turd (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @10:01AM (#62090375)

    I don't suppose Windows has quit being a humongous spyware / privacy invasion / advertisement distribution platform that has the user's best interests at heart has it?

    I didn't think so.

    • I just wanted to say that I'm going to start using "same smell, different turd" in my day-to-day speech. That cracked me up. Thanks.

  • Just stop crippling them (Score:3)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @10:11AM (#62090417) Homepage

    I don't care where they put the options, or what UI technology it uses, Microsoft just needs to stop crippling the control panel. Every time they redo a control panel half the options are missing, the documentation becomes out-of-date, and the keyboard no longer works with the UI. For some things they have 2-3 control panels that each offer a slightly different set of options.

    • I don't care where they put the options, or what UI technology it uses, Microsoft just needs to stop crippling the control panel.

      You don't get it's not the control panel microsoft and the tech industry are crippling, it's the entire personal computer, they've all been on the march since 1997 when the game industry stole networking code out of a PC game and slapped MMO sticker on the box. Ever since the rise of Ultima online, everquest and wow, the entire software industry has been engaged in industrial level software theft in order to get rid of local application ownership to extort profits from the stupid and ignorant computer illi

  • I find windows 10 already impossible to control outside of policy. I find that I have to manage personal use Windows instances the same way one would manage enterprise. I could only imagine horrid experience of users on basic version that don't have access to policy.
  • Windows 2000, had one user interface. Window 10, has several.

  • Why was any of this needed? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @11:08AM (#62090603) Journal

    People using Windows from as far back as Version 3.1 were used to the idea of the "Control Panel" as the place to go for all of the settings customization.

    When they decided to do the new gear icon for "Settings", I was fine with that context change on the menu -- but presumed it would be a refreshed control panel, vs a second set of things you could configure!

    Ever since that UI fiasco in Win 8, it feels like MS just tried to double-down on the screw-up, rather than admitting that people still wanted and NEEDED to use the classic Control Panel for things.

    It just makes zero sense to me, when they could have accomplished the same thing by simply making "Settings" open the classic Control Panel screen, and then worked on updating the look and option layout of individual settings inside that, as they were able to?

  • I don't really know of anyone who was unhappy with the control panel dialog. But I know tons of horror stories regarding the settings pane, which seems to want to prevent the user from actually changing anything of substance

  • Apparently, they have run out of obvious stuff to break or make significantly worse. So they are now breaking essentials. If they do much more of that, Win11 will be the last Windows and nothing of value will be lost.

  • I don't care if microsoft calls it control panel, or settings, or computer properties, or beyond plaid warp drive, is it really too much to ask to keep things in the same spot for the lifetime of the os? If you want to make major changes to the UI do it when you launch a new os. I don't care if windows 11 and windows 10 don't have quite the same way to configure the os. The location of the ui to change sound device configuration shouldn't depend on which build of windows 10 I am running. And this splitti

  • You know what I want? My settings moved. Also, a UI change and more surveillance. Oh, oh. Mandatory sign-on with Microsoft, a monthly subscription fee that includes things I don't use, and new hardware requirements. Also, please make the new hardware the kind that only installs an OS if it's made by you. I hate general purpose computing. It's for losers.

    I was going to say this is a quote from Nobody Ever, but that's a tired old cliche and aside from that it's not true. It's really a quote from Obliv

  • My guess is that they replaced the entire UI team at Microsoft with a bunch of assholes who can only program websites and therefore they want to turn the whole damn desktop into a website. And what's worse is that these same assholes are too arrogant and too stupid to even try to learn the why of past UI decisions before trying to make their own, thus causing them to just make shit and more shit.

  • What a holy mess. Replace a bad UI design with an even worse one. But wait, there's more. Not just a worse design, but not replace, just put the side by side, and you never know which one you need to use.

    I've gotten to the point where I just do things from the command line, and create either "shortcuts" or write small scripts that do what I actually expect them to do.

  • I don't care where they put it (Score:3)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @01:17PM (#62091081)

    I just want FULL CONTROL over EVERYTHING!. I hate the approach of "dumbing down" the controls and restricting what I can do with a device I own

    • I do care where they put it. I would be fine with everything in the "Settings" application, or with everything in "Control Panel".

      But please, not half here and half there !

  • Why canâ(TM)t they put certain settings in multiple places? Categories do not have to be strict. Note, before you reply saying it will cause clutter, I said certain settings not all settings.

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