Most popular submissions in 'Aesthetics' of all time
It's Time: Unified Control Panel
UPDATE 6/22/2010: Re-uploaded all of the concept images. Sorry!
I think the largest issue in terms of usability with the Windows operating system to date is the lack of a central unified control panel. While the OS does have a fairly large (more...)
Merge everything, all properties, options, tasks, EVERYTHING into the control panel.
Please see the mockups I have created here: http://davidswebserver.com/ControlPanelConcepts/
High
High
Not fixed
Bigger Window for Advanced Power Settings
When changing the system's Advanced Power Settings, the window contains a vast amount of settings in a tree format, however, the size of the window is far too small. This makes navigating all of the settings painfully difficult, especially as you (more...)
The Advanced Power Options should be in a window the same size as the regular power options. Personally, I do not think the settings should be in a tree format either. That alone makes them difficult to navigate.
Medium
Medium
Not fixed
Pie charts shown in the general tab of hard drive proprieties dialog box need redesign
The charts showing the busy and free space of hard disks are visually old.
Redesign the charts.
High
Medium
Not fixed
Properly Size Default Columns in File Explorer
When in "Details" view within Explorer, there is a large amount of blank unused space by default, yet many of the columns or "dividers" are sized too small, so much so that relatively short file names and extension types are cut off.
By default, all of the dividers should be properly sized to take up the entire width of the window, focusing primarily on the Name divider.
Low
Low
Not fixed
Document thumbnails should reflect number of pages
Thumbnails are simply shown with a rectangular border—this doesn't give a good visual representation of multi-page documents.
File types that have the 'pages' property, like Word Documents, should have a representation based on the number of pages they have—a document with more than one page shown as a pile, the front page with a curl.
Or, if there's (more...)
Low
Medium
Not fixed
Tooltip for Close/Minimise/Maximise uses XP style
Incredibly, the tooltips for these buttons STILL haven't been updated from the old XP style.
Use the standard tooltip style.
High
Low
Not fixed
Redesign the IE downloader to use Aero File Operation animation and styling
Copying, Renaming, Tagging, Deleting, and Moving files in Vista/7 all use a common window styling. The only File Operation that doesn't use this styling is Downloading.
Update the window to use the same styling as the other File Operations.
Here's a mockup to give an idea of what I mean. (Vote on suggestion not my not so good mockup!)
Full image (more...)
Medium
Medium
Fixed
Changed in Internet Explorer 9, for better or worse...
Correct all legacy and/or inconcistant windows to use aero styling rules
A lot of windows still use legacy colors. There's not much to explain, here are two examples:
- the background color is gray in "Virtual Memory" and in "Performance Options" it's almost white)
- the create new (more...)
Use consistant colors throughout whole Windows
Low
Low
Not fixed
Get Rid of Unneeded Tabs
There are tons of preferences and customization windows and such that have been split apart from other preferences windows, but still contain the tab bar at the top, even though only one tab remains.
Related Suggestion: (more...)
These tabs should be removed.
Low
Low
Not fixed
Support wallpaper spanning / diffrent wallpaper per-monitor.
Its annoying having multiple monitors with the same image on both.
It would be nice if windows supported wallpaper spanning, so you could place one image across both of them.
Currently I use display fusion to do this.
Make a more customizable wallpaper settings screen.
Low
Low
Fixed
Fixed in Windows 8.
Allow MSCONFIG and windows like it to be scalable.
There are many windows like this, but ill stick with Msconfig. One of the handiest little tools in the past few builds, letting you turn off startup programs.
But the window is so small and the content is soo long, it's a file location (more...)
Allow these windows to be scalable.
Medium
High
Not fixed
.reg files icon is very outdated, looks like Windows 95
The icon for .reg files is looking like the one that came with Windows 95.
Make a new 256x256 icon.
Medium
Low
Not fixed
Burn Disc Image does not show progress in the Taskbar
Unlike several other Windows operations that show the progress in the task bar icon, burning an ISO with Burn Disc Image does not.
Show the burn progress in the task bar icon for Burn Disc Image
Medium
High
Not fixed
Windows 7 converts BMP/TIFF/PNG to JPG for wallpaper
Windows 7/Vista reduces PNG/BMP/TIFF to an artifacted JPG if you attempt to load one as wallpaper.
The desktop should take a given image, display it and not touch it. PNG is not a niche file format, so display it natively, transparencies and all. Most users that would notice this would likely understand memory usage issues. So give us the option.
Low
Low
Not fixed
Why is there so much unused whitespace in the Update Driver Software Wizard?
There is all this empty unused space in the Update Driver Software Wizard and we're given such a small and annoying to navigate area to find the actual drivers!!! Why!?!?
Make those boxes wider and taller, the window should maybe be bigger also, I'd like to be able to view at least 7 rows at a time, 10 would be nice but I'll be take 7 rows.
Medium
Medium
Fixed