Icons back in the day used to be colorful, in varying shapes etc, being immediately recognizable.
Around 2015 or so, everything went black and white for some reason, turning into monochrome, silhouette icons.

Why would you remove distinct features of icons? (Attempt to decipher the icons in the middle row in the picrel without hovering over them for descriptions.)

Worse, This light/dark mode shit gets on my nerves. You have two options, blinding white or pitch black. Before chrome infamously got rid of "chrome" bars on your screen, our ancestors had arcane knowledge about this color: grey!

It has been 10+ years with this crap design, why does it still persist?
I cant wait for it to die! :(

>>460107 (OP)
lol wtf you talking about?
that top row task bar is obviously a fairly recent one. and the second row is obviously simply an instance for bad design... not like evey shit looks like that today.
I can personalize and adjust the appearence of more programs to my exact wishes and needs than ever before. grey. bluish. warmish. literally whatever.
>not just whote and black

you just want to hate something, I am pretty sure

>>460108
The taskbar is my own, right now.
Second row is steam overlay.

There are programs that have not adopted the design trend, which are most of the icons on that taskbar. And thankfully win11 has brought colors back in their settings icons, but take a look at windows 10s settings. Good luck trying to tell what they are without looking at descriptions.

>you just want to hate something, I am pretty sure
I dont know, am i? I am pretty jaded about it so ill leave it for you to judge.

>>460109
bruh I am not saying there were no bad instances of interfaces. but your initial description is simply hyperbole. there is more than white and black themes, and still colorful current taskbars like your own. cherrypicking the steam interface feels so out of touch with what the computer-experience actually feels like today.

yes. there is distinguishability, AND there is also clutter. and you will always find instances for badly done designs that declutter to a point of indistinguishability, and others that should tidy the fuck up and reduce features.

I don't get the fuss.

>>460107 (OP)
the future is dmenu and i3 window manager

what do you need icons for? to look at brand logos? is your personal computer a shop-front?

>>460137
why have functionality and identify elements without reading words like a fucking retard unix cuck?

>>460109
>The taskbar is my own, right now.
So you're saying that instead of before and after, that both are actually now. You're not comparing how something was versus how it is now, you're comparing two different designs which are both now.

>>460137
Not everything is about brands. Why was the power button icon created? Or volume icons? Or brightness icons? Or wi-fi and signal strength icon? For usability, and clean compact interfaces. It transcends language barriers and is far easier to look at at a glance and know what to select than a bunch of text.

>>460170
shit man if on a device i use almost every single day after 500ms sub-60fps gpu-accelerated videogame-style slide-fade-wobble every time i didn't see a gear or two blue gears one smaller and one larger or gears with very rounded corners or bicycle gear with gradient and soft large drop shadow, made out of transparent cyan acrylic plastic or whatever is the flavor of them month visual language, i would not immediately recognize what 'settings' or 'displays' or 'web browser (firefox)' or 'bittorrent client' fuzzy-completed text bits in a vertical selection list in center of the screen could possibly mean, i would feel completely under-stimulated by the gui in front of me and i may even zone out, i would also have to face how trivial and uninteresting the thing i am doing on the computer actually is.

>>460173
i don't use those icons in wm status bar and i have vertical monitors going. it says things like "network connected" and "volume 29%" or "volume MUTE". i'd look for emojis or iconfonts as an option if it was a very small mobile device screen and that status was absolutely necessary.

i don't mind icons (complex gui like image editors need them) but the issues i have is that they have duplicated and more vague meaning than text labels, varied style dependent on the ui toolkit and they often clutter the ui where the text is already in use, adding emphasis to things that don't need it. in windows and macos they are used as a means of brand recognition, advertising commercial software sold on their appstores - waste of anyone's attention span, computer is a utility to the end user.

i don't care about written language barriers, i am not a 4 or 80 years old non-english-speaker or a dyslexic, but they should have their options as well.

>>460107 (OP)
when you design something with colors, glossiness, and 3D into it you like it at first, then over time working on your designs and having it in front of you all the time it start to look tacky to you

i do like modern designs personally, they are cleaners and you don't get bored of them when you use something over and over

this is the first time im using /gd/ and i know this won't be the popular opinion,

>>460172
>Trying so hard to deliberately misunderstand what i am saying.
People in the thread pretending that there arent a gazillion examples to what i am talking about.

>>460189
I get that, and it could work with a handful of icons. I am not saying its ugly. I am saying its less functional.
Beyond a bunch of icons, having less distinct features, slows the user down.

Beyond that, its really disappointing that while you can do anything with design, everyone tries to do the exact same thing. It doesnt have to be the glossy 3d effect.

Its like, you can draw anything, but you deliberately draw anime faces that all look the same... Why?
>I am going to get lynched for this arent I?

content-oriented mostly text-based gui without excess of fartistic pictograms and vfx

>bbut my 90 years old indonesian grandma cant use it
sorry

>wheres da fruitman aeros fr fr

>>460217
>>460218

If you had your way, nobody but giga nerds would be using computers.
This is just a narcissistic circlejerk.

>>460219
who gives a shit. you adobes is a nerd shit too with 200 items on the screen for each app and a custom windowing system.

window manager - it splits up the screen per workspace or makes them float. it is a utility, like a hammer, a grid system. not electron react-"native" js start menu ads with copilot(tm) integration. does your screen background or lockscreen need to be a video player for you to be "engaged" in using the newest version of macos? a door is a door. a wall mounted metal shelf from home depot is a shelf not a "customer experience". same with program launcher. or status bar. what else? nothing. there is nothing more to it. computer is not a video game.

>>460221
I refuse to defend the strawman you have created.
Stop with this "Everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot!" crap.