http://blogs.msdn.com/rholloway/archive/2004/03/22/93913.aspxMike G., a person I respect tremendously, slams Scoble for his comments on the Longhorn UI . I think I'm somewhere in the middle of this discussion. While I do tire a little of all of this Longhorn UI discussion , I do think that the big breakthroughsen-USCommunityServer 2.1 SP1 (Build: 61025.2)http://blogs.msdn.com/rholloway/archive/2004/03/22/93913.aspx#93930Mon, 22 Mar 2004 18:02:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:93930SamI don't think theres anything bad about 'cool' features. If you think about application features that you really like, its the really 'cool' features that you remember...http://blogs.msdn.com/rholloway/archive/2004/03/22/93913.aspx#93932Mon, 22 Mar 2004 18:03:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:93932adamwMy primary problem from what I've seen of the Longhorn UI systems (Avalon etc) is that it’s a good technical foundation that will probably be grossly misused. <br> <br>The web is all too often an inconsistent nightmare of sites all behaving differently - at the moment, Common Controls, and the &quot;barrier to entry&quot; of writing your own themes ensures that there is a commonality between all windows applications. Having &quot;designers&quot; sticking their 2c in for every dialog could easily result in every single application being an unusable mess, totally different from every other application, until trying to work on your own local desktop is a battle against Billy the designer who thinks you should all use fixed width gadgets’s, and Barry the designer deciding that all his buttons need to be shiny, red and animated. <br> <br>Maybe that’s why I’m drawn more and more towards terminals these days… <br>http://blogs.msdn.com/rholloway/archive/2004/03/22/93913.aspx#93971Mon, 22 Mar 2004 19:13:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:93971JeffMike needs to settle down. It's clear to me that Scoble was making a funny at the expense of the car manufacturer. <br> <br>Design matters. Ask Apple. Why do you think people are willing to pay a premium for iPods? Because the UI is elegant, and the competition's absolutely sucks (check out that Dell unit to see what I mean). <br> <br>Regarding the fear of a UI &quot;nightmare,&quot; I think that's an unfounded panic. Look at the top ten sites your visit frequently. I bet you anything that they have nearly the same navigation template in each case.http://blogs.msdn.com/rholloway/archive/2004/03/22/93913.aspx#94236Tue, 23 Mar 2004 04:57:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:94236Enjoy Every SandwichTake Outs for 22 March 2004.http://blogs.msdn.com/rholloway/archive/2004/03/22/93913.aspx#99844Sat, 27 Mar 2004 21:35:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:99844SeanShouldn't the user be able to what his UI looks like and how to interact with it?http://blogs.msdn.com/rholloway/archive/2004/03/22/93913.aspx#100469Sun, 28 Mar 2004 00:50:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:100469Randy H.Absolutely. But elegance in UI design should enable users to have the &quot;right&quot; choices, on those things that will help them to be productive or enjoy their experience more. Longhorn's UI (the one we're waiting for) should allow for that.