As Home windows 11 goes via its greatest UI cleanup yr but, it seems Microsoft really defined a long time in the past why the previous UI components nonetheless survive at this time within the OS. A Microsoft engineer wrote about it in 2003, and after studying it, I really feel the scenario nonetheless describes half of what’s unsuitable with Home windows 11 at this time.
Again then, previous interfaces caught round as a result of Microsoft intentionally gave customers a technique to get again to them (a brief bridge whereas everybody adjusted). Right now, we nonetheless see legacy UI in Home windows 11 as a result of Redmond by no means acquired round to ending the substitute.
Microsoft had a surprisingly good motive for preserving previous Home windows UI
On October 20, 2003, Raymond Chen revealed a put up on his Previous New Factor weblog explaining how Alt+Tab ordering works, based mostly on window Z-order.
Microsoft didn’t exchange the previous Alt+Tab habits and inform everybody to take care of it. When Home windows 3.1 launched the newer process switcher, the corporate added a Management Panel choice that permit customers swap again to the older habits from Home windows 3.0 and earlier.
The previous model of Alt+Tab behaved very similar to Alt+Esc, transferring via home windows in Z-order, and it might routinely convey a minimized window again whenever you switched to it. Microsoft referred to as the newer system “quick process switching,” they usually had been involved sufficient concerning the change that they even supplied the SPI_SETFASTTASKSWITCH setting for applications to modify again to the previous habits.
No person complained, based on Chen, so Microsoft finally eliminated the previous task-switching system, and the brand new Alt+Tab that now we have now grew to become the default.
Microsoft gave customers a technique to hold the previous interface whereas they adjusted to the brand new one.
The software program large might introduce a brand new interface with out instantly forcing each consumer and each firm to adapt in a single day. As soon as the substitute had proved itself, the previous implementation might go. The closest analogy that I can consider in modern-day Home windows is the Managed Function Rollout (CFR) know-how.
Chen then explains why Microsoft bothered with any of this within the first place: “It seems that companies with 10,000 workers don’t prefer it when the consumer interface adjustments, as a result of it forces them to spend tens of millions of {dollars} retraining all their workers.”
As I take a look at a number of Home windows 11 Insider builds, I’m fairly used to seeing UI adjustments and modify pretty shortly. However for corporations the place workers do their jobs being agnostic concerning the OS their PC is working on, altering an interface has an enormous price, and it’s financial for enterprises and laborious for the customers.
As Microsoft wanted all that enterprise enterprise, giving individuals an escape hatch was a part of them managing that price responsibly.
Home windows modified, and the previous UI stopped going away
Issues modified someplace between 2003 and at this time, although. Now now we have previous UI in Home windows 11 not as a courtesy whereas individuals modify, however as a result of Microsoft hasn’t completed constructing no matter is meant to interchange it, and pulling the set off too early dangers breaking one thing essential for an enterprise that makes use of Home windows PCs.
In fact, IT Admins nonetheless use the Group Coverage Editor to ease up on the adjustments that Microsoft brings to Home windows.
Let’s check out the Management Panel. Home windows Newest reported in April that March Rogers, Accomplice Director of Design at Microsoft, confirmed the group is still migrating Control Panel controls to the Settings app, and it’s gradual going particularly due to community and printer drivers.
“We’re doing it fastidiously as a result of there are quite a lot of completely different community and printer units & drivers we want to verify we don’t break within the course of,” Rogers mentioned.
Not like macOS, which may deprecate previous {hardware} help extra aggressively because of a a lot smaller, and dare I say, submissive consumer base, Home windows has spent a long time supporting drivers and units that companies nonetheless depend upon, and, sadly, that historical past is why Management Panel refuses to die.
Lack of focus made RAM-hungry WebView2 ubiquitous
Microsoft additionally had the distasteful habit of never finishing a UI framework earlier than leaping to the following one. Win32 gave technique to MFC, then got here .NET-era frameworks, then XAML-based ones with {hardware} acceleration, a cross-platform detour that went nowhere, then UWP throughout the Home windows 8 and 10 period. Lastly, we’re at WinUI 3.
Someplace alongside the best way, Microsoft began reaching for WebView2 as a substitute of ending the native framework (WinUI) it stored constructing. Right now, as we first reported, Windows 11’s default Weather app is a WebView2 wrapper burning over 1.2GB of RAM at idle, practically 5 instances what the macOS Climate app makes use of.
This company behavior of unfinished substitute gave method for sluggish third-party apps too. WhatsApp on Windows uses up to 600MB doing nothing, and Electron-based Discord climbs as high as 4GB.
Whoever will get blamed, it’s the Home windows we use that inherits the RAM invoice!
Microsoft is lastly rewriting Home windows 11 as a substitute of protecting it up
What makes 2026 completely different is that Microsoft seems to be consuming the frog by changing previous code as a substitute of portray over it. Home windows Newest covered the new File Explorer Properties dialog in July, a rebuild in WinUI 3 of a dialog that goes again to Home windows 95.
The new Run dialog is interesting as a result of Microsoft’s telemetry confirmed it loaded in 94ms in comparison with 103ms for the legacy model. Previous code sticking round isn’t at all times about efficiency. Typically it survives as a result of rewriting it with out breaking something is tougher than leaving it alone. It’s not a talent difficulty both, as a result of we are literally speaking about Microsoft, of all corporations! However when Redmond does the rewrite correctly, the result’s measurably sooner.
The Begin menu exhibits why rewriting takes so lengthy
Home windows Newest reported in March that Microsoft is moving the Start menu’s shared UI infrastructure to WinUI to chop interplay latency. Elements of the Begin menu, together with the Really useful part and All Apps record, had been initially inbuilt React Native, as a result of it let the group iterate and ship sooner.
Microsoft’s WinUI group has mentioned efficiency, fundamentals, and bug fixing come earlier than new options, and that reminiscence utilization and the framework’s transfer to the system compositor should be prepared earlier than the Begin menu may be rewritten in WinUI.
The 5000-year-old concept is to get the muse steady first! After which transfer one of many most-viewed components of the OS onto it.
In July, Satya Nadella informed buyers Microsoft is investing in Windows to make sure it has the “very best quality and fundamentals,”. If you concentrate on it, it’s the identical intuition Raymond Chen described in 2003, after all, aimed toward a a lot greater backlog!
Chen’s strategy in 2003 was to offer individuals a method again, wait till complaints cease, then take away the previous factor. Nevertheless, Home windows misplaced that self-discipline, and the previous UI is piled up as a result of the replacements are usually not fairly completed. That mentioned, 2026 appears to be like just like the yr Microsoft is ending the job.
