Former Microsoft executive explains why Windows GUI strategy is such a mess

In the past, we have talked about how the Windows 11 GUI is inconsistent because some outdated interfaces still use legacy elements. However, there is a bigger problem as well, and that relates to Microsoft’s confusing GUI strategy for developers, which has led to a very fragmented tech stack.

Through a recent blog post by ex-Microsoft CTO Jeffrey Snover, we have some more insights into how Microsoft’s GUI strategy has gone wayward over the past couple of decades. Snover goes back to the 1980s, to the days of Win16 and Win32 APIs written in C, which could be used by all Windows developers in a consistent way. He also references the 852-page-long Programming Windows book by technical author Charles Petzold, which could be leveraged by people as the holy grail for desktop application development.

Then, in the 1990s,…