Vista: things I like [modified]
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ummmmmm cp/m?
"there is no spoon" {me}
I used CP/M in high school circa 1985, so I guess it does go back further than that. It's not so much the blinding obvious about it, it's how they implemented it in Vista that is pretty slick. You can't open a command prompt as quickly and easily and type in the application you want to run in as few letters. Don't despair I'm sure Linux will be copying it soon. ;)
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I used CP/M in high school circa 1985, so I guess it does go back further than that. It's not so much the blinding obvious about it, it's how they implemented it in Vista that is pretty slick. You can't open a command prompt as quickly and easily and type in the application you want to run in as few letters. Don't despair I'm sure Linux will be copying it soon. ;)
ummmm it's been in linux for several years now but thats ok i wasn't making a linux / windows issue of it thanks for playing ;)
"there is no spoon" {me}
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ummmm it's been in linux for several years now but thats ok i wasn't making a linux / windows issue of it thanks for playing ;)
"there is no spoon" {me}
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I figured you'd say something like that. :) Ok, how about this, Vista has that fresh new leather upholstery smell of raw capitalism all over it! ;P
ahhhhhhh now that's a different issue but i do hear that they've made a gnome add-on spray smell that gets very close to that although for patent reasons it can't be exactly the same out of the box ... of course you can download the formula and make your own modifications and redistill it to get that smell :rolleyes:
"there is no spoon" {me}
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Yeah. What he said.
Well, he said let's "stick with what works"; but I'm saying, the current approach doesn't work. It doesn't work for spotting spam, it doesn't work for eliminating viruses, it doesn't work with mis-named files, and it doesn't work for users who want control - full control - over their file names (and who have no interest in learning some DOS programmer's scheme for making the programmer's life easier at the expense of the user). Since we have to look inside files to spot spam and viruses, why not extend this technique to all files, simplifying and beautifying the interface while providing the user with fewer arbitrary restrictions and more freedom to do things naturally. One minute you're sad because you can't recommend a kluge to your friends and family, but the next you're taking sides against something that they could use and understand without effort. "What can I call this file, Chris?" "Anything you want." End of training session.
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Yeah. What he said.
Well, he said let's "stick with what works"; but I'm saying, the current approach doesn't work. It doesn't work for spotting spam, it doesn't work for eliminating viruses, it doesn't work with mis-named files, and it doesn't work for users who want control - full control - over their file names (and who have no interest in learning some DOS programmer's scheme for making the programmer's life easier at the expense of the user). Since we have to look inside files to spot spam and viruses, why not extend this technique to all files, simplifying and beautifying the interface while providing the user with fewer arbitrary restrictions and more freedom to do things naturally. One minute you're sad because you can't recommend a kluge to your friends and family, but the next you're taking sides against something that they could use and understand without effort. "What can I call this file, Chris?" "Anything you want." End of training session.
I was referring to " i love to see a system working to overcome this limitation. Using file analysis, MIME types, and extensions as hints, tagging files locally with the derived types." SPAM is any unwanted message and can be plain text. It's is an email issue, not a file association issue. The SMTP protocol needs to be revamped to really crack down on this one. Viruses are a trust issue. I'd like to see every application on my machine digitally signed with a valid certificate. Anything not signed gets run in a sandbox where it can go crazy but not actually do anything. Just so I can watch it and poke it.
The Grand Negus wrote:
One minute you're sad because you can't recommend a kluge to your friends and family, but the next you're taking sides against something that they could use and understand without effort. "What can I call this file, Chris?" "Anything you want." End of training session.
You have a very bizarre way of interpreting people's comments, Gerry. I think I'm just going to walk away now.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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I was referring to " i love to see a system working to overcome this limitation. Using file analysis, MIME types, and extensions as hints, tagging files locally with the derived types." SPAM is any unwanted message and can be plain text. It's is an email issue, not a file association issue. The SMTP protocol needs to be revamped to really crack down on this one. Viruses are a trust issue. I'd like to see every application on my machine digitally signed with a valid certificate. Anything not signed gets run in a sandbox where it can go crazy but not actually do anything. Just so I can watch it and poke it.
The Grand Negus wrote:
One minute you're sad because you can't recommend a kluge to your friends and family, but the next you're taking sides against something that they could use and understand without effort. "What can I call this file, Chris?" "Anything you want." End of training session.
You have a very bizarre way of interpreting people's comments, Gerry. I think I'm just going to walk away now.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
Chris Maunder wrote:
I was referring to " i love to see a system working to overcome this limitation. Using file analysis, MIME types, and extensions as hints, tagging files locally with the derived types."
Sorry for my (apparently bizarre) misinterpretation. No offense intended.
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Shog9 wrote:
I understand, but really, it does depend on meta-information of some sort - even if that meta-information is derived from the content of the file. Any given program has to be able to recognize the files it will use, and will usually have some fairly concrete means of determining that from the file itself, but even then it's likely using a combination of context (what the user's asking for) and the contents of the file to determine what to do. On the system level, a file management program needs to be able to work with anything, even files for which no program that recognizes them exists. Most proper file formats have well-defined methods of representing their data, but consider the case of a simple text file: assuming it is possible to identify the file as text, it might still be anything from an off-the-cuff recipe formatted with tabs and linebreaks to a complex script intended for interpretation by a specific language interpreter. The system could stop at "text", and rely on out of band information (Negus tells Shog: "this file i'm sending you is a script, you need this program to use it") to convey to the user the additional information they need to utilize it, or the system can attempt to guess at the purpose of the file - but, depending on how the file entered the system, such information might well not be available.
Agreed. And so? My original point was simply this: We shouldn't be praising Microsoft for adding the F2 feature when they really should be saying, "Our new operating no longer places any restrictions on file names; extensions are no longer necessary; we've got the whole thing covered." That's all.
The Grand Negus wrote:
My original point was simply this: We shouldn't be praising Microsoft for adding the F2 feature when they really should be saying, "Our new operating no longer places any restrictions on file names; extensions are no longer necessary; we've got the whole thing covered."
And i guess my point is, i don't trust Microsoft to actually do anything that impressive without screwing it up horribly. So i'll take the little things. It's like... when i'm cooking with my brain-damaged nephew. I encourage him when he cleans up after himself, rather than criticizing him for being unable to hold the spoon without shaking it. Wow, that is possibly the saddest comparison i've ever made involving Microsoft. :sigh:
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Shog9 wrote:
I've been using the "address bar" deskbar on my task bar as a poor man's command-line for about seven-eight years now.
I'm not sure I know what that is, can you type winkey then cal then hit enter to open the calculator?
John Cardinal wrote:
I'm not sure I know what that is, can you type winkey then cal then hit enter to open the calculator?
Naw, i either shove the mouse down-right, click, type calc, enter, or Ctrl+Esc, Esc, Tab, Tab, calc, enter. I suppose i could use the Win+R shortcut, but i just never liked that. Heck, i never liked any of the Win-key shortcuts - my keyboards tend to either not have the key at all, or put them in places where i can't easily reach them.
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Shog9 wrote:
Even if one of these systems implemented a reliable metadata system, it'd be lost when transferring files. That's what i mean when i say the filename is stable - it's the only thing (apart from the file contents) that's actually preserved. It's the lowest-common denominator.
I think you've misunderstood what I'm proposing, Shog beer drinking person. Clearly, the "lowest common denominator" is the content of a file, not its name (which may or may not accurately indicate what's in the file). A system like I'm advocating - based, not on derived metadata but on the file content - should never "get lost"; a file is what it is (regardless of name) and the system either recognizes it or not. For example, our page editor allows the user to import all kinds of graphic images - jpgs, pngs, bitmaps of various types and resolutions, etc; and since we look at the content of the file and not the name, the program will properly import a png with no extension, or a jpg with a bmp extension, etc. It isn't that hard, it eliminates the need for onerous naming conventions, it eliminates the need for the new F2 feature, it eliminates the need for hide/show extensions, it eliminates the need for error messages like "changing a file extension may make it unusable", etc. Less is more.
The Grand Negus wrote:
A system like I'm advocating - based, not on derived metadata but on the file content - should never "get lost"; a file is what it is (regardless of name) and the system either recognizes it or not.
I understand, but really, it does depend on meta-information of some sort - even if that meta-information is derived from the content of the file. Any given program has to be able to recognize the files it will use, and will usually have some fairly concrete means of determining that from the file itself, but even then it's likely using a combination of context (what the user's asking for) and the contents of the file to determine what to do. On the system level, a file management program needs to be able to work with anything, even files for which no program that recognizes them exists. Most proper file formats have well-defined methods of representing their data, but consider the case of a simple text file: assuming it is possible to identify the file as text, it might still be anything from an off-the-cuff recipe formatted with tabs and linebreaks to a complex script intended for interpretation by a specific language interpreter. The system could stop at "text", and rely on out of band information (Negus tells Shog: "this file i'm sending you is a script, you need this program to use it") to convey to the user the additional information they need to utilize it, or the system can attempt to guess at the purpose of the file - but, depending on how the file entered the system, such information might well not be available. Again, i agree that this is hardly a perfect scenario, and i do love to see real improvement - one of the things that's happened with the increasing popularity of the Firefox browser is that many webservers have been improved such that they properly tag streams with the proper MIME type, where previously they depended on the poorly-documented "type guessing" implemented by Internet Explorer. But, it's a long, hard road, paved with good intentions and poor implementations.
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I used CP/M in high school circa 1985, so I guess it does go back further than that. It's not so much the blinding obvious about it, it's how they implemented it in Vista that is pretty slick. You can't open a command prompt as quickly and easily and type in the application you want to run in as few letters. Don't despair I'm sure Linux will be copying it soon. ;)
John Cardinal wrote:
You can't open a command prompt as quickly and easily and type in the application you want to run in as few letters.
I've been using the "address bar" deskbar on my task bar as a poor man's command-line for about seven-eight years now. It's certainly quick (although i agree, Vista's search is a nice little improvement). Ctrl+Ctrl -> search via Google Desktop is nice as well, as it's made the often-hidden information contained in years of email archives immediately available. Having search + command + navigation all in one place is certainly a noble goal.
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John Cardinal wrote:
You can't open a command prompt as quickly and easily and type in the application you want to run in as few letters.
I've been using the "address bar" deskbar on my task bar as a poor man's command-line for about seven-eight years now. It's certainly quick (although i agree, Vista's search is a nice little improvement). Ctrl+Ctrl -> search via Google Desktop is nice as well, as it's made the often-hidden information contained in years of email archives immediately available. Having search + command + navigation all in one place is certainly a noble goal.
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The Grand Negus wrote:
A system like I'm advocating - based, not on derived metadata but on the file content - should never "get lost"; a file is what it is (regardless of name) and the system either recognizes it or not.
I understand, but really, it does depend on meta-information of some sort - even if that meta-information is derived from the content of the file. Any given program has to be able to recognize the files it will use, and will usually have some fairly concrete means of determining that from the file itself, but even then it's likely using a combination of context (what the user's asking for) and the contents of the file to determine what to do. On the system level, a file management program needs to be able to work with anything, even files for which no program that recognizes them exists. Most proper file formats have well-defined methods of representing their data, but consider the case of a simple text file: assuming it is possible to identify the file as text, it might still be anything from an off-the-cuff recipe formatted with tabs and linebreaks to a complex script intended for interpretation by a specific language interpreter. The system could stop at "text", and rely on out of band information (Negus tells Shog: "this file i'm sending you is a script, you need this program to use it") to convey to the user the additional information they need to utilize it, or the system can attempt to guess at the purpose of the file - but, depending on how the file entered the system, such information might well not be available. Again, i agree that this is hardly a perfect scenario, and i do love to see real improvement - one of the things that's happened with the increasing popularity of the Firefox browser is that many webservers have been improved such that they properly tag streams with the proper MIME type, where previously they depended on the poorly-documented "type guessing" implemented by Internet Explorer. But, it's a long, hard road, paved with good intentions and poor implementations.
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Shog9 wrote:
I understand, but really, it does depend on meta-information of some sort - even if that meta-information is derived from the content of the file. Any given program has to be able to recognize the files it will use, and will usually have some fairly concrete means of determining that from the file itself, but even then it's likely using a combination of context (what the user's asking for) and the contents of the file to determine what to do. On the system level, a file management program needs to be able to work with anything, even files for which no program that recognizes them exists. Most proper file formats have well-defined methods of representing their data, but consider the case of a simple text file: assuming it is possible to identify the file as text, it might still be anything from an off-the-cuff recipe formatted with tabs and linebreaks to a complex script intended for interpretation by a specific language interpreter. The system could stop at "text", and rely on out of band information (Negus tells Shog: "this file i'm sending you is a script, you need this program to use it") to convey to the user the additional information they need to utilize it, or the system can attempt to guess at the purpose of the file - but, depending on how the file entered the system, such information might well not be available.
Agreed. And so? My original point was simply this: We shouldn't be praising Microsoft for adding the F2 feature when they really should be saying, "Our new operating no longer places any restrictions on file names; extensions are no longer necessary; we've got the whole thing covered." That's all.
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The Grand Negus wrote:
My original point was simply this: We shouldn't be praising Microsoft for adding the F2 feature when they really should be saying, "Our new operating no longer places any restrictions on file names; extensions are no longer necessary; we've got the whole thing covered."
And i guess my point is, i don't trust Microsoft to actually do anything that impressive without screwing it up horribly. So i'll take the little things. It's like... when i'm cooking with my brain-damaged nephew. I encourage him when he cleans up after himself, rather than criticizing him for being unable to hold the spoon without shaking it. Wow, that is possibly the saddest comparison i've ever made involving Microsoft. :sigh:
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Well, perhaps Microsoft isn't the company to lead us into the future. But we know from our prototypes that the very same kind of algorithms can be effectively used to distinguish file types, check spelling and grammar, parse data files, compile Plain English statements into machine code, etc. File tags, in this context, are simply an artifact of "ancient" history. In other words, a single, consistent all-purpose language parser can do the job that is currently being done by a large number of more-or-less incompatible processors; the piecemeal approach is simply wrong. This, of course, is not surprising: your brain does the very thing I'm describing whenever you're presented with any kind of document. What I find surprising is the relative ease with which these things can be done when the proper approach is taken. Hawkin's approach to intelligent memory systems [^] is similar in its simplicity and straight-forwardness. He believes, as we do, that there is a new generation of computers on the horizon that will be significantly different from those we use now - computers that are different in kind, not just degree. It is these systems that interest me (and that bias all of my remarks) since I'm building systems not for myself but for Chuckles (18 months now) and for his offspring.
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Well, perhaps Microsoft isn't the company to lead us into the future. But we know from our prototypes that the very same kind of algorithms can be effectively used to distinguish file types, check spelling and grammar, parse data files, compile Plain English statements into machine code, etc. File tags, in this context, are simply an artifact of "ancient" history. In other words, a single, consistent all-purpose language parser can do the job that is currently being done by a large number of more-or-less incompatible processors; the piecemeal approach is simply wrong. This, of course, is not surprising: your brain does the very thing I'm describing whenever you're presented with any kind of document. What I find surprising is the relative ease with which these things can be done when the proper approach is taken. Hawkin's approach to intelligent memory systems [^] is similar in its simplicity and straight-forwardness. He believes, as we do, that there is a new generation of computers on the horizon that will be significantly different from those we use now - computers that are different in kind, not just degree. It is these systems that interest me (and that bias all of my remarks) since I'm building systems not for myself but for Chuckles (18 months now) and for his offspring.
The Grand Negus wrote:
Hawkin's approach to intelligent memory systems [^]
Interesting. Thanks.
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It appears that everybody is under the impression that I approve of the documentation. You probably also blame Ken Burns for supporting slavery.
--Raymond Chen on MSDN
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The Grand Negus wrote:
Hawkin's approach to intelligent memory systems [^]
Interesting. Thanks.
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It appears that everybody is under the impression that I approve of the documentation. You probably also blame Ken Burns for supporting slavery.
--Raymond Chen on MSDN
Hawkins has had some amazing insights. His stuff is even more impressive when you hear him explain it without the added and unnecessary complexity that arises when he tries to relate it to bayesian networks (a concession, no doubt, to some mathematician he's run into). I'm quite sure his approach will solve a wide variety of formerly unsolvable problems, like separating foreground and background in photographs. But I'm also convinced that a fully developed "Hawkins brain" will never exhibit intelligence beyond that of a chimp - impressive, to be sure, and much more than we've acheived so far, but limited none the less. I believe he's missing the same part of the brain that the chimp is: that little piece of more-or-less procedural language-processing code that separates us from the beasts. Which, of course, is the very part we're working on. When our systems meet, perhaps a decade from now, the result will be astounding.
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I like the right click on the taskbar to bring up the task manager without having to hit ctrl-alt-delete and I also like the shift right click on the explorer window to open a command prompt at that folder. There are a *ton* of things buried in there that are pretty slick but not immediately apparent. I've just become confident enough in that start menu search box to start using it instead of hunting for buried programs. I like typing calc and hitting enter to open the calculator or word and enter etc for word. It's pretty slick: every program is one click and an enter key away without having to hunt through the start menu.
John Cardinal wrote:
I've just become confident enough in that start menu search box to start using it instead of hunting for buried programs. I like typing calc and hitting enter to open the calculator or word and enter etc for word. It's pretty slick: every program is one click and an enter key away without having to hunt through the start menu.
hmmmn sounds great... isn't that how dos used to work only without the click step? :)
-- The Obliterator
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John Cardinal wrote:
I've just become confident enough in that start menu search box to start using it instead of hunting for buried programs. I like typing calc and hitting enter to open the calculator or word and enter etc for word. It's pretty slick: every program is one click and an enter key away without having to hunt through the start menu.
hmmmn sounds great... isn't that how dos used to work only without the click step? :)
-- The Obliterator
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In the spirit of being balanced here are the things I do like about Vista.
- It boots faster than XP for me.
- The Mac-like window minimise/restore effect
- The biggy: with the GPU now being used the screen is drawn faster and smoother.
- Small config tweaks such as those for the taskbar and desktop items. A tiny thing, but to whoever did it: I noticed.
- The new "My Computer" window.
- The breadcrumb trail in Explorer. And the best bit? Click on it and you get the traditional path that you can copy and paste or edit.
- Popup previews of windows minimised in the taskbar
- Driver discovery seems very polished and unobtrusive
- The Start Menu search box. Excellent idea.
- The concept of UAC. Not the implementation, though.
- The 'Description' column in the Processes tab of the Task Manager (nice!) and the new "Services" tab.
Any others? One more: Hit F2 to rename a file and only the name, not the extension, is selected. Attention to the small things will win me over every time. -- modified at 6:56 Sunday 11th March, 2007
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
This is the drum I have been pounding since September when I swtiched to Vista. Microsoft should change their marketing to push the fact this is the most complete version of Windows yet. "It is the little things that matter". I know there are a few things that seem to have drastically changed, but all the little things got me hooked in no time. At first glance I hated the new Explorer, now I hate to be on a machine without it :) Anyway, another item I use every day now which seems quite stable is the Sleep/Hibernate modes. In the past I had nothing but problems on my desktop machines under XP, but with Vista it just works. It even works from my keyboard which has never worked that way in the past. I think Microsoft needs to push the fact that this is what Windows was meant to be, we finally have Windows 1.0 beta :)
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: 20 Years to Web standards or a New Dream? Latest Tech Blog Post: Corel Lightning - what is the plan?
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[party poopper mode]
Chris Maunder wrote:
It boots faster than XP for me.
Not me. And I have nothing loaded on the Vista machine and lots loaded on the XP machine, and the hardware for the Vista machine is better.
Chris Maunder wrote:
The Mac-like window minimise/restore effect
I find it gives me motion sickness feeling. Same with a Mac. Not sure why, because games like Doom, which people have said gives them vertigo, never bothered me.
Chris Maunder wrote:
with the GPU now being used the screen is drawn faster and smoother.
Never really noticed a problem on XP.
Chris Maunder wrote:
A tiny thing
Indeed.
Chris Maunder wrote:
The new "My Computer" window.
Different. Mac'ish. Better? Don't know.
Chris Maunder wrote:
The breadcrumb trail in Explorer. And the best bit? Click on it and you get the traditional path that you can copy and paste or edit.
Nice. However, the fact that you can click on it and get the traditional path is not obvious. Bad UI design, IMO.
Chris Maunder wrote:
Popup previews of windows minimised in the taskbar
Agreed.
Chris Maunder wrote:
Driver discovery seems very polished and unobtrusive
No experience with adding things. I'm afraid to. In fact, I'm going to buy a small router and run a wire over to the Vista box where I moved it yesterday rather than a USB wireless thingy because I don't want to deal with the hassle of hardware incompatability with Vista.
Chris Maunder wrote:
Hit F2 to rename a file and only the name, not the extension, is selected.
What!?!?! Does it occur to people that one of the things that I (and therefore the only one) tend to do is rename things to ".bak"??? WTF? You call this attention to small things? [/party poopper mode] Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commentMarc Clifton wrote:
I find it gives me motion sickness feeling. Same with a Mac. Not sure why, because games like Doom, which people have said gives them vertigo, never bothered me.
Heh, we used to go out on a sailboat off of San Diego and I'd bring my playstation. Playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater below deck where you can't see the horizon was very fun. Most of the people with us couldn't even watch, they'd start to heave and run to the deck. :laugh: :laugh: And NO ONE wanted to play with me. I imagine its similar to being in a moving gyroscope.
This statement was never false.