Windows 7 - nice fish!
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That's very technical :) Still, it's a "show desktop button".. it's not like it was completely missing and is now completely new..
Yes it was completely missing and is completely new. You'll see when you run windows 7. The old method was a joke. Wanting to see the desktop is a fundamental basic requirement for a windowing operating system and my contention was that it should be in a place where it's *never* obscured or more than one click away. You can argue technical geeky and lawyerly loophole all you want but from purely good UI design perspective it should always have been on the task bar with one click. UI design is something I take very seriously and have studied carefully for years being a small shop where we do *everything*, I've also come to the conclusion that 95% of all software developers are entirely hopeless at UI design and their opinions on what is good or bad are surely suspect as a result. :)
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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Yes it was completely missing and is completely new. You'll see when you run windows 7. The old method was a joke. Wanting to see the desktop is a fundamental basic requirement for a windowing operating system and my contention was that it should be in a place where it's *never* obscured or more than one click away. You can argue technical geeky and lawyerly loophole all you want but from purely good UI design perspective it should always have been on the task bar with one click. UI design is something I take very seriously and have studied carefully for years being a small shop where we do *everything*, I've also come to the conclusion that 95% of all software developers are entirely hopeless at UI design and their opinions on what is good or bad are surely suspect as a result. :)
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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How is it more than 1 click away in XP? For anyone who has forgotten what it was like in XP, here's a picture of it[^]
Again and for the last time, that is *not* always visible and never obscured. It's a feature that can be turned on or off. Being able to see the desktop should not be a feature it should be in the top 10 things a user can quickly and easily do in any windowing operating system. This is the problem with programmers as UI designers, they forget entirely what it's like to be a completely new user or an average end user and can't conceive of the problems they might run into with a poorly designed UI.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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Again and for the last time, that is *not* always visible and never obscured. It's a feature that can be turned on or off. Being able to see the desktop should not be a feature it should be in the top 10 things a user can quickly and easily do in any windowing operating system. This is the problem with programmers as UI designers, they forget entirely what it's like to be a completely new user or an average end user and can't conceive of the problems they might run into with a poorly designed UI.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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Again and for the last time, that is *not* always visible and never obscured. It's a feature that can be turned on or off. Being able to see the desktop should not be a feature it should be in the top 10 things a user can quickly and easily do in any windowing operating system. This is the problem with programmers as UI designers, they forget entirely what it's like to be a completely new user or an average end user and can't conceive of the problems they might run into with a poorly designed UI.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
Can you post a screenshot? I can't imagine anything on a windows desktop that couldn't be hidden. What if you turn on Autohide? I really don't see how it's any different. Are you saying it's in the system tray?
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Yes it was completely missing and is completely new. You'll see when you run windows 7. The old method was a joke. Wanting to see the desktop is a fundamental basic requirement for a windowing operating system and my contention was that it should be in a place where it's *never* obscured or more than one click away. You can argue technical geeky and lawyerly loophole all you want but from purely good UI design perspective it should always have been on the task bar with one click. UI design is something I take very seriously and have studied carefully for years being a small shop where we do *everything*, I've also come to the conclusion that 95% of all software developers are entirely hopeless at UI design and their opinions on what is good or bad are surely suspect as a result. :)
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
John C wrote:
it should always have been on the task bar
John C wrote:
where it's *never* obscured
Does that imply you think the autohiding taskbar functionality should be removed?
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Can you post a screenshot? I can't imagine anything on a windows desktop that couldn't be hidden. What if you turn on Autohide? I really don't see how it's any different. Are you saying it's in the system tray?
jchigg2000 wrote:
I can't imagine anything on a windows desktop that couldn't be hidden.
Any app window configured to be always on top (eg task mangler) but that doesn't have an option to disable the feature or a minimize button. On XP I've encountered times where after minimizing to desktop and clicking on the desktop random nonmaximzed windows redisplayed themselves. I never figured out what the criteria for the behavior was though.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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jchigg2000 wrote:
I can't imagine anything on a windows desktop that couldn't be hidden.
Any app window configured to be always on top (eg task mangler) but that doesn't have an option to disable the feature or a minimize button. On XP I've encountered times where after minimizing to desktop and clicking on the desktop random nonmaximzed windows redisplayed themselves. I never figured out what the criteria for the behavior was though.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Again and for the last time, that is *not* always visible and never obscured. It's a feature that can be turned on or off. Being able to see the desktop should not be a feature it should be in the top 10 things a user can quickly and easily do in any windowing operating system. This is the problem with programmers as UI designers, they forget entirely what it's like to be a completely new user or an average end user and can't conceive of the problems they might run into with a poorly designed UI.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
Its always visible on my PC and it is on by default of every vista instal I've ever done (10+) I personally would absolutely hate anything that can't be turned off on my taskbar...the taskbar contains precious space and should never be cluttered with anything that will never be used. Just because YOU use it all the time doesn't mean it is a crucial part of the OS that every person should have to suffer through. Sure, On by default, great...but it should certainly be able to be configured to off by default. As for the speed of Windows 7 that everyone is hyping...I saw whoopty do...Vista was extremely fast back in the early stages as well. It wasn't until MS was forced by OEMs to include support for all the crap they announced wouldn't be supported before it got bloated and slow.
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Yeah but the Quick Launch toolbar isn't ON by default. You have to turn it on. So for those users who didn't know about Quick Launch Toolbar, its something new. By the way there is shortcut also to show the desktop (Windows Key + D), which I use most. :-)
crudeCodeYogi wrote:
Yeah but the Quick Launch toolbar isn't ON by default. You have to turn it on.
With all of the installs that I've done, it's always on by default.
"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown
"The brick walls are there for a reason...to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." - Randy Pausch
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The default underwater theme for windows 7 ultimate is certainly very beautiful. And I am very happy to see the show desktop button at the far right of the taskbar. I remember posting a while back here that there should be one in windows and lot's of people telling me why I was an idiot for saying that and now it's there. :) I just downloaded it from msdn to test my apps on it and I can say that it runs fine under vmware workstation 6.5 which id'd it as Vista for the purposes of a quick installation off the install CD (damn but that's a nice feature in VMWare). Also no license key is required and you will get an error if you try to view them on the msdn download site. It runs much faster and easier under VMWare workstation than Vista Ultimate does on a fresh install so clearly it appears to need less resources which is very handy for anyone doing testing with it on a virtual machine. Now off to do some testing I guess.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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John C wrote:
it should always have been on the task bar
John C wrote:
where it's *never* obscured
Does that imply you think the autohiding taskbar functionality should be removed?
Graham Bradshaw wrote:
Does that imply you think the autohiding taskbar functionality should be removed?
Yes, absolutely it's a pointless feature that just creates potential confusion for users. There are very few software applications out there that could not be improved tremendously by removing anywhere from a handful to thousands of "features" entirely. (Most things described as a "feature" that have a button or some other command to initiate them are actually poor design or lack of decisions on the part of the designers of the application.)
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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Graham Bradshaw wrote:
Does that imply you think the autohiding taskbar functionality should be removed?
Yes, absolutely it's a pointless feature that just creates potential confusion for users. There are very few software applications out there that could not be improved tremendously by removing anywhere from a handful to thousands of "features" entirely. (Most things described as a "feature" that have a button or some other command to initiate them are actually poor design or lack of decisions on the part of the designers of the application.)
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
John C wrote:
Yes, absolutely it's a pointless feature that just creates potential confusion for users.
Translation: "I don't like it so noone else should be able to use it". About 15% of my coworkers (WAG) have it turned on. Mostly they're people running on lower res screens who can benefit most from a few thousand extra pixels of screen space.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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John C wrote:
Yes, absolutely it's a pointless feature that just creates potential confusion for users.
Translation: "I don't like it so noone else should be able to use it". About 15% of my coworkers (WAG) have it turned on. Mostly they're people running on lower res screens who can benefit most from a few thousand extra pixels of screen space.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
Translation: I've spent years studying good UI design and implementing it and learning from direct feedback from my customers in an environment where I lose the roof over my head if I don't do it well. :)
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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Translation: I've spent years studying good UI design and implementing it and learning from direct feedback from my customers in an environment where I lose the roof over my head if I don't do it well. :)
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
John C wrote:
I've spent years studying good UI design and implementing it
So can we see some of this design of yours? Product web site, perhaps? (I realise bespoke software can't necessarily be shown). Don't forget, there's no such thing as "good UI design" as an absolute, only good UI design for a situation and user. The UI for a professional CAD package is vastly different from that of financial trading software, and both are vastly different from an e-mail client intended for non-technical users. You only have (I guess) one particular type of user. Windows has to cater for everyone from uber-greek to grandma.
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John C wrote:
I just downloaded it from msdn
Is it available for downloading? Last time I check it wasn't and I read in the news that it will be available from Friday.
I think that was "publically available". For those with an MSDN Subscription you can get it now.
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crudeCodeYogi wrote:
Yeah but the Quick Launch toolbar isn't ON by default. You have to turn it on.
With all of the installs that I've done, it's always on by default.
"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown
"The brick walls are there for a reason...to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." - Randy Pausch
Well to be specific I was talking about Windows XP Professional Edition and I have seen that the Quick Launch toolbar wasn't on by default.
