Windows 8 and the split personality Metro interface
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(Not the Metro design language, but their Tile based, all-apps-full-screen, can't-close-an-app-trust-us-we-know-what-we're-doing interface) Windows is skinnable. One of the primary issues with a touch interface is clumsy thumbs and gestures. Gesture support are is fairly straightforward to add to an app (or an OS), and so I can't help but think that a "touch" skin for windows (bigger close buttons, different dropdown list UI, different resizers etc) would have taken us 90% of the way to a totally useable tablet UI on Windows without the need of a double-sided OS. I've been thinking about Surface and Ultrabooks a lot lately, and the way I use a tablet is very, very different to how I use a laptop. On a laptop I use a keyboard, trackpad or mouse, and even with a touchscreen I only ever use touch for scrolling or zooming. On an ultrabook I create content, on a tablet I consume and so have a different set of UI needs. I just wish the demarkation between the touch and keyboard based UIs had been done between PC and tablet, instead of PCs and Tablets sharing the same UI, and then Phones having the separate, dedicated UI. (and yes, I know WinRT based devices only have the "Metro" apps -which makes me wonder why they bothered having Metro apps on the desktop). I'm confused, It seems there are simpler and better solutions to this.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
I think I am in the minority of 1 when I say this (outside of MS at least) but I think MS have definitely made the right choice here. W.I.M.P; thirty+ years in the making has been honed and extended universally, and computing has moved from the domain of scientists, through experts, to the realm of an everyday consumer device, and now W.I.M.P has been found wanting. This is mainly due to form factor, mobility, and ease of use, and so we are left with only two choices for the next thirty+ years. Either move all of our interfaces forward to make a unified interface, or keep separate the two interfaces, and as a manufacturer of software (and now hardware) for a variety of form factors, then it seems to me that the best way forward is a single unified interface, or one which, like Metro, promotes a main interface with a secondary interface for the expert and domain specific users. This isn't a new phenomenon, as, even with W.I.M.P. the CLI has continued to exist for a variety of expert uses, and is available from most W.I.M.P. implementations. I think it is a fair assumption that we will have a touch or gesture interface with single-app full screen coverage as the primary interface for all devices in the future, with access to a mature W.I.M.P. interface supporting multiple APPs/windows for professional and workflow usage. Beneath this we will continue to have CLI access and tooling. MS then, are the only company so far to give it a go, and that's got to put them in a position to drive forwards this over the next few years, so kudos to them, even if their first implementation leaves something to be desired.
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(Not the Metro design language, but their Tile based, all-apps-full-screen, can't-close-an-app-trust-us-we-know-what-we're-doing interface) Windows is skinnable. One of the primary issues with a touch interface is clumsy thumbs and gestures. Gesture support are is fairly straightforward to add to an app (or an OS), and so I can't help but think that a "touch" skin for windows (bigger close buttons, different dropdown list UI, different resizers etc) would have taken us 90% of the way to a totally useable tablet UI on Windows without the need of a double-sided OS. I've been thinking about Surface and Ultrabooks a lot lately, and the way I use a tablet is very, very different to how I use a laptop. On a laptop I use a keyboard, trackpad or mouse, and even with a touchscreen I only ever use touch for scrolling or zooming. On an ultrabook I create content, on a tablet I consume and so have a different set of UI needs. I just wish the demarkation between the touch and keyboard based UIs had been done between PC and tablet, instead of PCs and Tablets sharing the same UI, and then Phones having the separate, dedicated UI. (and yes, I know WinRT based devices only have the "Metro" apps -which makes me wonder why they bothered having Metro apps on the desktop). I'm confused, It seems there are simpler and better solutions to this.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
In reference to the general love/hate people have with Win8 - I can relate. At first use Windows 8 was clunky and unnatural, but most of that was because I wanted it to behave like the Windows I knew. I went hunting around for free Start Menu alternatives like so many others and even installed one. But I don't use it. What I discovered was that, for MY work habits, I rarely used the Start Menu; the few times I do use it I actually just used the search feature to quickly locate the app that I wanted rather than attempting to navigate the countless program folder groups. Pre-Windows 7 I used to spend time organizing these groups, but with Windows 7 Start Menu search and pin-able taskbar apps this is no longer necessary. This means my behavior in Windows 8 is actually the same - if I want to open regedit I just hit the start key on my keyboard and start typing "regedit" and hit ENTER. Don't get me wrong - Windows 8 has lots of things that still drive me crazy. As another comment posted - what idiot at MS decided that putting Shutdown under settings made sense? Why is it so un-intuitive to close a Metro app? Why are we forced to use the Metro interface by default rather than simply having a choice based on our user preference? And finally (the hardest question) - how can you properly blend the old and the new in a way that doesn't make one want to pull out their hair (IE10 Metro <> IE10 Desktop, why do some apps default to a metro instance, like when I double-click a PDF, or photo?) I completely understand that this comes down to personal use and work habits, but a lot of people forget that each significant new interface change takes some getting used to. Lots of people had the same negative reaction to Windows 95 back in the day (remember everyone complaining about "why do I have to click Start to Shutdown"?) Surprise, surprise - Microsoft isn't perfect! There's lots of things that they screwed up on with this release and (hopefully) many of these will be fixed with 8.1 (or 7.2 or 6.3). It's not like almighty Apple gets it right the first time either - heck, I still can't navigate their iTunes UI without wanting to take a long walk off a short pier.
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In reference to the general love/hate people have with Win8 - I can relate. At first use Windows 8 was clunky and unnatural, but most of that was because I wanted it to behave like the Windows I knew. I went hunting around for free Start Menu alternatives like so many others and even installed one. But I don't use it. What I discovered was that, for MY work habits, I rarely used the Start Menu; the few times I do use it I actually just used the search feature to quickly locate the app that I wanted rather than attempting to navigate the countless program folder groups. Pre-Windows 7 I used to spend time organizing these groups, but with Windows 7 Start Menu search and pin-able taskbar apps this is no longer necessary. This means my behavior in Windows 8 is actually the same - if I want to open regedit I just hit the start key on my keyboard and start typing "regedit" and hit ENTER. Don't get me wrong - Windows 8 has lots of things that still drive me crazy. As another comment posted - what idiot at MS decided that putting Shutdown under settings made sense? Why is it so un-intuitive to close a Metro app? Why are we forced to use the Metro interface by default rather than simply having a choice based on our user preference? And finally (the hardest question) - how can you properly blend the old and the new in a way that doesn't make one want to pull out their hair (IE10 Metro <> IE10 Desktop, why do some apps default to a metro instance, like when I double-click a PDF, or photo?) I completely understand that this comes down to personal use and work habits, but a lot of people forget that each significant new interface change takes some getting used to. Lots of people had the same negative reaction to Windows 95 back in the day (remember everyone complaining about "why do I have to click Start to Shutdown"?) Surprise, surprise - Microsoft isn't perfect! There's lots of things that they screwed up on with this release and (hopefully) many of these will be fixed with 8.1 (or 7.2 or 6.3). It's not like almighty Apple gets it right the first time either - heck, I still can't navigate their iTunes UI without wanting to take a long walk off a short pier.
I agree. Windows 8 has a lot of great features, even game-changing improvements. Microsoft is running in the right direction. Running sideways and backwards, sometimes, but still moving mostly the right way. Windows 8 has most of the pieces needed to be a truly great operating system. Getting there is more a matter of tweaking what they have than rebuilding. I like that my phone and my tablet have so much in common in how they operate. I think that phone, tablet and desktop should all work basically the same way. There will be differences brought about by the limitations of each form factor, but the OS doesn't necessarily need to be different for each case. Having appropriate settings available (and installed with defaults based on the device) should be able to take care of the problems while allowing single-path development. Imagine having the same control type render differently based on device type, but working the same way behind the scenes. You might need to have extra code based on whether or not touch and or mouse were available, and would have to account for different screen sizes - but one build would apply to phones, tablets and desktops instead of having one different build for each. It might take a couple more years, but I think Windows will get there. And when they do, let's hope they allowing installing your own software on your own computer.
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(Not the Metro design language, but their Tile based, all-apps-full-screen, can't-close-an-app-trust-us-we-know-what-we're-doing interface) Windows is skinnable. One of the primary issues with a touch interface is clumsy thumbs and gestures. Gesture support are is fairly straightforward to add to an app (or an OS), and so I can't help but think that a "touch" skin for windows (bigger close buttons, different dropdown list UI, different resizers etc) would have taken us 90% of the way to a totally useable tablet UI on Windows without the need of a double-sided OS. I've been thinking about Surface and Ultrabooks a lot lately, and the way I use a tablet is very, very different to how I use a laptop. On a laptop I use a keyboard, trackpad or mouse, and even with a touchscreen I only ever use touch for scrolling or zooming. On an ultrabook I create content, on a tablet I consume and so have a different set of UI needs. I just wish the demarkation between the touch and keyboard based UIs had been done between PC and tablet, instead of PCs and Tablets sharing the same UI, and then Phones having the separate, dedicated UI. (and yes, I know WinRT based devices only have the "Metro" apps -which makes me wonder why they bothered having Metro apps on the desktop). I'm confused, It seems there are simpler and better solutions to this.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
I bought a Surface RT when they came out. While it doesn't get much use due to a weak app store (that will change over time), I see it for what it is. It's Vista. In other words, it's a throwaway version that will fill the pipeline, get people used to it, and then Windows 9 will take lessons learned and present something usable, as was the case with Windows 7. I was visiting family last week and my niece (14 years old) has a new laptop. It came with Win 8 and she's just taking it as it comes. Eventually Metro will become normal, apps will migrate to that UI instead of the desktop, and then we'll hopefully see the benefits as developers. When Metro is normal on PCs and tablets, it'll also be normal on phones. And then, perhaps, MS will finally become a serious player in mobile just because people will appreciate having the same UI on all their devices. They're playing the long game. It sucks in the short term, but it's a strategy that's worked for them in the past given their dominance in the PC world. That said, does anyone else think that the desktop bears a striking resemblance to Windows 3.1?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
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I think most people know this, but saying "that damned ugly piece of crap that used to be called Metro" gets repetitive.
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I used a realy good Start button type shell on windows 8 the other week, dont recall which, but it was free, and just like XP.
============================== Nothing to say.
I remember when people made fun of the "Start" button when it came out with Win95 ("Press 'Start" to quit?"), now we can't live without it?
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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I think the way people think is wrong. When the mouse came out we didn't stop using the keyboard and we should treat touch screens the same (a 3rd input). There's no doubt that Win 8 feels like it has an identity crisis but after being forced to use it for a couple of weeks, Win 7 feels clumsy and slow.
button now requires a swipe over the entire height of the screen. Multiselect isn't available. Not even with touch. There's nothing wrong with introducing new technologies, but it's stupid to ignore the existance of millions of applications that are better controlled using a mouse, and then cripple mouse usability! I've used Win8 for a couple of weeks on my ultrabook, and I don't see anything that's inherently better than with Win7. But I did notice a whole lot of things that are now more difficult than they used to be. If your Win7 feels slow, how old is the machine it's running on? Mine is 2.5 years, but it doesn't feel notably slower than my brand new Win8 ultrabook. -
(Not the Metro design language, but their Tile based, all-apps-full-screen, can't-close-an-app-trust-us-we-know-what-we're-doing interface) Windows is skinnable. One of the primary issues with a touch interface is clumsy thumbs and gestures. Gesture support are is fairly straightforward to add to an app (or an OS), and so I can't help but think that a "touch" skin for windows (bigger close buttons, different dropdown list UI, different resizers etc) would have taken us 90% of the way to a totally useable tablet UI on Windows without the need of a double-sided OS. I've been thinking about Surface and Ultrabooks a lot lately, and the way I use a tablet is very, very different to how I use a laptop. On a laptop I use a keyboard, trackpad or mouse, and even with a touchscreen I only ever use touch for scrolling or zooming. On an ultrabook I create content, on a tablet I consume and so have a different set of UI needs. I just wish the demarkation between the touch and keyboard based UIs had been done between PC and tablet, instead of PCs and Tablets sharing the same UI, and then Phones having the separate, dedicated UI. (and yes, I know WinRT based devices only have the "Metro" apps -which makes me wonder why they bothered having Metro apps on the desktop). I'm confused, It seems there are simpler and better solutions to this.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Well, I'm still confused, too; and disappointed; how unfortunate that confusion, and disappointment, shared, are not always diluted :) ! On the other hand, this particular disappointment is less, for me, than that of seeing what I believed to be a remarkable future for Windows Forms disappear into what became the late WPF, SilverLight, etc. I have yet to own any touch-driven device, except a cheap knock-off mobile phone from China that's running (I'm pretty sure) a kind of iPhone4-like "UI veneer" over Android. And that, I use only for telephone calls, for which it's surprisingly useful, and easy to use. So, I haven't yet had the "tablet moment," which I can see is important in your essay here. Perhaps without having had the experience of using a small form-factor device to go on-line frequently, while traveling around, I may be "blind" to the point you are making about transit via tablet to new "desktop," rather than via "phone." But, if you'll excuse me for interpreting the gist of your comments as an argument for "one Windows, many skins" (a "vision" that makes perfect sense to me): well, I do find that idea a compelling "backboard" off which to bounce speculations about how Enterprise/Redmond bought into a bad batch of dilithium crystals, and got stuck in low-earth orbit. ... begin rant ... tag-line: "This is not your granddad's old mobile." For myself, I've found it hard to believe that "Modern" ... aka the whatever formerly known as "Metro" ... is a "design language," a "user interface design philosophy," or, anything, other than a kind of grandiose "cultish hive-mind" product of Microsoft's sending a misled (Sinofsky, now cast-into-outta-MS darkness, cast as "Svengali," or "Rasputin" ?) group of people off into a "virtual wilderness" in a state (I imagine) of apocalyptic paranoia, mesmerized (by sensory deprivation ?) into thinking they had to "save the company," gathering daily for hours-long sessions of screaming in rage: "Apple's venomous fangs are poised to strike;" alternating with: "Evil emasculating bitch Android wants Ballmer's balls." Then, exhausted of frenzy, re-fueled on Microsoft's own secret sauce (internally referred to by the code-words "kool-aid"), licensed from Red Bull, finishing off with a final hour-long session of blissed-out trance-dancing, chanting slowly: "We are the ones;" alternating with: "No Chrome is good Chrome;" and: "No eye candy is the sweetest candy:" while "Kum Bay Yah" played, accompanied by hypnotic drones, in the strobe-lit background.
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1. There's a lot of talk about MS trying to be more like apple, with Win 8. 2. If you start an apple desktop or laptop, it doesn't open with the iphone GUI. 3. This is a clear demonstration of the creative individuality of MS. They should be proud.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Windows 8 is doing a great job promoting Linux and OSX.
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Chris Maunder wrote:
can't-close-an-app-trust-us-we-know-what-we're-doing interface
You can (grab at top + pull to bottom, ALT+F4 for everything but the start screen, Or on desktop ram mouse to top left, then right-click app and select close) - it's just very badly executed. Typical Microsoft. Somewhen around Windows 11, it will be cool. I guess Microsoft just wanted an App Store like all the other big guys. It's just ... badly executed. Typical Microsoft.
peterchen wrote:
grab at top + pull to bottom
Wow - I just learned a new thing today. Can't say it's particularly obvious though.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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Well, I'm still confused, too; and disappointed; how unfortunate that confusion, and disappointment, shared, are not always diluted :) ! On the other hand, this particular disappointment is less, for me, than that of seeing what I believed to be a remarkable future for Windows Forms disappear into what became the late WPF, SilverLight, etc. I have yet to own any touch-driven device, except a cheap knock-off mobile phone from China that's running (I'm pretty sure) a kind of iPhone4-like "UI veneer" over Android. And that, I use only for telephone calls, for which it's surprisingly useful, and easy to use. So, I haven't yet had the "tablet moment," which I can see is important in your essay here. Perhaps without having had the experience of using a small form-factor device to go on-line frequently, while traveling around, I may be "blind" to the point you are making about transit via tablet to new "desktop," rather than via "phone." But, if you'll excuse me for interpreting the gist of your comments as an argument for "one Windows, many skins" (a "vision" that makes perfect sense to me): well, I do find that idea a compelling "backboard" off which to bounce speculations about how Enterprise/Redmond bought into a bad batch of dilithium crystals, and got stuck in low-earth orbit. ... begin rant ... tag-line: "This is not your granddad's old mobile." For myself, I've found it hard to believe that "Modern" ... aka the whatever formerly known as "Metro" ... is a "design language," a "user interface design philosophy," or, anything, other than a kind of grandiose "cultish hive-mind" product of Microsoft's sending a misled (Sinofsky, now cast-into-outta-MS darkness, cast as "Svengali," or "Rasputin" ?) group of people off into a "virtual wilderness" in a state (I imagine) of apocalyptic paranoia, mesmerized (by sensory deprivation ?) into thinking they had to "save the company," gathering daily for hours-long sessions of screaming in rage: "Apple's venomous fangs are poised to strike;" alternating with: "Evil emasculating bitch Android wants Ballmer's balls." Then, exhausted of frenzy, re-fueled on Microsoft's own secret sauce (internally referred to by the code-words "kool-aid"), licensed from Red Bull, finishing off with a final hour-long session of blissed-out trance-dancing, chanting slowly: "We are the ones;" alternating with: "No Chrome is good Chrome;" and: "No eye candy is the sweetest candy:" while "Kum Bay Yah" played, accompanied by hypnotic drones, in the strobe-lit background.
Wouldn't it have been easier to stick with Windows 7 like I did?
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peterchen wrote:
grab at top + pull to bottom
Wow - I just learned a new thing today. Can't say it's particularly obvious though.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
... nor particulary comfortable. From the same 15 minutes Windows 8 video: on the Tile screen, you can use Ctrl+Scroll to zoom out to rearrange and label the "groups" of icons. Something that would be cool if my interest in cleaning up my start menu hadn't died out about 5 years ago.
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(Not the Metro design language, but their Tile based, all-apps-full-screen, can't-close-an-app-trust-us-we-know-what-we're-doing interface) Windows is skinnable. One of the primary issues with a touch interface is clumsy thumbs and gestures. Gesture support are is fairly straightforward to add to an app (or an OS), and so I can't help but think that a "touch" skin for windows (bigger close buttons, different dropdown list UI, different resizers etc) would have taken us 90% of the way to a totally useable tablet UI on Windows without the need of a double-sided OS. I've been thinking about Surface and Ultrabooks a lot lately, and the way I use a tablet is very, very different to how I use a laptop. On a laptop I use a keyboard, trackpad or mouse, and even with a touchscreen I only ever use touch for scrolling or zooming. On an ultrabook I create content, on a tablet I consume and so have a different set of UI needs. I just wish the demarkation between the touch and keyboard based UIs had been done between PC and tablet, instead of PCs and Tablets sharing the same UI, and then Phones having the separate, dedicated UI. (and yes, I know WinRT based devices only have the "Metro" apps -which makes me wonder why they bothered having Metro apps on the desktop). I'm confused, It seems there are simpler and better solutions to this.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Microsoft appears to be trying to create the one-device-for-all-computing, and realizes that that device is going to be your smartphone. They could either do a me-too solution, a phone/tablet-only OS, or try to innovate a jump ahead of Apple, and align themselves with their vision of the future, in which an uberpowerful phone becomes our desktop of choice. To this end, Microsoft needs to wean their desktop users off the phone-unfriendly desktop UI, and over to a touch-centric, small-screen-friendly OS. Once done, it'll be an easy slide for those users to switch to the smartphone-becomes-desktop future, and Microsoft's OS will be able and well positioned to do that. However, this means they have to capitalize on it before their competitors can create me-too solutions and walk away with the business. This is why they rammed Metromode down their desktop users' throats, not because they couldn't be friendlier, but because us desktop devotees won't switch unless forced, and they need us switched now, rather than with Windows 9. As I see it, WinRT is the throwaway stopgap OS. Something that is trimmed down enough to run on low power devices, but has the Metro UI, so users get comfortable with it on phones and tablets. Win8 is the OS that forces desktop users to switch to the Metro UI, and unfortunately, force us it must because we certainly won't take the productivity hit to switch voluntarily. Like Vista, Win8 is a "training" OS, and that's why people hate on them so much. So, I don't expect Win9 to bring back the desktop, because that would be going backwards. If anything, I expect it to be the OS that eliminates WinRT, by being able to run in "RT mode" when the device is in lower power mode, and then converting to desktop mode when the device has more resources. Amusingly, Apple appears to be a fall-behind in this race -- right now its only MS & Ubuntu chasing this vision of the future. Will it be Windows or Linux on the uberphone/desktop?
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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Wouldn't it have been easier to stick with Windows 7 like I did?
Hi Herbie, Good question: I wasn't actually planning to change, but two hard-drives crashed-and-burned at the same time (the second one containing the most recent "restorable drive image" of the first one), and I had new "virgin" install disks of Win8/64 Pro and Visual Studio 2012 Pro, kindly sent to me by a friend in Redmond, waiting. At that point, I considered the amount of time (days) it would take me to do a fresh install of a five-year old early version of Win 7/64 Pro. Oh yeah, the actual OS install may be less than an hour: but, it's the endless series of on-line updates, and re-boots to even get to the point you can install service pack 1, followed by more hours and hours, after that, that drive you insane. Also, I was favorably impressed by comparisons I had read of basic functionality of Win 8 vs. Win 7 (exclusive of the whole Modern thing), and impressed by what I read that Start8 from StarDock could do, for real cheap. So, it was kind of the right time to change, and, to my surprise, it has been an easy transition. I'd say it was much easier, over-all, than re-starting from my old Win 7/64 Pro install DVD. Of course, you always pay the price, with a new OS, of re-installing all your apps, but I had all my critical files, data, and app installers, etc., stored in the Cloud, so just some grunt-work to do there. So far the only two apps that have failed to run on 8/64 are the drive-image utility called Drive Snapshot I used to make whole-drive back-ups (I think that program hasn't been updated in many years, may even be abandoned), and Microsoft's own "FixIt" utility that allowed you to clean up the mess left-behind by some corruption of whatever that made some programs un-installable. My daily experience in now using (my "stripped down") 8/64 Pro is that it is a bit faster, overall, than Win 7/64 Pro, but that could be just a kind of "novelty" effect: it's a very subjective perception. yours, Bill
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms, and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Hi Herbie, Good question: I wasn't actually planning to change, but two hard-drives crashed-and-burned at the same time (the second one containing the most recent "restorable drive image" of the first one), and I had new "virgin" install disks of Win8/64 Pro and Visual Studio 2012 Pro, kindly sent to me by a friend in Redmond, waiting. At that point, I considered the amount of time (days) it would take me to do a fresh install of a five-year old early version of Win 7/64 Pro. Oh yeah, the actual OS install may be less than an hour: but, it's the endless series of on-line updates, and re-boots to even get to the point you can install service pack 1, followed by more hours and hours, after that, that drive you insane. Also, I was favorably impressed by comparisons I had read of basic functionality of Win 8 vs. Win 7 (exclusive of the whole Modern thing), and impressed by what I read that Start8 from StarDock could do, for real cheap. So, it was kind of the right time to change, and, to my surprise, it has been an easy transition. I'd say it was much easier, over-all, than re-starting from my old Win 7/64 Pro install DVD. Of course, you always pay the price, with a new OS, of re-installing all your apps, but I had all my critical files, data, and app installers, etc., stored in the Cloud, so just some grunt-work to do there. So far the only two apps that have failed to run on 8/64 are the drive-image utility called Drive Snapshot I used to make whole-drive back-ups (I think that program hasn't been updated in many years, may even be abandoned), and Microsoft's own "FixIt" utility that allowed you to clean up the mess left-behind by some corruption of whatever that made some programs un-installable. My daily experience in now using (my "stripped down") 8/64 Pro is that it is a bit faster, overall, than Win 7/64 Pro, but that could be just a kind of "novelty" effect: it's a very subjective perception. yours, Bill
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms, and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
I have to admit that my Win7 Pro is taking longer to boot up these days. When it was new and shiny it seemed to start up very quickly. This is reminiscent of the XP behaviour as more and more hot fixes were added. The cynic in me suggests that Microsoft may be slowing Win 7 to make Win 8 look faster, surely not. I was so completely un-impressed by the Win 8 UI, having tried a few of the pre-release versions, that it is unlikely I will ever install the real thing despite reports of better 'under the bonnet' performance. I hear what you say about modifications but I like Win 7, apart from the broken start menu, and I'm sort of hoping Microsoft will change their strategy for folk like me.
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(Not the Metro design language, but their Tile based, all-apps-full-screen, can't-close-an-app-trust-us-we-know-what-we're-doing interface) Windows is skinnable. One of the primary issues with a touch interface is clumsy thumbs and gestures. Gesture support are is fairly straightforward to add to an app (or an OS), and so I can't help but think that a "touch" skin for windows (bigger close buttons, different dropdown list UI, different resizers etc) would have taken us 90% of the way to a totally useable tablet UI on Windows without the need of a double-sided OS. I've been thinking about Surface and Ultrabooks a lot lately, and the way I use a tablet is very, very different to how I use a laptop. On a laptop I use a keyboard, trackpad or mouse, and even with a touchscreen I only ever use touch for scrolling or zooming. On an ultrabook I create content, on a tablet I consume and so have a different set of UI needs. I just wish the demarkation between the touch and keyboard based UIs had been done between PC and tablet, instead of PCs and Tablets sharing the same UI, and then Phones having the separate, dedicated UI. (and yes, I know WinRT based devices only have the "Metro" apps -which makes me wonder why they bothered having Metro apps on the desktop). I'm confused, It seems there are simpler and better solutions to this.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
I think it's not just big buttons, the desktop assumes that you use a mouse and a (physical) keyboard, so I imagine it will be hard to rewire all the UI code to use fat fingers as pointers, if they would have gone for the bigger buttons approach the transition, most likely, would have required that the current apps developers modify their code to be able to use touch. I like the Modern UI interface, but I think they could have more gentler in how they feed this UI to the end users, however, given that they're (very) late to the party I believe that they could not afford to be gentle.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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I think it's not just big buttons, the desktop assumes that you use a mouse and a (physical) keyboard, so I imagine it will be hard to rewire all the UI code to use fat fingers as pointers, if they would have gone for the bigger buttons approach the transition, most likely, would have required that the current apps developers modify their code to be able to use touch. I like the Modern UI interface, but I think they could have more gentler in how they feed this UI to the end users, however, given that they're (very) late to the party I believe that they could not afford to be gentle.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
I am not so concerned with the UI as the WinRT sandbox is so restrictive!!! The last three things I wanted to develop a store app for hit the rocks.
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I am not so concerned with the UI as the WinRT sandbox is so restrictive!!! The last three things I wanted to develop a store app for hit the rocks.
I agree, I develop libraries for Modern UI, and I stumbled upon rock after rock, I had to port several libraries from the open source world to be able to develop my own libraries, simply because the functionality is not there in WinRT. I'm curious, what you wanted to do that you hit a big tiled rock?
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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(Not the Metro design language, but their Tile based, all-apps-full-screen, can't-close-an-app-trust-us-we-know-what-we're-doing interface) Windows is skinnable. One of the primary issues with a touch interface is clumsy thumbs and gestures. Gesture support are is fairly straightforward to add to an app (or an OS), and so I can't help but think that a "touch" skin for windows (bigger close buttons, different dropdown list UI, different resizers etc) would have taken us 90% of the way to a totally useable tablet UI on Windows without the need of a double-sided OS. I've been thinking about Surface and Ultrabooks a lot lately, and the way I use a tablet is very, very different to how I use a laptop. On a laptop I use a keyboard, trackpad or mouse, and even with a touchscreen I only ever use touch for scrolling or zooming. On an ultrabook I create content, on a tablet I consume and so have a different set of UI needs. I just wish the demarkation between the touch and keyboard based UIs had been done between PC and tablet, instead of PCs and Tablets sharing the same UI, and then Phones having the separate, dedicated UI. (and yes, I know WinRT based devices only have the "Metro" apps -which makes me wonder why they bothered having Metro apps on the desktop). I'm confused, It seems there are simpler and better solutions to this.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Completely agree with you, Chris. I've been thinking the same thing. The way that Windows 8 and the Metro UI are going just don't feel right to me. One of the solutions that made the most sense to me was something that Ubuntu was trying with Android devices a little while ago. When in "mobile" mode, it used the Android UI. When you docked the computer, it would switch over to using the Ubuntu desktop UI. We have different contexts when using computers - consumer, tablet, power user, desktop, whatever you want to call it. Each context is appropriate for a given set of tasks. It seems to me that MS could really differentiate themselves by giving us something similar that sensed which context we were in (or allowed some other sort of switching) instead of jamming two unrelated contexts together and forcing us into a mobile context when we're on a desktop computer and will never use a mobile context or giving us a desktop context on a mobile computer with a screen too small to give a really good desktop experience. The current strategy seems to be a poor compromise where neither context really wins. One thing to rule them all rarely works well for everybody. Microsoft tried to put the desktop context onto mobile devices and saw that people pretty much rejected it because the desktop wasn't appropriate for mobile. The funny thing is now they're trying the reverse by putting a mobile context onto desktops and thinking that that will be better received. I think at the very least, they should go with what has always been successful for them and give users more choice, rather than following the Apple path and taking choice away.
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button now requires a swipe over the entire height of the screen. Multiselect isn't available. Not even with touch. There's nothing wrong with introducing new technologies, but it's stupid to ignore the existance of millions of applications that are better controlled using a mouse, and then cripple mouse usability! I've used Win8 for a couple of weeks on my ultrabook, and I don't see anything that's inherently better than with Win7. But I did notice a whole lot of things that are now more difficult than they used to be. If your Win7 feels slow, how old is the machine it's running on? Mine is 2.5 years, but it doesn't feel notably slower than my brand new Win8 ultrabook.
Not sure what you are referring to with multiselect but you can right click on as many items as you want. Closing screens is either by swiping or by right-clicking in the recently opened apps i.e. left sidebar (I only figured that one our recently). With slower I didn't mean the machine was slow as both Win 7 and Win 8 was using the same machine (Core i7, 8GB RAM if that matters) but just handling things. If you're on start you can just start typing. You get a full screen of results which is amazingly quick. You can have a metro app (news, twitter, music open and pinned to one side which using desktop in the rest. This is what I mean with making may day to day life quicker. I don't own a touch screen laptop or desktop yet but I can only imagine that just making Win 8 even better.