Please fire the person in Microsoft that thought the charms thing is ok
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I love the charms bar - can't use windows without it. When people ask me how to use windows 8 I tell them move your mouse to the corner. The corners is all you have to remember. When people ask me how to use any other OS I'm on the phone for hours trying to explain simple concepts. I use a chainsaw for chopping down trees. This lack of future tools may explain to you why windows 8 is the way windows 8 is. When the chainsaw came out, people that use axes got confused and resisted to something they had to learn. Greg Colborne.
On a two 24 inch screen desktop system without touch, when I have the mouse somewhere on the left - are you telling me that having to move the mouse all the way over to the top right corner of the right screen - and then back again to get to work - is a good thing? really?? I can't even move that far without repositioning the mouse on the mat!
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It's an unfortunate fact of life that the users outnumber the developers by an incredible ratio. Guess where MS makes all of their money... It sure isn't from the developers.
Fletcher Glenn
True. But the developers are who are creating the content that users use. Without content, windows will die. Just as so many OSs died over the past decades without support from developers. It's the developers who made the C=64 survive well into the 16 bit PC times. It's the lack of developers that made it's successor, the C=Plus/4 a huge failure. I'm not saying W8 is like the C=Plus/4 OS, but this is an example for two very similar systems where the developers decided which is to live and which is to die. If the developers don't like a system, they won't develop for it. It's that easy. Also, MS made statements that are clearly false: they promised a system that will cater to all platforms. What they delivered is a system that runs on all platforms, but is clearly focused on smartphones and tablets. Desktop usability has been sacrificed in that transition, to the point where W7 is clearly the better alternative! MS is forgetting that they don't (yet) have a good foothold in the mobile market, and they're risking their market share in the one market where they do: Steam is already busy advertising it's own SteamOS to circumvent the restictions of the MicroSoft Store. Articles abound that claim Linux is on the rise again in the desktop market, and this time for real. If MS isn't careful they'll lose many Windows developers to Android and Linux - and that will affect mobile development as well.
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I have a quick test that the person that thought of, designed or approved the Windows 8 charms should take. Test: make them sit down in a computer, open terminal server and get into a Windows Server 2012 machine. Now ask them to try to show the charms bar instantly with the mouse 10 out of 10 times. It is not possible or you would have to be a ninja to do it consistently. If they fail, fire them! (Did Ballmer take the test?) Most people are not ninjas therefore it is not a nice user experience. Start button was way better. People need immediate reaction for an action, not guessing which one is the exact pixel to stand on top of. Make it simple, have a reaction for an action. Still want to get rid of the start button? Make a little triangle in the corner to fire it up. (You can also fix the screen with the apps but that is a separate topic) Make this the action that as a reaction Nonsense… You can see with pictures here: http://www.xaviermorera.com/2013/10/please-fire-the-person-in-microsoft-that-thought-the-charms-thing-is-ok/[^]
My new toy: www.cloudclipx.com -- If I have 8 hours to chop down a tree, I spend 6 sharpening my ax!
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Yes, non full screen on Windows Server 2012. Which brings me to the next point, who will use Windows Server 2012 in a tablet? hahaha Why not keep it as Win 2k8?
Present anytime, anywhere: www.ccview.me Clipboard in the cloud: www.cloudclipx.com -- If I have 8 hours to chop down a tree, I spend 6 sharpening my ax! And I mostly do in CodeProject and Pluralsight!
Yeah, it only works properly with full screen, since you need to pass by the screen corners. But if you're VNCing, you're smart enough to use Windows keys shortcuts (Win + C, Win + Tab, etc).
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On a two 24 inch screen desktop system without touch, when I have the mouse somewhere on the left - are you telling me that having to move the mouse all the way over to the top right corner of the right screen - and then back again to get to work - is a good thing? really?? I can't even move that far without repositioning the mouse on the mat!
If you have two touch screens use the finger gestures on the edges of both screens to pull up the same menus. Corners applies to both screens. If you have to reposition your mouse - I recommend you change the sensitivity setting so you can move the mouse across the entire environment.
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Use in RDP :) There is no exact corner. You will move your mouse out of the corner 9 out of 10 times!
Present anytime, anywhere: www.ccview.me Clipboard in the cloud: www.cloudclipx.com -- If I have 8 hours to chop down a tree, I spend 6 sharpening my ax! And I mostly do in CodeProject and Pluralsight!
Hover the mouse in the corner The menu will show gray move your mouse in the direction of the menu if nothing shows up on the left side menu - there are no programs open Right click to bring up any programs app bar
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Agreed. Many of the W8 UI features make some sense on small, touch based screens, but not at all on large desktop screens without touch. W8 Desktop mode should be desktop mode. Charms don't belong there! These are central system commands that should be discoverable and easily accessible on a typical desktop system, disregarding the needs of a touch based or mobile system! The W7 (and earlier) Start Button and attached menu fulfilled that role. the Charm bar does not - to the contrary, it gets in the way when you try to close a window!
Inexperience
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Win8 just sucks everywhere except its tiles - the ONE thing made useful for "finger pushing users".
Inexperience
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If you have two touch screens use the finger gestures on the edges of both screens to pull up the same menus. Corners applies to both screens. If you have to reposition your mouse - I recommend you change the sensitivity setting so you can move the mouse across the entire environment.
No touch. I did write that above. Didn't know that both screens' corners work: my current desktop fortunately still runs W7. But still: hitting a "corner" between screens is even harder than hitting it where you actually can't move any further. Increasing the sensitivity will actually aggravate the problem rather than help it. Not to mention that I don't want to adapt sensitivity just because MS is too stupid to make central system commands more accessible to desktop users. On my W8 Ultrabook, I've moved the control panel and other important stuff into my taskbar, because I see no other sensible way to do it. Which means I do not actually need the charms bar anymore. Which means I don't want to ever see it again - definitely not when I'm trying to close a window, thank you very much! I've been using this setup for half a year, and even though I got accustomed to the pecularities of the remaining W8 "features", I still don't like them. I have been considering to switch to Linux for these reasons, but am not quite ready yet. Still, if MS is going to move any further away from the desktop I'll reconsider.
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Inexperience
Then why do you even post?
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No touch. I did write that above. Didn't know that both screens' corners work: my current desktop fortunately still runs W7. But still: hitting a "corner" between screens is even harder than hitting it where you actually can't move any further. Increasing the sensitivity will actually aggravate the problem rather than help it. Not to mention that I don't want to adapt sensitivity just because MS is too stupid to make central system commands more accessible to desktop users. On my W8 Ultrabook, I've moved the control panel and other important stuff into my taskbar, because I see no other sensible way to do it. Which means I do not actually need the charms bar anymore. Which means I don't want to ever see it again - definitely not when I'm trying to close a window, thank you very much! I've been using this setup for half a year, and even though I got accustomed to the pecularities of the remaining W8 "features", I still don't like them. I have been considering to switch to Linux for these reasons, but am not quite ready yet. Still, if MS is going to move any further away from the desktop I'll reconsider.
The charms bar is the task bar of the metro mode. Metro app programming is the point to windows 8. The desktop is only there for backwards compatibility. Your arguments are based on inexperience.
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Then why do you even post?
It's a reason to why everyone is not happy about Windows 8, not the reality of it.
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It's a reason to why everyone is not happy about Windows 8, not the reality of it.
I've had plenty of time to learn about the reality of W8 on my Ultrabook. It's almost as bad compared to W7 as Vista was claimed to be compared to XP. At least for any kind of professional work. I've spent hours to find(*) and set up my energy settings only to get them wiped on a regular basis for no apparent reason (I suspect Windows Update does it, but can't be sure). I regularly spend valuable minutes of worktime to locate the folder in Windows explorer that actually contains the files I stored from an application, because the whole "library" system is a total mess and makes it unnecessarily hard to locate files from without the application that stored it. I've spent more hours removing annoying remnants of the Metro UI popping up in desktop mode - just how often and insistently do I need to tell Windows I don't want it!? I've spent even more time trying to figure out how to make Windows and applications store data on my data partition, but I'm not yet done jumping through hoops. Why can't I just relocate the "My Documents folder to another path in a simple manner? W8 is a horror to set up in a specific manner. If you're fine with the factory settings, then you're in luck. If not, plan for some exhaustive sessions to even find the appropriate settings that *may*, under certain conditions, affect the system in the way you want - only to have those settings changed or reset by some obscure background "service" that you possibly didn't even want to run in the first place if you even knew it existed. Maybe some of these problems hail from the additional manufacturer-installed software, but by all indications the majority are built into W8. Just to make a point: I wouldn't want to run iOS on a desktop any more than I would run W8. W8 is a smartphone OS. It is not a desktop OS any more, even in "desktop mode": It may be usable for tablets - I don't own one so I don't know. But on my Ultrabook - without touch screen - it is still more of a hindrance than help. (*): when I said hours to find and set up, I meant stuff way beyond the 10 minutes to blank screen and 30 minutes to power down. There are several dozen settings spread over two different dialogs, several tabs and a badly ordered list of options with a terrible UI. It's somewhat intuitive once you've found all of it, but it's painfully easy to override an option in one place that you've set to a different value in another if you're not careful. Plus, as mentioned above - something in the system appears to reset some or all of the choices under
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The charms bar is the task bar of the metro mode. Metro app programming is the point to windows 8. The desktop is only there for backwards compatibility. Your arguments are based on inexperience.
Metro is unusable for desktops workstations. This is not a matter of taste, it is a fact. This is not a matter of some things needing to be done differently, it is a matter of vital libaries not supported by Metro. Even for Metro app programming (depending on type of app) you may need to work in desktop mode, because Metro doesn't support some developer tools. At least this was true half a year ago - not sure 8.1 changed anything about it, but I doubt that. Clearly, you are not a developer, or you would know this. Here is an old article bashing the Win 8 preview[^]. My experience so far, pretty much mirrors the descritpions in this article. I've found it to be very accurate so far:
Neil McAllister wrote:
The result is a twisted chimera of an OS that can't decide whether it wants to frustrate, annoy, or interfere.
Neil McAllister wrote:
smartphone app UIs are tailored to the devices they run on. A smartphone's primary input device is a tiny touchscreen. Big icons and easy controls cater to that. But on a PC equipped with a 22-inch monitor, a mouse, and a keyboard, you don't need to simplify the UI to such a degree. Metro forces the PC usage model to cater to the UI, rather than the other way around.
Neil McAllister wrote:
Apps aren't why people buy PCs. Apps are frivolous. The most popular ones are mostly games, gadgets, social networking clients, and other minor diversions. True, some people use apps for business. But the apps that help you do real work aren't the type you download for 99 cents while you wait for the subway. They're not what's driving the app sales revenue Microsoft craves. Consumer entertainment is the sweet spot.
I can only underline these realizations. They match my experience, and probably that of most desktop developers, too. If they don't match yours, all the better for you - but please don't assume we all share your perspective.
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It's a reason to why everyone is not happy about Windows 8, not the reality of it.
P.S.: just to make a point: I actually like the vision behind Windows 8. I just don't like how it's being implemented. An UI should always cater to the users' needs, and these needs wildly differ between desktop users and smartphone users. It's a great idea to have a common OS under the hood - but it should remain under that hood and not force the pecularities of one device on the use of a comepletely different one!
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P.S.: just to make a point: I actually like the vision behind Windows 8. I just don't like how it's being implemented. An UI should always cater to the users' needs, and these needs wildly differ between desktop users and smartphone users. It's a great idea to have a common OS under the hood - but it should remain under that hood and not force the pecularities of one device on the use of a comepletely different one!
UI's that cater to the users is always a model that has failed.
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Metro is unusable for desktops workstations. This is not a matter of taste, it is a fact. This is not a matter of some things needing to be done differently, it is a matter of vital libaries not supported by Metro. Even for Metro app programming (depending on type of app) you may need to work in desktop mode, because Metro doesn't support some developer tools. At least this was true half a year ago - not sure 8.1 changed anything about it, but I doubt that. Clearly, you are not a developer, or you would know this. Here is an old article bashing the Win 8 preview[^]. My experience so far, pretty much mirrors the descritpions in this article. I've found it to be very accurate so far:
Neil McAllister wrote:
The result is a twisted chimera of an OS that can't decide whether it wants to frustrate, annoy, or interfere.
Neil McAllister wrote:
smartphone app UIs are tailored to the devices they run on. A smartphone's primary input device is a tiny touchscreen. Big icons and easy controls cater to that. But on a PC equipped with a 22-inch monitor, a mouse, and a keyboard, you don't need to simplify the UI to such a degree. Metro forces the PC usage model to cater to the UI, rather than the other way around.
Neil McAllister wrote:
Apps aren't why people buy PCs. Apps are frivolous. The most popular ones are mostly games, gadgets, social networking clients, and other minor diversions. True, some people use apps for business. But the apps that help you do real work aren't the type you download for 99 cents while you wait for the subway. They're not what's driving the app sales revenue Microsoft craves. Consumer entertainment is the sweet spot.
I can only underline these realizations. They match my experience, and probably that of most desktop developers, too. If they don't match yours, all the better for you - but please don't assume we all share your perspective.
I have no problem making enterprise apps in metro mode for desktop workstations. As a 16 year programmer I cursed when I realised all the libraries were not there, but then realised the tasks where not impossible I just didn't know at that moment how to do it.
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I've had plenty of time to learn about the reality of W8 on my Ultrabook. It's almost as bad compared to W7 as Vista was claimed to be compared to XP. At least for any kind of professional work. I've spent hours to find(*) and set up my energy settings only to get them wiped on a regular basis for no apparent reason (I suspect Windows Update does it, but can't be sure). I regularly spend valuable minutes of worktime to locate the folder in Windows explorer that actually contains the files I stored from an application, because the whole "library" system is a total mess and makes it unnecessarily hard to locate files from without the application that stored it. I've spent more hours removing annoying remnants of the Metro UI popping up in desktop mode - just how often and insistently do I need to tell Windows I don't want it!? I've spent even more time trying to figure out how to make Windows and applications store data on my data partition, but I'm not yet done jumping through hoops. Why can't I just relocate the "My Documents folder to another path in a simple manner? W8 is a horror to set up in a specific manner. If you're fine with the factory settings, then you're in luck. If not, plan for some exhaustive sessions to even find the appropriate settings that *may*, under certain conditions, affect the system in the way you want - only to have those settings changed or reset by some obscure background "service" that you possibly didn't even want to run in the first place if you even knew it existed. Maybe some of these problems hail from the additional manufacturer-installed software, but by all indications the majority are built into W8. Just to make a point: I wouldn't want to run iOS on a desktop any more than I would run W8. W8 is a smartphone OS. It is not a desktop OS any more, even in "desktop mode": It may be usable for tablets - I don't own one so I don't know. But on my Ultrabook - without touch screen - it is still more of a hindrance than help. (*): when I said hours to find and set up, I meant stuff way beyond the 10 minutes to blank screen and 30 minutes to power down. There are several dozen settings spread over two different dialogs, several tabs and a badly ordered list of options with a terrible UI. It's somewhat intuitive once you've found all of it, but it's painfully easy to override an option in one place that you've set to a different value in another if you're not careful. Plus, as mentioned above - something in the system appears to reset some or all of the choices under
To move the documents folder. Right click on the documents folder. select properties. go to location tab. click the move button. Find folder in the dialog box that appears. Click ok or apply. Message box appears that reads "Do you want to move all of the files from the old location to the new location - Yes no cancel. In your case select no. Nothing is hard in windows 8 in fact its super easy once you have the experience. The only time I've lost settings within windows 8 is when I screwed up the install.
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UI's that cater to the users is always a model that has failed.
You do understand that UI stands for "User Interface"? :doh:
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You do understand that UI stands for "User Interface"? :doh:
A car is a user interface, the car that Homer Simpson build was good I must admit but the reality is users don't know jack about what they really what.