Vista UI driving me insane. Need some explanations
-
The more I use Vista the more angry I get. Isn't that ridiculous? An operating system that is physically stressing me out when I use it. Anyway, on with the questions: 1. Is there anyway of hiding the waste-of-space "Favorite" links panel in Explorer. I'm not sure whose favourites they are but they ain't mine 2. Is there anyway to have the status bar show you the total number of bytes of all files in the current directory the way XP did by default 3. I have a lot of shortcuts in the "chris" folder. I click on them and it says "access denied". I'm an administrator. WTF? 4. Why is My Documents now called "[username]". It weirds me out. The files aren't to do with me; they aren't all about me. My picture isn't on them. The files are to with work and stuff. Anyway... 5. A general whinge: The glass effect has become old. It's distracting, ugly and distorting to the UI and is a big step backwards in usability. I have XP and Vista next to each other and finding things on the screen in XP is WAY faster and easier on the eyes. Why is it that "standard" actually means "Win2000" and not "XP", and Vista Basic means "Crayon coloured glass with serious tearing artefacts". A non-see-through, themed, graphics-card powered option would have been nice. 6. Again on the Classic thing: Why is there no XP style start menu offered? The XP start menu made sense, was easy to customise and was intuitive. You've either got "how many times can I click on things to find the program I want" Vista, or Windows 2000. That is frustrating. More to come.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
-
The more I use Vista the more angry I get. Isn't that ridiculous? An operating system that is physically stressing me out when I use it. Anyway, on with the questions: 1. Is there anyway of hiding the waste-of-space "Favorite" links panel in Explorer. I'm not sure whose favourites they are but they ain't mine 2. Is there anyway to have the status bar show you the total number of bytes of all files in the current directory the way XP did by default 3. I have a lot of shortcuts in the "chris" folder. I click on them and it says "access denied". I'm an administrator. WTF? 4. Why is My Documents now called "[username]". It weirds me out. The files aren't to do with me; they aren't all about me. My picture isn't on them. The files are to with work and stuff. Anyway... 5. A general whinge: The glass effect has become old. It's distracting, ugly and distorting to the UI and is a big step backwards in usability. I have XP and Vista next to each other and finding things on the screen in XP is WAY faster and easier on the eyes. Why is it that "standard" actually means "Win2000" and not "XP", and Vista Basic means "Crayon coloured glass with serious tearing artefacts". A non-see-through, themed, graphics-card powered option would have been nice. 6. Again on the Classic thing: Why is there no XP style start menu offered? The XP start menu made sense, was easy to customise and was intuitive. You've either got "how many times can I click on things to find the program I want" Vista, or Windows 2000. That is frustrating. More to come.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
I agree, Explorer is significantly worse compared to XP. :| 1. There might be a group policy setting to do that 2. I wish... I miss that feature too. 3. Those are junctions put there so badly-written apps won't break if they assume that there is a dir called, for example, "My Documents" or "Documents and Settings". Do a dir /a and you'll see them marked <JUNCTION> 4. Only the desktop shortcut changed. It now points to %USERPROFILE% instead of %USERPROFILE%\My Documents 5. You can turn off the transparency effect, that way you can still get the benefits of the DWM without having glass.
--Mike-- Visual C++ MVP :cool: LINKS~! Ericahist | PimpFish | CP SearchBar v3.0 | C++ Forum FAQ Ford, what's this fish doing in my ear?
-
I agree, Explorer is significantly worse compared to XP. :| 1. There might be a group policy setting to do that 2. I wish... I miss that feature too. 3. Those are junctions put there so badly-written apps won't break if they assume that there is a dir called, for example, "My Documents" or "Documents and Settings". Do a dir /a and you'll see them marked <JUNCTION> 4. Only the desktop shortcut changed. It now points to %USERPROFILE% instead of %USERPROFILE%\My Documents 5. You can turn off the transparency effect, that way you can still get the benefits of the DWM without having glass.
--Mike-- Visual C++ MVP :cool: LINKS~! Ericahist | PimpFish | CP SearchBar v3.0 | C++ Forum FAQ Ford, what's this fish doing in my ear?
Michael Dunn wrote:
You can turn off the transparency effect
Man - you really have to hunt around for this stuff, don't you? Excellent spot.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
-
The more I use Vista the more angry I get. Isn't that ridiculous? An operating system that is physically stressing me out when I use it. Anyway, on with the questions: 1. Is there anyway of hiding the waste-of-space "Favorite" links panel in Explorer. I'm not sure whose favourites they are but they ain't mine 2. Is there anyway to have the status bar show you the total number of bytes of all files in the current directory the way XP did by default 3. I have a lot of shortcuts in the "chris" folder. I click on them and it says "access denied". I'm an administrator. WTF? 4. Why is My Documents now called "[username]". It weirds me out. The files aren't to do with me; they aren't all about me. My picture isn't on them. The files are to with work and stuff. Anyway... 5. A general whinge: The glass effect has become old. It's distracting, ugly and distorting to the UI and is a big step backwards in usability. I have XP and Vista next to each other and finding things on the screen in XP is WAY faster and easier on the eyes. Why is it that "standard" actually means "Win2000" and not "XP", and Vista Basic means "Crayon coloured glass with serious tearing artefacts". A non-see-through, themed, graphics-card powered option would have been nice. 6. Again on the Classic thing: Why is there no XP style start menu offered? The XP start menu made sense, was easy to customise and was intuitive. You've either got "how many times can I click on things to find the program I want" Vista, or Windows 2000. That is frustrating. More to come.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
Hehe :)) i feel the same way about it. It's even worse when you have to deal with GUI coding for Vista (DPI awareness, Segoe UI fonts handling, UAC etc.) But think about it, Microsoft did lots of usability tests before Vista's release but i guess their testers were some 10 years old kids (probaby dev's kids). There are many proofs for my theory: * candy and shiny Vista's interface (who likes candies - kids, of course) * 100 UAC questions per minute (so you can't harm your precious OS, becouse by default they think you're some stupid kid) * more default games in every next release of windows (like that was the most important part of an OS...) * animated dog used in XP's search window (my favourite, they should hang by balls that guy who invented it)
Bartosz Wójcik || PELock Software Copy Protection