Windows 8 Dev build

I'm hoping they try something new with the 8.2 start menu rather than just excavating the old vista / 7 iteration. Having used the apps screen in 8.1 for about a month now I find it adequate, as was the old menu; but neither of them is a masterwork of GUI design. By the same token I don't understand the polemics--perhaps some of that's left over from win 8, which I skipped. You should be able to accomplish the same tasks in about the same number of clicks or keystrokes with either one (aside from recent docs I guess, which does seem a big oversight).

Be it menu or screen, it's just a place to bung all the crap you don't use on a daily basis. And then sometimes, depending on mood, either search through it forcefully and effectively, or just stare at all the icons blankly as you realize you already forgot what you went in to it for less than a second ago. Or maybe that's just me.

 

For me it's literally just 2 button presses to launch almost anything I use on a regular basis. The only thing I had to adjust to was remembering to pin any newly installed app (Windows 8.1) or unpin stuff (Windows 8.0). But then that's contrasted with the old start menu of having so many freaking folders and trying to remember where something was after first install (when it stopped highlighting the newly added folder).

And then to keep things sane, having to put items into nested folders. Which the made it a pain in the ass to find if you don't use it regularly. Not to mention having to then organize those nested folders.

Dealing with that mess was helped immensely when they made it easy to find items in Vista by typing the partial name. The helped the aging and anemic start menu. But really it just highlighted how crappy and inefficient the start menu was if you had a lot of things installed that you used on a regular or semi-regular basis.

The start screen isn't perfect (I've previously mentioned improvements I'd like to see made), but it's a hell of a lot better than the aging start menu, IMO. For once, I'm actually using it to launch items which I stopped doing with the start menu in Vista. For Vista/Win7 it was just far more efficient to start typing the name of something and ignore the rest of the start menu entirely other than the limited number of programs you could pin to the menu..

Regards,
SB

 

the one option the classical start menu was good for:
- you have a huge amount of applications installed
- you proceed to install a new application of which you are not sure what name it uses for its start menu shortcuts or program executables

The classic start menu would highlight the newly added entries.

How does this work with the Win8.x start screen (presuming an equally cluttered start screen containing many applications)?

 

Yes recent docs I use all the time, also this will allow them to put back the shutdown etc button

hopefully they also add mousewheel scroll over current window (and not focused window) I see a few apps do this already eg google chrome, including some of MS's own programs!

 

In 8.0 it was easy to find as it just appended anything new to the end of the start screen to the right in addition to adding it to the all applications sub screen.

In 8.1, they could have done a better job. It gets added to the all applications sub screen with a "NEW" tag, but it isn't highlighted or flashing, both of which would have made it easy to find and would be an improvement I'd like to see in 8.2. But you can sort the list by "date installed" which makes it trivially easy to find. You have to manually pin anything you want to appear on the main start screen.

BTW - the all application's subscreen would be analogous to the Start Menu, except with all folders open. It's a bit daunting when you first see it, but with the basic sorting options it's fairly easy to navigate. And you can still use partial name search to find things as in Vista/Win7.

Regards,
SB

 

Just had my PC reboot automatically three times while installing windows updates automatically when I turned it on this afternoon. What. The. Eff.

Three times, microsoft?

Like, one time's kinda understandable because you can't fucking change anything in windows without requiring a restart, and TWO, well what the hell was the second time for. Not to mention the third!

Lucky me I have an SSD as boot disk or I'd still be waiting for it to finish.

 

Well, this is a sign that the changes might be quite significant. Reminds me of installing Windows for the first time when it warns there might be several restarts in order to configure all the hardware, etc...

 

I've been running windows for ages now and the only time ever that an update required more than one restart before windows 8 was installing service packs. So this is something new, and it's also not the first time win8 restarts three times when patching.

 

Do you have any answer for your complaint from Microsoft's support? Clarification on the 'problem' and technical details why they need three restarts to configure?

Btw, I am not surpirsed at all. Windows 8 proved to be such a crap load of shit OS, perhaps the worst ever. Shame on Microsoft!

Windows 7 still going strong; consumers still not warming up to Windows 8 and 8.1

Windows 8.x has seen virtually non-existent growth, even after several months since public release

As noted by NetMarketShare for the month of November, the usage of Windows 8 actually fell by 0.87 percent. This was slightly compensated by a small increase in the market share of Windows 8.1 – bringing the net gain of the 8 family to a paltry 0.05 percent. This is certainly not good news for Microsoft as it means people are responding to the 8.1 update about as well as they responded to Windows 8, which as you know, wasn’t too positive.

Windows 7 remains the most used OS by a huge margin with its share increasing by 0.22 percent, more than four times that of the 8 family. Although Microsoft is encouraging companies to shift from XP to Windows 7 ahead of XP’s death date, they will be undoubtedly be worried that people are still reluctant in shifting to the latest Windows 8.x versions.

 

Sometimes windows will do that if there's an issue installing the update in which it removes after after the next reboot, forcing it to reboot yet again.

 

I haven't had this issue on either of our Win8 machines. What do you guys do with them? Lol.

I am seeing the start of the business uptake right now in our company. Suppliers have been slow in their Office 2013 and Windows 8 uptake, delaying the regular uptake process by 6-9 months on average vs previous transitions.

 

imo, Windows 8 is not that bad. The schizophrenic interface is scaring a lot of users, but the underlying kernel and desktop are an evolutionary improvement over the previous NT 6 family members.

Maybe a bit comparable to Windows Vista, another misunderstood version of Windows that technically was a definite improvement over the previous release (XP), and disliked due to some misunderstood features (memory used for pre-caching applications, etc.), and bad third party supplied drivers (mostly graphics and printer drivers).

Remember that XP was hated too when it was released (anyone remember the 'teletubby interface' and 'memory hog' nicknames it got?).

Once MS fixes the duality of the Windows 8.x interface (i.e. provide ModernMix-esque functionality), and allow users to stick to their habits (i.e. classic start menu), most of the hatred is likely to evaporate.

 

kernal yes, its getting better every time and I applaud that but the metro stuff has gone backwards. I can do/customize less now than before. The built in apps are retarded. Ive written about this before. eg I click on a jpg wait a lifetime (3 secs) and its displayed and then I cant even do much with this fullscreen represntation.
How do you turn win 8 off? I had to explain this 2 days ago to someone, all the steps involved, what the fuck were they thinking?

OK great with metro they made massive changes (yes they were the wrong changes but still change is often good, I applaud MS for having the balls)
anyways look at this, the latest version of internet explorer 11.0.96xx (cant copy the number hmm another issue I just happened upon)

look at the screen (the topleft icon, none uses so we'll ignore that), ok we have a title, nice, and then 3 icons yes important they are, but 90% of that top row is empty space, wow thats useful!
-- head hit graphic insert
next line addressbar (its ok on 1920x1200 but try it on a 1366x768 laptop and its tiny) OK small adressbar, and the 2/3 of the line filled with tabs

FFS whats the problem with the above scenerio
class can anyone tell me?
(jimi puts his hand up)
ok jimi go ahead
-well teacher, theyve crammed all the important information into a single line and on the other line stuck the nonimportant info but at the same time leaving 90% space wasted
well done jimi youre obviously not going to get a job at MS design since youre too intelligent

OK I jest but really what is going on there why are they screwing up so baddly

btw windows is still my favourite OS, also I do love the startscreen since its similar to what I suggested ~15 years ago (thouhg mine idea goes further it shows everything at once, hmm I should dig up some old postes )

 

I far prefer having an actual title bar to the crap that Chrome does. If you end up with a lot of tabs as I do (my address bar in IE sits on it's own row so that tabs occupy their own row) then it becomes annoying in Chrome if you want to drag the entire window. It's not uncommon for me to drag a stupid tab in Chrome instead of being able to grab some non-tab space when the window is maximized. Absolutely retarded, IMO.

But then, that's why we have competing browsers. The features I hate in Chrome, I'm sure other people love. The features I love in IE, I'm sure some people hate (as Zed does).

It'd be really crappy if there was only one browser or only one browser UI design. If that were the case then either Zed or I would be royally screwed as one or the other of us would hate the browser UI that we'd be forced to use due to there being only one browser available or only one browser UI design.

BTW - IE 9/10/11 UI still not as good as IE 7/8 UI. /sigh.

Regards,
SB

 

I agree that the desktop parts of win8 are an improvement, I kind of like the new ribbon explorer for example, and it boots fast (doesn't shutdown very fast though...*cough*), and things like that. The visual of the default barebones UI theme isn't terribly exciting perhaps, but I've seen worse (the grey hell called Mac OSX... *ahem*)

Exactly. I don't understand why they insist on trying to keep pushing metro down peoples' throats. Feels like it's prestige only that makes them keep insisting on not giving people what they want.

 

It's not prestige, but simplicity. It's the easiest thing to do technically, and if they can get away with the exact same interface on both, then great for Microsoft. They may not even have had enough time to go further than that, but just testing and see the response is an option as well. Generally, I think it would have been obvious that users would want to see the Apps and regular Desktop software interact and blend meaningfully and as seamlessly as possible, and that the userbase for Windows 7 is large enough not to want to give up significant functionality easily.

 

Bah, that's a lame cop-out of an excuse. It's not wanting to admit they were wrong, nothing else... They had a fully developed desktop UI already, no need to develop a new one for windows 8 if they really were worried about spending additional resources on this task. They wanted to foist metro on everyone to make their portable devices palatable through force of habit. (Like the reason IE8/9 UI looks nothing like a traditional browser's, to make you uncomfortable if you ever decide to switch away from IE.) This didn't work, they should change strategy ASAP but they're not exactly hurrying.

So...prestige.

 

Or stupidity

Their desktop UI with icons on whatever you want wallpaper background looks the same as Android when you press the Applications icon...

Why do they need those horrible tiles which occupy the entire screen without any beautiful background is just puzzling

 

It works really well on a WP8 phone, and presumably tablets too. The mistake MS has made is trying to force it onto desktop machines.

 

I am not sure whether it works well, it just works to some extent.

This certainly has an aim and they, at least, tried to achieve it. But unfortunately (for them) didn't predict the concequencies and people's reactions...

They should have forced the normal desktop UI on mobile devices, not the other way round entering unknown adventures which will end in a bad and painful way

'Misunderstood'... well, possibly, but in no way it is customers' fault. It was both Microsoft's and hardware suppliers' faults because they didn't build an environment where Vista would be accepted better.
For Windows 8 it is not misunderstanding but rather the simple, minimalistic look which obviously can not be called 'modern' in 2013