The Glade 4.0

ROFL.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Well I don't want to launch them by keyboard, I want to be able to easily click my start button and view all my programs right there on my desktop, if what I could do entirely and quickly with just my mouse before now required the mouse and keyboard that's a failure in design IMO, you don't make things more complicated when updating software, too many companies seem to be obsessed with change for the sake of the change, and in the case of Microsoft *coughribboncough* all they have done is make the software more complicated and take more steps to use or make it more cluttered, all for the sake of the few idiots who aren't computer savvy and need a huge *** button saying click here you moron to figure out what to do.

Well every single screenshot I see of Metro is all random colored blocks, blue, orange, green, magenta, etc, and unless it's changed from the article I read a while back and it sounds like maybe it has, that only Microsoft programs got tiles with icons showing the program, and other programs just had the colored block with the name of the program on it.

On any program I actually use I can tell just fine what the smaller icon is and I prefer the smaller icon, as again I prefer to keep my desktop uncluttered, actually I have objectdock on the bottom of my screen for my most used programs and everything else is in the start menu, nothing on my desktop save my wallpaper.

Too many people are obsessed with a lack of change for the sake of lack of change.

I kept reading, but you started off your entire post with a false statement. You can still use your mouse to access a list of all your apps from the new Desktop, in a much more clear view of what the Start Bar ever could have given. Now it requires a right click and then hitting "All Apps", instead of the two clicks in Win7 for "Start" and then "All Programs".

It looks like this:

I think calling the ribbon a mistake shows a real lack of objectivity in design and function. I say this as someone that called it **** when it launched in Office, but I was just being stubborn.



Making things easier for the mouth-breathers are what we in the industry call "usability".

This thread inspired me to download the preview w/apps on a laptop I have.

I'm struggling with the lack of the title bar and buttons on application windows, and the lack of control of where the application sits on the screen.

I am still playing with it. I'm sure there are ways to change the layout. I also don't have a multi-monitor setup, like I normally use on a desktop, so that might change things...

/signed, a mouth breather

The window control is something I struggled with the longest, as well. I mostly just had to modify my workflow a bit, but I just end up using alt/win+tab all the time like I do in Win7 anyway.

One feature I appreciate from Chrome, if you make it your default browser, you can open it in both instances - desktop and metro. Depending on where you open it from, it will be contextually fullscreen or windowed. I expect other programs may implement something like this as well.

Edit - Just realized the search will contextually search the store if you're inside the app. Should have known that but it didn't click in my head. There goes one of my annoyances.

As of 10pm last night, the RTM version of Win 8 is now available to Technet Professional and MSDN subscribers. Apparently the RTM has some updates over the 'preview' version that has been available for a while now.


There is a 90 day eval available for 'developers' as well.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcen ... 54510.aspx

Aye, final build is much more polished than the earlier previews. That's what prompted me to create the thread. Also, as far as I know the older previews don't have a functional MS Store which would put a pretty big damper on things.

My tile-less desktop, just for you guyz:

Article from engadget about the changes in RTM:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/15/windows-8-rtm-whats-new/

And here is a HUGE article from the devs on why they did the things they did with the Win8 UI, going all the way back to Windows 1!!!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/18/creating-the-windows-8-user-experience.aspx

C'mon Microsoft, make with the software assurance Win8 already! It's been 8/16 for hours now.

Haha, they finally put it up, their servers are DESTROYED. I'm at 8% after several hours.

Yeah it took me like three hours to download the new Visual Studio SDK to make a Metro app.

Work in progress...

Nice! So one complaint I've heard, when you're running 4 or 5 "desktop" apps (which everything will be, for quite a while), you can't alt-tab task switch, is that accurate? Have you run into that yet?

All of the tab commands you're used to still work. Alt tab, win tab, ctrl tab. Whoever said that is full of crap. Behold:



MYTHBUSTED.

Right, you can alt+tab, but it looks like there you're running all metro apps, and then the "desktop" which is where your old apps are. does it show all your "desktop" apps individually?

The first two applications there are Desktop apps.

Nice! So it's horrible uselessness on the desktop has been greatly exaggerated.

Most things about Windows 8 have been pretty horribly exaggerated. That's why I'm here

Farsky - does your HBOGo app show up in the Quickplay section on the Home tab on your X360? The Apps I have used show up there as well as games and it's a bit easier to launch from there than going through the App page.

So Win8 is definitely intriguing. I feel like some of the issues at this point will be addressed as people get better at designing apps. Right now there is a lot of screen real estate in metro apps going to waste (on a desktop PC), at least in the apps I checked out.

Example:


and I'm not even running 1080P on this monitor. I noticed this in quite a few apps. It's obviously optimized for lower rez tablet screens. However, this may just be because in the past that's all these apps have run on. As they're updated for higher resolutions closer to win8 public launch, that issue may go away.

The other thing I've found really strange is the seperation between desktop and metro apps. If I open google chrome on my desktop, set it up, tell it to sync, then open google chrome in metro, it's a completely seperate instance, with seperate settings, seperate bookmarks, and seperate pages. This may also be something that is fixed in programming as they move forward.

It definitely feels like the desktop is the "legacy" instance here (essentially that it's windows 7 without a start menu), and essentially everything new is in metro. They have upgraded the task manager and file browser with the ribbon in the desktop, and it's actually quite functional.

All in all, definitely weird, but I kind of like the idea of showing entirely content instead of a bunch of menus covering your screen. Not sure how it will fit into my workflow, will probably load a test box up at work to see how it functions day to day.

Yeah that's definitely bad design on Tom's part... IMO the best looking application ATM is Cocktail Flow. Check that one out.

Totally thought I was gonna be all awesome and read my metrotwit feed while watching some Netflix in metro. DENIED!



Also, you're right, Cocktail flow is beautiful. Time to restock that liquor cabinet!

In related news: Windows Phone will be overtaking Blackberry no later than November of this year:
http://news.yahoo.com/windows-phone-soo ... 51181.html

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That's an accomplishment right up there with a shitty car overtaking a different sort of shitty car.

My metaphor-fu is weak today.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Dude 1% market share is nothing to sneeze at.

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Market share isn't always an indicator of quality :/