More Eye Candy Coming To Windows 10

jones_supa writes Microsoft is expected to release a new build of the Windows 10 Technical Preview in the very near future, according to their own words. The only build so far to be released to the public is 9841 but the next iteration will likely be in the 9860 class of releases. With this new build, Microsoft has polished up the animations that give the OS a more comprehensive feel. When you open a new window, it flies out on to the screen from the icon and when you minimize it, it collapses back in to the icon on the taskbar. It is a slick animation and if you have used OS X, it is similar to the one used to collapse windows back in to the dock. Bah.

Comments

how pretty

[CheshireDragon]

I couldn't care less about how pretty it looks...I want it to WORK PROPERLY.
Linux back in the day looked like hell, but it worked.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux back in the day looked like hell, but it worked.

No it didn't, sound and graphics were a pain in the ass to get working!

Re:how pretty

[pooh666]

Indeed. I turn off all animations they waste time and resources. How about making it super easy for me not to have to do searches for files all of the time? More intelligent awareness of what I did last time when I opened a file from one folder vs another. LESS visual BS that just looks pretty but leaves me entirely confused as to how to do my work. FRICKN OFFICE MENUS MUST DIE.

Re:how pretty

[DocHoncho]

As long as you can still turn them off. Just one more thing to add to the post-install de-crapification checklist.

Re:how pretty

[CheshireDragon]

I am talking about the system functionality. What the hell requires sound or serious graphics on a daily basis in Linux? nothing that I have used yet. Of course, an admin only needs command line ;)

Re:how pretty

[Hognoxious]

Controls that you can actually see before you activate them.

Re:how pretty

[exomondo]

I couldn't care less about how pretty it looks...I want it to WORK PROPERLY.

These days the issues with operating systems (Windows, Linux (incl. Android) or OSX) are more related to the user installing malicious software than the actual operating system working incorrectly. Actual operating system crashes - even those that stem from bad kernel-mode drivers - are few and far between these days on any of the modern operating systems, we've come a long way from the days of Windows 9x, MacOS and the early versions of Caldera.

Re:how pretty

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

Well, scientists for one. It might explain why so many of them have switched to OSX as their *NIX of choice. I remember a lot of Linux desktop managers struggled with doing basic things like properly rendering Mathematica and allowing it to accelerate graphics with open GL whereas on OSX and Windows, it just "worked" pretty much 99.9% of the time.

Linux itself (the actual kernel) is very stable, maybe even more stable than the base Windows NT kernel. But as a desktop operating system? There's a reason why most people shell out good money for OSX or Windows, and it is not just because they look pretty (which many Linux desktops do these days as well).

Re:how pretty

[davydagger]

it "worked", but it had shit HW support, and a terrible UI, so that doesn't really count as "works", because a without a decent user interface your not getting much done, or your ability to get shit done was severly degraded.

Kernel 2.4 was usable, but 2.6 solidified Linux as a really great OS, and its just getting better.

but as far as UI, on linux it feels like its a dime a dozen because we've had compiz for so long, we can just make any effect we really want, and none of it really seems new.

or just bring back compiz. Windows seems to be copying their ideas around 3-5 years later.

Re:how pretty

[djdanlib]

Image editing.

Audio production.

Design.

Page layout.

Video editing.

You know, a lot of professions.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I am a researcher, work with Mathematica, Acegen, C++11, OpenGL, Qt, some Fortran 2003, CEI Ensight and ParaView. I am slashdotting in my Mac but do all work in Linux. Basically, I use the Mac to read and write emails and to listen to music. All serious work is done in Linux.

Actually, after OSX 10.9, most classical software like Xfig, Lyx, Gnuplot, etc became brittle, slow or simply stopped working.

It is difficult to keep a straight face and state that OSX is stable. Xcode crashes all the time, Qt software crashes all the time, visualization software works much better on Linux. Keynote is ok though, but that's about it.

What you are referring to is perhaps the 2006-2009 period.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also a reason that so many of the actual scientists I know come rushing back to Linux after playing around in MacOSX or Windows for a while. It's just not as good at SCIENCE. It wastes CPU and RAM for starters. And if you need a graph of 3d animation or other visualization, Linux can now do that just fine these days, much less annoyingly than it was even a few years ago. If you need to do serious work, it doesn't waste the system's resources as much, and it doesn't distract you into playing around instead of getting work done. It is also still more compatible with Unix-ish software without as much pain of setting it all up because OSX is so comparatively annoying to set up for software developer (I say this as a primarily-Mac dev who likes OSX, but let's be realistic now).

Re:how pretty

[exomondo]

I am talking about the system functionality. What the hell requires sound or serious graphics on a daily basis in Linux?

Most things that people do with their computers, you know like web browsing, watching video, listening to music and then of course professionals want to do things like audio, video and photo editing/production, architectural, factory and product design/engineering/simulation/visualization.

Of course, an admin only needs command line ;)

And most people don't get a computer just to administer it.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

sound and graphics were a pain in the ass to get working!

Not on any distro I've used in the past decade or so.

Not to mention that Linux has always had far more eye candy options than Windows of the same era,

Re:how pretty

[Tablizer]

Linux back in the day looked like hell, but it worked.

Now it's reversed

Re:how pretty

[OhPlz]

Office menus? Careful, they'll take that as an endorsement of ribbons. We replaced everything with ribbons! See? No more menus!

Re:how pretty

[kheldan]

I second this. I turn all that crap off whenever possible. It's just a waste of CPU cycles and annoying. I don't need Pretty Pretty Blinking Lights in an OS, I need an OS that is rock-solid reliable, how about you work on that, Microsoft?

Re:how pretty

[GODISNOWHERE]

Indeed. I turn off all animations they waste time and resources.

Counter-intuitively, and contrary to the label "Adjust [Visual Effects] for best performance", turning off animations on Windows Vista and above will make your system slower because it disables hardware acceleration.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnew...

Re:how pretty

[TheInternetGuy]

Linux itself (the actual kernel) is very stable, maybe even more stable than the base Windows NT kernel. But as a desktop operating system?

Well you just wait and see until 2015, that is going to be the year of the Linux Desktop.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

A-men. And there is less bloat, power usage, API pollution, and POLA crap without the stupid eye candy.

Re:how pretty

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

Most of the Linux desktop evangelists have quietly switched to OSX or sewn their lips shut. There are still a few of them around.

The Steambox is coming out next year though, so that's something.

Also, when everything is working correctly, the Linux desktop is actually a pretty pleasant experience these days, so there's always that.

Re:how pretty

[arth1]

Ah. Mystery meat navigation. Got to love it.
The real killers with Windows 8 and 10, though, are
1: Edge detection. Edge detection only works well on single monitors. It really doesn't work at all if you run a VM in a window.
2: Apps that automatically go full screen, and many of which don't even have a windowed mode. That's a huge productivity killer, and source of errors. It kills drag/drop, but even worse, you can't have source and references visible at the same time, nor copy/paste between multiple windows.
3; No activate without auto-raise. Which now is auto-raise-and-zoom. Why won't you let me type in or paste into a window that isn't on top? It makes no sense. Do people really like to bring an entire IM session to the foreground, and, depending on the program, obscuring everything else, just to type in "ok"?
4: Inconsistent menus and windows, self-organizing depending on use. It's a support nightmare when you can't tell someone how to do something, because the menus and windows are going to be different on each user's machine. You have to shoulder-surf people to support them.
5: Dumbing down DPI support. In W7 and to a smaller extent W8, you can set the DPI correctly and control the physical (as opposed to pixel) size of what you display. in W10, scaling changes on you as you try to work. it doesn't matter if you actually want a 10 dpi font to be, you know, 10 dpi in size. No, what matters now is how to scale a random amount to fit a full-screen window with huge unused borders, and your own settings be damned.

It's like they have looked at Gnome 3 and iPads, and taken all the worst "features", making an unparalleled productivity killer.

Eye candy doesn't make up for that. Sorry.
Aero was at least semi-useful, as you can see other windows through the borders. But W8/W10? It's looks for the sake of looks. And bad looks at that.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

1: Edge detection. Edge detection only works well on single monitors. It really doesn't work at all if you run a VM in a window.

It works fine on multiple monitors as you have that couple of pixels at the top to "catch" the mouse as you move between displays. It also works in VM windows if you do manual mouse capture, obviously it isn't going to work if you do automatic mouse capture.

2: Apps that automatically go full screen, and many of which don't even have a windowed mode. That's a huge productivity killer, and source of errors. It kills drag/drop, but even worse, you can't have source and references visible at the same time, nor copy/paste between multiple windows.

In Windows 10 they can all be run in windowed mode.

3; No activate without auto-raise. Which now is auto-raise-and-zoom. Why won't you let me type in or paste into a window that isn't on top? It makes no sense. Do people really like to bring an entire IM session to the foreground, and, depending on the program, obscuring everything else, just to type in "ok"?

It's there, and it's simple to configure it. Most people don't want that as default behavior.

4: Inconsistent menus and windows, self-organizing depending on use. It's a support nightmare when you can't tell someone how to do something, because the menus and windows are going to be different on each user's machine. You have to shoulder-surf people to support them.

Yes we should eliminate customization so everything is the same on every system because allowing people to customize their system is too confusing for "support" to understand ... heaven forbid they use this thing we've had for years called "remote desktop".

Standard modern geek mentality "if it doesn't work the way i like it out of the box it's crap, i shouldn't have to do scary things like change settings to make it work the way i want, that's too hard".

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

While I can't stand them myself, I've had more visually oriented people (yes, programmers) tell me that they find them very useful to their workflow by strengthening the visual metaphors of the desktop. Just because they don't help you doesn't mean they are worthless.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10 Technical Test (W10TR) runs slowly on my test machine. The test machine runs Windows 8.1, which it shipped with, okay--no a speed demon but not slow. I turned the animation off in order to use W10TR for the things I do with a computer and to have a bearable experience. Hopefully, M$ will clean and optimize the code so that my test machine will run W10TR as well as Windows 8.1. My Test Machine exceeds the minimums that M$ lists for W10TR and was purchased new this year so it's not a slug of a computer.

Linux has always done a decent job on its GUI. It has always worked. It's a relatively easy OS to use these days. After the W10TR is completed, I plan to load Linux on it and test a variety of Linux distributions. Linux and GNU are the way to go for end users.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and how about rendering them properly in the first place?

Re:how pretty

[lawnboy5-O]

"It is difficult to keep a straight face and state that OSX is stable. Xcode crashes all the time, Qt software crashes all the time, visualization software works much better on Linux."

I play with the same tools - and I experience no instability like this on OS X. Xeon and Core Ix series hardware.

Re:how pretty

[rtb61]

Technically, the most accurate description for a usable operating system and interface, is as invisible as possible, whilst allowing the user to, configure the system, search for files and launch applications. In addition rather than pointless prettiness the operating system and graphical user interface should incorporate applications in the base package that the bulk of people use, so office suite (spread sheet, word processor, simple relational database and, vector drawing tool), calendering application, email and, web browser for example.

Re:how pretty

[cyn1c77]

"It is difficult to keep a straight face and state that OSX is stable. Xcode crashes all the time, Qt software crashes all the time, visualization software works much better on Linux."

I play with the same tools - and I experience no instability like this on OS X. Xeon and Core Ix series hardware.

Agreed. Same here.

If you are having serious instability issues, you have something wrong locally with your machine.

Especially if it is crashing with that "classical" software.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

How about dialog boxes that are actually nearby where my mouse cursor (and hence, my eye's focal point) is, instead of just defaulting to the centre of screen. It's particularly an issue on a 30" monitor, where a mouse-cursor journey to the centre of the screen, just to click one button and then go back to whatever corner you were working in, takes valuable seconds. Even more retarded when the dialog just defaults to the primary monitor, when you're working on a secondary one.

Re:how pretty

[jcupitt65]

I'm a working scientist. I have a Mac at home for playing, but work is all Linux. OS X has a very slow filesystem, no working package manager (or rather it has at least four, none of which are much good) and only runs on relatively expensive hardware. Good luck building a compute cluster from imacs. Windows is even worse, of course.

Re:how pretty

[gl4ss]

no.. they were pretty simply to get working 1996.

after that however.. dunno what the fuck went down. even 3dfx cards(voodoo1/2) were easy to get work in linux.

however, I'm just having flashbacks to os/2 warp when they talk about windows animating out of things etc.. those transitions don't matter shit.

Re:how pretty

[guacamole]

I have worked for nearly a decade as a sysadmin in a science environment, and I hardly witnessed people demanding to switch from Linux to OS X. For the most part, MOST science software actually happens to work best under Linux distributions. Your Mathematica example is only one piece of evidence. However, the Linux distributions track much better packages like R, Octave, or Latex, which are bread and butter packages in a lot of scientific fields. While I never used Mathematica, I never had any issues with commercial software packages like Matlab or SAS under Linux.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

1: Edge detection. Edge detection only works well on single monitors. It really doesn't work at all if you run a VM in a window.

It works fine on multiple monitors as you have that couple of pixels at the top to "catch" the mouse as you move between displays. It also works in VM windows if you do manual mouse capture, obviously it isn't going to work if you do automatic mouse capture.

Edge detection is nice, but keyboard shortcuts are even nicer. Win+C brings up the charms, Win+directional keys allows you to pin your windows one side of the screen or the other. Win+R brings up the run window to do your cmd, regedit, dxdiag, etc

Re:how pretty

[gbjbaanb]

I thought they'd turned off all extraneous 'eye candy' to get a slim, lean, 'clean', look that was very efficient... and so I fully expect them to start making some tiles translucent in the next release, and then with shiny graphical highlights too.

Maybe one day they'll make buttons that look like buttons so you know where to click!

Re:how pretty

[arglebargle_xiv]

Is the overall appearance still that of Windows Vista Starter Edition that they moved to in Windows 8? Microsoft are pretty much financing an entire company, Stardock, whose Window Blinds you have to buy if you don't want your desktop to look like some bland flat pastel-shaded 1960s show home.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual operating system crashes - even those that stem from bad kernel-mode drivers - are few and far between these days on any of the modern operating systems

I can crash my 1-year old Windows 7 Pro laptop about 50% of the time just by touching my track pad at the first log-in screen. It's a known and to-remain-unpatched bug in the driver that requires manually shutting off the power and rebooting.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

It's there, and it's simple to configure it [blogspot.com.au]. Most people don't want that as default behavior.

Most Windows users don't want that behavior, mostly because they are unaware of the possibility, also because it requires tweaking the registry, and importantly because tweaking those settings in Windows causes unintended behaviors in various applications / OS utilities, etc.

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows dialogs or ones from an program?
If it's program ones then thats down to the developer to make them come up where they want them to.

Re:how pretty

[perryizgr8]

If Windows 10 is running slow, your setup is *really* old. For particularly large values of old.

Re:how pretty

[fluffynuts]

You obviously haven't visited Penguin land in some time. I suggest you go find a friendly KDE-based distro (like Kubuntu, but there are others) and test your hypothesis again. You may find that you get a better experience at zero cost.

Re:how pretty

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

Yes, the only possible explanation for me having an opinion that differs from you is that I am ignorant.

As a matter of fact, I have extensively used and continue to use Linux. Every time I have tried to setup Linux as a desktop environment, it has been extremely problematic. Kubuntu, for instance, will not even properly initialize the graphics drivers for my laptop, so it is completely unusable. In the past, any desktop installation of Linux I have created suffered from serious driver and stability problems compared to Windows.

As a result, I do most of my Linux work through SSHing into a Linux server from Windows. When that is insufficient, I have a Linux VM that I use. Luckily, the VM drivers are well-supported by Linux (unlike real hardware), but even still, getting KDE working properly under VMWARE took hours of research and tweaking (and it still is not 100% stable compared to running Windows in a VM).

On my laptop, I installed CYGWIN as an alternative. It has support for most of the basic open source packages that I use out of the box and the more esoteric tools are not usually much harder to install under CYGWIN than they are under Linux (and interestingly enough, the KDE development environment was much easier to install under Windows than OS-X).

Even though Linux is ostensibly easier to get open source software set up on than OSX, when I was in school, most of my professors had switched to OSX (even those that held out for a while using separate Windows and Solaris boxes) for their workstations and laptops, because the overall ease of use of OS-X compared to Linux is worth the pain it takes to get open-source packages set-up properly, plus it can run a large percentage of the most popular commercial scientific and business applications that Windows can.

I'm not an OS-X fan, but I completely understand why it beats Linux so handedly these days as an end-user technical computing environment for academic research (obviously, other than some Windows servers to handle email and whatnot and a handful of institutions that have switched to Windows high performance computing clusters, Linux is gaining grounds as environments for distributed computing or centralized servers).

Re:how pretty

[fluffynuts]

I never said, nor even suggested that you were ignorant. Your opinion just seemed to be based on outdated experiences. So some feedback, for what it's worth:

1) I have Kubuntu running reliably on 3 very different setups. If win8 is working well for you on your setup and Kubuntu isn't, then it's time to start blaming the hardware manufacturer for not giving a flying fsck about the users and only putting effort into windows drivers. You do remember, after all, that linux drivers are (mostly) done by unpaid people who do so just because they can and care to? Not to say that I don't care about your plight -- PLEASE do email your hardware manufacturers and implore them to solve the situation. It's them that are depriving you of the freedom to use your device as you see fit. In that vein though, I've learned (the hard way) not to buy hardware which isn't mainstream and already well-supported by the FOSS community simply because I don't want to be in that situation. Not to say that I get it right all the time :/
2) I've installed Kubuntu (and other debian derivatives) with zero issue under VirtualBox. Multiple times. Again, if your virtual machine provider doesn't provide for an environment as supported by the FOSS community, please DO complain loudly to them. You'll be doing everyone a favour. Still, you need to know that VM+*buntu == win, so if that's not your experience, swap out your VM.
3) Every experience I've had under OSX has been one of frustration. To the point that, in addition to my existing base rage against the cost of crapple products for what you get, hardware-wise, I'll go so far as to do whatever I can to discourage someone from getting a Mac simply because the user experience that I've had has been one of terrible frustration. "Close" window titlebar buttons which don't actually close the application. "Maximise" buttons which make the window arbitrarily bigger, but not to the size of the screen. A "POSIX" system which has the terminal buried under layers of tricky-to-traverse menus (layered menus are one of the greatest UX failures ever, imo), and a system which has the intelligence to use the 'file' function to figure out that a .xlsx file is a zipped collection of XML and dump that out to the desktop when a user without MSO double-clicks it, but which provides no feedback about that eventuality. This is UI failure. When the ideal target audience for a Mac (inexperienced user, given laptop for birthday, not a power-user on any platform whatsoever) can't figure out why her mail attachment "won't open" (when it's silenty unzipping to the desktop with every double-click), it's time to give the whole deal another thought. Windows could have done better. A decent Linux distro could have done better, though I'm sure a shitty one wouldn't have.

I really try to be objective and I'm a big proponent of "a tool for a task". But, at no point in the time that I've used OSX, have I ever thought "I could carry on using this", or "Other vendors could learn from this". Multiple times, the phrase "HULK SMASH" has been predominant. YMMV, of course, but the Linux desktop is way less frustrating and way more stable and responsive, as my pre-schooler would attest to -- if he even cared. And he doesn't. And that's the point. It gets out of the way so he can do the stuff he wants to.

Re:how pretty

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

Ignorance means "lack of knowledge". If you are claiming that my views are based on lack of knowledge about recent builds of Linux desktop, then you are claiming that I am ignorant and that my opinion is based upon ignorance.

Everyone has different sets of knowledge and experience. Rather than actually trying to learn about mine (such as asking, "what experience do you base you opinions upon") you summarily concluded that my opinion must be based upon my ignorance. It is profound superciliousness to believe that the only possible explanation for someone having a different opinion than you is their ignorance, especially when you have not even bothered to explore the basis of their opinion.

As for VMWARE, I think they are one of the few companies that produce VM software which fully supports 3D acceleration. The primary problem I had was related to newer builds of KDE working correctly with VMware's Open-GL drivers (for things such as desktop effects). It also seems to have some trouble in other Linux applications which use 3D acceleration. I don't really think the problem is on the driver end, since VMware provides the proper drivers. The problem is on the open-source community doing quality-assurance testing to ensure the drivers work properly, which is somewhat understandable, because it is not like Microsoft, which has the money to do proper quality-assurance for VMware's drivers and only has a handful of Windows configurations to support. Other visualization environments such as Virtual Box and Microsoft's Hypervisor have limited or only experimental support for full 3D acceleration, so I don't think it would be such an issue since Linux simply won't use 3D acceleration if it is not available in the virtualized environment.

I tend to agree with you about OS-X, but it is widely used in certain fields of science and most of them seem to like it just fine, so even though I prefer a combination of Windows and Linux, I also know that I am in the minority and I understand why most users prefer OS-X, even though there is a steep curve to actually get it set up properly for technical and scientific computing, but once you get it set up, you have a single environment that can run not only open source, but a big chunk of the most popular commercial software (Word, Excel, Outlook, Onenote, Mathematica, Matlab, IDL, Photoshop, and quite a few other major commercial programs).

Re:how pretty

[exomondo]

Certainly sounds like a bad trackpad driver otherwise it would be happening to everybody, which it isn't.

Re:how pretty

[Hognoxious]

It works fine on multiple monitors as you have that couple of pixels at the top to "catch" the mouse as you move between displays.

Fine - if you know that they're there.

Perhaps I should patent "having a couple of pixels that perform some action, and are visually distinguishable from other pixels that perform other actions, or no action."

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

Media requires epicly awsome hardware. Media like movies, games, entertainment. Hubble and what not. Game development is happening in Unity Dot net. Native Client and Koffe IDE all of wich call for sound video and what not.
Michel Bay movies take hardcore aysnrinous real time clouds that do not crash and are backed up real time such that if there's a problem not even a milisecond of time is lost. No what a admin wants is for a OS to not be such a cluster fuck to use in the first place second choice is a quick acess to fixing things that commonly go wrong and if they have chant to the moon or pray to the old gods then yes a CLI as a emergency is great but not as first choice for finding common issues

Re:how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

MacOS and WIndows say hi for inconstinant and or just shit hardware support. I have a fancy buckling spring keyboard. The super expensive 25 dollar ones you can get from Amazon that way about 40tons and double as a shield and or blunt weapon as needed. It's so fancy it comes with a USB cable and sounds something like a cross between rice-rocket car and a jack hammer.
Sooo why is it then when it in Winderz tells me it can't find a driver for it?
I submit that if a OS can crash and burn due to garden variety share ware that's not exactly an improvement over Linux.

Fucking hell

[Anonymous Coward]

That video posted of "Compiz Crazy!" is seriously fucking ugly. Five seconds of that and I'd be tempted to put my boot through the monitor.

Re:Fucking hell

[DocHoncho]

The worst part is the animation duration, how in the hell can you use a system where it takes nearly two seconds for each menu to appear? It's completely insane!

Re:Fucking hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Very good point. Five seconds of that and the first animation wouldn't even have finished (although my boot would already be embedded in the monitor).

Re:Fucking hell

[stoborrobots]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkN-gEUnICI

Re:Fucking hell

[Luckyo]

I think the default animation time in windows 7 menus is 200ms. Or at least that's what ClassicShell claims it to be in advanced mode that lets you adjust the timing.

If they actually push animation time as far as you suggest, I think that would just become another reason why people will stick to 7. OS needs to be functional first and foremost. That's why 8 failed, vastly impaired desktop desktop functionality. Too pronounced/delayed animations would likely fall in the same category.

Re:Fucking hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my. That is a glorious clusterfuck of unusability.

Re:Fucking hell

[Anonymous Coward]

That is horrible. Not just the animations themselves, but how choppy they look.

Re:Fucking hell

[kaladorn]

The highlight of the top bar that caused the windows to expand to fill the screen was actually nausea inducing.

FFS people.....

Eye candy might help some of you a bit, it'll hurt some of us others a bit.

Simple utility and well thought out design for usability makes a quite usable UI. Windows 2000 had a workable UI. So did XP if you put it in classic mode. So does 7. 8+... assssssssss.....

Xubuntu I quite like. Ubuntu before Unity isn't bad. I've seen Zorin lately and it looks okay.

A decent operator can learn a consistent UI in a bit of time and work around its ideosyncratic behaviours to accomplish a lot.

The main offense in UI/desktop design is inconsistency and too much contextual stuff that can choose to hide key things when IT thinks you don't want to do them. Inconsistency ruins any amount of training.

I find Apple's UI unintuitive. I can navigate Droids and Crackberries fine, but iPhones give me pain. I can navigate Slackware, RH, RHEL, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, and likely even BSD or Yggdrasil (that goes back!) no problem. Even NonStop UNIX or Sun UNIX. But OS X.... makes my teeth gnash. Windows 8 Metro a bit too (others I could manage fine).

I can't quite put my finger on it, but every assumption I make in those problematic environments that would be the logic of all the other named systems in one way or another, doesn't seem to work as expected.

I do appreciate that the people who find OS X and iPhones straightforward may struggle with Droids and other OSes for the reciprocal reason.

Generally, if I have to fight the UI or Desktop to get things done, it isn't doing its job.

Re:Fucking hell

[KozmoStevnNaut]

The animation is choppy because the screen recording is running at 10-15fps (my estimation), which is perfectly fine for showing off a piece of software, but not very good for showing fluid animations.

Re:Fucking hell

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why 8 failed, vastly impaired desktop desktop functionality.

How so? I had no problem adapting to Windows 8. Unlike most people, I used to painstakingly customize my start menu to the extreme by deleting all unneeded shortcuts, creating custom folders, and rearranging everything. The Start Screen does away with that hassle and I never want to go back to the Start Menu. Plus, idiots who kept a smorgasbord of program shortcuts on the desktop should feel right at home.

Re:Fucking hell

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not "perfectly fine". It looks like absolute shit. I'm also not buying your excuse, because WHY would someone limit a recording to 10-15fps? I can record a completely fluid 60+fps @ 1080p in a complex 3D video game, so don't try to tell me it's not possible to record just a desktop at a higher framerate.

No, the answer is because the desktop actually was that choppy.

Re:Fucking hell

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Look at how the mouse moves. Have you every seen any desktop environment where the mouse update rate is that shitty? No, you haven't.

A lot of desktop recording applications run at 10-15fps to save space and/or bandwidth, and because it's plenty to adequately show off the user interfaces of most graphical applications. I've been using WebEx and other screen recording solutions (including FRAPS) for over a decade. don't try to school me on this.

I want

[Anonymous Coward]

wobbly windows. Where ARE my wobbly windows??

Re:I want

[wiredlogic]

Don't forget the flames.

Re:I want

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh yeah. I like my windows wobbly and my decorations flamin' !

Re:I want

[Tteddo]

KDE has that. Also the rotating cube.

Re:I want

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a few drinks away.

BowWowWow!

[Anonymous Coward]

I want candy!

Will Microsoft ever learn?

[whizbang77045]

I wonder when Microsoft will learn that a lot of us would rather use our CPU and GPU cycles for something other than eye candy? While computers can be used for fun purposes, we shouldn't all be left with the feel that what we have is little more than a technotoy.

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[Dracos]

They won't learn, because while most people think MS is a software company, they are actually a marketing company.

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[StripedCow]

I know this is Slashdot, but you must be talking about Google here.

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck, I'm so confused! I thought I was the product, not the customer. But if the product is Windows, and I'm buying it, then that makes it the product and so I'm the customer? But when I download Debian I pay $0, so that makes me the product, not the customer?

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder when Microsoft will learn that a lot of us would rather use our CPU and GPU cycles for something other than eye candy?

Agreed! If we wanted to see something "pretty" and slow down our computer ridiculously, we would load IE and visit all the porn sites we could find.

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[Dutch Gun]

My computer has had CPU and GPU cycles to burn for the past decade, and while my machines are typically reasonably powered, they're not exactly considered monsters either. For all the complaints I hear about wasting cycles, I have yet to see OS-level effects or window animations seriously slow down my computer in any measurable way, even on specialized workstations I optimize for performance, like my digital audio workstation.

Animation actually has a real purpose in terms of UI design. For instance, an animation between a window in it's normal state and the minimized state is not just aesthetically pleasing, but helps the user to mentally connect those windowed positions, making it less likely for people to be momentarily confused about where their window disappeared to. Moreover, people generally like eye candy, and they like to be able to customize their system. It simply serves to make people more comfortable with the OS environment, but I'd argue that's actually important of any tech product intended for the masses as well.

Adding animations or some virtual gloss doesn't devalue an operating system and turn it into a tech toy, nor does making a product boring and dull enhance it's functionality in any way.

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[JDG1980]

I wonder when Microsoft will learn that a lot of us would rather use our CPU and GPU cycles for something other than eye candy? While computers can be used for fun purposes, we shouldn't all be left with the feel that what we have is little more than a technotoy.

Windows has always offered the option to turn off animations. (System Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Performance gives a bunch of checkboxes for this on both Win7 and Win10.) Flip it around: why shouldn't those of us with good mid-range or high-end desktops be able to use a small portion of our CPU and GPU power to make things look nicer? Why should we be hamstrung to what the crappiest tablet with a half-dead battery can handle?

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[Jake Dodgie]

This, This, this, I liked Aero, I had a PC that could run it, I like buttons that look like buttons that click whan you push em and have a bit o shiney hi-light.
I like translucent effects and stuff showing through.
Who really likes flat blah square windows with little indication as th who has focus and whats on top.

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the receipt.

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[fizzer06]

I do. Especially the terminal window.

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder when Microsoft will learn that a lot of us would rather use our CPU and GPU cycles for something other than eye candy? While computers can be used for fun purposes, we shouldn't all be left with the feel that what we have is little more than a technotoy.

Desktop effects do not take much CPU and GPU power.

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry -but I think all that "flatness" is as ugly as hell!

Aero is much more comfortable and easy for the eye that all that flat stuff.
I can only agee with Jake Dodgie. I want buttons to look like buttons, so you don't make any mistake.
Really - I think that flat interfaced has lowered functionality, just for the sake of "being different than previous Windows"
Come on.. Today's computers are more than powerfull enough to take that little extra power that Aero need, without the end user notice anything.
They should have made it optional, just like in Windows 7. Why the hell push an ugly interface without giving an choice to change that in something acceptable? They really must hate to give consumers an choice - I see no other way to explain this...

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[kaladorn]

Or perhaps the excess packaging....

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[kaladorn]

Hmmm.

I'd say I prefer my windows to just *be gone* when I minimize them. I know they end up in the system tray. I don't need an animation to tell me that my UI/Desktop Manager is doing its job.

You can provide status information visually WITHOUT animation.

Just to say: Some years back, I had a boss who, using a dual monitor station for software development, frequently hit the Windows 2000 Window Limit (64 I think).

I currently have 22 windows open. Of them, about 8 are tabbed browser windows so you can figure I likely have about 60-80 tabs open concurrently. My editors and PDF viewers also run multiple documents concurrently. I'm not even on heavy workload right now or there would likely be another 10-15 windows open. I sometimes do notice slowdowns but I suspect I may be pushing the available memory from time to time, but animations may also play a role.

In the background or actively running on my machine, I have 2 Tomcat instances, and HFS instance, iTunes, SQL Server instance, a My SQL Instance, Apache Instance, Netbeans, Eclipse, KeePass 2, Adobe Chrome, IE, SVN client and server, Steam, Calibre, and the list goes on. There are likely a number of background servers I'm actually forgetting.

I begrudge my cycles to animations I don't need and that actually I find visually distracting and which don't aide me in figuring things out but I find distract me and confuse the issue.

Not everyone just has a handful of apps open. Not everyone benefits from animations. A lot of $ are used getting them to work and making them pretty when that money could be spent on truly functional software features.

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the animations in OSX because I never use it and they help me understand what the hell is going on.

I dislike the animations in Windows 7 because I am familiar with it and I do not need the visual cue that what I minimized went to the taskbar.

With windows 10 I might leave animations on for a month or so, but as soon as I am comfortable I will disable them. I like a snappy interface and the animations just slow me down.

On a side note... I just upgraded to Android KitKat and am starting to get annoyed by the inability to turn off the animations. At least it doesn't do that stupid bounce effect when you scroll to the the end of a list. Maybe I just suck and can't find them.

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I have some of the animations in KDE 4 enabled, stuff like opening/closing windows, minimizing/maximizing, switching desktops and the like. I also have them set to "fast" rather than "normal". The animation is still clearly visible, but it's quick enough that they don't get in the way. Nothing at all like that horrible Crazy Compiz video linked in the summary.

Animations are perfectly OK, as long as they don't get in the way of actually using the system.

Re: Will Microsoft ever learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Steam open along side all that other stuff?

Re: Will Microsoft ever learn?

[kaladorn]

Because occasionally I forget to stop it after I play a game at the end of the day. My work laptop happens to also be my current steam platform since my gaming box is now out of support (XP). (By work, I mean 'the laptop I do useful work on' vs. 'the laptop provided by work').

Re:Will Microsoft ever learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

The animations dont slow you down. Not unless you're trying to minimize windows one after the other with less than 200 milliseconds between each action.
The minimize animation on windows 7 is too fast to prevent you to doing anything else,

in other words, you are full of shit.

form over function?

[dAzED1]

Given the type of IT consulting I do, I have to stay comfortable with Windows - I've been trying out Win10 on my fairly new high-end gaming laptop, installed on a SDD, and have been amazed at how often a seemingly menial task can lag - or even hang up the entire UI. For instance, I started up IE a bit ago - while using a blank default/home page - and it froze up the entire desktop for a few seconds (even briefly sputtering the audio of a movie I had playing in another window). Seems to me like they have more to work on than animations - maybe they should focus on usability for a bit first.

Re:form over function?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only viable solution here is to switch all your clients to OpenLDAP and Samba4 implementations so you run Linux.

Re:form over function?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, this is a Technical Preview, and I wouldn't be surprised if these are "checked" debug builds, which are always going to be slower than a highly optimized build.

Captcha: OVERFLOW

Re:form over function?

[Anonymous Coward]

That, or quit assuming that what is effectively a pre-alpha release is at all indicative of problems present in the final software. You know, like someone who works in "IT consulting", although given his post I strongly suspect that this "IT consulting" involves charging old ladies a fortune for telling them how to connect a laptop to their wifi network.

Re:form over function?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean not holding Microsoft to ridiculous, unpractical standards compared to other platforms just so we can shame them? Hell no.

Re:form over function?

[musikit]

i call that the mythical mutex. the os acts like it is waiting for a mutex to unlock (very low cpu and disk access but doing nothing) i noticed it in osx and it seems to slowly be disappearing from osx but not from xcode yet. however microsoft seems to have stolen or licensed this patent from apple and is now putting it in all windows versions everywhere they can. god save the queen

Re:form over function?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, almost like it is a technical preview. Maybe...you should find another line of work.

Re:form over function?

[ljw1004]

Seems to me like they have more to work on than animations - maybe they should focus on usability for a bit first.

You think they should focus first on the things where the desired user experience is well understood, so leaving the unknowns and exploratory experiments to be done much closer to ship time?

Re:form over function?

[ILongForDarkness]

Not saying there isn't work to do but I think betas/previews are debug builds with a lot of optimizations turned off. There is a minimum bar on all features I think before people start saying you don't look cool/add features etc. It is a constant battle as a developer pushing for a balance between new shinny and performance/maintenance.

Re:form over function?

[Anonymous Coward]

For instance, I started up IE a bit ago - while using a blank default/home page - and it froze up the entire desktop for a few seconds (even briefly sputtering the audio of a movie I had playing in another window).

The problem with this was using IE.

Re:form over function?

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently run win10 on a rather dated i3 with an ssd and enough ram. Most of it actually flies for me.
However i do agree with the new version of IE, it is unstable. It crashes and lags every day (sometimes multiple times a day).

For something that is not even beta I think it runs rather well. For me the most unpolished thing is the flickering screen while booting (could be a driver thing, have not spend time on it).

Ridiculous

[Luthair]

The OSX animations are awful, people have been using windowing systems for decades and completely grok what happened to the window. At most you need to a tiny fraction of a second to avoid the user overlooking the change. Please do not waste precious seconds or cause people motion sickness for your whizbang effects.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, 'grok' has been around since 1961. Where the fuck have you been? It's over half a century old. Additionally, it's pretty damn standard amongst folks with half a brain.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slashdot: "news for nerds". By definition grok is standard usage for slashdot readers. If you don't grok that, you shouldn't be reading slashdot.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you ought to give up your account, since it's such a newfangled word. I mean, it only acquired its current meaning in 1966.

Application to any male is recorded by 1966, U.S., originally in Black English.

Hey, it's barely a word:

In the 1960s, dude evolved to mean any male person, a meaning that slipped into mainstream American slang in the 1970s.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

More like standard usage for bitter twats who think User Friendly is the best comic ever.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Waaaaah waaaaah! Somebody call the waaaambulance! AC got all butthurt!

Re:Ridiculous

[spire3661]

Dictionaries are a compendium of words that are commonly used. It is a reactionary publication, it doesnt set the tone or even codify language. Its really not an authority on anything other than saying 'hey this word gets used in this context a lot by real-world people.' Your perception of a dictionary is backwards. Grok is cromulent.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another troll. Some selected quotations by this Dude:

many liberals are rabid supporters of the gay community. I tolerate their existence in society but I do not support specific rights for gays

Honestly, you should be taken out back and beaten if you actually use plastic to pay for small purchases prick.

Oh, wait, you want to try to make your gaming/facekbooking/drawing computer sound tough and industrial? Is that like how slashdotter like to call their tech jobs their "trade"? Sorry but the software industry is not a "trade". We are not blue collar but rather white collar and we do not earn a "wage" but rather a salary.

You are so eloquent. Where did you go to school? Get back to us with a larger vocabulary. Then and only then will your opinion be worth hearing.

You atheists are funny. You don't believe in god but then you blame god when people get sick as a consequence of bad behaviour.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus... don't say that too loudly or 2003 may overhear and want it's meme back.

Re:Ridiculous

[ILongForDarkness]

That is my biggest complaint about windows phone: take a desktop animation then make it take 4X longer that is windows phone. Otherwise it is pretty nice though (if only they could convince more people to develop for it). I fully agree with you these days if someone is staring at a screen and clicks something they know what they expect to happen 90% of the time so you might as well just give it to them as quickly as possible.

Perhaps make the UI adaptive: have the wiz bang animations and after an hour ask the user: "hey do you like these or do you want us to just open the damn app already?"

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using computers since the mid-lates 1980s and writing code pretty much since day one. I actually like the OS X animations, they might be just a little too slow for my taste but IMO visual cues in the UI are a good thing.

I mean, full-on compiz-style flaming windows that wobble and leave ripples across your desktop every time anything happens is way over the top but the idea that for example window minimization should just result in the windows disappearing just sounds like something a cranky luddite dreaming of the golden days of FVWM would say.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, troll. In my 37 years traveling between 6 different countries with 4 of them using English as a primary language and conversing with a multitude of people young and old, I've never heard the word "grok" used by anyone in any context. It is a VERY obscure word and not a very good one at that. Probably a favorite of "Grammar Assholes". People who purposely use obscure words in an attempt to feel superior to others.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I refuse to "taste" anything on Slashdot, hell 99% of things on the net at all, in fact!

Icon zooms to window, window zooms to icon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay olwm!

The flat thing needs to go away

[ErichTheRed]

I know, I know, Apple did it so it must be cool right? I really want the ability for people to change themes as they see fit come back. If you are on a low spec phone, tablet or PC, or just don't like effects, you should be able to turn them off. But if you want more effects, you should have the option. You could easily turn off the Aero Glass effect in Windows 7 and either stay with the less-transparent Windows 7 GUI or even go all the way back to Windows Classic. Why can't we have that option again?

Re:The flat thing needs to go away

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, I know, Apple did it so it must be cool right?

Actually Apple was the last one to this "flat look" game with it's new fischer price look after seeing Google and Microsoft go that way with their user interfaces.

If you are on a low spec phone, tablet or PC, or just don't like effects, you should be able to turn them off.

You can.

Why can't we have that option again?

We do, you can customize them individually through the visual effects in the performance pane or use the "Turn off all unnecessary animations" from the Accessibility part of the Control Panel.

Re:The flat thing needs to go away

[Anonymous Coward]

This would add more work for Microsoft. Microsoft has been struggling with ever increasing monitor resolutions, i.e. the HighDPI issues that todays display cause. They have designed the Modern UI to be mostly resolution independent, whereas their own software sometimes broke with the "make text larger" solutions they had employed since XP.

There new UI for the desktop is designed to scale better, but they would need to redo all the assets and possibly reprogram the old code that makes up those old UI choices, which would almost certainly cause compatibility issues with older software.

Now, I give Microsoft some credit for being able to run software written for Windows 98, but seriously, sometimes they need to let go. One of the major sources of program bloat in Windows is from its compatibility layers. We went from an OS that could be striped down to a 500MB install with Windows XP to the very next version needing 15GB with Vista. And it hasn't gone down since, even when they put Windows 8 on a 32GB SSD in the SurfaceRT.

This is what I say needs to be fixed. Have a compatibility layer that is optional for users to install, but don't put it in by default. They already have an equivalent with .Net. Windows 8 comes with .Net 4, but the user can install a compatibility layer for .net3.5 for older software. It is even downloaded from the Windows Update service, so it takes up little space unless needed.

OS X had Classic and Rosetta that did similar things, allowing running OS 9 and earlier code or PPC code respectively. After the first few versions, both had to be installed explicitly by the user, thus was not taking up space or holding back newer OS features and newer Programs. Both were discontinued after a few generations of hardware that decreased the burden on Apple to produce better OS/Programs without as much concern for backwards compatibility.

And no, I don't care that you want to run your Windows 95 games in Windows 2020, Windows has the advantage of being one of the two most widely virtulizable OSes in production, so download Virtualbox and have fun.

Re:The flat thing needs to go away

[Blaskowicz]

More than the looks (though flexibility in the looks would be welcome) I would like options to make the file manager not suck : optional left pane, favorites menu, no wasted space (show more damn files and folders per area), customizable toolbar.
Loss of the style of file manager I used in Windows 98 and XP was one reason that led me to flee to linux. What a pain in the ass.

Re:The flat thing needs to go away

[Blaskowicz]

Is that me or the "smiling icon" can be seen as two homosexual people smiling and kissing together?

(I like it better than the blue folder with compas shaped symbol, that makes me think of the freemasons or a symbol of East Germany)

Re:The flat thing needs to go away

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has been struggling with ever increasing monitor resolutions, i.e. the HighDPI issues that todays display cause.

I worked at Microsoft from 1998 to 2008. One day around 2002, on my way to lunch, I noticed a three foot high wall of these marble cubes they give employees when they are awarded a patent. This guy had maybe 100 of them. Employees there sometimes proudly display their 2-3 cubes, and most have none, so I was curious. I stopped by his office to talk to him for a second and ask what he was working on. He was working on various problems with high resolution displays. He showed me his $25,000 graphics setup from IBM usually used for things like radiology. I think it was 16x 1024x768 so 4096x3072, which was monsterous at the time.

My point is just that they obviously saw this problem coming a long time ago, and put some really smart people on it. So I'm a little dumbfounded that now that the resolutions are becoming common, they appear to be struggling with it.

Re:The flat thing needs to go away

[perryizgr8]

I actually don't understand what the problem is. Windows looks fine to me from 1200x800 all the way to 2K. What is the problem exactly? Chrome can show more tabs, you can have crisper wallpapers and everything is so nice!

"9860 class of releases"

[Anonymous Coward]

All builds starting with 986x must be identical to each other because they're now being used for a classification of releases! Clearly this means 9870 must add more features!

Because build numbers mean something!

MUST... HAVE... MORE BUILD NUMBERS!

Re:"9860 class of releases"

[mkiwi]

Hey, at least they're not decrementing.

I can imagine, "Ok guys, we've released version 1 and there are still a whole lot of bugs. Marketing says negative numbers and zero can't be used, even though zero appears commonly on beverages. So, instead using negative numbers outright, we're moving to vectors like Intel did."

Re:"9860 class of releases"

[mkiwi]

Ok, for the overly pedantic among you, i3, i5, and i7 are technically complex numbers, but you can map them to a vector or matrix.

Re:"9860 class of releases"

[Anonymous Coward]

They are decrementing by MAX_INT+1. It just wraps around.

Re:"9860 class of releases"

[Anonymous Coward]

...but it sounds much cooler than "the next release will have a higher build number."

Making up technical sounding labels for meaningless strings or numbers may also impress non-techies.

make it stop!

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it stop!!!

Is this a joke?

[bazmail]

All the issues that stood out like a sore thumb in Windows 10 and the headline feature of the latest release is window animations?

Meet the new MS same as the old MS.

Re:Is this a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure there are a lot of work being done on the kernel side as well, but they can use a 250 page long bugfix list sell it.

Clippy!

[linear a]

Gimme my Clippy!

Re:Clippy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Say NO to Clippy! :)

Re:Clippy!

[BenSchuarmer]

not just Clippy, break dancing Clippy!!!

Re:Clippy!

[Joe_Dragon]

It seems like you want me to come back click hear to vote for me

again more sauce and no meat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I went through all that with Compiz on Linux. I now prefer quick to fancy. How about they work on some security to stop all the bots out there from witless Windows users?

I'm fairly certain you have that option.

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

Even if you don't, you should be able to download it and install it as a theme. Windows is pretty customizable. The desktop effects are under advanced computer properties and the theme is under personalization. You can also turn Aero glass off in the power management menu.

Re:I'm fairly certain you have that option.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is customizable if you use third party software to modify the UI. If you want to change the appearance of Windows 7 from the default Aero or Basic theme (at least beyond color/transparency) you need to run third party apps and modify the registry, and doing so can cause some major instability. You can't just change the theme to whatever you want it to be, as far as I know not even on Windows 8. "Themes" are just a pack of wallpaper and window color, and the "effects" are just basic drop shadows and animations that you can't modify.

There's a reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

and it's called perceived value.

Re:There's a reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that the likes of Mathematica and Maple are "perceived value"?

Re:There's a reason...

[chihowa]

If you're visualizing large or dynamic datasets, a hardware accelerated animation adds all sorts of value. Not everyone can produce meaningful conclusions from screenfuls of cascading text.

Re:There's a reason...

[sootman]

> Not everyone can produce meaningful conclusions
> from screenfuls of cascading text.

Blonde, brunette, readhead...

Checkbox to disable

[Anonymous Coward]

long as there is a check box to disable all this, i could care less what animations they add.

Now That They've Finally Fixed All the Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad to see that they have finally fixed all the security, usability and stability problems with the Windows OS so that they can focus on much-needed eye-candy.

Aero?

[SeaFox]

Can we have our transparency back?

Re:Aero?

[Tablizer]

Dude, it's harder to hide your porn that way

Re:Aero?

[Anonymous Coward]

A thousand times YES!!!!!!!
That flat interface is ugly as hell..
To be honest - that one of the main reasons I going to keep Windows 7 as long as possible..
You may call me stupid, but I have to stare at that interface for hours, and that ugly flatness hurt my eyes.
I hate it with an passion!!!

Re:Aero?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not stupid. I feel exactly the same way. This flatness craze has lead to a kind of dullness in UI design. Some might argue that it results in less "distraction" because the UI elements are simpler-looking, but it's not as if I'm sitting back in my chair and marveling at a nicely shaded progress bar rather than doing work.

If you're gonna be spending a lot of time with a computer, the UI's design will end up affecting your mood. If it's inviting, you'll be positive (or at least not as negative as you could be). If it's drab looking, it'll hardly make your day any easier. Researchers have known for years how color and design affects human mood, and yet designers seem to have forgotten this recently.

Re:Aero?

[jez9999]

I don't so much mind the flatness as the drive toward black-and-white UI icons. That is a UX "innovation" that needs to die, now. Even today when I fire up an old copy of Visual Studio 2010 I think the interface is so much nicer and richer than the minimalist BS of today.

Re:Aero?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that. The new version sucks major league ass.

Re:Aero?

[Anonymous Coward]

The icons in my currently-open copy of Visual Studio 2012 are gray, with color portions to let me know if I'm looking at a C# (green), VB (blue, but should be red for "warning, this is shit"), or whatever. Next to that, there's a color icon for the TFS status of each item. Blue for checked-in items, red for checked-out items, and yellow for newly-added items.

Even the toolbar icons have color where it draws attention to something other than the basic outline of an icon that has been around since 1984. (There really isn't a sane explanation for why we still have a floppy disk icon for the save feature now that the floppy hasn't been used for serious data storage for well over a decade.)

Re:Aero?

[perryizgr8]

Black and white or grey UI is usually Google's apps. Windows is nicely colored, on the desktop as well as on the phone. They are the one who started the flat craze though.

Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great to see features from X11 Enlightenment are finally being picked up by other systems....15-20 years later.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great to see features from X11 Enlightenment are finally being picked up by other systems....15-20 years later.

Amen, brother.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit, GEM was doing this stuff in 1984.

WONDERFUL

[Anonymous Coward]

Even more stupid guff to disable outright.

Who the FUCK wants that stupid crap? Literally nobody wants it except morons that like wasting time.
People want menus to come out instantly, it isn't jarring to anyone except people in their 90s.
People want things instantly, not have to wait for some stupid crap to finish animating.

Stop this crap.

And stop shiny monitors as well. Literally the worst thing to happen to screens.
Fuck you computing industry, give us what we want.
God, I seriously hope gaming does move over to Linux, I'll ditch this shit OS in a heartbeat.

What the hell is beatific? That is a word? Who the hell came up with that? God damn, I hate English.

Re:WONDERFUL

[jones_supa]

And stop shiny monitors as well. Literally the worst thing to happen to screens.

The low-frequency 200Hz backlight is the worst thing that has happened to screens. The glossy finish is a nice runner-up though.

The whole summary to tell us this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Thanks for letting us know after almost 15 years someone at Microsoft figured the fucking minimize animation was all totally fucking wrong.

Nothing new here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again, MS copying Apple but hey, everyone copies each other, its just a matter of getting caught ;)

Long File Paths ?

[Anonymous Coward]

So no file paths longer than 256 characters, but animations I will turn off ?

Good work, concentrate on what you're good at.

Re: Long File Paths ?

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point, allowing file paths longer than 260 characters will break most Win32 software in existence.

For those of us who've been around ...

[CaptainDork]

... we know damn well that Windows is an Apple knockoff.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

My workplace is very Windows-heavy. A few people have macs, but the vast majority of the ~200 employees work with Windows machines on MS software. We're still running Windows 7, but all machines were recently upgraded to the Office2013 suite. I have a few issues with the suite, as well as its integration in the OS. The TL;DR is that the Office2013 suite actively hurts productivity and introduces visual effects that make your machine seem slow and irresponsive. This is the same in the OS. For example, try switching any window between two screens using the Winkey+Shift+Arrow shortcut with animations turned on, and then do it with animations turned off. Which systems configuration feels like it works better?
 
The option for disabling the half-second delay between you click the minimize button and the window actually gets minimized is called "remove unnecessary animations." If they are unnecessary then why are they enabled by default? What the bloody fuck are they supposed to achieve? Make your machine feel slow and irresponsive? Why is there a maddening cursor delay in Excel and Word? Why is my typing cursor lagging behind the letters I have typed? Why do I need Excel to animate the movement of the highlighted cell, which happens even if I type the cell reference?
 
And don't even get me started on layouts drained of all iconography and color that make it impossible to tell the difference between objects I can interact with and ones I can't...

Re:Why?

[perryizgr8]

Dude your office seriously needs new hardware if the cursor in Word lags behind your typing. Although I agree that all Office apps have an irritating startup time that was not there earlier.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The workstations are not the problem, and the cursor lag is specific to the Office suite and is eliminated by turning off animations.
 
It feels like lag, but it is created by the application animating the cursor movement, not by the hardware's inability to keep up.
 
And the best way I've found to speed up application starting times is to upgrade your HDDs to SSDs.

Still more work to be done

[JDG1980]

This is a good start (assuming you can turn these animations off if you don't like them). Hopefully they'll bring back Aero Glass-style transparency soon.

There are also a lot more substantive flaws that need to be addressed. The Start menu (which is Win10's big selling point!) doesn't currently do DPI scaling properly. It's disappointing enough to see this flaw with third-party software, but for a core part of the OS, it's inexcusable. And there is still no way to remove the obtrusive Search and Task View icons from the taskbar. (Both of these issues have hundreds of votes on Feedback; hopefully they will be addressed.)

There are also a bunch of smaller annoyances – unlike in Win7, I can't get the useless "Homegroup" option to disappear from the left panel of File Explorer, even if I leave all homegroups completely. They also shove OneDrive down your throat. And if I rename "This PC" back to "My Computer", it displays under my preferred name in most places, but not in the tile half of the Start menu – it appears fine in the left-hand list portion, but the tile always says "This PC" no matter what it has been renamed to.

There are some encouraging signs, but this is definitely an alpha-class release in my experience. Glad I installed it in a VM.

Re:Still more work to be done

[Hamsterdan]

"And there is still no way to remove the obtrusive Search and Task View icons from the taskbar"

That one bugs me too, especially when activatng the taskbar on multiple monitors. I wouldn't mind if they were only on the main monitor, but thay are on all of them (back to display fusion I guess)

Re:Still more work to be done

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the integrated Feedback button to report those.

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Still no transparency. No purchase from this guy until they either change the awful flat color UI or put back transparency.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah - these animations take CPU cycles also, so why not give Aero back?
I really hate that boring flatness...

My experience with Compiz under Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I recall playing with that a while ago. It was fine; the animations worked correctly, it was cool, and there was no delay that I was aware of (on a system with an Nvidia card and the Nvidia driver.) However, after a while I disabled Compiz, went back to a desktop without such effects, and I have never tried again. Why? Because I got fed up with them. Yes, they are cool and pretty. But once the novelty is gone, they just become in-your-face kind of things. Good for fun and show, a nuisance for work.

What's a "comprehensive feel"?

[Streetlight]

Does it feel me or do I feel it comprehensively? And how many CPU cycles and RAM percentages does it use to be "comprehensively" felt?

Are they bundling Candy Crush?

[toonces33]

Hand me the Windows 10 installation CD, and I will go and get a hammer.

Because

[Greyfox]

If you polish a turd long enough, it turns into a diamond.

Yet more pre-announced product from MICROS~1

[lippydude]

I do hope I experience as much consumer satasfation with this iternation of Windows as previous affordable MICROS~1 products ..

It's a bird, it's plane, it's......a chair?

[Tablizer]

When you open a new window, it flies out on to the screen...

The Ballmer "Chair" interface, eh?

Seriosouly, though, I hope there is an option to switch that animation off. I like quick response, and switched off the XP and Win7 animations on my PC. Please, don't take that away, Mr. Nadella.

Re:It's a bird, it's plane, it's......a chair?

[Teresita]

We're talking about the same company that put Mr. Clippy on Word 97 with no way to turn him off.

Re:It's a bird, it's plane, it's......a chair?

[Tablizer]

Clippy...no way to turn him off

You can, but you'd have to go through the pod bay doors without a space helmet. I found that cheat tip on a black monolith found in the dumpster.

Re:It's a bird, it's plane, it's......a chair?

[Anonymous Coward]

no way to turn him off.

Wrong.

Oh Great! Another lawsuit!

[__aaltlg1547]

Looks like Apple's animation... must by a copyright infringement, or if not that a patent infringement, or if no that just really really bad. Fire up the lawyerbot.

Helpful to newbies

[Tablizer]

If done right, such animations can be helpful to newbies, showing the relationship between the icon and the newly opened window (versus say a randomly popping message or spam). But after a while such "training wheels" get annoying and slow you down.

Re:Helpful to newbies

[exomondo]

But after a while such "training wheels" get annoying and slow you down.

At which point you turn them off.

Wat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC since I already moderated here.

After going to the Youtube page, I gotta say - Just what the fuck?

So now in order to salve the wounds of people butthurt by the monumental sucakge of Windows 8, will be treated to the awesome best ever spectacle of rotating menu items, what they've always been waiting for?

Can't wait until the fanbois come out and tell us how waiting for a menu to spin around a few times is based on extensive research done by Microsoft that proves once and for all that most users want the operating system to waste their fucking time, and that anyone who doesn't just love the steaming hot piece of shit is an idiot who doesn't kow that they are doing.

No wonder the other links just gushed over it rather than show you thte latest thing Microsoft is going to force on people.

Re:Wat?

[fizzer06]

Yes, don't they always blame the victim?

Re:Wat?

[benjymouse]

Posting AC since I already moderated here.

After going to the Youtube page, I gotta say - Just what the fuck?

So now in order to salve the wounds of people butthurt by the monumental sucakge of Windows 8, will be treated to the awesome best ever spectacle of rotating menu items, what they've always been waiting for?

Ahem. The youtube link (showing the flipping menus) shows a Linux desktop. It was intended by submitter jonas-supa to show how much more advanced Linux desktops are.

Can't wait until the fanbois come out and tell us how waiting for a menu to spin around a few times is based on extensive research done by Microsoft that proves once and for all that most users want the operating system to waste their fucking time, and that anyone who doesn't just love the steaming hot piece of shit is an idiot who doesn't kow that they are doing.

Lol. We have to wait for the Linux fanbois to explain why the hell Linux needs compiz and all of the (agreed: Horrid!) animations from that youtube link.

Way to go there, buddy.

Free Upgrade???

[brunes69]

All I care about is if users that are stuck with the never-ending train-wreck that is Windows 8/8.1 going to get a free upgrade to Windows 10.

Re:Free Upgrade???

[vandamme]

Get a free upgrade to Ubuntu this week.

Welcome to 8+ years ago :)

[markdavis]

>" It is a slick animation and if you have used OS X [(MacOS 10)], it is similar to the one used to collapse windows back in to the dock."

You mean like the one we have been using in Compiz/Beryl in Linux and then in KDE under Linux for many years?? Yawn.

No thanks I have eyeball diabetes.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I am not sure I want the telomeres on my executable code prematurely shortened either.

Aero in season again yet?

[Twinbee]

More eye candy? How about making it look less flat - you know, how like Aero used to look? You could distinguish windows and panels and widgets more easily, and didn't have to squint to be productive.

Or.... you could be Edgy!! Yeah let's go with edgy...

Re:Aero in season again yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I truely agree. I turn the animations off within the first five minutes of using a new computer, and usually that happens just after turning off the annoying system sounds. Microsoft has noticed, that people don't use the sounds, so there is nowadays a separate sound theme (silent), so one does not need to go clicking and disabling each sound. I hope there will be similar no-2s-animation-delays-for-me -animation theme. If one actually used and waited for those animations, it would eat really many hours of work time per year. But the 3D effect that Aero had actually did benefit the use of computer, since even new applications are immediately intuitive and usable, as one does not need to guess, which text is a hidden button and which is not. So that really need to come back to gain some of the lost productivity.

Re:Aero in season again yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

There has always been a "No sounds" in the drop down menu for system sounds.

Where have you been?

Doesn't Win 7 Aero do this now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. Aero does most of these now. I start most applications from the much maligned start menu or from things pinned to the taskbar, so I don't know about things POPing out of the icon. It seems that most applications have some sort of customized start screen. However, maximizing and minimizing are animated up/down unless you turn it off (which is really easy).

It also come with an animated...

[Anonymous Coward]

BSOD. Every time it crashes you see a caveman walk up to the screen and smash all of your files with a club, then he starts laughing at you as it fades into a skeleton.

Re:It also come with an animated...

[ledow]

http://www.worldofspectrum.org...

B.C. Bill. Very apt naming...

Gnome 2 and Windows 2000 got it right.

[walterbyrd]

Sensible, and functional, without an overload of useless crap.

JMHO.

oh boy

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually prefer the windows 8(including metro color) color scheme which causes no eye strain. I just hope windows 10 gives you the option to remove the taskbar transparency leaving it a solid color. I rather have the metro on my screen all the time stretched to my second screen and just rid the old desktop for good. Too bad there is no way to wrap the metro frame work around old applications to make them integrated with the metro. Until we see professional applications using the WinRT API with side loading the old desktop won't go away and metro will remain stagnant. These days I hate the pc desktop and just want to move over to mobile devices like phone and tablets.

Linux was pretty if you wanted it to be

[dbIII]

Actually linux back in the day, as in about 1997, resembled this sort of thing with the animated effects available for the Enlightenment window manager - however they were designed to be very easy to turn off if you didn't want them. It even had the little window snapshot images that are in win7, and of course the multiple desktops coming with Win10 (but even twm has those).
Rob Malda had an popular web site for the Enlightenment application ePlus when Slashdot started which is why a lot of people who used it turned up in this place early on.

Polish a turd and ....

[stonedead]

Still a turd.

who cares about how it looks?

[amoeba1911]

Seriously, if you want it to look different, just get windowblinds and you're done.

What could microsoft do better? get functionality like windowblinds built-in and make it easy to use
incorporate ability to mount ftp drives
fix built-in defrag too to allow it to move page file so you can shrink partition to minimum size
get rid of the abysmal ribbon and change menus in office to allow typing (ie. type commands/keywords instead of browsing through menus/toolsbars)
how about improving built-in notepad to not suck ass? year 2014 and notepad still chokes while opening large files
same with ms paint, is this a joke? it hasn't changed since 1996! either improve it by adding modern features to it, or get rid of it.
get rid of IE intergrations. wasn't there a lawsuit about this
include a pdf reader that's not a full-screen piece of shit, get rid of fullscreen craps, this is a desktop os, not a phone/tablet/phablet.
how about an ability to run exes in sandboxed mode? ie. catch all file/registry access, report it, undo it.
.. and many more!

no, instead they're adding "eye candy"...

Re:who cares about how it looks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I rather have these animations gone and Aero back!!!!!!!
PLEASE give us users the choice to switch the "old" Aero back on.
I do not care one bit for animations - I just do not want to stare for hours at that flat ugly interface!
Come on Microsoft - give your users an choice!!!

Typical

[folderol]

It seems ther've finally caught up with what was possible on Linux over 5 years ago. Virtual desktops too. How very, erm, usual!

Icons

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are they keeping 3D icons with their flat UI? This makes the thing so visually inconsistent...

Re:Icons

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish they would just dump that flat UI and give us Aero back...
No more animations needed, and no more inconsistencies...

Sigh

[ledow]

Because what I want in an enterprise-class operating system, what I desire more than anything else, what I cannot live without, what my users are crying out for, what I will pay good money just to have... ... is more shit jumping out at me on the screen for no good reason.

Gimme WinFS and we'll talk. Gimme complete application isolation and I'll think about it. Otherwise, honestly, you're just papering over the cracks.

well

[ruir]

who fucking cares about windows nein...Not anymore, I have jumped to other pastures far too long ago.

Re:What a USELESS Waste of CPU cycles!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a waste of CPU cycles.

Eye candy

[brunnegd]

Glad to see MS continues to be style over substance.

Still more work to be done

[Anonymous Coward]

Respond via the Technical Preview feedback mechanisms or else your comments don't matter where they count most.

how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh
Fek it they all suck.
The whole lot of the OS devs have gy-normouse aholery.
Apple and MS can take there eye candy and shave it up there ass. I just want a OS that's fun to use. Works. and when I'm bord I can play games on modern and retro.

Windows has no meeningfull way to back up.
Apple thinks it's awsome to have no older-version support, it's eats up a horrid amount of disk space on a laptop and the damn thing slows to a crawl after more than 45 minutes of use
Oh and they charge 3x as much as a peecee vendor for the same shite hardware.
Thanks but no thanks.

Perhaps Arch, or Slack, or Deb or the moon or Android, or borg function better wich at this point is not a high bar to reach

how pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

PREACH ON!
You know there is no shareware or el cheepo windows native disk cloner? As in: oh shit my internal drive is going south, what's out there so I can move to a 100USB drive (for example)-
OR there the 10k Bugs it's viersion of Chrome and Firefox have
Or how the only "fix" for a perfectly good system with bloatware is reformat? That's like burning down a house because the door suck.