Open source makes windows 8 usable

@Sven Groot: I sort of wish jumplists were part of the startscreen in some variant. I miss right clicking Word or Excel in the taskbar and going straight to the doc I just recently edited. It's fine now going to the desktop and doing it, but it'd be even better if I could save that extra jump and do it straight from the start screen.

4 hours ago, cbae wrote

*snip*

"pave the next innovation"? LOL A site like that is where content CONSUMERS hang out. They are not the content creators. At best they are the types that know how to overclock their GPUs. Big * whoop.

Oh wow, just wow.

6 hours ago, Sven Groot wrote

*snip*

It's the damn statistics. Unless MS can tell from their data that 90% of users are clicking something daily, it seems to be a death sentence these days.

I agree and as such I am clicking the crap out of everything I like.

52 minutes ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

I agree and as such I am clicking the crap out of everything I like.

It's like a UI feature tamagotchi; if you don't keep feeding it usage data, it will die.

1 day ago, DCMonkey wrote

*snip*

It's like a UI feature tamagotchi; if you don't keep feeding it usage data, it will die.

Yea.

Automating this would be a cool idea for an app.

Nobody seems to have mentioned the only part of Windows 8 that has truly hindered my productivity.

There are two disparate work areas; the old windows desktop with its task bar and the new "metro UI"... I'd have no real issue with the mix of full screen apps and desktop apps, if they shared a single task area.

I frequently find myself "loosing" a window, for instance by opening Chrome in the fullscreen UI then continuing to work in office in the desktop mode. Naturally alt-tab will allow me to switch back, but I find it very disconnected and arbitrary to not be able use the taskbar to switch between tasks.

Right now the whole OS feels like it's separated into a touchUI and a clickUI and doesn't give me a smooth productive user experience. I'm incredibly disappointed, as I've been really looking forward to Windows 8.

@CarlHead: You can't really have Windows Store apps* on the Taskbar, because the entire point behind them is that they are conceptually always running, even when they aren't actually running. To represent that on the Taskbar, you'd need to have them all visible, all the time. That would make the taskbar unusable. It would also be completely counter-intuitive, you couldn't "unpin" them (because they're "running") or use the Taskbar to meaningfully keep track of what you're doing (as some people suggest it should).

The only place I find it annoying at the moment is moving between IE one the desktop and IE Windows Store app* and I only ever have to do that because of the weird and arbitrary decision over Flash. I'd love to believe Flash would disappear overnight and then it would be a non-issue, but I don't see it happening and really think Microsoft need to reconsider that, perhaps moving to a blacklist rather than a whitelist for Flash in IE.

*Yeah, that name really works, doesn't it?

The only place I find it annoying at the moment is moving between IE one the desktop and the IE app 

Fixed. And yes, I know that technically bla bla bla but everyone will know what you mean.

@AndyC: I never need to switch because I only use desktop IE. Why would I want a browser to be full screen?

1 hour ago, Sven Groot wrote

@AndyC: I never need to switch because I only use desktop IE. Why would I want a browser to be full screen?

You might want it to be a third/two-thirds of the screen, tho maybe? Metro apps are not only fullscreen in RTM.

@evildictaitor: You mean I can make them overlapped at any size, like we've been able to do for the last 20 years? If you can tell me how I'll give you a dollar.

I'm aware of the option to dock them on the side, but it's useless. The IE app just doesn't lend itself to having stuff on call while I'm developing in VS. I can't even really put it on the second screen, because if I do that, all Metro stuff (including the start screen) moves to that screen, which is just the stupidest thing ever.

I'm on a regular desktop PC, with two large monitors. I simply see no reason to ever have anything run full screen. And docking it on the side is nice in theory, but then it pushes the entire desktop aside, and I can't put any windows on top of it without first undocking it again. Plus, there's a pointlessly huge border dividing the docked app and the rest of the screen (I'm using a mouse, I don't need a 10 pixel divider).

Metro is nice, I'm sure it's great on tablets, but I simply have yet to discover anything I would want it for on the desktop. Every time I find an app that's potentially nice, the same thought runs through my head: "if only I could run this in a window..."

2 hours ago, Sven Groot wrote

@evildictaitor: You mean I can make them overlapped at any size, like we've been able to do for the last 20 years? If you can tell me how I'll give you a dollar.

Sadly not.

One nice feature of Metro's thirds is that other Windows then respect the fact that you have something that shouldn't be overlapped and maximise accordingly.

This means you can, for example, have, say Windows Live Messenger in one third, and use your desktop in the other two thirds. No matter what you do to your desktop, nobody will ever pop their window over or under your metro third, and you can still Aero-snap on your desktop to maximise (to two-thirds screen) any app you're running.

13 hours ago, AndyC wrote

@CarlHead: You can't really have Windows Store apps* on the Taskbar...

The only place I find it annoying at the moment is moving between IE one the desktop and IE Windows Store app*...

*Yeah, that name really works, doesn't it? 

Thank you Andy.

My favorite part of Windows 8 is the charms. But sadly, desktop apps can't take advantage of them.

I think Windows 8 SP1 will be a nice update that ties up all of these loose ends.

Was a lot of posts and walls of text, but I don't think anyone mentioned that there is a Metro taskbar. On a tablet, you swipe it in from the left, on the desktop you put your mouse in the top left corner, then move it down a bit and it will show all metro apps running...

3 hours ago, Harlequin wrote

Was a lot of posts and walls of text, but I don't think anyone mentioned that there is a Metro taskbar. On a tablet, you swipe it in from the left, on the desktop you put your mouse in the top left corner, then move it down a bit and it will show [as many] metro apps running [as it can fit in the vertical space]...

No disrespect but I fixed a small discrepancy for ya. When you add in the idea that Windows Store apps are designed not needing to be closed all of a sudden this makes the Windows Store app taskbar pretty useless. Do you close the apps to make the taskbar useful or do you leave the apps open because you are not supposed to have to close them?

4 hours ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

No disrespect but I fixed a small discrepancy for ya. When you add in the idea that Windows Store apps are designed not needing to be closed all of a sudden this makes the Windows Store app taskbar pretty useless. Do you close the apps to make the taskbar useful or do you leave the apps open because you are not supposed to have to close them?

It's not useless though, it just isn't intended for the purpose you're trying to suggest it should be. It's more a MRU list for Metro* apps. Even if you "close" them to try and pretend that it is showing "running" apps, reality soon breaks when, for example, someone sends you an IM (for example) and the Messenger app which wasn't "running" pops a notification up on screen (and still doesn't appear in the MRU list till you actively open it).

You have to let go the idea that trying to somehow use "running" applications as some sort of mental "what am I doing" list makes much sense - even the old-school Taskbar was pretty rubbish at doing that, because it could only ever give you a single "grouping" (so no real-world multi-tasking for you) and couldn't persist beyond reboots etc. You can probably far more usefully manage your time and thought processes with a Metro* to-do list style app pinned to the side of the screen than you ever could with the Taskbar.

*Yeah, I said it. Sticking to that till a less silly designation happens

@AndyC: FWIW, "Windows Store apps" (or just "apps from the store") has always been what they've been called inside Windows 8 itself, going back as far as the Developer Preview. There have never been any instances of "Metro" inside UI or help text, but there are multiple references to "apps from Windows Store", e.g. in System Refresh.