Discussions

12 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

well, this is why i wanted to wait for beta. So far, my favorite taskbar is treated as second class citizen and metro is first class citizen.

it doesn't matter blah, if i cannot have taskbar always visible in metro, then, i will skip win8. surely I can cope with win8, but it is rather pointless when I already have win7.

I don't know how many people feel the same. I can give up many things, like start menu and desktop, but, I will not give up always visible taskbar. Simple as that. And win8 team has yet to demonstrate such capability. If RTM indeed lacking such feature, win8 will be the second win I skipped. First is win ME cause I cannot play games.

If you're not interested in running Metro-style applications, then you have no need to upgrade anyway. However, if you do, then methinks you will upgrade despite the lack of an always-visible task bar. It seems rather silly to boycott an OS simply because you want a UI feature that has no business being visible when you're running a Metro-style application.

For the record, I can't stand having the task bar always visible. I always set it to auto-hide. It's a complete waste of screen real estate when 99% of my time is spent looking at program windows. Having it visible when a Metro app is active goes against the very reason for running a Metro application in the first place. Not only am I indifferent to not having the task bar available while a Metro app is running, I would strongly disagree with any decision to add such a feature.

14 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

While this wasn't intended to answer your topic, but again, presentation presentation presentation. In the end, the presentation will only runs limited recompiled apps on desktop.

The presentation, presentation, presentation of the start menu has no bearing on the functionality of the applications, whether there be millions of existing applications or just a handful of recompiled applications that the particular version of the OS happens to run.

Not just IronPython. Any Python.

8 minutes ago, wastingtime​withforums wrote

*snip*

Yeah, you can pin them onto the task bar, but if you work with dozens of programs, pinning them all is really clunky.. that's why the start menu got invented in the first place!

The start menu predates task bar pinning.

3 minutes ago, DCMonkey wrote

*snip*

The same goes for Metro apps. Why can't I run them in multiple overlapping windows?

Metro does have a sort of overlapping pane metaphor. From the start menu, when you start typing, a search pane flies in from the right side, overlapping the start menu. There's also the split-screen, Aero-snap-like feature, so multiple Metro-style windowing is supported. The problem is that once you allow for greater control over the resizing and control of the window z-order, you have to add controls for that, and that means you have to have some window chrome. Granted, they could have retained the chrome and have it blend with the rest of the client area like Zune Desktop.

43 minutes ago, davewill wrote

I'm seeing files download to 100% only to fail the post download checks and have to be redownloaded.  I'd say 50% of the time the file has to be downloaded again.  It isn't unusual to have to try the same ISO 3 or 4 times.

Version 5.0.0.32 is what I'm currently.

I've seen this behavior for a year or more.

Does anyone have issues downloading large ISOs from your MSDN account using the File Transfer Manager designated by MSDN?

I used to frequently get "connection to the server has been reset" errors when downloading anything from Microsoft properties through http. The errors stopped happening about 5 months ago. Downloading from MSDN using the Download Manager has never been a problem though--no connection problems nor corrupted ISOs.

37 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

*snip*

It really is pointless to talk about implementation when presentation is what user cares about.

Your post is pointless because you completely missed my point. Death claimed that Windows for ARM won't have a desktop, and I showed that you can't have Windows with the immersive start menu without also having the desktop. Both the desktop and the immersive start menu live in the same process--explorer.exe. If you kill the explorer.exe process to hide the desktop, you have no start menu either, immersive or otherwise.

37 minutes ago, ScottWelker wrote

++@Richard.Hein (and others who expressed similar)

See why some of us who are relatively partial to MS products sometimes seek open source alternatives?

I feel like this nearly every time I try to recommend MS products - Office365 is a notable (pleasant) exception.

Open source is another can of worms. If you misinterpret an open source license, you might be obliged to give up source code, which could be far costlier than having to pay a licensing fee that you weren't aware of.

4 hours ago, ScanIAm wrote

well, nevermind.  Only 2GB, Only win32, and it won't ship until the end of the month.

Super-duper-no-thanks.

The problem with this ridiculous fascination with having ultra thin devices is that you know the gdamn DRAM is soldered onto the motherboard, which makes it impossible to open it up and just add memory like you can on a regular notebook.

14 minutes ago, vesuvius wrote

@cbae: Not if you know .xaml, and how to construct MVVM applications, both will be used right off the bat in Win 8

Sure, but XAML can be edited using the designers which should be easy to learn to use, and a lot of the plumbing for MVVM is created for you by the project templates.

On the other hand, if you have an elaborate application framework using something like MEF, who knows if the dependencies will even be part of the Metro .NET profile?

Besides, I didn't say Metro apps would have a completely level playing field. I said that it represents the most level of all the playing fields because there's going to be at least *some* learning curve for everybody.

Not only that, if you listen to all the indignation about Metro applications, it's pretty clear that many seasoned SL and WPF aren't going to embrace Metro apps right away. This means a lot of newbies could potentially get up to speed on Metro apps before the seasoned SL/WPF developers decide to dip their toes in the water, if they even decide to do so at all.