NoelC

+1 Seems to me that people dictating what to do actually have to be SMARTER than the people being forced NOT to do the things they're good at. Though I may be gaining wisdom, if anything I'm losing brain cells as I age yet I haven't sensed that OS design has been getting smarter for a long time. Dumbed-down maybe. More predatory, definitely. But not smarter. -Noel

Mkanet2, I'll give it a try. That's an appealing look. I suspect much of the magic of that theme, though, comes from that glow that fools the mind into thinking the button is brilliantly lit, and without actual alternate theme code to support it there's simply no way to spread the glow around the button. -Noel

(To no one in particular...) After a bit of refinement, how do these buttons look to you? More appealing than my prior version? (for Win 10) http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/RoundedCorners.png -Noel

As mentioned elsewhere (maybe it was this thread, I don't recall), it's all about sex. Sex sells. I'm surprised Microsoft's CEO isn't being raked over the coals about the WIndows assistant being the same nude-but-digitally-body-painted character as is found in their Halo game. And let's not forget that Apple invented theirs with the name Siri. Microsoft can't let Apple do anything without trying to do it too. It's like one of the most important industries on the planet is being run by 11 year olds. -Noel

In all seriousness there are reasons I choose to use IE. Its security model is actually good, even though out of the box it's poorly set up. And prior to this week I haven't had crashes with it, so your characterization of it as excrement is not really founded. But everyone has their browser preference for whatever reasons. It's all good. -Noel

Yeah, all I want is for Microsoft to continue to IMPROVE or at least MAINTAIN the good functionality of the desktop while moving forward with their Windows is an App Store Delivery Engine initiative. At the moment, there are no Metro/Modern Apps I need, nor can use in any of my work. That probably won't keep. But it's true now. Why? It's been possible to develop Apps for years now. Wouldn't you think something useful would be developed besides just fun and games? Bravo to you if you've done it - what's the app? The concept of making the desktop more difficult to use for no other reason than to try to usher people toward something else - and you can't seriously refute that it's less usable without tweaks and 3rd party software that didn't used to be needed - that's just wrong. Couldn't the Start button have just been left in as a "legacy option"? By the way, I was already using an alternative since Vista, since Classic Shell is better implemented than any of Microsoft's code. Why did they delete the GUI for setting up backup? The capability is still there, but now I have to schedule a wbadmin command. Previous Versions? I actually used that feature (and I welcome its apparent return in Win 10). Why did they remove drop shadows from the Win 8 GUI (not to mention visual styles from buttons, thumbs, etc.)? Those help visually differentiate windows and controls within windows. Why make disabling UAC cause the loss of use of Metro/Modern Apps? That's just arbitrary. Up through Win 7 it could be completely disabled from the GUI, which is no longer possible with Win 8+. Did they figure the folks who needed to do it would just die off? Why did they remove the ability (in Win 10) to control as carefully what gets installed via Windows Update? Who does that benefit? The 3rd party developers of the world are not stupid. They came forth with solutions to many of these things because people need them, and research solves most of the rest. At the moment I'm quite productive with Win 8.1 x64 running my workstation. But having to bend over backwards to achieve that is a long way from Microsoft providing it out of the box. Mostly it's just possible because they've left the functionality in the system. Probably their own developers tweak Windows similarly. The very things I (and I'm sure others) need from a serious OS have to be coaxed out of disabled, deprecated, or outright deleted functionality. I'm supposed to like this? I'm no stick in the mud, I develop high performance graphics software as well as do business and research on my workstation. I've been an incurable early adopter of Microsoft software since there was a Microsoft (and I still am), and I worked with even better systems before that. No, my friend, I'm no "hater", except maybe that I "hate" that Microsoft is dumbing down the desktop without providing anywhere near equivalent capability in Metro/Modern land. -Noel

That IS the question. There is some, often intangible, value to keeping current. It really boils down to making a value judgment about whether continued partnering with Microsoft is a net gain or a net loss. And the judgment DOES need to be re-evaluated from time to time, as the value seems to be going down. For what it's worth, I've had several Internet Explorer crashes over the past couple of days (since the last set of updates went in). Not to the level of "I need to uninstall KBxxxxxx" yet, but it is an option I'm not unwilling to consider. -Noel

I think it's pretty arrogant of you to call people who aren't satisfied with the status quo and want to improve it "haters". That's traditionally a way people who are overly self-satisfied with themselves justify their positions. -Noel

As long as you use decimals. The only reason for whole numbers would be the struggle to find how to change the setting. -Noel

So it's your opinion that Microsoft is maintaining or improving desktop usability while improving your work in the field? No dig on you, but why don't other people who know what they're doing think so? What's your theory on why power users feel Windows 8 and 10 are stepping back from desktop support? Mass delusion? Haters? People who could use Windows 7 are incapable of learning anything more? People who are incurable early adopters are holding their collective noses over what's being shoveled in front of them. Newsflash, the desktop is being made harder to use. Why? Consistency is down, visual cues are being reduced (tell me you haven't struggled to find a scroll bar thumb), apparently in the name of predatory marketing. Next version is eliminating window borders, presumably because having a visual target for the resizing controls is a bad thing. With near 40 years high tech experience, I've tuned my Windows 8.1 workstation and now Win 10 test system to be essentially as useful as Win 7 was. Note that I didn't say better. There has been no improvement, and let me tell you, it took an unprecedented amount of knowledge and effort to get it to be a productive environment. No, the delusion isn't among the masses here. -Noel

Windows 10 on anything, baby! -Noel

Seems an appropriate acronym to me... Count the number of letters. App - 3, application - 11. 3/11 is about 27 percent, which pretty much describes their degree of usefulness vs. a real application. APP - "Almost Passably Pretty" Application - What you use to develop Apps or do anything useful. -Noel

You should stick to your own discipline. Most here LOVE tech. But it has to be GOOD tech. You seem to feel anything Microsoft does must be good. To see people so brainwashed... Sad. -Noel

FYI, you can make the columns wider in RegEdit. Just grab the divider between the column headings (e.g., just to the left of "Type") and drag... Would save you some guessing. -Noel

I always wonder about systems where the basic design is left to the last minute... Ever see the film "Brazil"? Think tiny screens with Fresnel lenses (on which the entire office watches soap operas while the boss is not watching). -Noel

There are registry settings that ApplicationFrameHost reads the first time it starts that can both scale everything about Apps as well as lift the minimum size restriction. Whether that will make them look better on a 1600 x 900 display is not clear... http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173477-windows-10-tips-tricks-and-tweaks/#entry1094489 -Noel

NOTE: This is VERY experimental at this point. Some interesting registry values seen being read by ApplicationFrameHost when it first starts... Set as a decimal percentage, this one seems to resize Modern Apps...[ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Scaling ] LegacyAppScaleFactor REG_DWORD 85 This one seems to remove the minimum window size restriction...[ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell\ApplicationFrame ] DisableMinimumSize REG_DWORD 1 Please do not try these on a critical system. I only just discovered them and I'm not sure what all the implications may be. -Noel

I wish I could find a setting that affects the title bar height, but so far, no luck. It may be hard-coded inside ApplicationFrameHost. Or I may just not have found it yet. For what it's worth, this is as good as I've been able to get it to look so far... Thank you, Big Muscle, for the updated DLL. -Noel

Here's a family photo... -Noel

[emphasis added] Wow, that's VERY interesting news! I guess that means they're not likely to delete any more useful stuff... This is good news, though to be honest I was still expecting a bunch of new gee whiz stuff. But it makes sense - a full release requires quite a bit of lead time for testing and packaging. If this truly is the case maybe Windows 10 won't be a bust. I find I can use build 9926 for my work. It also means Big Muscle's Aero Glass product will probably work with the final release. So what is Windows 10 in light of this news? Metro apps in Windows (but just as useless as they were full-screen).A re-implementation of the Start Menu in a form worse than all that have come before.Re-implementation of some of the control panel, with attendant loss of functionality.An push through useless things like Cortana to get the masses to sign up for cloud integration. Positives: Classic Shell still works.Aero Glass can be made to work.Old applications that were iffy under Windows 8.1 seem to work better (I tested Office 2003, for example). -Noel

Yes, I plan to, when I find time. I have about 100 projects I'm trying to do at once, as well as prepare my tax return for Uncle Sam. -Noel

Possibly. I always disable all the customer experience improvement program stuff. I wonder if a majority of halfway savvy people do... So the majority of feedback they get is about how the more technically challenged folks use Windows. That could explain Microsoft's low opinion of its users... -Noel

I'll check it again... I don't honestly know if the short name is required any more. I'll try it both ways. I rather enjoy prodding Windows 10 to see what squeaks or falls to pieces. Oh, and that error message remains even if I don't try to inject anything. So it may be a result of some recent choice I've made (e.g., to not use a cloud account, or to disable OneDrive, or...). Okay, some updated info... Process Hacker does NOT list it as s loaded module.I CAN delete it while other applications are running.Ergo your initial comment was actually correct - somehow it's simply not being loaded. -Noel

Well, to be fair it's a function from an earlier time. More info here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd744762(v=vs.85).aspx I mentioned setting my systems up to not allow short names, and this is the only thing I've used in a long time that I've found needs short names. -Noel

Ah, I see a new error in the error log now... -Noel