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Why does MS Marketing Still Try To Mislead Everyone?


NoelC

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In my opinion, it's to sway "fashion" in the direction of selling more Microsoft devices.

Tablets with flat, lifeless UI - good. Desktops with plenty of power but ugh, skeuomorphism - bad.

Consider... Even Apple devices are now switching to the flat look. IPads have had plenty of UI responsiveness and battery life, even back when they had wood grain, decent 3d looking buttons, and drop shadows.

Computers and GPUs are not getting slower. The amount of computation that goes into something like Aero Glass is inconsequential. Do you hear of people claiming Big Muscle's Aero Glass replacement software slows their desktop down? I haven't.

Now you know what I mean in this thread.

-Noel

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Exactly.  Windows 8 is almost exclusively about manipulating people.

 

They just don't make any money in an ongoing fashion without continuing to improve it, and everyone wants to make money nowadays as a sales facilitator.  Building better mousetraps is harder than letting other folks do the programming.

 

I just don't understand why a company the size of Microsoft couldn't do all of the above - BOTH improve the OS *and* build an infrastructure through which to facilitate sales.  The folks running the show must be real simpletons.

 

-Noel

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Looks like the guys at Mozilla have been smoking the same stuff as Microsoft.

 

I woke up this morning to an 'update' to Firefox v29.0. that basically did the same as delete a Start Menu.... They Removed the 'Firefox Orange Menu' from the Top left.

 

I liked it fine where it was. You adopt a methodology and muscle memory for tasks. Its not hating change, but its getting tiring.

 

There were even stories from the moderators etc how this has taken 4years of research to update a UI that wasn't broken.

 

Sounds familiar.... what happened to asking if I wanted to try the new style- and choose to refuse and continue with classic.

 

It didn't take long to notice I wasn't the only one feeling this way- usual outbursts and rants in forums.. but at least a solution was found.

 

Another patch to restore simple functionality that shouldn't have to exist.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/reviews/

 

I guess this is job creation of sorts.. Out-Sourcing of classic code and interfaces.

 

Hum..

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Yep, this is also - sometimes - because of "commissions" or "collective design". :w00t:

 

Just in case, there is a site that helps making your own Tree Swing Cartoon ;) or "How Projects Really Work"

http://www.projectcartoon.com/

 

Of course, ironically, the originally version 1.0:

http://www.projectcartoon.com/cartoon/3

was updated to 1.5:

http://www.projectcartoon.com/cartoon/2

and to 2.0:

http://www.projectcartoon.com/cartoon/1

 

jaclaz

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That's interesting. My understanding all along was that saving resources on cr*ppy mobile devices (never mind the billions of desktop PCs out there) was the whole purpose for removing Aero Glass, and that the bit about abandoning "skeuomorphism" was just an after-the-fact rationalization for public consumption.

 

If not for saving resources on mobile devices, then what earthly reason could there be for removing Aero Glass?

Actually, when I was contemplating on whether to up(?)grade to win8.1 from win7, I also looked at VRAM usage. Guess which version had about 100MB more VRAM used in idle?

Also, fast boot turned out to be a can of worms in my case, even though I only have one OS installed. Inexplicable behavior like the language bar disappearing, programs hanging on start waiting for a svchost thread, DWM suddenly deciding accepting any input from a filthy human is beneath it... etc. And every time, the problems were gone after a restart... deactivating the feature solved them and win8.1 has been much more agreeable since then.

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Yeah if you deconfigure just about everything relatively new and do an unprecedented amount of tweaking it's possible to make WIndows 8 work nearly as well as a well-tuned Windows 7 did.

 

But quite clearly nothing is advancing.

 

I'm guessing someone inside Microsoft must actually USE Windows 8 and he raises hell when the near infinite number of monkeys with a near infinite number of keyboards are about to screw up its core functionality.  When he retires we're screwed.

 

-Noel

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Well, one thing that did advance is the fact it can now finally send a "move/copy file/folder" command to the remote server, not having to copy the file to local temp dir, then sending it back to the new remote location. This is actually about the only reason why I'm still on win8.1 and haven't rolled back to win7. All my files are on a remote server, linked to my home folder, so doing any operations take a while on win7.

To be honest, I managed to port most of my workflows to the linux world, so the day I jump ships is not far off.

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Remember when, on a pre DWM setup, you'd see all the controls flicker as you were resizing a window and they were all repainted before your very eyes?

I remember it from 2 minutes ago when I resized an Explorer window on Win8. The most extreme example is resizing from the a top corner. Result: right end of the ribbon/menu bar flickers black (near the question mark), status bar jumps around, possibly with an extra trail by that button there (yeah, I should really check ClassicShell's alternative status bar). The same problem looked even worse on Win7 with the fancier transparency.

It's really silly how they can't get the UI the draw cleanly after all these years, and even with hardware acceleration. The first software I made on Win9x was skinned. It didn't jump nor flicker on resize. Surely Microsoft can do the same?

Edited by shae
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Not seeing that at all here.  Resizing is smooth on all windows.  I don't think I've seen any dialog flicker on resizing in a very long time.  Perhaps it's because of the particular video card or something.

 

-Noel

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It's not a flicker due to layered elements and no double buffering, it's the desynchronized moving/resizing of the elements and the enclosing window. I've seen it on all Win 7 and 8 computers I encountered.

Edited by shae
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it's the desynchronized moving/resizing of the elements and the enclosing window. I've seen it on all Win 7 and 8 computers I encountered.

 

Okay, if I wildly resize my Explorer window I can get an effect where the stuff in the Classic Shell status bar seems to be slightly behind the resizing of the border.  It's kind of too fast to be distracting though.

 

Regarding resizing...  For what it's worth I use a neat little tool called ShellFolderFix by Georg Fischer that positions my Explorer windows to the last place I left them.  It's nice for example to be able to open windows to C: and D: and have them not overlap, to facilitate moving things between them.

 

-Noel

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The flashing black on horizontal resize is worse than the vertical problems. It looks even worse on Aero, where it's more out of place next/in the fancy blur/transparency. Looked like a bug initially, but after 8 years since NT6 release now it's just sloppy and unpro. The video isn't as smooth as normal usage, but the general impression is similar.

The vertical isn't as bad, but still lame. In normal usage, where it's smoother, quick sizing up leaves a giant trail of the button's border. Very noticeable. The top flashing black is not something I see in normal use.

Edited by shae
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