Windows 10 - First Impressions

[Tripredacus]

Other screenshots I've seen of the Start Menu don't feature this translucency, so I'm wondering if the image I sourced from WinBeta might have been a mockup rather than something that represents what the Start Menu will actually look like in the coming TP build.

The Start Menu shown during the Briefing was not translucent or transparent. It looked like the normal blue one from the TP, with the exception that you could snap the Start Menu to your entire screen for whatever reason.

[JorgeA]

The odd thing is, I saw that same translucent TP Start Menu on another website (can't find it now ) as well as on the print version of the Wall Street Journal's coverage of this week's Win10 showcase.

 

--JorgeA

 

UPDATE: In the ongoing discussion in WinBeta, a couple of people have said that that translucent Start Menu is shown on Microsoft's own website (although, sadly, nobody gives a URL):

 

It is also on Microsoft's website also. I believe it is an optional theme in Windows 10!

 

They show it transparent on their website, so I'd expect it.

Edited January 24, 2015 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

first good news:

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-windows-10-will-not-be-sold-as-a-subscription/

 

then not so good news:

 

Microsoft plans to update the OS with smaller, more regular updates rather than the big, chunky updates of past Service Packs/ this means basically rapid releases that will ruin stability.

 

Basically more updates that might cause huge problems.

 

Amen to that.

 

About the merging of the Control Panel with the PC Settings: my first reaction to that is -- OK, what user choices are they eliminating with this overhaul?

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

I'm starting to question either the competence or the integrity of the TP Windows Feedback program via the Windows Feedback app.

 

Over the last few days, I've submitted at least three items via the app. None of them has shown up in the list of "Most Recent" items. As my suspicions grew, I decided to start capturing them before submitting (thankfully, the highlight + Ctrl-C commands work on the app so that I can save them in Notepad). Here are two:

Please enable use of the PgUp, Pg/dn, Home, and End buttons when wading through the Feedback suggestions. (Currently they don't do anything within the Feedback lists.) It's slow and tedious to have to scroll through every listed suggestion all over again every time you finish voting on a particular one -- you're always taken back to the top of the list. For Pete's sake, at least take us back to where we had been on the list instead of back to the top!!! If this Feedback app is intended to showcase the possibilities of Metro, I am NOT impressed. It's a limited, constrained existence compared to real Windows applications.

The feedback I submit via the Feedback app never seems to show up on the list, even days after I submit it. Makes me wonder about either the quality or the integrity of the Feedback process.

Somehow, I suspect that Microsoft's response is more likely to be to disable saving feedback to memory for pasting to Notepad, than to address these concerns.

 

--JorgeA

 

Edited January 24, 2015 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

From this blog post by Gabriel Aul, some good news and some bad news:

 

[...]The work on Start isn’t done yet, and we’ll have more changes that will show up in future builds including more personalization (and transparency!), drag and drop, Jump Lists, and the ability to resize the Start menu.

 

New Settings app: We’re working hard to evolve the Settings experience in Windows and in this build, you will see a lot of this work come together. This is where you will go to manage your device and things like your display, network, and account settings. As I noted above, the new Settings app introduces a different way for configuring how you receive new builds from us too. Even better – the Settings experience will be consistent across all your Windows devices. We’ve made the homepage easier to scan and reminiscent of Control Panel, which many of you were familiar with. It’s icon-based and we re-organized the categories to be more familiar. You can also use search within the app to find the setting you want. Search will even find Control Panel pages that aren’t in the Settings app.

 

 

Question: where is the equivalent to the Programs option in Control Panel??

 

Cortana on the desktop: We’re excited to include Cortana as an integrated part of the desktop in Windows 10. Cortana is one click away on the taskbar, helping you find the things you need while proactively bringing you information you care about. Cortana can help you search in Windows 10 for apps, settings, and files as well as searching the web.

 

This seems to be replacing the dedicated Search box on the TP Taskbar, as well as (some say) Start Menu Search. So, can I configure Cortana to search ONLY on my PC?

 

Another top request from you was to have the option to pick the default folder when opening File Explorer, and the team responded and added this feature.

 

One definite improvement. It was annoying to have it go to "Frequent Folders" by default.

 

And a big "uh-oh" in the comments section:

 

Please tell me I’m missing something! The START BUTTON!!! [i think he means the Start Menu] I feel like you guys are going backwards again into that territory of unwantedness….We hated you taking away the start bar in 8. so much so that people made apps that brought it back third party style. So here we are and you brought it back and integrated it with the metro screen. great, I loved it. Now you have fallen back and removed the program files section once again which is really that part of the start button that people missed. Put it back. Trust me. Put it back. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new look. But people will want the program files option for a pulldown still. Do a survey. people want it. Don’t take it away.

 

--JorgeA

 

[JorgeA]

A link to a description of a Win10TP rollup led to the following screen:

 

 

Maybe the TP program isn't quite as open and forthcoming as we'd been led to believe...

 

--JorgeA

 

[MagicAndre1981]

Build 9926 is ugly as hell. I can't believe why Microsoft designer have absolutely no taste.

[jaclaz]

Is this image for real? :00t:

It reminds me somehow of the Psion 3 interface:

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/sibo3a

or of the NewDeal/Breadbox Ensemble "Preferences" one:

http://toastytech.com/guis/bbe.html

 (which the difference that the Psion 3 icons were actually nice and that the Breadbox ones had colours ).

 So the teacher has deprived the 5 year old kids designing the interface of their colour pastels and they were left with just a dark blue felt tip pen?

 

jaclaz

[MagicAndre1981]

this image is real. it looks like win95 with 16 color vga driver.

[JorgeA]

They have managed not only to eliminate the 3D (depth) aspect, but also to wash out the coloring from the window control buttons.

 

What is it with this spreading (anti-)esthetic in OS design??

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

It reminds me somehow of the Psion 3 interface:

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/sibo3a

or of the NewDeal/Breadbox Ensemble "Preferences" one:

http://toastytech.com/guis/bbe.html

 (which the difference that the Psion 3 icons were actually nice and that the Breadbox ones had colours ).

 So the teacher has deprived the 5 year old kids designing the interface of their colour pastels and they were left with just a dark blue felt tip pen?

 

The windows in that Breadbox Ensemble UI look very much like Windows 95/98. I'd never heard of Breadbox, did they come out with this UI before or after Windows 95, and what OS was their UI intended to be used with?

 

Regarding the people who devised the interface, IMO either the Win10 designers need to go to remedial design school at once before they do any more damage, or they must be fired and replaced immediately.

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Check out this thread about the build 9926 Start Menu thread in the Windows Insider Program. Unfrickinbelievable.

 

Is this seriously supposed to be better?

After I unpinned all the "Metro Apps" and disabled search in the taskbar this is what I ended up with.

 

 

 

If you look around the discussions in that forum, the standard responses to complaints are "use the Feedback app," and "you know this is only a beta, right?" Well for all intents and appearances the effect of using that Feedback app has been negative -- i.e., the developers are moving AWAY FROM what people are clamoring for. And no doubt they would like for everybody to shut up about what's wrong with the UI until it's too late to fix it before RTM, at which time they could respond, "well, you should have spoken up sooner."

 

And as I pointed out upthread, in any case it's now questionable whether they care about or even want any feedback that doesn't conform to their predetermined direction.

 

--JorgeA

 

EDIT: typos

Edited January 25, 2015 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

An important tidbit from that thread:

 

To everyone else wondering, the reason why the Start Menu sucks so much horse meat, is because they've decided to re-write it in XAML. XAML is the language of 'modern' aka completely useless dumbed down apps made for tablets. 

 

--JorgeA

 

[JorgeA]

Question: where is the equivalent to the Programs option in Control Panel??

 

Something else that people are reporting missing from the revamped Control Panel (now renamed "Settings") is the choice whether to download and install updates. See this thread; it's giving people fits and leaving their computers unusable.

 

There is a registry fix here to bring back the regular Windows Update (I have not verified that it works).

 

Sure, this is a beta and we agreed to the terms of use and all that. Nonetheless, up to now you could call up the regular Windows Update applet and hardware drivers were optional, not automatic. This is just asking for trouble, and is already getting trouble.

 

Nor does it speak very well for the direction Microsoft is taking with regard to user choice.

 

--JorgeA

Edited January 25, 2015 by JorgeA

[jaclaz]

The windows in that Breadbox Ensemble UI look very much like Windows 95/98. I'd never heard of Breadbox, did they come out with this UI before or after Windows 95, and what OS was their UI intended to be used with?

The BreadBox Ensemble (just like it's predecessor NewDeal Office) is/was last evolution of GEOS/GeoWorks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(16-bit_operating_system)

http://toastytech.com/guis/indexgeos.html

Of course the original was more Windows 3.x-like, while the New Deal thingy was pretty much 95ish:

http://toastytech.com/guis/nd32.html

 

The thingy worked very well AFAICR, had very little hardware requirements (being essentially a DOS shell).

 

If you put it in perspective, or if you ever loaded the Windows 95 first edition through floppies you can understand how at the time it wasn't a bad idea to come out with something providing a good enough GUI on low power machines, remember how when the Windows 95 came out it needed rather "beefy" machines, a "standard" Windows 3.x would run with 4 Mb and a "good, fast system" had double that, 8 Mb typically.

 

Just for the record, I would like to highlight a comment on the given Toastytech site:

http://toastytech.com/guis/nd32.html

The default graphical shell is basically a Windows Explorer clone, but it leaves out all of the BS that that newer Windows version have, leaving an extremely usable lightweight user interface that works well even on old 386 machines.

 

jaclaz