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Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

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Re: Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

#81

Post by JasonSage »

As far as touchscreen-compatible window management goes, I'm not sure it gets better than ChromeOS.

For example, the keyboard shortcuts for snapping a window left or right let you customize how wide the window is after the snap. So for example, alt + ] snaps the window to the right half of the screen. The same shortcut again grows the window to 90% wide, then 80%, then 60%, and finally back to 50%. So if I want whatever I'm reading to be decently wide at the cost of letting my SSH window take up slightly less than half the screen, I can make that happen without a mouse. Or for a good responsive site, 20% or 30% of my screen is all the site needs.

In addition, when I have two windows each taking up 50%, hovering on the window edges they share them brings up an additional handle that lets me adjust the width of both windows simultaneously (if I want). Why can't Windows do that?

Finally, there's a keyboard shortcut for centering a window on the screen, which I am a total sucker for.

Re: Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

#82

Post by RivieraKid »

jonnydark wrote: post #80
RivieraKid wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. This "reinvent the classical desktop" trend really annoys me. Traditional desktop environments like Win 95 up to 7 or Gnome 2 are imho closest to the ideal, they have many many years of evolution behind them. Mistakes that are being made: 1) Thinking that touch is superior to mouse, that touch is the future. That's simply untrue, mouse is quicker and more productive. 2) Focusing on fi…

I am reminded of the Henry Ford quote "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." The design idioms seen in Gnome 2 and Windows 7 are essentially highly refined versions of what existed on the Apple II OS. Personal computers and what we use them for have come a long way since then and it makes sense to redesign the UI to reflect this. Often this means getting your hands dirty and try…

Yes, this Steve-Jobsian reasoning is exactly what leads to bad UI designs: "People don't know what they want and if they don't like our UI, it's in some way their fault."

I don't have anything against designers trying new things - unless they are trying them on me. For me, Win 8 or Gnome 3 is clearly a downgrade in terms of user experience.

Re: Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

#83

Post by RivieraKid »

lnteveryday wrote: post #76
RivieraKid wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. This "reinvent the classical desktop" trend really annoys me. Traditional desktop environments like Win 95 up to 7 or Gnome 2 are imho closest to the ideal, they have many many years of evolution behind them. Mistakes that are being made: 1) Thinking that touch is superior to mouse, that touch is the future. That's simply untrue, mouse is quicker and more productive. 2) Focusing on fi…

I think tiling would greatly improve the usability. If windows had tiling and something like dmenu I would be much happier. The start screen sucks, especially if you have a lot of applications that you commonly use. It's impractical to look for a application in the tiles. I know that you can go to the start screen and start typing in the name of the program (sort of like dmenu), but why should you have to go to a poi…

Exactly, and another problem of the start screen is that it's fullscreen - it's distracting when the whole screen changes.

Re: Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

#84

Post by ericcumbee »

arethuza wrote: post #7
spdy wrote: post #2

Am i the only one who does not like "touch" on a desktop/laptop. It is not the revolutionary input method that makes everything magical. I want to think in boxes (desktops) not a fluid streams of desktop space. We need something else for the desktop.

It is even less appropriate on a server OS - I have no idea what they were thinking making Windows Server 2012 use the same touch oriented start menu replacement nightmare.... [Having to use a demo VM that has 2012 installed at the moment and I'm finding it incredibly annoying].

I think the Idea is that you wont use the GUI much on server instances. I am working through a Sharepoint MCSE right now. and the Server config and admin, your encouraged to use the Server Manager tool on another computer or the command line. Ideally on most installs the Full GUI is not installed. MS considers it best practice to use the Core install if at all possible. Followed by the Min Gui, and then if necessary the Full GUI.

Re: Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

#85

Post by Zigurd »

Not too surprising to see lots of people here who would prefer a gradual evolution of Windows toward a touch interface. Bouncing back and forth between legacy Windows and "Modern" UI is obviously unsatisfactory. But, remember that Microsoft tried a gradual, familiar evolutionary approach three times previously and failed. Where were you then?

Now Microsoft has a new kind of failure. Is evolving it in this proposed direction or any other going to succeed? I think this proposal is good. It helps the "bouncing back and forth" problem. One problem is that Microsoft has different security models for "Modern" and legacy apps. (Never mind what kind of sense it makes to have a stronger and weaker app security model in the same OS.)

Here is a potential irony: Ubuntu Touch is an evolutionary approach to bringing a conventional implementation of the desktop metaphor to touch. I could see using an Ubuntu tablet. It probably won't be widely popular since it will have some touch-unfriendly legacy in it. But it might end up being a better evolutionary path than what Microsoft chose. But I'd know what I'm getting and probably be comfortable with it.

Re: Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

#86

Post by Zoomla »

PaulJoslin wrote: post #10

Am I right in thinking with this design you can only have one app as a point of focus at a time? So assuming I'm doing development, I can't be in my IDE, with a browser open on a particular stack overflow question, while having the app I'm debugging open in front of it all and some other app also in view showing diagnostics? Instead, I'd have to flick back and forth between the apps like a headless chicken? [Edit] Ac…

They need to make the desktop monitors as small as phone screens for this to be acceptable.

Re: Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

#87

Post by arethuza »

ericcumbee wrote: post #84
arethuza wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is even less appropriate on a server OS - I have no idea what they were thinking making Windows Server 2012 use the same touch oriented start menu replacement nightmare.... [Having to use a demo VM that has 2012 installed at the moment and I'm finding it incredibly annoying].

I think the Idea is that you wont use the GUI much on server instances. I am working through a Sharepoint MCSE right now. and the Server config and admin, your encouraged to use the Server Manager tool on another computer or the command line. Ideally on most installs the Full GUI is not installed. MS considers it best practice to use the Core install if at all possible. Followed by the Min Gui, and then if necessary…

"I think the Idea is that you wont use the GUI much on server instances"

Yes - but this one is a completely standalone demo VM from Microsoft with a pile of different products installed - so logging in directly and using the Screen Eating Menu From Hell is difficult to avoid.

Re: Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

#88

Post by philliphaydon »

gabemart wrote: post #41
Freaky wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been using 8 for about a year and have no problem with the start screen without a touch interface - the workflow is pretty much identical to 7: Press the Windows key and type part of the name of what you want, with the bonus that it's significantly faster at giving results. If you do end up having to select something in the menu, you now have more space to see what's available and modifying the layout to match your u…

> Been using 8 for about a year and have no problem with the start screen without a touch interface - the workflow is pretty much identical to 7: Press the Windows key and type part of the name of what you want, with the bonus that it's significantly faster at giving results. A full-screen menu appearing on top of whatever I am working on completely breaks my flow. It's immensely distracting to me. As a result, I lit…

I thought, wow, awesome, an Alfred alternative to windows.

- Install

- Type in visualstud... I get CALCULATOR...

- Uninstall...

Launchy has absolutely NOTHING on Windows 8 Key + typing.

Re: Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

#89

Post by Raphael »

alkonaut wrote: post #63

Manual window management isn't the perfect UI paradigm for anyone, regardless of input method. Being able to overlap by a few pixels isn't necessary for me. A simple way to see where window management should have gone is to look how it has changed within applications, where the resistance to change is lower. 15 years ago it was all MDI applications, where the idea that a doc has a window . Soon people realized that n…

Exactly. People need resizable panes, not overlapping windows.

Re: Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

#90

Post by vezzy-fnord »

FridayWithJohn wrote: post #14
spdy wrote: post #2

Am i the only one who does not like "touch" on a desktop/laptop. It is not the revolutionary input method that makes everything magical. I want to think in boxes (desktops) not a fluid streams of desktop space. We need something else for the desktop.

Agreed! Thankfully there is something else. Ubuntu baby!

This concept looks as if Canonical designed Windows, quite frankly.

If anything, it does borrow elements from the Android interface and modern DEs like Cinnamon.

I'll just stick to my window manager. There's something charming about their raw simplicity compared to the overt modern "glossy minimalist" interfaces of today.

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