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Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

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Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#141

Post by LukasMathis »

satyrnein wrote: post #113
LukasMathis wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another option would be to set the text caret inside the text box, but allow people to write anywhere, while the focus is on a text field. This is probably something where you'd have to do a ton of different prototypes, and see which one feels best.

Agreed that there are plenty of ideas that warrant prototyping, but I think there is special value in not having a text cursor to manage at all, similar to how touchscreens obviated mouse cursors for certain tasks.

Yes, if you can pull that off, it's a huge win.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#142

Post by LukasMathis »

tanzam75 wrote: post #126
joshvm wrote: post #115

Surely the comment about hardware variability is moot on the Surface. It's designed by Microsoft..

> Surely the comment about hardware variability is moot on the Surface. It's designed by Microsoft.. The Surface has a USB port. And that makes it an uncontrolled environment. For example, the article complains that Windows is "technically terrible", because "I suddenly started getting an error message about some DLL every time I restarted the Surface (which you sometimes have to do when you get updates, which you ge…

I did at one point plug a Logitech keyboard into the Surface, but I definitely did not intentionally install any Logitech drivers. It's something Windows put there by itself, only for it to become a problem later.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#143

Post by bad_user »

LukasMathis wrote: post #48
bad_user wrote: post #42

On using multiple apps for the same task, the author is completely right. However, it's also the reason for why I don't like Metro on the desktop, as I often need to look at more than 2 windows at the same time. For desktops, the split-screen concept in Metro is a huge step backwards, whereas for tablets it's a step forward. But here's why I hate the iPad and hope Windows RT never wins in the marketplace, as it share…

I'm thinking the natural progression of the split-screen mode would be a system-level tiling window manager. An advanced, easy-to-use version of what most IDEs implement to show their various panes.

Ubuntu's Unity does an interesting thing - dragging a window to the top panel maximizes the window, dragging it to the left/right borders will auto-tile it to that side of the screen, taking up either the whole vertical space or half of it.

It's very easy to arrange 2 windows side by side, or 4 windows in all 4 corners. And besides using mouse interactions that would work with screen touch gestures, it works with keyboard shortcuts too.

I'm also not convinced that having windows that can overlap is not desirable. Personally I like having windows that I can move around. Works great with multi monitor setups too. Have a window opened on this screen and you need to move it to the other screen? You just drag it from here to there.

The only problem with draggable windows on mobile devices is that you don't have enough screen real-estate, so having a top border for dragging is wasteful, or if that top border is too small it's painful to target it with your finger. But touch gestures can work - as in, a two or three finger swipe could mean a drag, or whatever.

I'm all for wheel reinvention and new UI paradigms, but when introducing something new, it has to be better and not inferior to the old UI paradigm.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#144

Post by dagw »

leviathant wrote: post #8
bunderbunder wrote: post #2

's funny; one of the screenshots is used to call out the Charms bar as an example of great UI. For me - as a user of Windows 8 on a desktop - it has become something of an icon of just how poor Windows 8's UI is. On a tablet, you swipe it out from the left edge of the screen. Makes sense - so much sense that Apple copied the idea in iOS 7. On a PC, you bring out the charms bar by frustratedly wiggling your mouse agai…

I've found the least annoying way to bring up charms on my desktop computer is Win+C.

Do you know if you can disable bringing it up with the mouse?

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#145

Post by blueskin_ »

There will always be edge cases. Someone using an end user read-only device to create content and do real work is like a dancing animal - everyone is interested for the fact that it can do it at all, not for the quality of what it does compared to a human. Using Windows 8 or any tablet/phone for something serious is the same way.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#146

Post by com2kid »

satyrnein wrote: post #29

I definitely concur about the handwriting recognition being terrific, but the interface being terrible. I wrote a little prototype of how I thought it should work a few months ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhn6EdN3Vvw

Making special ink only controls is actually pretty easy, I've seen AWESOME demos all the way back to the original Windows XP Tablet PC Edition days.

The real problem is making inking work with any arbitrary control! That is what the current input panel is for. Remember it has to work anyplace anyone could ever enter text, wherever a cursor appears. So that includes Bob's Janky Control Factory DLL version 1.32a last updated on October 3rd of 2008.

If you search MSDN, there are plenty of examples of some really awesome ink enabled controls! Designing a system for ink first would be a lot of fun! I remember controls published for web pages that supporting inking, forums you could just draw right into the reply box on. Really cool stuff.

There is also usability concerns, not everyone has hand writing small enough to fit inside of a single line input box! Increasing the area to outside the box only works until the tip has been picked up, if you make the user always start the inking inside the box maybe something could be worked out, but that'd be a very unnatural way of writing.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#147

Post by lloeki »

fumar wrote: post #15
nextstep wrote: post #4

"There are artists who draw on iPads, and musicians who make music on iPads, and writers who write novels on iPads, and movie makers who cut their movies on iPads. But the fact that you have to point to these people, the fact that there are articles about these people, shows that they’re unusual." Unusual in a relative sense, the same way artists and musicians and movie makers are unusual in any segment of society. T…

Last summer I participated in a startup accelerator in Chicago. My Macbook died in the first week! At the time, I didn't have the funds to purchase another Apple machine. Luckily, my girlfriend had recently purchased a Surface RT with the keyboard cover. I did not think that the tablet would be able to replace a laptop for "serious" work, but it did. There are a couple of things that allowed me to do this. First, a U…

> I could have Excel and a browser window open at the same time.

My developer coworkers — whether on Linux or Windows — multitask by ALT-TAB'ing between maximized windows (so, basically fullscreen). If they have multiple monitors, they use each one with a full-screen app. They never use Aero snap, they never have floating windows. The first thing they do when opening a program is double-click on the titlebar (possibly putting it on the monitor of their choosing before).

Conversely I can't work without Mission Control, and use Moom liberally (~ Aero snap on steroids)

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#148

Post by ksk »

rudin wrote: post #137
fumar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last summer I participated in a startup accelerator in Chicago. My Macbook died in the first week! At the time, I didn't have the funds to purchase another Apple machine. Luckily, my girlfriend had recently purchased a Surface RT with the keyboard cover. I did not think that the tablet would be able to replace a laptop for "serious" work, but it did. There are a couple of things that allowed me to do this. First, a U…

You have posted 10 positive Microsoft reviews in the past year which corresponds to approximately 10%-20% of your posts. Are you paid to do this or just really into the company?

So are you paid to question why people like ms products by their competitors? Accusing people like this is rather childish.. unless your 'proof' takes the form "someone likes a product which nobody is supposed to like.."

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#149

Post by [deleted] »

ksk wrote: post #148
rudin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have posted 10 positive Microsoft reviews in the past year which corresponds to approximately 10%-20% of your posts. Are you paid to do this or just really into the company?

So are you paid to question why people like ms products by their competitors? Accusing people like this is rather childish.. unless your 'proof' takes the form "someone likes a product which nobody is supposed to like.."

[deleted]

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#150

Post by ksk »

rbanffy wrote: post #130
fumar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last summer I participated in a startup accelerator in Chicago. My Macbook died in the first week! At the time, I didn't have the funds to purchase another Apple machine. Luckily, my girlfriend had recently purchased a Surface RT with the keyboard cover. I did not think that the tablet would be able to replace a laptop for "serious" work, but it did. There are a couple of things that allowed me to do this. First, a U…

> I was able to create great decks on Powerpoint, manage large Excel files, use the Google Suite, and multitask like on a laptop The fact we consider such uses to be stretching the abilities of a 5-core 32-bit 500 megahertz processor coupled to half a dozen gigabytes of RAM and attached to gigabytes of blazing fast storage, that displays data using a multi-core SIMD supercomputer just for pushing pixels speak a lot a…

>With this kind of computer power, our parents designed Hydrogen bombs, ICBMs, supersonic fighters and spaceships.

You can still write bare-metal code and run it on modern hardware with a thin OS that has functionality on par with the ones from that era.

Question is, why would you want to? What specific tangible development cost/time (or other) benefits do you get out of it?

>Now we make great Powerpoint decks...

Powerpoint is also a vector art editor, a word processor, a spreadsheet tool, a multimedia player, a language translator, a restricted web browser, a script engine, etc, etc.

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