win8 ModernUI without Touch: Why It Is Relevant

[Athernar]

With voice control you don't even need search, and we had that before Vista iirc! So maybe Windows XP is the future! (I almost died making that joke, please never remind me of this moment.)

All jokes aside, a combination of search and voice activation will likely be the future. In that regard ST:TNG was dead on.

I don't even know how it's jarring. It's been more natural to me than the start menu after a few days with it. So I guess we'll agree to disagree on that one.

It's a full screen transition to a fundamentally different UX, by nature that is going to be disruptive to a certain degree. When you add that to the fact that having that full screen menu is a waste, it makes moving from 7 unappealing.

And when we transition to higher settings which we can do already, the apps will still be broken.

Apps get broken over time anyway, the ones that are worthwhile will get updated with support for high DPI.

And..umm...they did write a simple replacement. It's the Grineer! (err, nevermind.) It's a very simple, easy to configure start menu without the garbage folders and uninstall program links barely anyone ever needs. And the two seconds you spend in there before you launch a program totally interrupt your workflow! (for less time than you'd spend looking for the same program in the start menu or searching for it)

At any rate, we've said our piece already and I don't feel the need to do the 'I hate it' 'I love it' 'I hate it' 'I love it' thing, so I'm done.

Have fun all. :)

See, that's the thing. That simple little menu in a desktop context would of been so trivial to develop and would have killed 80% of the negativity towards Windows 8 from the start. (Hah!)

It's unfortunate we have sycophants like a certain specific poster in this thread that harm Microsoft through their mindless devotion and praise.

[spaceelf]

It's unfortunate we have sycophants like a certain specific poster in this thread that harm Microsoft through their mindless devotion and praise.

You antagonize him, he antagonizes you. I mostly agree with him, but I'm all about personal preference. If you prefer 7 stick with 7, it's a fantastic OS. 8 is just better.

I think some of the anti 8 sentiment is due to fade over time as it's just 'me too' crap ('I heard it sucks so it sucks') that is pretty common these days. Even Vista had that problem...it eventually grew to be a very solid OS, but it took a long time to shake that initial reputation.

[Athernar]

You antagonize him, he antagonizes you. I mostly agree with him, but I'm all about personal preference. If you prefer 7 stick with 7, it's a fantastic OS. 8 is just better.

I don't have any issue debating points or even alternative opinions, but pure fanboyism/sycophantry helps no one - arguably it only hurts all parties involved, including Microsoft.

I think some of the anti 8 sentiment is due to fade over time as it's just 'me too' crap ('I heard it sucks so it sucks') that is pretty common these days. Even Vista had that problem...it eventually grew to be a very solid OS, but it took a long time to shake that initial reputation.

Even a perceived negative OS release will become accepted with enough time, just look at the U-Turn on XP. 8 however doesn't have XPs advantage of being the successor to 9x/ME, and 7 largely has tech-parity.

[spaceelf]

Even a perceived negative OS release will become accepted with enough time, just look at the U-Turn on XP. 8 however doesn't have XPs advantage of being the successor to 9x/ME, and 7 largely has tech-parity.

I don't expect 8 to gain 7s traction because of the Android/iOS encroachment and simply because it's new. Most people don't jump to the new thing right away. I don't expect that to change by Windows 42 unless MS adopts a subscription method, which wouldn't surprise me (though I'm sure it'll be a while.)

(Not to mention 7 being the most all around reliable OS MS has ever had. It was the first one I was entirely happy with.)

[PGHammer]

Considering a good chunk of win32 apps still use GDI, I disagree. It's great to have a properly accelerated program that actually looks decent to boot.

What does security have to do with hardware? You lost me.

He is talking about security in terms of SOFTWARE - not hardware. The primary reason for Win32 (back in the beginning of Windows NT) was so badly-behaving applications could not bring down the rest of the operating system. Despite Windows 95 being built upon the vestiges of MS-DOS, because it also supported Win32, as did Windows NT, in addition to Win16 (as Windows 3.1 did) and Win32s (the infamous transition between Win16 and Win32), it was the ideal OS to show the masses the benefits of Win32 over either Win32s or Win16 from a software-security or even software-robustness standpoint. However, computing advanced so far, and so quickly, that Windows 9x/Win16 simply could not keep up; I never (as in ever) ran Windows ME as a home OS; instead I crossgraded from Windows 98 Second Edition to Windows 2000 Professional. (I use the "crossgrade" term as there was no officially, or even unofficially, supported way to go from 98SE to 2000 Professional - a clean install was necessary AND a reinstall of your applications and games.) It was Windows 2000 Professional, not XP, that first showed how solid a purely Win32 OS, complete with TCP/IP, could be as a gaming OS. And it was entirely due to robustness (the combination of software security and outright stability) that was the linchpin. However, that same stability also brought with it a return of sloppy coding practices, which has returned to plague even Win32 to the present day. Hence the need for an API that discouraged sloppy coding, while remaining able to be coded rather easily -.NET was merely the first step toward that.

[chrisj1968]

Maybe because ModernUI doesn't need to overlap Win32?

I never said (in fact, I don't see anyone saying) that Win32 is necessarily a *bad* API - I have said, however, that it is a very static and porky API.

The app or even application model for ModernUI is simplistic and concise by design - yet it allows for control options difficult, if not impossible, to implement in the Win32 API.

ModernUI is also very much a 1.0 API - how many developers are actually daring to write ModernUI apps that are desktop-friendly (or, by and large, even desktop-usable)?

I pointed out ModernUI's glaring weaknesses compared to Win32 - full-screen by default and an unfriendliness to higher resolutions.

However, there can be situations where a ModernUI app that plays to the strengths of ModernUI - yet is desktop-friendly - can work. (MetroIRC and MetroTwit are prime examples.)

My issue with a lot of the trolls (and a large number of the critics) is that they are unwilling to give ModernUI an honest evaluation - even compare the apps directly to ther Win32 equivalents. (Notice that I said "evaluate" - not adopt.)

I'm not asking that everyone adopt ModernUI whole-hog - that WOULD be silly (and hypocritical, given that a mere two ModernUI apps, as opposed to games, successfully passed through my gauntlet). Don't assume that ModernUI apps are automatically unsuitable merely due to the API. Evaluate and compare them honestly - including to the Win32 API competition. There is no reason at all to fear ModernUI, or the apps that use it - even without touch.

Athernar, look over all the criticism of ModernUI - not merely the apps, but even the API itself. What's been the overweening thread of ALL the criticism of ModernUI? Touch-friendliness.

Touch-friendliness matters not a whit to me as a user for the rather obvious reason that my desktop doesn't have any touch support. None. It hasn't had any, and likely won't - ever.

I started this thread to point out that ModernUI is relevant to even those of us that have no touch support in our hardware at all - including desktop users. Why cut off your nose to spite your face?

I have used the modern UI and desktop both. The issue I saw was, modernUI seems kinda cool. the issue i take with it however is, it is essentially separate from the rest of the system. sorry for my analogy but, going into the modern UI reminded me of how I go into the media center edition. it is separate all together from the desktop. I guess this begs me to ask; "if they wanted people to predominately use the modern UI, why even have a desktop? I get the feeling MS couldn't pull the trigger to fully get rid of the desktop.

they could have made a separate tablet version of for surface pro and RT and then a desktop version for those users.

[Dashel]

I mostly agree with him, but I'm all about personal preference.

I think some of the anti 8 sentiment is due to fade over time as it's just 'me too' crap ('I heard it sucks so it sucks') that is pretty common these days. Even Vista had that problem...it eventually grew to be a very solid OS, but it took a long time to shake that initial reputation.

I don't see how that works considering Derp is anything but 'for' personal preference (which is really what ALL of this boils down to, a segment of fanboys that refuse to empathize, or even understand, the criticisms involved; that foremost do not want choices that they see as 'clinging to old ways'. Nor are the vast number of criticisms, unlike their apologies, 'me too'. Unless you are talking about Mac/Droid folk and there is no helping them anyway.

You yourself make the same biased mistake with your comments on the Taskbar Screen (TS). You show you don't care enough to understand the complaint because it doesn't bother you.

Per the OT, from the horse's mouth for 8.1:

Desktop and Start Screen

Improvements have been made to better support users who prefer a mouse and keyboard experience to access applications.

[spaceelf]

You yourself make the same biased mistake with your comments on the Taskbar Screen (TS). You show you don't care enough to understand the complaint because it doesn't bother you.

I don't care about much of anything, why should I care about that?

(Though I disagree on your 'not understanding' point.)

[Athernar]

I don't care about much of anything, why should I care about that?

(Though I disagree on your 'not understanding' point.)

Forgive me if I'm mistaking you with someone else, but you seem to care very deeply when it comes to what graphics API version a game engine uses.

And that's something you wouldn't even notice unless explicitly told.

[spaceelf]

Forgive me if I'm mistaking you with someone else, but you seem to care very deeply when it comes to what graphics API version a game engine uses.

And that's something you wouldn't even notice unless explicitly told.

I notice the inaccuracy of the special effects. They tend to mask that with very fast ones now. I notice that the games run slower than they should on modern systems. I notice the graphical errors that aren't necessarily common anymore but on faraway objects like mountains still occur. I notice they're generally optimized for dual core systems and don't bother using much beyond that (not always true anymore, but often enough.) I notice how few special effects they use at all so they don't run afoul of the limits on them. The newer global lighting systems also make a difference when you see them in action.

I didn't say there's nothing I care about. Progress is one of those things, and it's been severely hamstrung (in large part because of the economic meltdown I'm sure.)

[Athernar]

I notice the inaccuracy of the special effects. They tend to mask that with very fast ones now. I notice that the games run slower than they should on modern systems. I notice the graphical errors that aren't necessarily common anymore but on faraway objects like mountains still occur. I notice they're generally optimized for dual core systems and don't bother using much beyond that (not always true anymore, but often enough.) I notice how few special effects they use at all so they don't run afoul of the limits on them. The newer global lighting systems also make a difference when you see them in action.

I didn't say there's nothing I care about. Progress is one of those things, and it's been severely hamstrung (in large part because of the economic meltdown I'm sure.)

Without derailing this thread into a back-and-forth about 3D graphics, I'll end this line of discussion by remarking that the quality of graphical effects are largely independent of the graphics API, budgeting and optimisation around dual-core systems are a symptom of being held back by consoles.

The point being is that the reality of the situation is that the graphics API is generally a very tiny thing when it comes to the end user and you're not going to notice it. And yet from my observation you seem to be very passionate about it despite that.

Anyway, enough of that tangent.

[spaceelf]

I'll end this line of discussion by remarking that the quality of graphical effects are largely independent of the graphics API

It really isn't. Almost everything I talked about is an issue with d3d9...and I didn't even get into the tesselation/DirectCompute stuff. And assuming endusers don't notice is silly...they play the games they want to despite it, but it is easy to see.

And yes, a lot of it is being held back by consoles and the Vista/d3d>9 break.

Fair enough, though. Another time.

[Athernar]

It really isn't. Almost everything I talked about is an issue with d3d9...and I didn't even get into the tesselation/DirectCompute stuff. And assuming endusers don't notice is silly...they play the games they want to despite it, but it is easy to see.

Tesselation can be achieved under DirectX 9, it's just not as "easy" to implement. GPGPU could also be done prior to DirectCompute and was leveraged with tech like CUDA / OpenCL.

That's the point I'm trying to make, the graphics API doesn't have a direct impact on image quality, it just makes things easier.

[spaceelf]

That's the point I'm trying to make, the graphics API doesn't have a direct impact on image quality, it just makes things easier.

In some ways, certainly, in other ways it does. Shader Model 3 is all D3D9 has, and those changes do have a direct impact.

Anyway I don't really feel like spending days debating the issue when I've already spent years, so stopping now.