win 8.1 Poll: Windows 8.1 Preview Experience (How do you like it?)

[BannanaNinja]

Still can't close metro apps without going back to said god awful start screen, scrolling to the left and then closing

 

The easiest way to close apps is to move your mouse into either left corner (top or bottom) and the list of recently used apps appears. You then middle click to close them. If you don't have a middle mouse button you click and hold and drag down. And this works from wherever you are. No need to go to the start screen to close apps.

[Studio384]

Yay the start button is back but wait.... clicking it takes us back to the god awful start screen instead of the apps menu. Fail 

 

Still can't close metro apps without going back to said god awful start screen, scrolling to the left and then closing

 

It was rumoured that shutting down the PC was going to be simplified.... did I miss something?

 

I see the visuals have improved slightly, but after been treated to Areo Glass in Win7, This is still ****.

The startbutton does what it did since Windows 95: bring you back to start. That's 18 years of fail.

 

Scrolling to the left? Anyway, where is it supposed to bring you? The Settings-app?

 

Start > Right click > Shut down

 

I don't get whay you mean with the last one: however, the only difference between Aero Glass and Aero Metro are the transparant and corners. And it has been like that for over 12 years and optional for over 18 years.

[spaceelf]

The easiest way to close Metro apps is to not close them at all, since they suspend on their own (which no previous version of Windows had the setup for.)  I don't get why people still get hung up on that.

 

Still can't close metro apps without going back to said god awful start screen, scrolling to the left and then closing

[zhangm Supervisor]

The issue I'm having is that the thumbnail switcher only hosts up to 9 apps on my screen, regardless of whether I have more open. This means that if I just leave apps open, it becomes harder (or impossible from that list) to switch to the one I want.

[Chris123NT]

The issue I'm having is that the thumbnail switcher only hosts up to 9 apps on my screen, regardless of whether I have more open. This means that if I just leave apps open, it becomes harder (or impossible from that list) to switch to the one I want.

Use Alt-Tab in that case.

[George P Global Moderator]

The issue I'm having is that the thumbnail switcher only hosts up to 9 apps on my screen, regardless of whether I have more open. This means that if I just leave apps open, it becomes harder (or impossible from that list) to switch to the one I want.

 

 

Yeah, I think they need to allow it to scroll like they did with the new tabs window in metro IE11 compared to the fixed tabs bar in IE10.  It shouldn't be limited in any way.

[Studio384]

In Windows 8.1, you can close apps COMPLETLY by draging them to the bottom side of your screen, then wat 1 second, the thumbnail of the app will change into the apps logo, as soon as that happens, you can release the mouse and the app will be closed.

[PGHammer]

I agree that we could see the classic control panel get the axe in time but I don't think it'll be soon.  There are lots of advanced option they still haven't even changed from their original Win9x days, old dialog windows etc.  Look at IE's internet options for example, that things been the same since IE5 I bet. 

 

It's going to take quite some time to redo all that and work it into the new PC Settings area, though I think if they do it then fine.  In the end it's best to have one area for things and not 2 or 3.  As for the desktop, nah, not going away but I expect more changes to it.  I think the systray will be replaced once they add a notification center/area as part of metro which I fully expect is going to happen.

 

Right now though I'm much more interested in the 4,000+ new APIs they've added to 8.1 and what developers can do with those as far as metro apps go.

GP007 - that is largely due to our (as users) insistence on backward-compatibility with how we have historically done things; why else did it take until Windows 8 for the Start menu to have its chop called?  The same applies to Enhanced Protected Mode - it can easily turn into a UAC gripefest.  (It is on by default in Windows Server - and has been since 2003 - due to folks expecting SERVER operating systems to be locked down that way; do that to a desktop or even workstation OS and users will kvetch.)

However, I'm neither griping OR kvetching - I'm simply enjoying.

[George P Global Moderator]

GP007 - that is largely due to our (as users) insistence on backward-compatibility with how we have historically done things; why else did it take until Windows 8 for the Start menu to have its chop called?  The same applies to Enhanced Protected Mode - it can easily turn into a UAC gripefest.  (It is on by default in Windows Server - and has been since 2003 - due to folks expecting SERVER operating systems to be locked down that way; do that to a desktop or even workstation OS and users will kvetch.)

However, I'm neither griping OR kvetching - I'm simply enjoying.

 

I get that, but at the same time, those old settings dialog boxes don't have much to do with backwards compatibility.   Nothing stops them from changing desktop IEs options into something new for example.    I just think it's going to take longer than some expect before they have everything in the new PC Settings section that they can drop Control Panel.  And I think that by the time we reach that point the desktop itself could just be a Win32 VM to run our old apps and nothing more.  If they keep adding more and more APIs to WinRT with each update then it shouldn't take long for it to be able to drive the same level of apps we're used to with Win32.

[Pulagatha]

Meh. The Start Button disappears after you press it and Microsoft is still insistent on you using their Metro apps. The scroll bar at the bottom of the Start Screen page doesn't need to be there. It overlaps with the Start Button. Maybe a small scroll bar right underneath the Start Screen with a glow that moves from left to right as you scroll? There needs to be windowed Metro apps (with a menu bar) and they need to reside in the task bar and not the (recent apps) bar on the left. Is it possible for the Charms options to be located in the task bar too?

[Dot Matrix]

^ Metro apps are not supposed to be "windowed" in the traditional sense.

[Noir Angel]

They won't. Ignoring the fact that it had issues working with Windows 8 features, Microsoft has built a branding image with live tiles. Windows Phone has them, XBox has them, SkyDrive has them, Windows NOT having them would be damaging to that brand. Remember, three screens and a cloud? That's this. That's why it's not coming back.

 

"I don't, however, believe that Microsoft is going to relent on the Start screen. The new app launcher does the job well enough, and live tiles are a genuinely useful capability. The tile design is taking on an important branding role across the company (being more or less shared across phone, tablet, PC, and console), and that unification makes any backtracking very unlikely. There are plenty of third-party Start menu implementations. If the issue is truly a deal-breaker, I would suggest that you investigate one of those."

 

- http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/what-does-windows-8-1-offer-to-desktop-die-hards/

 

It's hard to further damage a brand image that consumers already hate.

[johnporter29]

The only gripes I have is with the customisation of the Start Screen.

 

I have found that you can't easily place 4 "small" tiles in a line easily if you don't have a "wide" tile above them first even if you have a "large" tile it doesn't work. Also you can't have a line of "small" tiles and then a "wide" or "large" tile below without leaving a "small" tile high gap between them - Hope these gets fixed before release.

 

Other than that, loving 8.1

[Dashel]

The easiest way to close apps is to move your mouse into either left corner (top or bottom) and the list of recently used apps appears. You then middle click to close them. If you don't have a middle mouse button you click and hold and drag down. And this works from wherever you are. No need to go to the start screen to close apps.

I noticed this no longer works on 8.1 via touch.

 

Meh. The Start Button disappears after you press it and Microsoft is still insistent on you using their Metro apps. The scroll bar at the bottom of the Start Screen page doesn't need to be there. It overlaps with the Start Button. Maybe a small scroll bar right underneath the Start Screen with a glow that moves from left to right as you scroll? There needs to be windowed Metro apps (with a menu bar) and they need to reside in the task bar and not the (recent apps) bar on the left. Is it possible for the Charms options to be located in the task bar too?

On one hand I quite agree with the idea of more polished scroll notification.  On the other, driver support in Win8 is still spotty enough on touchpads I'd hate to be without the landing area.

[TPreston]

• The start screen looks a mess with the tiles being colored based on their icon color, Id prefer an option to set them all to the accent color
• Not a good idea using the accent color for anything other than labels in the new control panel.
• At least they added some eye candy to the start button to justify its waste of screen space

All in all its the same as windows 8 lots of new features for SMB/Enterprise/PowerUsers

[neufuse Veteran]

Anyone else unable to sign in with a local account? the only option it gives me during setup is make or sign in to a Microsoft account....

[George P Global Moderator]

Anyone else unable to sign in with a local account? the only option it gives me during setup is make or sign in to a Microsoft account....

 

 

There's another thread about that as well, you can fail the account login and it should show the option to make a local account, or once you reach that part disconnect from the internet and you get the local account option as well.

[neufuse Veteran]

There's another thread about that as well, you can fail the account login and it should show the option to make a local account, or once you reach that part disconnect from the internet and you get the local account option as well.

 

that's just ridiculous... makes testing in a domain annoying

[grayscale]

The only gripes I have is with the customisation of the Start Screen.

 

I have found that you can't easily place 4 "small" tiles in a line easily if you don't have a "wide" tile above them first even if you have a "large" tile it doesn't work. Also you can't have a line of "small" tiles and then a "wide" or "large" tile below without leaving a "small" tile high gap between them - Hope these gets fixed before release.

 

Other than that, loving 8.1

This. The way we can customize the position of the tiles can still be improved. Right now, we are still restricted with the size of the "medium" tile. You have to fill that spot first or have a bigger tile before you can place a tile on the other column or below it. This also prevents us from having 4 small tiles in a line as you mentioned or as the screenshot below shows, placing the Movie Moments tile a slot higher to cover the blank area.

[Dashel]

Its still an arranging grid, so the smallest grid size is still a medium tile.  You just have the option to subdivide it now, not make small rows of things.

[George P Global Moderator]

Any driver/firmware update to those on newer Intel atom hardware?  I still can't get this on my ativ smart pc tablet yet.

[grayscale]

Hmm, today I decided to try the Metro version of IE11 so I set it to be the default browser. For some reason, it still keeps on opening the desktop version.  What else do I need to do?

[George P Global Moderator]

Hmm, today I decided to try the Metro version of IE11 so I set it to be the default browser. For some reason, it still keeps on opening the desktop version.  What else do I need to do?

 

Where do you open links from?  I think they made it so that if you open a link from a app on the desktop then desktop IE opens, if it's a link inside a metro app then metro IE opens.   I'll have to fire up my VM and check.

[grayscale]

Where do you open links from?  I think they made it so that if you open a link from a app on the desktop then desktop IE opens, if it's a link inside a metro app then metro IE opens.   I'll have to fire up my VM and check.

No, I mean, opening a fresh session of IE and not just links.

[f0rk_b0mb]

If you have Neowin Forums pinned to your Start Screen, I just noticed the tile supports the Wide and Large tile sizes.

 

Screenshot (101).png

 

Is it a live tile? It would be really sweet if it showed the news feed. :p