MS Modifies black maximized borders

[boogerjones]

its not as simple as a check box though is it? :unsure:

Yes, it is. Box check = black maximized windows. Box unchecked = transparent maximized windows.

[1Frothy]

I also hate (with an unrivalled passion) the terrible stripes that appear in the transparencies, I have glass windows at home - no stipes here. :p

I guess it will be up to Guru's like em3 to "fix" what Microsoft are forcing on us with Aero.

[Slimy]

Yes, it is. Box check = black maximized windows. Box unchecked = transparent maximized windows.

No, it isn't. I don't code operating systems, but even I know it's not that easy. And even if it was, MS has other things to focus on: bugs that affect everyone, not just 1% of the user base that is whining about the colour of 1/30th of their monitor that they will probably end up theming within a month. Not to mention, we're between RC1 and RC2, a change like that can create new bugs too.

[jimbo11883]

If you ask me, there should be the following radio buttons in the color customization dialog...

Appearance of maximized windows and the taskbar:

( ) "Black" titlebars and taskbar (Default)

( ) Transparent titlebars and taskbar

( ) Opaque titlebars and taskbar

I personally would go for the third option. Keep the colors and look the same, just go from transparent to opaque.

[Tech_Dude_5000]

What do you think about the close, maximize and minimize buttons? I remember seeing in the 4xxx bulids some had ^ V for them..... i know its not a big deal but what do you guys think?

[boogerjones]

No, it isn't. I don't code operating systems, but even I know it's not that easy. And even if it was, MS has other things to focus on: bugs that affect everyone, not just 1% of the user base that is whining about the colour of 1/30th of their monitor that they will probably end up theming within a month. Not to mention, we're between RC1 and RC2, a change like that can create new bugs too.

First of all, it's not a bug. It's an annoyance that's bothering the **** out of a large number of Vista testers. Second, there are a lot of assumptions when the blogger says "1% of 1% of 1% are the ones whining about it." Third, this can't be that difficult to do because the blog says that they ARE changing it (only slightly, though). And color change introducing more bugs? You're crazy! All they have to do is keep the aero glass on maximized windows. If they hadn't messed with it in the first place, there wouldn't be any changes to make at all.

[Sn4k36]

The only thing i wanted microsoft to do with this black taskbar was give a good enough option just to change it's color to whatever we want... Since it was the only thing that u can't change the color for.. I'm not sure about the sidebar since i find that the sidebars are more dead now a days then anything..

[-Dave-]

now lets get them to fix that darn font box, and the wordpad icons!!!!!

[Ambroos]

(Probably) new taskbar style:

(Probably) new sidebar style

(Probably) new start menu style

All images are from microsoft-

-Don't blame me if they aren't what it's going to be, and remember they are quite old! But still i like them more than the current style

[nemo]

I can't believe you still think they aren't doing their best. I want my window to be 6 inches thick and white. Joe Blow wants it completely transparent. MS can't listen to every beta tester and give them what they want. Did you even read the blog?

Who says MS has only changed one thing? :sleep:

I can't believe you still think they aren't doing their best. I want my window to be 6 inches thick and white. Joe Blow wants it completely transparent. MS can't listen to every beta tester and give them what they want. Did you even read the blog?

Who says MS has only changed one thing? :sleep:

They *ARENT* doing their best, and you can't honestly sit there and believe that they are. If I have my windows set to X color, when I maximize my window, it should look EXACTLY the same. It should be the same color, same shade, same everything. In WindowsXP, when you maximize my windows, they don't turn black to "focus on the content" do they?

If they want to use that excuse because they say if aero glass is enabled, you'll see through the transparent titlebar and lose focus... then um... DISABLE TRANSPARENCY. There is no need for the black in the first place.

If they WERE doing their best, they would give the user the choice of what they want. How it should be.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't have waited until MAY to release BETA2, which was at best, a pre-alpha release.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't have taken 5 years to release Vista.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't say that every screw-up in Vista is because of time, money, or priorities.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't have given Vista less than a year for developing, testing, bug-fixing, and releasing it.

[-T- Member]

wow this is a lot of fuss over nothing, I dunno about most people but when I maximise a window, it's to look at whats in that window, not the titlebar. I probably would not have even noticed that they changed anything unless it was pointed out to me. However if people really must have it transparent, why not just manually size the window to fill the screen, doing that leave the titlebar transparent.

[rjtd]

I hate the black, but I hate even more the way they do it.

If only they fade the window to black or something.

But has they do it, it looks very unpolished. You maximize a window and dang, black everywhere.

Also, why the hell do they turn the taskbar black, and turn off the transparency of it?

[Sartoris]

Hopefully there will be a uxtheme.dll type patch for Vista in the near future that will let us customize this however we want.

[M118LR]

They *ARENT* doing their best, and you can't honestly sit there and believe that they are. If I have my windows set to X color, when I maximize my window, it should look EXACTLY the same. It should be the same color, same shade, same everything. In WindowsXP, when you maximize my windows, they don't turn black to "focus on the content" do they?

If they want to use that excuse because they say if aero glass is enabled, you'll see through the transparent titlebar and lose focus... then um... DISABLE TRANSPARENCY. There is no need for the black in the first place.

If they WERE doing their best, they would give the user the choice of what they want. How it should be.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't have waited until MAY to release BETA2, which was at best, a pre-alpha release.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't have taken 5 years to release Vista.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't say that every screw-up in Vista is because of time, money, or priorities.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't have given Vista less than a year for developing, testing, bug-fixing, and releasing it.

Maybe they know that you are not smart enough to choose for yourself. So they have to do it for you.

[zeta]

They *ARENT* doing their best, and you can't honestly sit there and believe that they are. If I have my windows set to X color, when I maximize my window, it should look EXACTLY the same. It should be the same color, same shade, same everything. In WindowsXP, when you maximize my windows, they don't turn black to "focus on the content" do they?

If they want to use that excuse because they say if aero glass is enabled, you'll see through the transparent titlebar and lose focus... then um... DISABLE TRANSPARENCY. There is no need for the black in the first place.

If they WERE doing their best, they would give the user the choice of what they want. How it should be.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't have waited until MAY to release BETA2, which was at best, a pre-alpha release.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't have taken 5 years to release Vista.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't say that every screw-up in Vista is because of time, money, or priorities.

If they WERE doing their best, they wouldn't have given Vista less than a year for developing, testing, bug-fixing, and releasing it.

Ok, I'll take the bait.

Hey, maybe they *should* give the user the choice of what they want. I mean, there's only a few hundred million users out there, and clearly, everyone should be able to have it *their* way. Cause this is Burger King. That way, Windows can add options willy-nilly and end up with a million different options that 99% of the people will never use and clutter up all the control panels. Then Windows will be really good and take another 2 years just so all the options can be completely written, internationalized, tested, debugged, etc. Every time you add an option, you increase the number of codepaths that need to be tested by a lot.

Second of all, I don't think you actually bothered reading the blog post. It's not just that people will see through the transparency--the primary idea here was to use the letterbox effect to draw people's eyes to the content. Maybe you think it should do this or do that. Good for you. I'm sorry that you don't like it, and that it ruins your nice idea of what the interface should or shouldn't look like.

The last 3 points. Well, I'm not sure I understand, because points 3 and 5 seem to be in conflict. We've given it 5 years =)

Finally, for people who suggested the fade: think about what you're asking. If you want it to fade to black in the same time it takes the window to maximize, the fade time is going to be instantaneous--i.e. what happens now. Ok, you want it to fade slowly--now it's distracting that your window is changing colors after it's maximized. Why is it doing that!? Fine, we'll put a maximize animation in along with the fade. Ok, now window maximizing feels sluggish. Ok, let's make it as fast as the minimize animation. Gee, I don't think a 0.1 second fade works very well. &($#$(* Let's just remove the animation and fade, because anything else is just too distracting.

P.S. for all you people who are complaining, a much more observant complain would have been this: if I maximize a window on a display that my taskbar is not on, it still turns the taskbar black. The taskbar should remain transparent if there are no maximized windows on the same display as the taskbar.

[nemo]

Ok, I'll take the bait.

Hey, maybe they *should* give the user the choice of what they want. I mean, there's only a few hundred million users out there, and clearly, everyone should be able to have it *their* way. Cause this is Burger King. That way, Windows can add options willy-nilly and end up with a million different options that 99% of the people will never use and clutter up all the control panels. Then Windows will be really good and take another 2 years just so all the options can be completely written, internationalized, tested, debugged, etc. Every time you add an option, you increase the number of codepaths that need to be tested by a lot.

Second of all, I don't think you actually bothered reading the blog post. It's not just that people will see through the transparency--the primary idea here was to use the letterbox effect to draw people's eyes to the content. Maybe you think it should do this or do that. Good for you. I'm sorry that you don't like it, and that it ruins your nice idea of what the interface should or shouldn't look like.

The last 3 points. Well, I'm not sure I understand, because points 3 and 5 seem to be in conflict. We've given it 5 years =)

Finally, for people who suggested the fade: think about what you're asking. If you want it to fade to black in the same time it takes the window to maximize, the fade time is going to be instantaneous--i.e. what happens now. Ok, you want it to fade slowly--now it's distracting that your window is changing colors after it's maximized. Why is it doing that!? Fine, we'll put a maximize animation in along with the fade. Ok, now window maximizing feels sluggish. Ok, let's make it as fast as the minimize animation. Gee, I don't think a 0.1 second fade works very well. &($#$(* Let's just remove the animation and fade, because anything else is just too distracting.

P.S. for all you people who are complaining, a much more observant complain would have been this: if I maximize a window on a display that my taskbar is not on, it still turns the taskbar black. The taskbar should remain transparent if there are no maximized windows on the same display as the taskbar.

Adding three options (Turn black (or a selected color), Turn off transparency, or Do Nothing) I think would pretty much fit everyone's needs. That isn't willy-nilly, or a million different options. I can guarantee if nothing was done, when Vista was released and people began using it, MS would get plenty of calls asking why their window is changing to black when they set it to Red, or orange, or green, or pink. Taking 2 years to internationalize three options? That shouldn't happen... But yeah... it is Vista, so I wouldn't be surprised.

Yes, I read the blog post, and if you check the topic in the shell revealed forums, I have posted there too. I know what the purpose of turning the window black was. I don't care what the purpose was. I have my Aero set to Reddish color. I DO NOT want them black. I want Aero the color I picked, not Microsoft. Maximized windows have worked fine since 3.1, why do they need to introduce this "letter box" bull**** 14 years later?

For points 3 and 5... XP was released 5 years ago, they "supposedly" began working on Vista before that. However, to me, it seems like they sat around with their thumbs up their asses until Beta 2 was released in MAY of 2006. Beta 2 was such a debacle they needed to get as much feedback as possible, and that's when they started to actually begin really working on Vista. That's what I meant... I guess it was kind of confusing :blush:

And as for the fade/animation type thing... I think that the window could be able to have a quick maximize animation... then after it was completely maximized, it could have a nice soothing fade to the black, or whatever color it is being faded to.

And your P.S. that's been complained about too. :) Don't worry, the MS teams knows all about it. :p

[1Frothy]

The last thing I will say in this thread is that it's very brave for Microsoft to have launched the Shell Revealed site. I think the feedback they are getting may be not what they totally expected but it is a wake up call for Microsoft over its Interface.

[Digitalx]

what they should do is just make the glass themeing program able to change colour for complete aero interface so you can change the start menu and taskbar and windows and boarders to any colour you wish with hue and saturation

[freeeekyyy]

Adding three options (Turn black (or a selected color), Turn off transparency, or Do Nothing) I think would pretty much fit everyone's needs. That isn't willy-nilly, or a million different options. I can guarantee if nothing was done, when Vista was released and people began using it, MS would get plenty of calls asking why their window is changing to black when they set it to Red, or orange, or green, or pink. Taking 2 years to internationalize three options? That shouldn't happen... But yeah... it is Vista, so I wouldn't be surprised.

Yes, I read the blog post, and if you check the topic in the shell revealed forums, I have posted there too. I know what the purpose of turning the window black was. I don't care what the purpose was. I have my Aero set to Reddish color. I DO NOT want them black. I want Aero the color I picked, not Microsoft. Maximized windows have worked fine since 3.1, why do they need to introduce this "letter box" bull**** 14 years later?

For points 3 and 5... XP was released 5 years ago, they "supposedly" began working on Vista before that. However, to me, it seems like they sat around with their thumbs up their asses until Beta 2 was released in MAY of 2006. Beta 2 was such a debacle they needed to get as much feedback as possible, and that's when they started to actually begin really working on Vista. That's what I meant... I guess it was kind of confusing :blush:

And as for the fade/animation type thing... I think that the window could be able to have a quick maximize animation... then after it was completely maximized, it could have a nice soothing fade to the black, or whatever color it is being faded to.

And your P.S. that's been complained about too. :) Don't worry, the MS teams knows all about it. :p

Testosterone overload?

I imagine you punching the air and screaming at your monitor.

It's not that big a deal, it's just a color.

[+Elі Subscriber²]

For what I read, the change won't even be very noticeable on the default color scheme, So I'm not expecting anything drastic at all regarding the black borders when maximized.

[nemo]

Testosterone overload?

I imagine you punching the air and screaming at your monitor.

It's not that big a deal, it's just a color.

Go read the shellrevealed forums... Go read Microsoft's response to everything that is said... and then you'll understand why I, as well as many other people are ****ed off with MS and Vista.

[Tech_Dude_5000]

(Probably) new taskbar style:

(Probably) new sidebar style

(Probably) new start menu style

All images are from microsoft-

-Don't blame me if they aren't what it's going to be, and remember they are quite old! But still i like them more than the current style

See thats what they should do. its one of their concepts and they SHOULD folow it.

[Long]

There's a screenshot of it: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061005/...aximize-border/

[1Frothy]

There's a screenshot of it: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061005/...aximize-border/

(Y) Thanks for posting that Long, that's a nice improvement Microsoft have made.

[Veedems Veteran]

Adding three options (Turn black (or a selected color), Turn off transparency, or Do Nothing) I think would pretty much fit everyone's needs. That isn't willy-nilly, or a million different options. ...

His point was that this isn't going to be the only feature people complain about or love. In the end, the entire way the OS works has to be a compromise. Whether it's the color of a window or the way files are indexed, it's all a compromise. If MS were to give people what they want, there'd be 3 options for the transparency and then two or three for every other little nit pick aspect to the OS.