Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Looks interesting. I'll read this in a little bit.
Reading the topic title reminded me of something I thought of a little while ago, that the Windows 95 explorer (particularly with the toolbar and explorer sidebar enabled) looks very similar to the modern Mac OS X Finder. It's funny considering how bloated the Windows explorer has become over the years (particularly since Windows 98).
One thing that has always ground my gears about Windows is that Microsoft has this odd policy of always introducing UI changes to each new version of Windows just for the sake of it being "different" rather than the changes being actually useful. In other words, the principle seems to be "a new version of Windows must be visibly different to justify people buying it" (rather than, say, "a new version of Windows must be better to justify people buying it").
Sometimes the changes are actually for the better, once you get over the resistance to change. However, often the changes are for the worse. And the major problem? Quite often these changes end up being permanent, appearing in all subsequent versions of Windows forever, without any setting to use the old behavior (for whatever reason) and, what's worse, other producers will often copy these bad ideas (to third-party Windows programs, and sometimes to even other operating systems).
These are often minor things, but they can be pretty annoying. For example, in Windows 3 you could pop up the context menu (basically anywhere that supported a context menu) with the right mouse button and then, keeping the button pressed, drag to the desired menu entry, and release the button. The entry would then be activated. This was especially handy for a "power user" especially in situations where you needed the first or second entry (most prominent example: The "back" entry in a web browser's context menu).
But no, they had to change this for the worse. Now the context menu only appears when you release the right mouse button, hence requiring you to perform two clicks to make a selection. (Yes, a small thing, but it still annoys the hell out of me even to this day!)
The worst thing? Many third-party programs (such as web browsers) started copying this bad idea, and even some linux/unix window managers. Luckily the current KDE as well as MacOS X use the better method.
(Not related to Microsoft or Windows per se, but at some point web browsers started to completely destroy the "power user" capabilities of the context menu by making the contents of the menu change depending on which part of the page you click. This was extremely annoying when there was no "back" when you happened to click eg. on an image or link. Who ever thought this was a good idea? Since then I have mapped "back" to a thumb button of the mouse.)
Speaking of changing menu contents, one of the most braindead ideas ever to surface this earth was when Microsoft decided to implement changing menus in Windows ME (IIRC). No longer were the contents of menus fixed (thus you being able to select what you want from "muscle memory"), but the contents of menus could change seemingly at random. What was the second entry the last time you selected it might be the first entry the next time. I really can't understand what were they thinking. I think it tells how braindead idea this was that they subsequently quietly dropped this enormous misfeature from subsequent versions of Windows. (OTOH I haven't really checked if it can be turned on somewhere eg. in Windows XP.)
(Disclaimer: I'm not claiming that Microsoft is the only company doing these kinds of things.)
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Warp wrote:
Speaking of changing menu contents, one of the most braindead ideas ever to surface this earth was when Microsoft decided to implement changing menus in Windows ME (IIRC). No longer were the contents of menus fixed (thus you being able to select what you want from "muscle memory"), but the contents of menus could change seemingly at random. What was the second entry the last time you selected it might be the first entry the next time. I really can't understand what were they thinking. I think it tells how braindead idea this was that they subsequently quietly dropped this enormous misfeature from subsequent versions of Windows. (OTOH I haven't really checked if it can be turned on somewhere eg. in Windows XP.)
You actually had that in previous versions of Windows if you turned it on with TweakUI. And when they made it the new default, you could turn it off with TweakUI.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Reads less like a researched article but more like a subjective soapbox.
Beginning an article about UIs with Windows 3 is somewhat laughable, if you consider where they started, and where MS copied their ideas from. (Not saying the other major UI developers didn't get "inspiration" left and right, but during the 80s/early 90s MS was usually the last one to get a feature everyone else considered to be standard. Like you said, win95 was the first one that could truly replace DOS for you, which was a state others had achieved 10 years earlier.)
And btw, Trinity is not exclusively a religious concept.
Noun, trinity (plural trinities)
* A group or set of three people or things; triad; trio; trine.
* The state of being three; threeness.
Not sure what's wrong with that name for a project that maintains version 3 of KDE.
If some religious zealot really must assign a christian connotation to that word, he'll surely also refuse to use an UI based on heathen "magic" creatures, right?
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Tub wrote:
Reads less like a researched article but more like a subjective soapbox.
Indeed.
Tub wrote:
Beginning an article about UIs with Windows 3 is somewhat laughable
Mostly done to contrast it with the upcoming version of Windows.
Tub wrote:
And btw, Trinity is not exclusively a religious concept.
Noun, trinity (plural trinities)
* A group or set of three people or things; triad; trio; trine.
* The state of being three; threeness.
Not sure what's wrong with that name for a project that maintains version 3 of KDE.
If some religious zealot really must assign a christian connotation to that word, he'll surely also refuse to use an UI based on heathen "magic" creatures, right?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Reads less like a researched article but more like a subjective soapbox.
Indeed.
To clarify, there's nothing wrong with just, I just object to labeling it an "article". Despite the current state of journalism in countries everywhere, "article" still has connotations to something researched, factual. I'd classify yours somewhere between "rant" and "random blog post".
It's not well-researched, it has a very limited, subjective POV (GUIs must be made to suit YOUR personal use case / preferences), it doesn't offer anything constructive except bitching both about the direction of current mainstream GUIs as well as about every other alternative (gnome sucks, trinity has an awful name, bla bla), and you focus on perceived regressions without even acknowledging any improvements that went along with it.
FYI, you can have applets in your KDE4 panels, right-click works fine, and okteta has configurable line sizes, defaulting to 16 bytes on my install. On 4.7.x at least.
For the record, I'm using KDE3 on my desktop and KDE4 on my notebook. Workflows are different, but I get things done on both, and there's just a single regression related to multi-monitor systems that's preventing me from switching my desktop to KDE4, too. I don't disagree that the early KDE4 releases were unusable, but IMHO by now the improvements outweigh the regressions - as long as you accept that it's different and make the effort to adjust to it. Trying to make KDE4 look and behave like KDE3 won't work, but that's not KDE4s fault, it's the fault of the ranting guy with the shoehorn.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Tub wrote:
Nach wrote:
Tub wrote:
Reads less like a researched article but more like a subjective soapbox.
Indeed.
To clarify, there's nothing wrong with just, I just object to labeling it an "article". Despite the current state of journalism in countries everywhere, "article" still has connotations to something researched, factual. I'd classify yours somewhere between "rant" and "random blog post".
Well, it contained many personal opinions clearly labeled as such. I don't think anything I said was untrue though.
Tub wrote:
It's not well-researched, it has a very limited, subjective POV (GUIs must be made to suit YOUR personal use case / preferences), it doesn't offer anything constructive except bitching both about the direction of current mainstream GUIs as well as about every other alternative (gnome sucks, trinity has an awful name, bla bla), and you focus on perceived regressions without even acknowledging any improvements that went along with it.
The point of the article is that most interfaces seem to be moving towards something designed for small screens, or a touch interface, or are just "different", without even providing an option for a common interface that people may prefer.
I've seen lots of improvements in look, but functionality wise, I haven't really noticed anything new being offered by the new UIs in normal desktop settings.
Tub wrote:
FYI, you can have applets in your KDE4 panels
But you can't have them directly in the sense I described.
Tub wrote:
and okteta has configurable line sizes, defaulting to 16 bytes on my install. On 4.7.x at least.
I have not seen okteta, what I did see was a new KHexEdit for KDE 4 which was completely busted. Perhaps as you suggest, they replaced it with a new app.
Tub wrote:
but IMHO by now the improvements outweigh the regressions - as long as you accept that it's different and make the effort to adjust to it.
Maybe they do outweigh the regressions overall, but as I described in the article, I only use a couple of windowsy programs. What I found that as late as KDE 4.6, there were regressions in every single application I use other than KolourPaint, as well as the overall interface. Absolutely nothing new that I liked seemed to be added anywhere, I could care less about raindrops on my screen, or spinning cubes, or windows that explode when you close them. Maybe these improvements are in places that I don't use.
Tub wrote:
Trying to make KDE4 look and behave like KDE3 won't work, but that's not KDE4s fault, it's the fault of the ranting guy with the shoehorn.
It is KDE's team fault for removing/changing what once existed throughout, without having any way to use a method which many people prefer.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Still speaking of menus... I am using Windows 7 for the first time right now (just bought a new computer), and it looks like Microsoft has had this magnificent idea that menus are obsolete. I can't see menus anywhere.
I'm quite lost without them, frankly. For instance, I would like to set up Windows Explorer a bit (eg. to start showing file name extensions) but I have no idea where to set it up because Windows Explorer has no menu anylonger.
How much dumbed down must Windows become before there's nothing left?
I'm still surprised Microsoft hasn't fixed the Windows 7 Windows Explorer bug where if you expand the contents of a folder in the left pane, the left pane will frequently scroll up moving the expanded contents of the folder you just interacted with, off the bottom edge of the Windows Explorer window and thus making you have to scroll down...
That's the biggest thing that concerns me but I also noticed the following problems with it:
1) Navigating the left pane via keyboard doesn't refresh the right pane automatically, you must press Enter before the right pane updates to reflect the newly chosen directory.
2) The > symbols to the left of folders on the left pane which you click to expand/collapse folders fade out and there's no way in Windows to make them static/always present.
3) Status Bar is sometimes blank when opening a new session of Windows Explorer.
4) Status Bar shows less info then under Windows XP and older. (Like size of selected files, total size of all files if no files are selected etc.)
5) Windows Explorer's new Move, Copy and Delete dialogs don't show all details by default.
6) New file/folder conflict dialog box (When copying a file to a folder that contains a file of the same name for instance) is unhelpful.
7) Windows 7 makes it extremely difficult to have all folders of all types look exactly the same as each other. In XP you configure one folder how you want it to look, click Tools then Folder Options, click View tab then finally the Apply to All Folders button. In Windows 7 this only applies to the currently selected folder "Type" and there are numerous folder types in Windows 7.
8) Windows 7 can become resistant to changing folder views requiring you to go into the registry and delete some Keys then restart Windows Explorer.
All of these problems aren't present in XP but ClassicShell and Classic Explorer can fix them all (Except 7 and 8) completely under Windows 7.
Are there any other non-obvious tricks that I should be aware of (and that I just cannot find in Windows itself)?
You can make the File/Edit/View/etc. menus visible by pressing Alt in any program that has them hidden (Microsoft Paint, Microsoft Word, Firefox, etc.).
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
CoolKirby wrote:
Warp wrote:
Are there any other non-obvious tricks that I should be aware of (and that I just cannot find in Windows itself)?
You can make the File/Edit/View/etc. menus visible by pressing Alt in any program that has them hidden (Microsoft Paint, Microsoft Word, Firefox, etc.).
Thanks, that will come in handy.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Maybe these improvements are in places that I don't use.
Exactly. You don't use them because you didn't know them from KDE3, so you learned to live without them. Go look for them, give them a chance, there's good stuff in there.
If you'd been a longtime KDE4 user, switching to KDE3 would likely yield a similar reaction from you. "Feature X is gone, KDE3 sucks!".
Nach wrote:
But you can't have them directly in the sense I described.
Is this about the device notifier? Defaulting to one icon per device doesn't scale well, so KDE4 opted to have one icon. How often do you eject devices that you need this?
You can add the device notifier to your desktop, it'll then give you the full list. If you add it to the panel, I think it defaults to one icon for all. I'm not sure whether you can add the full notifier to a panel of sufficient size, but if that really does irk you, it's a simple thing to patch.
Nach wrote:
It is KDE's team fault for removing/changing what once existed throughout, without having any way to use a method which many people prefer.
It's not like they just removed stuff because they liked removing stuff. KDE4 was rebuild from ground up, and some things that didn't work well or weren't perceived as high-priority features simply weren't reimplemented. The rebuilt was needed for several reasons, and it enabled several features you will never see in KDE3. A GUI that isn't rendered entirely in software, for example.
WinKey + '+' will activate the zoom function
WinKey + TAB is a more fancy looking alternative to Alt + TAB
The other extreme is Alt + Other Alt, Release Other Alt + TAB
WinKey + 'R' brings up the command prompt, quite useful
WinKey + 'M'/'D' minimizes everything
WinKey + Space for a short peek on your desktop
WinKey + Home minimizes everything but the currently selected window
WinKey + Down to minimize the current window
WinKey + 'X' might be useful too
You can name a folders "anything.anyofthefollowingstrings" for some handy shortcuts, e.g. "GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}"
{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} The Infamous Godmode
{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33} Default Location
{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428} Biometric Devices
{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D} Power Settings
{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9} Notification Area Icons
{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70} Credential Manager
{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4} Install From Network
{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966} Default Programs
{1D2680C9-0E2A-469d-B787-065558BC7D43} Assemblies
{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87} WLANs
{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} Printers
{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B} RemoteApp and Desktop
{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423} Firewall and Security
{62D8ED13-C9D0-4CE8-A914-47DD628FB1B0} Region and Language
{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC} Performance
Use "mklink" in the command prompt (Win+R,cmd) for creating hard links and the like.
"powercfg -energy -output report.html" gets you a power efficiency diagnostics report.
Shift+Right Click on empty space in explorer will let you open cmd with the path already set to there.
Ctrl+Shift+Esc will quick launch the task manager.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Tub wrote:
Nach wrote:
Maybe these improvements are in places that I don't use.
Exactly. You don't use them because you didn't know them from KDE3, so you learned to live without them. Go look for them, give them a chance, there's good stuff in there.
If you'd been a longtime KDE4 user, switching to KDE3 would likely yield a similar reaction from you. "Feature X is gone, KDE3 sucks!".
Perhaps, except I use so little of a desktop as is, I don't really care about most of the apps they improved.
Tub wrote:
Nach wrote:
But you can't have them directly in the sense I described.
Is this about the device notifier? Defaulting to one icon per device doesn't scale well, so KDE4 opted to have one icon. How often do you eject devices that you need this?
Several times daily. It's seems odd, but due to some of the weird things I work with, I generally juggle half a dozen removable devices a day.
Tub wrote:
You can add the device notifier to your desktop, it'll then give you the full list.
Which defeats part of the point. I want to see what's currently going on without minimizing everything.
Tub wrote:
If you add it to the panel, I think it defaults to one icon for all. I'm not sure whether you can add the full notifier to a panel of sufficient size, but if that really does irk you, it's a simple thing to patch.
KDE 4 team already rejected a patch.
Tub wrote:
Nach wrote:
It is KDE's team fault for removing/changing what once existed throughout, without having any way to use a method which many people prefer.
It's not like they just removed stuff because they liked removing stuff. KDE4 was rebuild from ground up, and some things that didn't work well or weren't perceived as high-priority features simply weren't reimplemented. The rebuilt was needed for several reasons, and it enabled several features you will never see in KDE3. A GUI that isn't rendered entirely in software, for example.
I understand why it wasn't there from the get go. Some things they're downright against though.
I had to fight them for 6 months to fix behind the scenes bugs in some networking apps, and apply the patches I sent them. Their reasons for refusal at first was that no one internally knew what the existing code did.
I'm currently fighting them on accepting syntax highlighting improvements for existing languages in KATE, and added syntax highlighting scripts I wrote for languages they don't currently cover. I don't understand what the holdup on this is.
I spoke to Aaron Seigo regarding getting in some old features in KDE 3, which I'd happily write all the code for. He told me that I don't have a clue about usability and how GUIs should be designed, and I should stay far away from these things. And basically made it seem like he'll block anything I'd try to contribute.
I did bother him initially about brining the tree view back to the control panel, and he told me that such a thing should never see the light of day, and he would love if this optional feature can be killed. But buckled due to pressure from lots of people complaining.
It seems to me the only thing they understand is repeated pestering.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
What exactly do those strings do when you name folders using that syntax?
Those strings are CLSID keys. I've found a list of more of them [URL=http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/110919-clsid-key-list-windows-7-a.html]here[/URL]. An alternative way to get the same functionality without having ugly folder names is to create an empty folder, create a desktop.ini in it and edit it to the following:
Then save it, open the command prompt and type "attrib Foldername +s"
Edit: This method doesn't seem to work on my desktop though, only in ordinary folders.
That was interesting, Nach. My experience with UI can be summed up as:
* I don't remember windows 3.1 really well, I was 3 or something when I used it, I can only vaguely remember the look of the windows, a spaceship DOS game I played in it and a DOS program that my father used to register customers.
* Win95 was an enormous surprise to me and I can see why it was such a huge hit, I was next to my father when he installed it from 13 floppy disks and when it booted we were surprised that there was no need to type "win" in the DOS console to open the graphic interface.
* Win98 was basically the same thing in UI. At that time, my desktop was flooded with icons, because when I started using a program regularly I put it on the desktop and forgot to remove the others, as clicking on the icon was my main way of launching a program.
* I installed windows XP a lot of time after it was launched, so my hardware was well prepared for it and I didn't notice many performance drawbacks. I didn't notice much differences from its predecessors aside from the new theme, the win95 paradigm was still there. I changed the way I used the computer, I started opening the programs using the "Run" dialog and typing what I wanted.
* During the long development cycle of XP's successor, I eventually installed Debian and began dual booting Debian and XP. I loved Debian, it was the OS where I first became a "power user" and really started to understand computers better. From that on, I've always used Linux distributions with GNOME and have no experience with KDE, so I never experienced the change to KDE4, though I've heard a lot about it from others.
* I stayed a long time with XP and skipped Vista. Today, I dual boot win7 and Ubuntu (I switched to Ubuntu, because I thought Debian was too conservative and its updates lagged a lot behind, but lately Ubuntu seems to be rushing some releases, so I'll probably get back to Debian when Wheezy comes out).
The biggest annoyance I found in win7 was the new Control Panel, which is stupid. The best thing for it is the search feature in the start menu. It's very convenient, I start typing the name of the program and after a few letters its icon is up there for me to click.
Then 2011 came and GNOME 3 brought the most radical change to UI I've ever seen. It was completely absurd at its time, GNOME 2 was a windows 95 like environment that everybody loved, and suddenly it became a UI that had no minimize button in its windows, demanded a lot from hardware, and you had to hold Alt to bring the menu option to shutdown the computer.
It took me nearly one month using it to understand what the developers had in mind. Fortunately, with GNOME 3.2 things got a little more stable and now it seems GNOME plans to incorporate a lot of extensions that people developed for it in the main project, so it'll likely improve a lot in the future.
I think that the whole UI wars though are a bit overrated. There's an obsession with UI in every software project, and for me at least, there is a lot of stuff more important than it, people are always gonna complain if you change what they're used to, and given that I survived the change from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3, I think I can take whatever "unholy mess" the developers throw at me (this is not a challenge though ;) ).
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Well said, thanks!
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Folder Options -> "View" tab -> Show Menu's. This enables all menu's without having to press Alt first.
Something else I hate about Windows 7 is that when you access Control Panel from Windows Explorer it reverts Control Panels View setting to Category mode. Accessing it via every other method retains the Large Icons setting.
There's a difference in the functionality of these. Using M minimizes everything, while D can minimize AND restore everything to how it was.
Winkey + R = Run
+E = Explorer in Folders mode.
+U = Utilities mode
+F = Search
+L = Lock
+B = ? (It does something, but not sure exactly what.)
