I'm going to be honest here, I have no shortcuts on my desktop. I can't stand it. All I do to launch a program is hit the windows key and type the first 3 letters and hit enter. Boom done. If I can still do this on Windows 8 Start Screen then I don't care.
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Win 8 Ditching Start Menu for a Start Screen
- Thread starter HardOCP News
- Start date
That says the desktop isn't going away, it doesn't mention the Start Menu at all.
Paul's been wrong before. It'll be interesting to see.
That works just fine in the Developer Preview.
heatlesssun
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As Arainach said, this works perfectly in the Developer Preview, just like Windows 7 only in full screen.
nope, try it with something in motion like video or chat to see what I mean. if you leave the window up, the thumbnails will continue to update along with your content. once you minimise these windows, it only saves the last frame, or goes blank once other apps bump it off the cache.
wtf is the point of live previews that only work for windows you can see? this is the kind of absurd idiocy that is coming out of microsoft these days. this feature also has a whole bunch of options that can be used to configure style, size, enable/disable, and of course there's no ui for it, again you have to go editing the registry if you want to customise any of this.
heatlesssun
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When a window is minimized it's not being updated so why would the thumbnail update? And thumbnails do update for non-minimized windows that can't be seen.
Unknown-One
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Yes, it freezes the last frame so it doesn't waste resources continuously rendering a non-visible window. But that last frame is usually more than enough to figure out what window it is.
That only happens if the desktop gets reset (resolution change) or explorer crashes. These are not common occurrences for most people, so thumbnails work just fine.
Except...you just said yourself that an optimized version of the the thumbnails is still visible for minimized (non-visible) applications...
The feature works great, can still tell what the application is, and the system isn't wasting resources rendering it when it's minimized. I don't see the down-side here, aside from a slight lack of animation some of the time...which doesn't really hinder their base functionality at all.
"Idiocy" would be continuing to render all of your minimized windows just to update some thumbnails...which is what you seem to want.
In all honesty, I don't think there's any need to customize the window previews. Some of the options you speed of (like disabling them entirely) create new fringe usage scenarios that would have required additional testing for not much payoff.
I'd imagine if they didn't want the old start menu on Windows 8 as an option there wouldn't be a registry entry that lets you switch between them to begin with.
this is an interesting line of thinking, that could only be answered with another question. if there are more windows on your desktop than you can see, what do you do with them?
a. continue covering tasks not in focus with new windows
b. minimise tasks not in focus, and restore them as you work
see where I'm going with this? in the case of the former, they're now being drawn twice, whenever you use any live thumbnail preview (taskbar or alt-tab). if they were to swap this behavior with active/inactive windows, they would only be drawn once, saving resources and promoting an efficient workflow. what they actually did here was take a shortcut through some hackish route, to produce a pretty ui with no functional value, by simply redrawing active windows instead of extending their functionality.
I don't think you're understanding the way live preview works. these thumbnails are not actually updating unless you're viewing them, so the function I'm proposing would be exactly the same as restoring a minimised window, only through the live preview popup as opposed to fully restoring the app. what's the definition of idiocy here, drawing active windows twice, or inactive windows once when you need them?
to realise why microsoft has done it this way, you have to look at their original goals when implementing these features. instead of developing increased efficiency for everyone, what they are doing is making concessions for novices, that promotes poor usage and lack of understanding in the underlying mechanics of switching tasks. they're more focused on obfuscation and manipulation than real functionality, it's an illusion that serves no real purpose.
heatlesssun
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I have no idea where you're going. Minimized window thumbnails aren't updated because the window is minimized, there's nothing to update the thumbnail with, a window isn't being redrawn to create the thumbnail, it's merely a snapshot of what's being drawn in the window, which is nothing for a minimized window.
As for thumbnail caching, that's a bigger deal as there really is no reason for it other than code. From what I've seen in Windows 8 thus far thumbnail caching seems to be greatly reduced, if seems to have gotten better even in Windows 7 over years in my unscientific observation.
The more I play with it the more I'm convinced that Windows 8 can be a game changer. For one, the development tools are fantastic and cover most of the major languages, JavaScript, C++, C# and VB. Any developer worth a shit can work in the tools and many already have the skills. Secondly, even a shitty version of Windows sells a zillion copies and Metro apps aren't limited to tablets. If you already have Android and iOS tablet apps, you're virtually are compelled to create Windows versions due to the doubtless large number of potential customers that don't even have to have tablets depending on how well of course a particular app translates to keyboards and mice, a great number translate effortlessly from the input method standpoint.
I'm sure you'll get it eventually if you keep reiterating my point, that this gimmick does not really extend functionality at all. it's not merely a snapshot for active windows, where you're getting real time updates through the existing window manager, before it switches to a static snapshot when you minimise. but regardless of z-order they're all going to be redrawn twice, as long as you're previewing a window on the desktop.
redrawing a visible window is pointless to me, when it could be used as a pre-emptive restore to an inactive window. this sort of concept exists in other applications, think multi-desktop virtualisation. of course it's possible to draw inactive windows, this is just a matter of perspective to the user. though obviously more complicated than just duping active windows.
heatlesssun
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I don't understand what's being redrawn twice, the thumbnail isn't redrawing the window even if the window is visible.
Thumbnails are just visual cues, I don't understand why you think it's a gimmick , they can be great in determining what you want to look at if you have multiple instances of a program running.
they're 2 seperate images in motion, what part of this are you not understanding? rendering once for the actual window, then again for any thumbnails in the task bar or tab view. this gets pulled from an off screen buffer that is constantly updated for any running apps that need to be drawn. so again, instead of rendering 2 visible windows, they could make this truly functional with app previews that are not already on the desktop.
live thumbnails are obviously a useful feature, the problem is in the pointless way they implement it.
good article here if you want an understanding of the underlying architecture behind the latest window manager, the rage inducing part is knowing what they really could have done with it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Window_Manager
heatlesssun
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You just said it yourself, the thumbnail comes from a buffer, nothing is being redrawn twice, the thumbnail is just a scaled down bitmap of an existing buffer, I've played with the APIs behind this a while back. There's practically zero overhead to the thumbnails since it's just bitmap ALREADY in memory. And all of this is offloaded to the GPU, blasting a 2D bitmap to the display is an effortless task for even integrated GPUs these days.
And again, minimized windows AREN'T UPDATED! What's the point of updating a windows that one has expressly said that they don't want to see since it's been minimized?
heatlesssun is correct. Nothing is getting "rendered twice". When apps are shown, they paint into a buffer. This buffer is drawn for the window and is drawn for any thumbnails - when you're viewing a thumbnail, it's not having the app rerender. When an app is minimized, it's off the screen, so it no longer paints to its buffer because it's minimized, so it's offscreen and what would be the point? Since it's no longer painting to its buffer, the buffer can only show its last contents.
so you're trying to claim that windows is incapable of getting a window state, without the user giving a strict restore command, am I reading this right? think about what you're saying.
not sure why the technical aspect is even up for debate, this is an opinion on functionality, that can be implemented either way, just look up the WPF specs linked from that article if you really want to go into methods that are not refuting the obvious.
again, not sure why you insist on twisting this into some sort of efficiency debate, that has nothing to do with anything. what's the point of this redirection? to defend a feature you believe is better than what was proposed? talk about that instead.
the user doesn't expressly say anything with the act of minimising a window, besides getting it off the desktop. why point out the obvious? no one is saying anything about updating graphics that are not being used. this is about requesting data other than what was given, when the user wants it, not all the time for no reason.
and heatless man, you could run a farm with all the strawmen you build, unless you spent half the time actually discussing topics instead of crapping on them all with these pointless arguments.
not sure why the technical aspect is even up for debate, this is an opinion on functionality, that can be implemented either way, just look up the WPF specs linked from that article if you really want to go into methods that are not refuting the obvious.
again, not sure why you insist on twisting this into some sort of efficiency debate, that has nothing to do with anything. what's the point of this redirection? to defend a feature you believe is better than what was proposed? talk about that instead.
the user doesn't expressly say anything with the act of minimising a window, besides getting it off the desktop. why point out the obvious? no one is saying anything about updating graphics that are not being used. this is about requesting data other than what was given, when the user wants it, not all the time for no reason.
and heatless man, you could run a farm with all the strawmen you build, unless you spent half the time actually discussing topics instead of crapping on them all with these pointless arguments.
heatlesssun
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I have no idea were you're going with all of this. All I said was that thumbnails of minimized windows are static because there's nothing else for the thumbnail to do since minimized windows aren't drawn by design, that's just the way it's worked in Windows forever as far as I know. If one wants a thumbnail to update, don't minimize the window. I really have no idea why anyone would even care other than simply understanding the behavior in case of confusion.