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About LinkBacksMetro can be used as just a large start menu. I don't get the difficulty that people are having with this?
Metro can be used as just a large start menu. I don't get the difficulty that people are having with this?
If that's the case, I'm not upgrading, this implementation of the "Start" button is not what I'm looking for as I consider MUI to be horrendous. If you're happy with how it works for you, go for it, but I absolutely detest having to bring up a search box to find installed programs; the whole point of a GUI is to be able to use a pointing device to easily find what you want, not be forced to move to the keyboard because you need to find the one program you haven't used for six months.Originally Posted by Kumagoro
LOL?
When you install a program you make a shortcut on the start screen, then you don't have to search for it.
They would be suicidal to stop specific programs from running within the OS, regardless of what they do. Maybe they altered something that means Start8 and so on need an update, but I doubt it's anything more sinister.
Not even Apple try to do that on the desktop.
Seriously? There is a huge thread on this where people directly answer you, including some long posts by Saracen. No one's asking you to agree with them, but if you're still asking this question in new threads, you're either not reading the replies, are ignoring them or are baiting people into another circular argument.
Yes we know you have no issues with Metro. Some people do. Can we please stop going in these circles in every Windows 8 thread?
Yes, Saracen says that he wants Icons not Tiles, but really what is a tile but a slightly larger icon, and it doesn't matter that it is slightly larger because the start screen is HUGE. I mean maybe it matters to people who have their mouse sensitivity on minimum, but I really don't think that is the case.
Maybe other people install a lot more programs than I do, but I can fit every single program I have on my start screen and still have spare space.
Took them a while but they must have finally figured that making PC consumers use an interface that is basically like a phone is just stupid.
I didn't literally mean that they will just stop the program from running. It was more that they would stop the features etc they exploit.
If you think that's all I've said, then I doubt your reading comprehension skills, because that is SO selective. If not, then you directly make Agent's point for him. It is true that I don't like the tiles, but I also said that that was merely the aesthetics and it's the entire way MUI functions that make it unacceptable to me. But please don't be so patronising as to misrepresent my position as merely "icons not tiles".
aidanjt (31-05-2013)
That's half the problem. It crowds out *everything*. My attention isn't so deficient that I need *everything* hidden away in order to focus *solely* on starting a programme.
You may be content to squeeze yourself into Microsoft's tabletise-everything box, but most people prefer the desktop-optimised traditional desktop environment.
I just find it helpful to take points one by one for reasons of clarity, if we debate 10 points simultaneously most of the points get lost.
So Tiles are aesthetically unappealing but functionally fine?
Next Point. You miss being able to group things into folders on the start menu. You can group things but not within folders, essentially you have a series of open folders. This is different, but given the much larger area available, not necessarily worse.
Also if you really want to group things you can do so using jump lists on the Win8 Start Bar.
I would agree however that Win8 could do this better, groups could be more flexible and customisable.
Why is it a negative though? To launch a program takes less than a second, there's no faffing around with menus and sub-menus any more.
This provoked a question in my mind .... where do you stand on Canonical's Unity UI?
Now there's a UI that - according to common belief - was designed to be "touch friendly" and (barely?) usable on phones. Which is pretty much the brief that MUI had. And while I'm not claiming for a microsecond that Unity is perfect, I will argue that it's less "imperfect" than MUI. Although I'm coming to really like/appreciate MUI's live tiles.
Career status: still enjoying my new career in DevOps, but it's keeping me busy...
On the latter point, no, again, not what I said, either in that post, or previously when I've made the point at length. Why put words in my mouth?
The aesthetics is unattractive, but THAT is merely the fly on the dogpile. The dogpile is the nature of the UI changes as a whole, and the way that it seeks to FORCE us to do things differently, because it suits MS.
On the first point, I'd agree on taking points one at a time IF you did it in context. But you didn't.
Look at the point you made and that Agent quoted, which wasand Agent pointed out is that's far more than that, and that I was one of those that had gone into our objections in considerable, if not tedious detail, and you then portray my position as being bout tiles, not icons. That is so trivialising as to be downright offensive, and yet, here you go again, suggesting that I think the functionality is fine.Metro can be used as just a large start menu. I don't get the difficulty that people are having with this?
Look, Willzzz, please do me the courtesy of either reading what I said and considering the position, or stop quoting me and trivialising it by implying that one small part is the objection.
My objection is not this little part, that little part of the other little part. It's the entire change in ways of working that MUI represents, it's the start menu changes, it's full-screen apps, it's the sudden denigration of desktop mode to the role of a second class citizen to MUI, it's the lack of an option to revert, like the previous ability to switch of UI changes such as going back to "classic" appearance, or disabling Glass, transparency, etc,.
The effect of a UI is synergistic. To paraphrase Aristotle, the whole UI is more than the sum of the individual features. If you take a series of individual aspects of an interface, each can be good or bad, or indifferent, in their own right, but when you out them together, you get the synthesis that results in the user experience.
What I object to is that the half-assed way that MUI has been kind-of bolted on top of the traditional model destroys that synergy. It's neither fish nor fowl, but rather, some bastardised genetic experiment that ought to have been destroyed in the lab.
It's not about the lack of a start button, as some people try to portray those angry with the changes, and it's certainly not about whether a button giving you the new start screen is the permanently or whether you have to hover to get it. And it's not just about aesthetically fugly tiles. It's about that, and other things like the full-screen aspects, and the clunkiness of going MUI to desktop, or not being able to boot (yet) to desktop, or even about that, contrary to MS' s position, it clearly is possible to revert to Win7's way of doing things because Start8 type tools prove you can, and that it's that MS won't let users choose to use MUI or not but try to shove it down our throats.
It's about the synthesis of all these factors, and a few more, and the impact it has on the user's experience.
Put it this way. Someone I know is very bright, but medium dyslexic. She does not seem to learn in quite the way most of us do, but for some things that most of us take for granted, she struggles with. One of those things is that in getting a computer to do what she wants, she basically has to learn by repetition. The way she thinks doesn't mirror the way most of us do, and she has to memorise where to go and what to do to get a UI to do things. If you change things from being at the top to the bottom, or from a menu item to layered tiles, or, yes, even from a desktop item to grouped tiles, it totally throws her and she basically has to start all over again learning where things are.
She is a fairly extreme case in terms of the impact of faffing about with the entire structure of the UI, but EXACTLY the same process, is much less in seriousness, applies to vast numbers of people that are just casual computer users and that have learned, over the years, how to do basic things with Windows.
Another way to think of it. People do so much by habit, out of a sort-of muscle memory. And they vary in how quickly they adapt to change. If I snuck into your bedroom and rearranged your clothes storage, I suspect you'd rapidly get fed up with finding your socks aren't where you expect them to be, and having to hunt to find your Y-fronts. Odds are, you'd put things back where you want them, and even if you didn't, there'd be a period when, if your concentration lapsed, you go to where your knickers used to be, even though you know full well, if you think for a moment, that they're now in the far more logical place I decided to put them.
Years ago, my father traded in a Morris Marina for a new one. For some strange reason, Leyland had decided to change the "UI". The stalk with the indicators and lights had been swapped, so the horn and windscreen washer had been swapped too.
Sooooo ..... about 6 months later, we were going home and some idiot carved him up, to which my father responded with a really long and angry squirt of the windscreen washer jets!
When you change the UI, some people (including the majority of those on a forum like this, that are computer enthusiasts) are capable of adapting pretty quickly. Others, like large numbers of people whose only interest in computers in doing their daily office duties, will struggle but get it, sooner or later. Others, like my dyslexic friend, face a real hassle.
Another example is an elderly person I regularly help with their computing needs, partly because they're on their own, in their late 80's and their computer is a lifeline to the outside world. So imagine their horror on buying a new laptop only to find it had Win8 and getting it to do ANYTHING was a nightmare, until I told them about Start8 and installed it for them. Their relief was overwhelming, and their stress level decreased vastly.
The experience the user gets depends on the synergy of all the aspects of the UI which culminate in their immersive experience, and it's not about individual trivial aspects, like whether you have to bottom-left-hover or whether the button is permanent. If MS really think that's the answer, they're a couple of orders of magnitude more thick than I thought they were. It's a pathetic little sop designed to let them say "we're responding", when in fact, they either don't get to reasons for the furore, or (more likely) they do get it, and are ignoring it.
I'd have far more respect if they'd just said "this is where Windows is going, and we're not changing it", but their announced changes are the sort of pathetic PR gloss I'd expect from a 3rd rate politician. Of course, I'd have even more respect for MS if they'd actually listened, and put an in option to enable to disable MUI, at the users choice, instead of apparently thinking a button and a default to desktop option will do it.
It's a problem because it steals my *entire* focus away from what I'm doing, in order to do something so trivial. If you don't want browse, don't. You were never forced to browse since Vista. Even if wiping out start menu structure is a good thing, and that's debatable, otherwise people would rearrange their start menus so, that doesn't mean a 30" monitor gobbling fullscreen wall-o-tiles is the solution.
I disliked it from the start and while I now tolerate it, I still dislike it. But I dislike it less than I dislike GNOME 3. GNOME 2 was superior to both and it pisses me off that some uppity 'designers' came along thinking they know better than all the developers, testers, and users who came before them and arrogantly proclaim "THIS SUCKS ON MY TABLET WHICH I NEVER EVEN TRIED THIS ON AND PROBABLY NEVER WILL!" and proceeded to screw up the desktop to fit the environment in a paradigm nobody will ever apply desktop environments and software to. Canonical didn't even stick with desktop Unity for their Tablet/Phone ports, they came up with something entirely different after all. And that crap just irritates me to no end.
So basically, I'm now inclined to run dwm or some other lightweight window manager and cherry pick GNOME apps I have any use for.
crossy (31-05-2013)
I take it the "full-screen aspects" is referring to apps, if you don't like apps don't run them, don't download them. I utterly fail to see how the start screen being full screen is any disadvantage when you have it open for a fraction of a second. Returning to the desktop is as simple as opening the program you want, or if you have changed your mind about opening a program clicking on the desktop tile. Bang, you are instantly back on the desktop.
There are just so many different ways to launch programs in Windows 8 that if you really can't stand MUI you can get away without using it at all (with boot to desktop).
Yes I can understand that many non computer literate people find the change difficult, but I find it less easy to understand why so many power users are having the same difficulties adapting.
And the regular start menu doesn't? If you used eye tracking equipment I doubt you would see people using the start menu while still looking at the rest of the screen. I'm pretty certain I don't do that.
If it isn't a frequently used program it takes longer to find on the start menu. If it is a frequently used program I probably have it pinned to my start bar anyway.
I'm not sure what you mean by "browse"?
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