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Do you mean the one that zooms out all your desktops? Something like that is missing in WP as a first party shell option, the 3rd party ones are of course slow to pop open.
If you've still got the device, try the 14 day zune pass free trail.
Do you mean the one that zooms out all your desktops? Something like that is missing in WP as a first party shell option, the 3rd party ones are of course slow to pop open.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
No it's a multitasking thing, the bottom right 'button' brings up the menu. I'm not sure what version it was introduced in but I think holding the home button did something similar in previous versions. Anyway, it shows a scrollable list containing thumbnails of recently used apps, allowing you to resume what you were doing as state is preserved in memory.
press and hold the back arrow.......
I think this is a one of Microsoft's issues, rejecting skeuomorphism is ment to make the user able to understand they can do such things (as there isn't an oldy worldy equivilent for this particular task), they are failing if someone who's screen name is watercooled can't figure it out. Failing badly.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
I admit I hadn't looked for it, and TBF I didn't know you could hold the home button on older versions of Android until I read about it somewhere. I understand there's a limit to what you can do, and expect a user to understand, with 3 buttons or so, but for someone new to the OS, there isn't an easy way to know about these things unless you go looking for them. And not many people will take much in if they sit there and read about every possible gesture, if there's a lot of them.
In WP 8 there isn't.
Back Arrow Long Press, task switch (much faster and neater than Andriod imsho, doesn't have issues with heavy apps running)
Back Home Button Press, Voice Command.
Pinch to zoom.
Tap top icon for full icon info.
Press and Hold on Live Tile to edit them.
Only ones I can think off.
The reason I find this odd, is that MS really have forced this design language which is ment to promote discovery of such things, its the exact opposite of iOS that tries to run by being "familiar", which personally I really, really hate. Andriod just has no consistancy or publicy expressed language for such things which always leads me confused, before the vendor starts to meddle, for instance I'd never go near an HTC again.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
Dammit, nudged the back button on my mouse and lost a fairly big reply, will try to re-construct it from memory. The auto-save doesn't happen often enough.
Maybe some sort of intro would be useful when the phone is first powered on? In fact there might have been one, but I wasn't the first person to use the phone. I'd have used that task screen frequently if I knew about it, for instance, and I'm sure there are a lot of other things which would have improved my overall experience.
As it stands, my opinion is likely clouded by my limited and somewhat rushed initial experience, finding the OS frustrating to use, and it's not exactly an objective criticism, but it just *felt* restrictive and somewhat confusing e.g. some options located in seemingly unrelated menu trees, sorting for photos/music seemed erratic.
I'm not aware of any problems with heavy apps on Android? They're essentially stopped and cached in memory when they're not in the foreground, unless the app specifically requests to run in background, so they shouldn't consume any resources besides the 'free' memory they're held in.
Do you find yourself using the search button much? I pressed it by mistake more than a few times, but don't recall using it naturally to search for anything. Still, that's likely because of my limited time with the OS.
I'd quite like to try a recent version of iOS, as I don't know an awful lot about it. I'm not really qualified to answer people when they ask for advice, comparing it to another OS in terms of experience for instance. However, it's not like it's readily available to try.
I know where you're coming from with vendor modifications of Android, some end up looking like a different OS on the surface, but some do add some useful features. Branding/crapware is something I like to avoid where possible though, and having some useless apps pre-installed (and not removable) is annoying, although at least recent versions of Android allow you to 'disable' them i.e. stop running/starting at boot/appearing anywhere/prompting for updates.
Edit: Sorry for the bullet-point-like nature of the post, I did my best to remember stuff I wanted to cover.
Install 'Lazarus' - it's on both Chrome and Firefox. It'll save you raging more than once, I promiseOriginally Posted by watercooled
watercooled (28-02-2013)
Cheers, I'll give it a try!
I find it fascinating because, story time I've been doing more and more UI work, originally I used to do high performance middle tier stuff, but I was frustrated the UI guys I was depending on were so useless, they kept messing up, so begrudgingly I did the UI too.
I then realised that often its not enough to have a functioning system technically, but to make something that people can use, people can comprehend. I used to give no thought to such things.
Windows Phone I think has been the most interesting concept in UI these last 10 years. However obviously it still has a lot of maturity. One of the ideas is that most things do not require instructions to do things, they are self discoverable. The classic being the inital lock screen. Hitting the windows button makes it 'bump up a bit' it gives a visual non-verbal queue.
Nothing is ever trying to emulate what was before, it is about trying to make it as clear as possible.
It is interesting to see how much they've failed from this thread.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
watercooled (01-03-2013)
If you're talking about having Windows on a PDA you're talking about Windows Mobile which Microsoft ceased with. This is about Windows Phone, completely different OS.
TheAnimus, if you want weather or news information, you can for instance download the CNN app or WeatherFlow app and then you can set it so that the information will appear on your lockscreen by going into the settings.
TheAnimus (30-04-2013)
Sorry for thread revival, but I recently had a chance to play with an SIII mini. Not a bad little phone, although something about the display makes it look, IMO, far more grainy than the lower DPI display of the Galaxy Ace. Maybe AMOLED doesn't work so well at lower pixel densities?
Anyway, you had the option to enable some tip system, similar to what I suggested earlier in the thread, and IMO it could be quite useful to a new user. Even though I'm familiar with stock Android, it showed me a few things unique to TouchWiz. IMO there should be some option to choose how experienced you are with android, so it can sort tips based on complexity, and adjust pacing - it occasionally feels like you're being bombarded so many users might just get annoyed and skip through them, or not really take them in. You're going to have the phone for a while, so why not limit the amount it can show per day/hour, and give a simple option to pause them for when you don't want to be annoyed?
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