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Windows Operating Systems GUI Software

Improving the Windows XP User Interface? 265

Posted by Cliff from the tweaked-to-your-heart's-desire dept.
Pimpin' Up Windows asks: "Many of us are forced to live with Windows XP for our day-to-day computing needs - at work, home or school - and longingly look to the not only beautiful, but functional and efficient, Mac OS X 'Aqua' user interface. Apart from just themes, what would be Slashdot reader's suggestions for improving the user interface of XP? What changes, add-ons and other improvements could further enhance its usability?"
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Improving the Windows XP User Interface? More

Improving the Windows XP User Interface?

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  • Clippy. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) * <mikemol@gmail.com> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @03:57PM (#12237668) Homepage Journal
    Clippy. Or Bonzai Buddy. Take your pick. :)
  • Animated and singing dancing hamsters on the desktop. Maybe they could take the place of clippy too!

  • Win XP Power Toys (Score:5, Informative)

    by waynegoode ( 758645 ) * on Thursday April 14, 2005 @03:57PM (#12237670) Homepage
    Win XP Power Toys [microsoft.com], which is free.

    There are some good ones here. I like:

    • Open Command Window Here, opens a command prompt window at the path of the current window
    • Alt-Tab Replacement, see more when you use alt-tab to switch apps
    • Tweak UI, which does a lot of things
    • Virtual Desktop Manager, manage up to four desktops, a feature from others UIs that is missing in Windows
    • Virtual Desktop Manager, manage up to four desktops, a feature from others UIs that is missing in Windows
      Danger, Will Robinson, Danger.

      I have tried this, and found it seriously lacking. Windows was not designed for this sort of thing, and software, in general, does not know how to handle it. I have found that it is unstable, and it is impossible to move windows from one desktop to another.
      • The best desktop manager is Virtuawin. Open source, pretty stable, very configurable.

      • Re:Win XP Power Toys (Score:2, Informative)

        by Chop ( 211528 )

        I have tried this, and found it seriously lacking. Windows was not designed for this sort of thing, and software, in general, does not know how to handle it. I have found that it is unstable, and it is impossible to move windows from one desktop to another.

        I currently use Enhanced Vitual Desktops available from on Windows2000 SP4 and have had no problems moving windows between desktops. I have had explorer.exe crash and all the tray icons disappear and EVD is still running along fine, switching desktop

      • Re:Win XP Power Toys (Score:4, Interesting)

        by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:41PM (#12241241) Homepage
        The best desktop expansion you can do for windows is get additional monitors. Most video cards will allow you to plug in a second monitor, usually one analog and one DVI. A cheap DVI connector and a used monitor can be had for about 30 bucks. Add a cheap PCI secondary video card, Two DVI connectors, and three new monitors and you have all of the desktop that you'll ever need for about 150.

        I had pretty much constant problems with the multiple virtual desktop setup in XP, but the multiple monitor support in applications is pretty good these days.

        • FWIW, I can second this. The local computer store we bought our office PCs from for a while happened to be installing a video card with a second port. Once when we upgraded a few people there were some spare 17" monitors lying around, and one of the guys tried hooking it up to his XP box to see how Windows coped with a second screen. The answer was that it coped very well, as did the applications in almost all cases, and he (and now several other colleagues) became an instant convert. Having a real second m

    • And on a related note (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Brave Guy ( 457657 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @07:13PM (#12239656)

      Also check out the many useful tools available from SysInternals [sysinternals.com]. These guys are serious Windows hackers and know how to integrate tightly with the internals. For general use, Process Explorer is a must-have replacement for task manager, and many of the others are useful if you're working in the areas they concern. And they give them away free, and a fair bit of source code too, bless them.

  • Start button doesn't stay in the bottom left (Score:5, Interesting)

    by robolemon ( 575275 ) <nertzy@noSpaM.gmail.com> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @03:58PM (#12237681) Homepage

    One of my biggest pet peeves is that if I make the Windows XP taskbar 2 rows tall instead of one, the start button only takes up the top row instead of spanning both or taking up the bottom row.

    This results in a spot underneath the start button that has no use. This also breaks the shortcut of clicking on the bottom left corner of the screen to access the start menu.

    • "Make it NOT look like froofy pastel crap that makes people violently ill!"

      If you right click in there, you can access the toolbar access stuff without bringing up the properties of that particular icon. That's not to say I disagree with you, but rather just pointing out that it's not completely 100% useless. (That's typically where I go when I either need the task manager or to unlock the taskbar.)
      • Task manager: Shift, Control, Escape.

        Taskbar should be one row.
        System tray icons should be "Always Hide" by default, not "hide when inactive" for new ones.

        And now that I have a laptop for work, I use two independant taskbars. (ultramon does it, there are probably other vendors)
        • "Task manager: Shift, Control, Escape."

          Alt + Ctrl + Delete does it too, but sometimes I want to use my mouse. (Like when I'm using my TabletPC in slate mode, for example.)

        • Taskbar should be one row.
          No, the taskbar should be however the user feels more comfortable with it. I prefer two rows, with two quick launch toolbars on the left side, one for work apps, one for non-work apps.

          Say what you want about the Windows UI. In my opinion it is far better than the OS X UI, NOT because of its inherent functionalty, but because its far more customizable than the Mac UI. The Windows UI also does a passable job supporting keyboard shortcuts in a consistent way, and making more of the UI accessible from the keyboard.

          The Mac theory of UI seems to revolve around Apple knowing the right way to do something. But different people end up working with the UI in different ways. There's never just one right way to do a thing with something as complex as an application or an operating system.

          • "The Mac theory of UI seems to revolve around Apple knowing the right way to do something. But different people end up working with the UI in different ways."

            On the flip side, though, this philosophy makes it considerably easier to support the user. If people re-map their kb shortcuts and the locations of their icons, it's considerably harder to tell or show somebody how to do something in particular.

            I run into this problem with Lightwave, sometimes. When they went from version 7 to 8, they remapped a

  • Virtual Desktops (Score:2, Informative)

    by christophe.vg ( 742168 )
    using VirtuaWin [sourceforge.net]

  • Useability? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by billh ( 85947 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @03:59PM (#12237693)
    Switch to classic mode
    Turn off menu delays
    Turn off every other stupid effect
    Install unix command line tools
    Never use IE or Outlook
    Install some decent fonts

    It might not be as pretty, but it is more functional.
    • You know, if you just installed linux, it would take care of all of those in one fell swoop.

      Well, except for the decent fonts thing. ;D
      • Well, that used to be true.

        I've got the bitstream vera fonts and some other installed on my laptop (Gentoo), and I now can't stand going back to Windows because of the horrible fonts. Once you forget how fonts are 'supposed to look', you'll realize how ugly the MS default fonts are.
        • Couldnt agree more , the last couple of years has seen a real upsurge in the eye candy linux has to offer(can't wait for Cairo) In my eyes the FreeDesktop world has long since surpassed windows in GUI gloss (although if you mix and match GTK /Motif/QT aps its hard to get a solid look and feel) .

          The only thing i find the freedesktop still cant hold a candle to (and this is just right now , as projects such as cairo are really showing promis) is OS X .Even if you dont like the GUI you can apreciate the wonde

    • Re:Useability? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nickos ( 91443 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:04PM (#12238453)
      "Install some decent fonts"

      I like to bash MS as well, but Georgia [microsoft.com] and (especially) Verdana [microsoft.com] are lovely (read more here [will-harris.com]). Verdana-Regular-8 is a great non-antialiased font that I use for everything (including coding).

      An aside - why do so many coders insist on using non-proportional fonts in their editor of choice (we've come a long way from text-mode displays)? Proportional fonts are more readable and take up less horizontal space on the screen. Try it!

      • Re:Useability? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Glonoinha ( 587375 )
        Proportional fonts make it difficult to eye-ball character columns, particularly if you are want to keep string lengths under a certain length.

        With fixed space fonts you can put one of these : //34567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789 0 123456789012345678901234567890
        for an 80 character wide ruler, cut it and paste it as necessary into your code and Voila! instant width chart (make it whatever size you want.)

        I have also found that my head OCR's faster with certain fonts (Courier 10 point, San Serif
        • Each to their own I spose, but why would you want to keep string lengths under a certain length?

          The only argument I could think of as to why people would want to use non-proportional fonts is so that they can line up text after non-whitespace characters on a line. IMHO this is a small price to pay for the increased readibility and better use of space. I suppose they're good for ASCII art though...

          • I've spent a long time trying to find a decent programming font that's not tiny but still distinguishes the usual similar characters clearly. (My eyes aren't good enough, particularly when running at the high res I prefer for other reasons, for all these single-figure-square bitmap jobs.)

            I did try several proportional fonts for a while, including Verdana, but it just proved too difficult to keep the code tidy. Too many things I read and write take up more than one line, and we try to keep things as inhere

    • OSX is pretty and functional, both 100 times than anything you could do with windows.

  • win XP needs a contextual helper... (Score:5, Funny)

    by xutopia ( 469129 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @03:59PM (#12237698) Homepage
    It would be cool if this helper would popup whenever you are doing something and show you ways to do things better. Oh and it could look like some smart guy too which would make it really cool!

  • Want improvement in XP? Go back to Windows 2000 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LazloToth ( 623604 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:02PM (#12237731)
    Truly, if you're into function over form, the Win2K interface is far more refined than the prettier, but painfully illogical backwards step that became XP. I am amazed, yet not surprised, at the number of people who are barely competent enough to create a desktop icon, but manage to figure out how to return to the "classic" style. I hope the next Windows interface will be a return to crisp function and logical work flow.

    • Re:Want improvement in XP? Go back to Windows 2000 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:16PM (#12237923) Homepage Journal
      "Truly, if you're into function over form, the Win2K interface is far more refined than the prettier, but painfully illogical backwards step that became XP. I am amazed, yet not surprised, at the number of people who are barely competent enough to create a desktop icon, but manage to figure out how to return to the "classic" style. I hope the next Windows interface will be a return to crisp function and logical work flow."

      Can you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by 'painfully illogical backwards step'? For basic folder stuff, etc, XP's not that much different. The difference is mostly cosmetic. The start menu is questionably better or worse, depending on how you drive. It's great if you use 10 apps requently, it's an extra step if you blow past that. The Control Panel... er... I have no idea what they were thinking with that, but you're a click away from bringing it back.

      Err okay I was just babbling for a moment. When you switch from XP's default to classic view, the main change to it is cosmetic, not functional. (Unless you can correct me on that, which I'd appreciate.) You still have your min/max/restore/and close Icons etc.

      In the mean time, what XP does offer you is the ability to lock the taskbar. That little feature suddenly makes the toolbar a far more interesting UI tool. There's actually a lot you can do down there, but I don't think most people bothered with a whole lot because you could accidently drag it and mess up the order of everything.

  • I've got an idea! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by OmgTEHMATRICKS ( 836103 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:03PM (#12237748) Journal
    Make it NOT look like froofy pastel crap that makes people violently ill! That's a good first step.

    • Re:I've got an idea! (Score:3, Informative)

      by skadus ( 821655 )
      A patched uxtheme.dll [neowin.net] and about 2 or 3 minutes at DeviantArt [deviantart.com]will clear that right up.

      I agree, though. Luna and Royale [softpedia.com] look godawful. I'd love to see them recruit a better artist for some themes later on. Maybe they can make a cool Sci-Fi theme that looks like the one in Minority Report (just saw it this weekend, otherwise I'd think of a better movie/interface design).

    • Re:I've got an idea! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:21PM (#12237965) Homepage Journal
      "Make it NOT look like froofy pastel crap that makes people violently ill!"

      Err okay. The XP default scheme, though quite bold, is not pastel. (It's more like Fisher Price. :P)

      In all seriousness, it's not all that bad. I discovered that my biggest beef with that color scheme wasn't the colors used, but the wallpaper. I turned that black, and suddenly XP's interface isn't so bad. What's nice about it is that it's rather easy to tell which window is active or blinking. The difference between orange and blue is quite striking. Green is a nice highlight color as it has a decent contrast against blue.

      I can understand the screenshots not looking so appealing, but having used it for a while now, I actually kind of like it. (Especially after getting rid of that damn wallpaper.) I wish by default the titlebars were smaller, but their color choice is fine.

  • cygwin (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tadd ( 51292 )
    ... and as mentioned above, windows powertoys, and a whole bunch of firefox extentions

  • The task bar has more in it than you realize (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:10PM (#12237847) Homepage Journal
    One of my biggest usability changes in XP came from unlocking the taskbar and making effective use of the tabs inside it. No, I'm not just talking about Quicklaunch here. You can add different folders, including My Computer. For example, right now I have my drive letters exposed. I can right click on the C:\ drive and do a properties to get an idea of how much space I have left. I have two optical drives so at a glance I can see what discs are in there. (The name of the disc is put in place of the title.) I also have a 'shortcuts' folder I made (sort of like Quicklaunch) with a shortcut to that folder. Why is this useful? A.) it's easy to get at that folder so I can add remove stuff. B.) I'm constantly changing folders or files so I can quickly add stuff.

    In short, I've made effective use of shortcuts etc using the taskbar. I don't have to do near as much folder surfing. On top of all that, the interface is pretty simple provided you know to unlock it first.
    • I have such a links attached to my taskbar, too. The reason why we need it is because Windows doesn't have a favorite folder menu/button in the open/save dialog boxes. It sure is a pain because not all applications remember your last accessed folder. The last accessed folder is nice, but not as nice as a favorites (Mac OS 9/X).

  • Stop interrupting me! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fsck! ( 98098 ) <jacob.elder@gmCHEETAHail.com minus cat> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:14PM (#12237900) Homepage
    It shouldn't be possible for a dialog box, especially one from another application, to steal keyboard focus. It's bad enough that the dialogs are usually very poorly written. I was afraid of "sheets" the first time I heard about them in OSX, but that plus the bouncing dock icons really makes it a lot easier to focus on what I'm doing. The hundreds of little icons, sliding boxes and word ckouds in the system tray need to be completely rethought.

    Next I guess I would say that bitmapped icons should be dumped in favor of vector based ones for readability at higher resolution.

    • It shouldn't be possible for a dialog box, especially one from another application, to steal keyboard focus.

      It is really annoying, but you can prevent an application from stealing focus. It is a setting in tweakui.
    • As others have mentioned, Tweak UI [microsoft.com] to the rescue.

      "General - Focus - allows you to stop applications stealing focus ie. taking over your screen. You can set it so the tab flashes indefinitely or a finite number of times. "
    • I agree, I've thought the exact same thing. Not only is it annoying to be interrupted, but if you're in the middle of typing something, it's quite easy to end up dismissing the dialog box without even seeing what it is. Then you have to go look through all your open programs and try to deduce what it could have possibly been. Often there's no way to figure out what it was.

      It wouldn't be too hard to solve this problem for most cases. Just check if the user has typed something or used the mouse in the la

  • Different themes are available... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WebHostingGuy ( 825421 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:15PM (#12237905) Homepage Journal
    XP Themes [xpthemes.com]

    This site has a lot of window dressing (pun intended) to change the look and add a few items to XP to customize your interface.

  • what the? (Score:2, Funny)

    by drac0n1z ( 824583 )
    Did Microsoft infiltrate /. to ask us nix-users how to better the Longhorn interface?
    • Having seen some screenshots of Longhorn I really must say a resounding "Dear God No"..
      well actualy i would say "yes" they asked someone who was looking to bring MS down
  • Porblem solved. [stardock.com]

  • Use the system, don't fight it. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:18PM (#12237947) Journal
    If you go installing a ton of crap on your Windows machine, then you won't learn how to use Windows on everyone else's machine, which works pretty damn well. Learn the system, and it's not too bad. It blew my mind once when Anand of Anandtech tried to claim that MacOS X had better keyboard shortcuts than Windows. I love MacOS, but Windows has keyboard accessibility completely nailed.

    What Microsoft has done:

    Windows-D hides all your apps.

    Windows-R brings up the run window.

    The only things I've changed:

    ctrl-alt-g puts focus in the Google Deskbar.

    The Google Deskbar is a part of a side-docked not always-on-top toolbar with my quicklaunch & desktop, with large icons that I can use like a dock. So no matter where I am, ctrl-alt-g gives me access to the stuff I don't want cluttering my taskbar.

    If it's always-on-top, then you can't use fitts the way that XP is designed for, which is fantastic.

    I'm pretty happy with the setup. My only complaint with Windows is that the text-editing shortcuts aren't the same as MacOS, so my fingers do all the wrong things when I'm typing on either system. Both operating systems have passable text-editing key commands, I just can't learn either one since they're different. If only they both had emacs-mode, I'd just learn it the emacs way.

    Anyway, here's a picture of how it works out for me on xp [mac.com]. That's what it looks like when I've popped up my toolbar with ctrl-alt-g.

    • Re:Use the system, don't fight it. (Score:4, Informative)

      by larien ( 5608 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:49PM (#12238270) Homepage Journal
      Couple of others:

      Windows-E - bring up explorer window
      Windows-M - Minimise all windows (seems to be same as Windows-D which I didn't know about).

    • I can't speak for how OSX does things, but I agree that keyboard shortcuts in Windows are pretty solid. My main beef is that so many user apps don't implement them properly or at all.

      It's possible to control every aspect of a Windows computer (except MMC, dammit) from the keyboard. Except for third-party apps, which are often broken - but you can't blame MS for that. Most keyboard shortcuts have been Windows-standard since the 3.0 days, it's not MS's fault that so many developers are too lazy to implem

      • Clipboard shortcuts are the same, but line up, line down, word forward, word back, move/select, paragraph up, paragraph down, &c. are all different. Since it's the only way to do it right on both systems, I wind up using the arrow keys a lot, and only memorize the move/select character/word modifiers. I trip up even there.

        MMC is so weird. I can't tell if they've got their own scheme for how things should work, or if it's just missing a billion important features. I suspect that it's missing.
    • Windows may have very small number of good shortcuts, but overall, they're pretty half-assed. Yeah, you can minimize all windows, but you can't minimize one app's windows. You can open the Run box, but you can't get Properties. It feels like the people that chose the shortcuts haven't ever spoken to the people that designed the GUI.

      I don't have a Windows box handy, but the one the most baffles me is the window/app closing shortcut : Alt+F4.

      What sort of freakish mutant flipper must one have to find tha
      • alt-space n
        alt-space c

        Very handy. Anything you can do with a mouse can be done with a keyboard. You can get properties with the menu key (right click key ?) which is next to the right hand ctrl key on my keyboard.

        There are plenty of things that I don't know how to do with the keyboard on Windows, but that's because I don't know Windows very well.

  • Get rid of the annoying pop-ups (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nick_danger ( 150058 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:34PM (#12238105)
    It seems that Windows is always popping something up on the screen that forces the user to stop what they're doing to acknowledge before they can continue. And most of these pop-ups are totally meaningless. At times getting anything done with Windows is like playing a game of "Whack-a-mole".

    To be fair, not all of the annoying pop-ups come from Windows itself. Norton is really bad about popping up windows that say nothing more than "I'm here to completely interrupt your work to let you know that everything is just fine. Please click here to make me go away for a little while." However, it is a larger problem with WinXP if only because it's become an accepted practice among the software vendors.

    Someone correct me if I'm wrong (wait -- this is Slashdot -- someone will correct me mercilessly if I'm wrong) but doesn't the Mac have pretty well defined UI guidelines that cover things like this?

  • 2600 has already covered this (Score:4, Informative)

    by StarWynd ( 751816 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:39PM (#12238171)

    A while back there was an article in 2600 [2600.com] about how to "Hack the Look" of Windows. Take a look at the articles here [shell-shocked.org] and here [shell-shocked.org].

  • * auto-switch to "list" view whenever opened, regardless of the last view setting

    * auto-sort the "details" view by name, regardless of the last sort setting

    * auto-switch to top of list in "details" view - that may arguably the correct behavior but when opening files in the same directory from the same application I want the dialog to remember the scrollbar position to make going over a long list of files and opening some of them less annoying.

    Is there any open source (or at least free) software that can
    • Mate, you're not even trying if that is all you can come up with. :-)

      Try on:

      * doesn't show the full path to the current directory!

      * it seems you can't modify the big shortcut buttons on the left hand side of the dialog to point somewhere useful.

      * you can't directly type in the directory you want.

      * there is no way of entering a custom "filter by filetype" pattern. (eg. *.py)

      * it always seems to forget its size and/or position between uses.

      * when a model dialog (like the file dialog) is open, you can't

      • Re:thats all?? (Score:5, Informative)

        by TechnoPops ( 590791 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:40PM (#12238819) Journal
        * it seems you can't modify the big shortcut buttons on the left hand side of the dialog to point somewhere useful.

        Download the TweakUI PowerToy [microsoft.com]. It let's you change those to whatever you like.

        * you can't directly type in the directory you want.

        Sure you can. Just put your cursor in the file name box and type away. It'll even autocomplete for you.

        * there is no way of entering a custom "filter by filetype" pattern. (eg. *.py)

        Ditto with this. Type *.py in the file name box, hit enter, and all your Python files will only show up.
    • I could never understand why sort by name in details separates folders from files. How can I change this? It's one of the most stupid thing ever. I mean, sort by name, not by type.

  • Strokeit and Trip (Score:3, Informative)

    by FrenZon ( 65408 ) * on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:44PM (#12238220) Homepage

    I find stroke-it [tcbmi.com] to be invaluable after some jigging of the default settings. It's a mouse-gesture recognition system, and can be configured to do just about anything (although I mainly use it for open browser, open explorer and close window.

    I also use trip [glenmurphy.com] regularly, but I wrote it, so I'm quite biased.

  • When I drag and drop a folder C:\FOO in Windows Explorer to any destination, all it says is

    "Copying From 'FOO' to 'FOO'"

    in the status dialog.

    Which drive did I drop it on? It doesn't say.

    Where in the tree on that drive is FOO actually being copied? The message given is the same even if I drop it in radically different places, so there's no way I can tell if I dropped it in the wrong place.

    And why not provide some sort of file count or byte count instead of the simplified "x seconds remaining"?

    Who

  • Things I can't live without... (Score:3, Informative)

    by phallstrom ( 69697 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:58PM (#12238386)
    Putty for SSH
    http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ [greenend.org.uk]

    CTRL-CAPS Lock Switcher
    http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/ctrl2cap. shtml [sysinternals.com]

  • OS/2 had this over ten years ago, and it still isn't an option in Windows. It's sometimes nice to be able to quickly open a program's original directory to look at documentaton or whatever.
  • OS/2 had this. I *like* creating custom icons for my programs and folders.
  • My advice: turn it off. I do it on all my machines that I'm forced to run XP. Also turn off the fade, slide, etc. animations.

    Its default theme's minimize, maximize, and close boxes are way too big. Does MS think everyone needs glasses? The other thing is that they're much too close together and it is easy to click one when you meant something else--unlike OS X where the widgets are further apart.

    See? Functional after that. I do admit that I use ClearType. First time I did it on an LCD I thought something

  • Windows "window manager"... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nickos ( 91443 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:26PM (#12238683)
    Get MS to untie us from the Windows "window manager" so that we can run 3rd party ones or write our own. I'd love to get rid of the raise-on-focus policy (if anyone knows how to do this I'd love to know about it)...

  • Consistency and Integratioin. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mabinogi ( 74033 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @05:48PM (#12238900) Homepage
    The two things that people love to say is Windows' advantage are actually things they do really badly.

    Why can't I rename the recycle bin, when I can rename "My Computer", "Network Places" and "My Documents?"

    Why don't I have a "send to" context menu on items in a zip folder?
    In fact, why do zip files act nothing like regular folders at all when explorer presents them as if they are.

    Why do control panel items open up in a dialogue style menu, when you've navigated to them via a web style interface?

    Why does MS-Office _always_ have a totally different look and feel to any existing windows version at the time of its release?

    Why can't I open from and save to WebDav and ftp from any application?

    Why can I use windows networking paths (being able to "cd //servername/sharename") in cygwin of all things, but not in cmd.exe?
    I think they had to actually try to make that one not work, as fopen() in Windows will accept those paths.

    Microsoft loves to introduce an idea - and then not follow through with a complete and useful implementation, but they'll still use their half arsed useless implementation as an example of how innovative they are.
    Innovation is all very well, but it does you fuck all good if you have the worst implementation of your own idea.

    Windows could be an absolutely excellent environment if only Microsoft finished half of what they started.

    • Re:Consistency and Integratioin. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jherico ( 39763 ) <bdavisNO@SPAMsaintandreas.org> on Friday April 15, 2005 @01:18AM (#12241681) Homepage
      In fact, why do zip files act nothing like regular folders at all when explorer presents them as if they are.
      Because zip folders are a new feature and aren't as polished as everything else.
      Why does MS-Office _always_ have a totally different look and feel to any existing windows version at the time of its release?
      Well, that's hardly a failing of the OS is it? But in point of fact, the release cycle of Office, arguably one of the most used applications on windows besides IE and games, allows the microsoft team to experiment with additional UI polishing efforts. You'll frequently notice the well recieved changes in Office finding their way in to the next version of Windows.
      Why can I use windows networking paths [...] not in cmd.exe?
      In point of fact you can. If I say 'copy \\server\share\foo.txt c:\' it will work fine, as long as I'm able to authenticate against that share. Granted, you can't change to a network directory unless you mount it somewhere, but I'm pretty sure that's the case on Mac and Unix as well.
      Microsoft loves to introduce an idea - and then not follow through with a complete and useful implementation,
      This is actually a common problem with developing features in software. You can make a feature, and you can decide its not popular enough to not warrant further effort, but got help you if you ever remove a feature. When you add a feature to software, keep that in mind, because somewhere out there, no matter how bad the feature is, will love it, use it, and scream bloody murder and never upgrade again if you remove it.
  • GoScreen virtual desktop
    - Well written little app.
    - Does not lock up like msvd
    - Has Sticky windows ...
    - I have 10 vd windows - I know alot but I have alot of windows. By using arrow keys in combination with `ctrl-windows-alt` -or- `window-alt` I have 8 easy to remember windows. Nice thing about this setup as well is that it works on _most_ laptops and apple comps.
    - I cannot live without my virtual desktop. I use the mouse about half of what I used before and I rareyl hit the maximize or minimise b

  • Nvidia Owners Only (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nuintari ( 47926 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:07PM (#12239053) Homepage
    Nvidia Nview is pretty handy for the X junkie who has to live in windows.

    It can do a very nice on mouse over auto raise, sloppy focus style. It needs more options for people who are yused to a different type of mouse focus. But for those who prefer sloppy, its there.

    MS Power Toys include a virtual desktop manager, but it sucks. Nview has a much better one, that has far fewer bugs (but it does have them), and is _much_ faster.

    Then there are the little features, which include, but are not limited to: shading (minimize to title bar), throwing (toss a window accross the screen and watch it stick to the opposite edge), and true transparency (for those with massive cpu time to waste).

    But of course, you non Nvidia people miss out.

  • Mac OS is not so hot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pyrotic ( 169450 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:10PM (#12239072) Homepage
    not only beautiful, but functional and efficient, Mac OS X 'Aqua' user interface

    Excuse me? Since when was rendering metalic textures for half your windows either efficient, or functional? OK, GPU might make it less inefficient, but it's hardly the simplest thing to render to a screen. And it gets worse when you try to work out WHY the windows are metal. Why is my web browser metal, but my FTP program not?

    And don't get me started on the "traffic lights" window closing buttons. Apple wrote the book on colourised user interfaces (Inside Macintosh), which they then ignored. They also had a good section in that book on Fitt's law, and how stuff in a fixed position at the edge of a screen is easiest to mouse to. So they stick the dock floating somewhere at the base of the screen, at variying positions depending on how many apps you have open. OK, expose is nice, font rendering is good, admin is less of a chore than with traditional unix, but I really wish they'd bothered reading their own guidelines from the 80s. Humans still only use 2 eyes and 1 mouse, it's not as though faster CPUs have rendered WIMP obsolete. Man, it almost makes me long for Motif.

  • Taskbar default (Score:5, Insightful)

    by r00k123 ( 588214 ) <borenste AT student DOT umass DOT edu> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:14PM (#12239120)

    The taskbar's default position should be on the left-hand side of the screen, not the bottom. Here's why:

    1. Having the bar at the bottom uses up vertical space, esp. when it's two units high or more. Reading stuff on a screen requires much more vertical space than horizontal. Moving the bar to the side frees up vertical space and results in less scrolling.

    2. You can fit WAY more quicklaunch buttons without affecting how much taskbar room you have for running programs. Quicklaunch buttons are a blessing and I can't live without em.

    3. You also get way more room for the hooks for running programs that show on the taskbar (can't think of a better way to describe them). They stack vertically and you can fit dozens more than when the taskbar is horizontal.

    Seriously, once you move the startbar to the side and get used to it, you'll keep it there forever. Give it a shot if you haven't tried it.

  • Address bar in task bar. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by knisa ( 209732 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @06:38PM (#12239376)
    One of the first things I do when I'm on a new 2000 or XP box is add the address bar to my task bar. (Right click on task bar | toolbars | Address). From there, you can type almost any command you like. I almost never use the start menu now; I just click into the address bar and type winword (or soffice -writer). You can also just type a URL to go directly to it, type c:\ to go straight to the root of c: in explorer, cmd to get a command prompt, or lusrmgr.msc to open user manager.

    I often use it while telnetting to network devices (go to address bar, type telnet 10.x.x.x). It really can't be beat, and nobody does it.

    Steve
  • An often-missed feature of Windows is the fact that you can embed anything on the web into your taskbar. If you find documents appropriately-sized, this can make it easy to add live information to the taskbar.
  • If you're locked out of installing stuff & changing Control Panel options, you can still do a few things to make it better. I've installed both Firefox (with a shitload of extensions) and Openoffice.org on my network drive, even though you usually can't install stuff on the user accounts where I am. Firefox needs to be set up as portable firefox (Google it), but other than that, it works great.

    It sucks, though, when the program you're using requires that you access C:\ to use plugins ... most folde
  • At work there are a bunch of folders on the network I have to use all the time, but there are too many to map network drives, and they are buried deep in folder heirachies. So here's a tip for you.
    Use the My Network Places folder to create a link to any remote location.
    Copy and Paste this folder to any other folder on your PC.
    The real folder (not the one you see in explorer) contains a shortcut called target.lnk.
    Using a dos window you can replace this shortcut with a shortcut to any folder you want, eve

  • A big list (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Darth_Burrito ( 227272 )
    For me, the biggest problems with the windows UI are the things that are missing.
    • Programming editor with syntax highlighting, something like editplus.
    • An industrial grade database (msde but with a usable interface)
    • centrally manageable Apt-get like software package management.
    • Remote Desktop access on XP Home
    • SSH client & server
    • A little choice for common applications (web browsers, email).
    • A scripting environment that doesn't suck.
    • A command line environment that doesn't suck.
    • Outlook deserves it's

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