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Operating Systems GUI Graphics Microsoft Upgrades Windows

More Eye Candy Coming To Windows 10 209

jones_supa writes Microsoft is expected to release a new build of the Windows 10 Technical Preview in the very near future, according to their own words. The only build so far to be released to the public is 9841 but the next iteration will likely be in the 9860 class of releases. With this new build, Microsoft has polished up the animations that give the OS a more comprehensive feel. When you open a new window, it flies out on to the screen from the icon and when you minimize it, it collapses back in to the icon on the taskbar. It is a slick animation and if you have used OS X, it is similar to the one used to collapse windows back in to the dock. Bah.
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More Eye Candy Coming To Windows 10

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  • how pretty (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CheshireDragon ( 1183095 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @04:49PM (#48190125) Homepage
    I couldn't care less about how pretty it looks...I want it to WORK PROPERLY.
    Linux back in the day looked like hell, but it worked.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Linux back in the day looked like hell, but it worked.

      No it didn't, sound and graphics were a pain in the ass to get working!

      • I am talking about the system functionality. What the hell requires sound or serious graphics on a daily basis in Linux? nothing that I have used yet. Of course, an admin only needs command line ;)
        • Re:how pretty (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Mr_Wisenheimer ( 3534031 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @05:00PM (#48190231)

          Well, scientists for one. It might explain why so many of them have switched to OSX as their *NIX of choice. I remember a lot of Linux desktop managers struggled with doing basic things like properly rendering Mathematica and allowing it to accelerate graphics with open GL whereas on OSX and Windows, it just "worked" pretty much 99.9% of the time.

          Linux itself (the actual kernel) is very stable, maybe even more stable than the base Windows NT kernel. But as a desktop operating system? There's a reason why most people shell out good money for OSX or Windows, and it is not just because they look pretty (which many Linux desktops do these days as well).

          • Re:how pretty (Score:5, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20, 2014 @05:12PM (#48190371)

            Well, I am a researcher, work with Mathematica, Acegen, C++11, OpenGL, Qt, some Fortran 2003, CEI Ensight and ParaView. I am slashdotting in my Mac but do all work in Linux. Basically, I use the Mac to read and write emails and to listen to music. All serious work is done in Linux.

            Actually, after OSX 10.9, most classical software like Xfig, Lyx, Gnuplot, etc became brittle, slow or simply stopped working.

            It is difficult to keep a straight face and state that OSX is stable. Xcode crashes all the time, Qt software crashes all the time, visualization software works much better on Linux. Keynote is ok though, but that's about it.

            What you are referring to is perhaps the 2006-2009 period.

            • "It is difficult to keep a straight face and state that OSX is stable. Xcode crashes all the time, Qt software crashes all the time, visualization software works much better on Linux."

              I play with the same tools - and I experience no instability like this on OS X. Xeon and Core Ix series hardware.
              • Re:how pretty (Score:4, Informative)

                by cyn1c77 ( 928549 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @01:13AM (#48192901)

                "It is difficult to keep a straight face and state that OSX is stable. Xcode crashes all the time, Qt software crashes all the time, visualization software works much better on Linux."

                I play with the same tools - and I experience no instability like this on OS X. Xeon and Core Ix series hardware.

                Agreed. Same here.

                If you are having serious instability issues, you have something wrong locally with your machine.

                Especially if it is crashing with that "classical" software.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward

            There's also a reason that so many of the actual scientists I know come rushing back to Linux after playing around in MacOSX or Windows for a while. It's just not as good at SCIENCE. It wastes CPU and RAM for starters. And if you need a graph of 3d animation or other visualization, Linux can now do that just fine these days, much less annoyingly than it was even a few years ago. If you need to do serious work, it doesn't waste the system's resources as much, and it doesn't distract you into playing around i

          • Linux itself (the actual kernel) is very stable, maybe even more stable than the base Windows NT kernel. But as a desktop operating system?

            Well you just wait and see until 2015, that is going to be the year of the Linux Desktop.

            • Most of the Linux desktop evangelists have quietly switched to OSX or sewn their lips shut. There are still a few of them around.

              The Steambox is coming out next year though, so that's something.

              Also, when everything is working correctly, the Linux desktop is actually a pretty pleasant experience these days, so there's always that.

          • Re:how pretty (Score:4, Informative)

            by jcupitt65 ( 68879 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @03:14AM (#48193269)

            I'm a working scientist. I have a Mac at home for playing, but work is all Linux. OS X has a very slow filesystem, no working package manager (or rather it has at least four, none of which are much good) and only runs on relatively expensive hardware. Good luck building a compute cluster from imacs. Windows is even worse, of course.

          • I have worked for nearly a decade as a sysadmin in a science environment, and I hardly witnessed people demanding to switch from Linux to OS X. For the most part, MOST science software actually happens to work best under Linux distributions. Your Mathematica example is only one piece of evidence. However, the Linux distributions track much better packages like R, Octave, or Latex, which are bread and butter packages in a lot of scientific fields. While I never used Mathematica, I never had any issues with c

        • Image editing.

          Audio production.

          Design.

          Page layout.

          Video editing.

          You know, a lot of professions.

        • I am talking about the system functionality. What the hell requires sound or serious graphics on a daily basis in Linux?

          Most things that people do with their computers, you know like web browsing, watching video, listening to music and then of course professionals want to do things like audio, video and photo editing/production, architectural, factory and product design/engineering/simulation/visualization.

          Of course, an admin only needs command line ;)

          And most people don't get a computer just to administer it.

      • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        no.. they were pretty simply to get working 1996.

        after that however.. dunno what the fuck went down. even 3dfx cards(voodoo1/2) were easy to get work in linux.

        however, I'm just having flashbacks to os/2 warp when they talk about windows animating out of things etc.. those transitions don't matter shit.

    • Re:how pretty (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pooh666 ( 624584 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @04:53PM (#48190149)
      Indeed. I turn off all animations they waste time and resources. How about making it super easy for me not to have to do searches for files all of the time? More intelligent awareness of what I did last time when I opened a file from one folder vs another. LESS visual BS that just looks pretty but leaves me entirely confused as to how to do my work. FRICKN OFFICE MENUS MUST DIE.
      • Re:how pretty (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @04:57PM (#48190195) Homepage Journal

        Controls that you can actually see before you activate them.

        • Re:how pretty (Score:5, Interesting)

          by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @08:57PM (#48191933) Homepage Journal

          Ah. Mystery meat navigation. Got to love it.
          The real killers with Windows 8 and 10, though, are
          1: Edge detection. Edge detection only works well on single monitors. It really doesn't work at all if you run a VM in a window.
          2: Apps that automatically go full screen, and many of which don't even have a windowed mode. That's a huge productivity killer, and source of errors. It kills drag/drop, but even worse, you can't have source and references visible at the same time, nor copy/paste between multiple windows.
          3; No activate without auto-raise. Which now is auto-raise-and-zoom. Why won't you let me type in or paste into a window that isn't on top? It makes no sense. Do people really like to bring an entire IM session to the foreground, and, depending on the program, obscuring everything else, just to type in "ok"?
          4: Inconsistent menus and windows, self-organizing depending on use. It's a support nightmare when you can't tell someone how to do something, because the menus and windows are going to be different on each user's machine. You have to shoulder-surf people to support them.
          5: Dumbing down DPI support. In W7 and to a smaller extent W8, you can set the DPI correctly and control the physical (as opposed to pixel) size of what you display. in W10, scaling changes on you as you try to work. it doesn't matter if you actually want a 10 dpi font to be, you know, 10 dpi in size. No, what matters now is how to scale a random amount to fit a full-screen window with huge unused borders, and your own settings be damned.

          It's like they have looked at Gnome 3 and iPads, and taken all the worst "features", making an unparalleled productivity killer.

          Eye candy doesn't make up for that. Sorry.
          Aero was at least semi-useful, as you can see other windows through the borders. But W8/W10? It's looks for the sake of looks. And bad looks at that.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward

            1: Edge detection. Edge detection only works well on single monitors. It really doesn't work at all if you run a VM in a window.

            It works fine on multiple monitors as you have that couple of pixels at the top to "catch" the mouse as you move between displays. It also works in VM windows if you do manual mouse capture, obviously it isn't going to work if you do automatic mouse capture.

            2: Apps that automatically go full screen, and many of which don't even have a windowed mode. That's a huge productivity killer, and source of errors. It kills drag/drop, but even worse, you can't have source and references visible at the same time, nor copy/paste between multiple windows.

            In Windows 10 they can all be run in windowed mode.

            3; No activate without auto-raise. Which now is auto-raise-and-zoom. Why won't you let me type in or paste into a window that isn't on top? It makes no sense. Do people really like to bring an entire IM session to the foreground, and, depending on the program, obscuring everything else, just to type in "ok"?

            It's there, and it's simple to configure it [blogspot.com.au]. Most people don't want that as default behavior.

            4: Inconsistent menus and windows, self-organizing depending on use. It's a support nightmare when you can't tell someone how to do something, because the menus and windows are going to be different on each user's machine. You have to shoulder-surf people to support them.

            Yes we should eliminate customization so everything is the same on every system because allowing people to cus

            • It works fine on multiple monitors as you have that couple of pixels at the top to "catch" the mouse as you move between displays.

              Fine - if you know that they're there.

              Perhaps I should patent "having a couple of pixels that perform some action, and are visually distinguishable from other pixels that perform other actions, or no action."

      • by OhPlz ( 168413 )

        Office menus? Careful, they'll take that as an endorsement of ribbons. We replaced everything with ribbons! See? No more menus!

      • Indeed. I turn off all animations they waste time and resources.

        Counter-intuitively, and contrary to the label "Adjust [Visual Effects] for best performance", turning off animations on Windows Vista and above will make your system slower because it disables hardware acceleration.

        http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnew... [msdn.com]

      • I thought they'd turned off all extraneous 'eye candy' to get a slim, lean, 'clean', look that was very efficient... and so I fully expect them to start making some tiles translucent in the next release, and then with shiny graphical highlights too.

        Maybe one day they'll make buttons that look like buttons so you know where to click!

    • Re:how pretty (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DocHoncho ( 1198543 ) <`dochoncho' `at' `gmail.com'> on Monday October 20, 2014 @04:55PM (#48190169) Homepage

      As long as you can still turn them off. Just one more thing to add to the post-install de-crapification checklist.

    • I couldn't care less about how pretty it looks...I want it to WORK PROPERLY.

      These days the issues with operating systems (Windows, Linux (incl. Android) or OSX) are more related to the user installing malicious software than the actual operating system working incorrectly. Actual operating system crashes - even those that stem from bad kernel-mode drivers - are few and far between these days on any of the modern operating systems, we've come a long way from the days of Windows 9x, MacOS and the early versions of Caldera.

    • it "worked", but it had shit HW support, and a terrible UI, so that doesn't really count as "works", because a without a decent user interface your not getting much done, or your ability to get shit done was severly degraded.

      Kernel 2.4 was usable, but 2.6 solidified Linux as a really great OS, and its just getting better.

      but as far as UI, on linux it feels like its a dime a dozen because we've had compiz for so long, we can just make any effect we really want, and none of it really seems new.

      or just bring
    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Linux back in the day looked like hell, but it worked.

      Now it's reversed

    • I second this. I turn all that crap off whenever possible. It's just a waste of CPU cycles and annoying. I don't need Pretty Pretty Blinking Lights in an OS, I need an OS that is rock-solid reliable, how about you work on that, Microsoft?
      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Technically, the most accurate description for a usable operating system and interface, is as invisible as possible, whilst allowing the user to, configure the system, search for files and launch applications. In addition rather than pointless prettiness the operating system and graphical user interface should incorporate applications in the base package that the bulk of people use, so office suite (spread sheet, word processor, simple relational database and, vector drawing tool), calendering application,

    • Actually linux back in the day, as in about 1997, resembled this sort of thing with the animated effects available for the Enlightenment window manager - however they were designed to be very easy to turn off if you didn't want them. It even had the little window snapshot images that are in win7, and of course the multiple desktops coming with Win10 (but even twm has those).
      Rob Malda had an popular web site for the Enlightenment application ePlus when Slashdot started which is why a lot of people who used
    • Is the overall appearance still that of Windows Vista Starter Edition that they moved to in Windows 8? Microsoft are pretty much financing an entire company, Stardock, whose Window Blinds you have to buy if you don't want your desktop to look like some bland flat pastel-shaded 1960s show home.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    wobbly windows. Where ARE my wobbly windows??

  • I wonder when Microsoft will learn that a lot of us would rather use our CPU and GPU cycles for something other than eye candy? While computers can be used for fun purposes, we shouldn't all be left with the feel that what we have is little more than a technotoy.
    • by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @06:45PM (#48191175)

      My computer has had CPU and GPU cycles to burn for the past decade, and while my machines are typically reasonably powered, they're not exactly considered monsters either. For all the complaints I hear about wasting cycles, I have yet to see OS-level effects or window animations seriously slow down my computer in any measurable way, even on specialized workstations I optimize for performance, like my digital audio workstation.

      Animation actually has a real purpose in terms of UI design. For instance, an animation between a window in it's normal state and the minimized state is not just aesthetically pleasing, but helps the user to mentally connect those windowed positions, making it less likely for people to be momentarily confused about where their window disappeared to. Moreover, people generally like eye candy, and they like to be able to customize their system. It simply serves to make people more comfortable with the OS environment, but I'd argue that's actually important of any tech product intended for the masses as well.

      Adding animations or some virtual gloss doesn't devalue an operating system and turn it into a tech toy, nor does making a product boring and dull enhance it's functionality in any way.

      • Hmmm.

        I'd say I prefer my windows to just *be gone* when I minimize them. I know they end up in the system tray. I don't need an animation to tell me that my UI/Desktop Manager is doing its job.

        You can provide status information visually WITHOUT animation.

        Just to say: Some years back, I had a boss who, using a dual monitor station for software development, frequently hit the Windows 2000 Window Limit (64 I think).

        I currently have 22 windows open. Of them, about 8 are tabbed browser windows so you can figure
      • I have some of the animations in KDE 4 enabled, stuff like opening/closing windows, minimizing/maximizing, switching desktops and the like. I also have them set to "fast" rather than "normal". The animation is still clearly visible, but it's quick enough that they don't get in the way. Nothing at all like that horrible Crazy Compiz video linked in the summary.

        Animations are perfectly OK, as long as they don't get in the way of actually using the system.

    • by JDG1980 ( 2438906 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @06:50PM (#48191209)

      I wonder when Microsoft will learn that a lot of us would rather use our CPU and GPU cycles for something other than eye candy? While computers can be used for fun purposes, we shouldn't all be left with the feel that what we have is little more than a technotoy.

      Windows has always offered the option to turn off animations. (System Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Performance gives a bunch of checkboxes for this on both Win7 and Win10.) Flip it around: why shouldn't those of us with good mid-range or high-end desktops be able to use a small portion of our CPU and GPU power to make things look nicer? Why should we be hamstrung to what the crappiest tablet with a half-dead battery can handle?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Jake Dodgie ( 53046 )

        This, This, this, I liked Aero, I had a PC that could run it, I like buttons that look like buttons that click whan you push em and have a bit o shiney hi-light.
        I like translucent effects and stuff showing through.
        Who really likes flat blah square windows with little indication as th who has focus and whats on top.

  • form over function? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dAzED1 ( 33635 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @04:57PM (#48190197) Journal
    Given the type of IT consulting I do, I have to stay comfortable with Windows - I've been trying out Win10 on my fairly new high-end gaming laptop, installed on a SDD, and have been amazed at how often a seemingly menial task can lag - or even hang up the entire UI. For instance, I started up IE a bit ago - while using a blank default/home page - and it froze up the entire desktop for a few seconds (even briefly sputtering the audio of a movie I had playing in another window). Seems to me like they have more to work on than animations - maybe they should focus on usability for a bit first.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20, 2014 @05:09PM (#48190335)

      To be fair, this is a Technical Preview, and I wouldn't be surprised if these are "checked" debug builds, which are always going to be slower than a highly optimized build.

      Captcha: OVERFLOW

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      Seems to me like they have more to work on than animations - maybe they should focus on usability for a bit first.

      You think they should focus first on the things where the desired user experience is well understood, so leaving the unknowns and exploratory experiments to be done much closer to ship time?

    • Not saying there isn't work to do but I think betas/previews are debug builds with a lot of optimizations turned off. There is a minimum bar on all features I think before people start saying you don't look cool/add features etc. It is a constant battle as a developer pushing for a balance between new shinny and performance/maintenance.

  • The OSX animations are awful, people have been using windowing systems for decades and completely grok what happened to the window. At most you need to a tiny fraction of a second to avoid the user overlooking the change. Please do not waste precious seconds or cause people motion sickness for your whizbang effects.
    • Helpful to newbies (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @06:38PM (#48191111) Journal

      If done right, such animations can be helpful to newbies, showing the relationship between the icon and the newly opened window (versus say a randomly popping message or spam). But after a while such "training wheels" get annoying and slow you down.

      • But after a while such "training wheels" get annoying and slow you down.

        At which point you turn them off.

    • That is my biggest complaint about windows phone: take a desktop animation then make it take 4X longer that is windows phone. Otherwise it is pretty nice though (if only they could convince more people to develop for it). I fully agree with you these days if someone is staring at a screen and clicks something they know what they expect to happen 90% of the time so you might as well just give it to them as quickly as possible.

      Perhaps make the UI adaptive: have the wiz bang animations and after an hour ask th

  • by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @04:59PM (#48190211)

    I know, I know, Apple did it so it must be cool right? I really want the ability for people to change themes as they see fit come back. If you are on a low spec phone, tablet or PC, or just don't like effects, you should be able to turn them off. But if you want more effects, you should have the option. You could easily turn off the Aero Glass effect in Windows 7 and either stay with the less-transparent Windows 7 GUI or even go all the way back to Windows Classic. Why can't we have that option again?

    • Even if you don't, you should be able to download it and install it as a theme. Windows is pretty customizable. The desktop effects are under advanced computer properties and the theme is under personalization. You can also turn Aero glass off in the power management menu.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This would add more work for Microsoft. Microsoft has been struggling with ever increasing monitor resolutions, i.e. the HighDPI issues that todays display cause. They have designed the Modern UI to be mostly resolution independent, whereas their own software sometimes broke with the "make text larger" solutions they had employed since XP.

      There new UI for the desktop is designed to scale better, but they would need to redo all the assets and possibly reprogram the old code that makes up those old UI choices

    • More than the looks (though flexibility in the looks would be welcome) I would like options to make the file manager not suck : optional left pane, favorites menu, no wasted space (show more damn files and folders per area), customizable toolbar.
      Loss of the style of file manager I used in Windows 98 and XP was one reason that led me to flee to linux. What a pain in the ass.

      • I actually don't understand what the problem is. Windows looks fine to me from 1200x800 all the way to 2K. What is the problem exactly? Chrome can show more tabs, you can have crisper wallpapers and everything is so nice!

  • by Anonymous Coward
    All builds starting with 986x must be identical to each other because they're now being used for a classification of releases! Clearly this means 9870 must add more features!

    Because build numbers mean something!

    MUST... HAVE... MORE BUILD NUMBERS!
  • All the issues that stood out like a sore thumb in Windows 10 and the headline feature of the latest release is window animations?

    Meet the new MS same as the old MS.
  • Aero? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @05:18PM (#48190427)

    Can we have our transparency back?

  • ... we know damn well that Windows is an Apple knockoff.

  • by JDG1980 ( 2438906 ) on Monday October 20, 2014 @05:42PM (#48190663)

    This is a good start (assuming you can turn these animations off if you don't like them). Hopefully they'll bring back Aero Glass-style transparency soon.

    There are also a lot more substantive flaws that need to be addressed. The Start menu (which is Win10's big selling point!) doesn't currently do DPI scaling properly. It's disappointing enough to see this flaw with third-party software, but for a core part of the OS, it's inexcusable. And there is still no way to remove the obtrusive Search and Task View icons from the taskbar. (Both of these issues have hundreds of votes on Feedback; hopefully they will be addressed.)

    There are also a bunch of smaller annoyances – unlike in Win7, I can't get the useless "Homegroup" option to disappear from the left panel of File Explorer, even if I leave all homegroups completely. They also shove OneDrive down your throat. And if I rename "This PC" back to "My Computer", it displays under my preferred name in most places, but not in the tile half of the Start menu – it appears fine in the left-hand list portion, but the tile always says "This PC" no matter what it has been renamed to.

    There are some encouraging signs, but this is definitely an alpha-class release in my experience. Glad I installed it in a VM.

    • "And there is still no way to remove the obtrusive Search and Task View icons from the taskbar"

      That one bugs me too, especially when activatng the taskbar on multiple monitors. I wouldn't mind if they were only on the main monitor, but thay are on all of them (back to display fusion I guess)

  • Does it feel me or do I feel it comprehensively? And how many CPU cycles and RAM percentages does it use to be "comprehensively" felt?
  • Hand me the Windows 10 installation CD, and I will go and get a hammer.

  • If you polish a turd long enough, it turns into a diamond.
  • When you open a new window, it flies out on to the screen...

    The Ballmer "Chair" interface, eh?

    Seriosouly, though, I hope there is an option to switch that animation off. I like quick response, and switched off the XP and Win7 animations on my PC. Please, don't take that away, Mr. Nadella.

    • We're talking about the same company that put Mr. Clippy on Word 97 with no way to turn him off.
  • Looks like Apple's animation... must by a copyright infringement, or if not that a patent infringement, or if no that just really really bad. Fire up the lawyerbot.

  • All I care about is if users that are stuck with the never-ending train-wreck that is Windows 8/8.1 going to get a free upgrade to Windows 10.

  • >" It is a slick animation and if you have used OS X [(MacOS 10)], it is similar to the one used to collapse windows back in to the dock."

    You mean like the one we have been using in Compiz/Beryl in Linux and then in KDE under Linux for many years?? Yawn.

  • More eye candy? How about making it look less flat - you know, how like Aero used to look? You could distinguish windows and panels and widgets more easily, and didn't have to squint to be productive.

    Or.... you could be Edgy!! Yeah let's go with edgy...
  • Sensible, and functional, without an overload of useless crap.

    JMHO.

  • Seriously, if you want it to look different, just get windowblinds and you're done.

    What could microsoft do better? get functionality like windowblinds built-in and make it easy to use
    incorporate ability to mount ftp drives
    fix built-in defrag too to allow it to move page file so you can shrink partition to minimum size
    get rid of the abysmal ribbon and change menus in office to allow typing (ie. type commands/keywords instead of browsing through menus/toolsbars)
    how about improving built-in notepad to not

  • It seems ther've finally caught up with what was possible on Linux over 5 years ago. Virtual desktops too. How very, erm, usual!
  • by ledow ( 319597 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @04:47AM (#48193617) Homepage

    Because what I want in an enterprise-class operating system, what I desire more than anything else, what I cannot live without, what my users are crying out for, what I will pay good money just to have... ... is more shit jumping out at me on the screen for no good reason.

    Gimme WinFS and we'll talk. Gimme complete application isolation and I'll think about it. Otherwise, honestly, you're just papering over the cracks.

  • by ruir ( 2709173 )
    who fucking cares about windows nein...Not anymore, I have jumped to other pastures far too long ago.

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