“I found a nice present in the mail today, the Zeta 1.5 upgrade. Installing on top of 1.21 is a breeze and worked flawlessly. After installing the upgrade you need to do a reboot and you are greeted by the new login screen.” Lots of screenshots in the article, boys and girls. Rejoice.
The title bar is cut off on the screen shot: http://www.xs4all.nl/~tako0033/studio-33/highslide/slideshow/studio…
Is this a bug or intentional?
What do you mean exactly?
Are you talking about the lack of a “resize” button? – if so I believe that’s intentional as the preferences dialog isn’t resizable.
Edit:
Oh wait, I just realized you’re probably referring to the fact that the titlebar is a “yellow tab” rather than a full titlebar. This is a standard behavior of all BeOS OSes. Funny, I’ve become so used to it over the years, that I often forget that others consider it strange!
Edited 2007-03-06 01:06
Interesting… I assume you can have several tabs, one for each open window, is that it? There should be some sort of background behind the tabs so that it looks more like tabs, like in web browsers.
How do you move windows?
Before you keep talking, you really need to download BeOS Max, BeOS developer’s edition, Syllable or somesuch. Not only is it an awesome experience, but you will get a taste of an OS unlike Linux, OS X, or Windows.
No, not exactly.
The tabs are the titlebars, and you can move said tabs (shift+click and drag) so you can line up several windows in a row that way and just manipulate the titlebar tabs to whatever position you want them at on top of the window.
To move the window you just click the tab (which is just a titlebar) and move it.
Sliding tabs stopped working in BeOS when the UI changes were done in Dano0 betas. ZETA hasn’t changed this behavior. Slidey tabs are a big point in the whole tabbed UI scheme of things. When they stopped working, tabs became almost moot to have. It is one of the features I still scream to have put back.
Does Haiku not have support for this?
It does. Doesn’t mean it’d port to zeta’s app_server, though – its totally different.
Yeah, was just wondering the status of that in Haiku.
The sliding tabs in Haiku have been tweaked a little from the original BeOS implementation. Tab positions (along the top edge of the windows) are now saved when the window is closed. IMO, a neato device if you like stacking multiple windows atop one-another.
With Dano, Be used Lua to implement decorators instead of just C++ code, which is very odd to use, and only exposes a handful of the internals. To support sliding tabs the lua backend must be extended to allow it, which means you have to understand it first
Would be nice to have something similar in haiku too, since currently the decorator api exposes too much of the internal workings. Someone I know suggested using SVG for decorators, or some scripting language.
> How do you move windows?
click’n’drag on the title bar or the window borders.
Just to clarify things, I have never used Zeta. I am a BeOS user since 2000 and a happy one I can say. But something on this review made me feel not so good. I copy :
“To load another account there is no need to reboot, you simply logout and the login screens becomes visible. However if you load a account without rebooting you ‘userbootscript’ is not run and it seems that some applications like FireFox keep running while changing users.”
I don’t have anything against multiuser support but IMHO I think that BeOS wasn’t meant to be a multi user OS and it shows. It also shows that it was an OS so different from Linux and Windows as far as programming is concerned that Firefox and Mozilla in general are the only apps that can bring down the whole OS anytime they want (even if it has memory protection). Don’t want to sound too negative but this is a great OS and I think that a group of developers as large as Yellowtab (or Magnusoft) is, should put their efforts to develop large native applications that other developers can’t make on their own. A good example is a web browser (so much needed on BeOS land). Other things can come later.
BeOS like every other OS has its pros and its cons… I remember (from 1995-2000 using OS/2 as main OS) OS/2 had the SIQ problem (for more look on wikipedia). In most good OS/2 programming books (example: Designing High-Powered Os/2 Warp Applications: The Anatomy of Multithreaded Programs) it was stated that the main window thread should be snappy to be able NOT to block the input que). In case more work was needed a second thread should be used. This is similar to the BeOS way with the BWindow being a BLooper (another thread for the application). The point is developing for an OS means to be able to see the shortcommings and adopt to them. So for BeOS land be careful: Linux ports don’t feel good.
And before anyone goes crazy I am not a native speaker so sorry for any mistakes and I apologize if sounding negative. I appreciate all efforts for alternative OSes, a big thank you to all those people and I am glad I used and still use OS/2 and BeOS.
BeOS’s fs has always been multi-user, however there was no actual support for it in the UI, and this something that YT hacked in.
Is it possible to buy a copy of YellowTab 1.5 and install without upgrading?
Anyone have a link?
.. some professional help in the UI design department. BeOS had a very refined look to it imo, but with Zeta, it just keeps getting worse.
Is Zeta 1.5 compatible with the JMicron IDE contoller? Also, is BeOS MAX compatible with the JMicron controller? A lot of motherboards these days have the JMicron controller and a lot of Linux distributions sub 2.6.17 don’t work with it so I assume other operating systems also don’t support it.
By the way Zeta 1.5 looks really good. I like the title bars on the screenshots — the original BeOS ones and the colors are soft. The font is very readable.
Edited 2007-03-06 07:21
> The directories of unactive users are hidden and the ‘/boot/home’ folder links to home directory of the currently active user.
Wrong.
/boot/home is the home folder of the root account. Other users have their home in /boot/users/. (though I’m not sure the home symlink on the desktop is correctly set for regular users)
In this article it seems the author haven’t played around that much with the upgrade. My experiences are not that good. So i also replied this comments to the article.
He told about the Autologin feature but forget to mention if you let the default settings to “5sec” you have to hurry up when you want to change from one account to another. – That’s very annoying. And after I get back to the root account after several tries I deactivated it again.
Another not really working thing will only mention all non English customers. The menu entries in Deskbar (the formerly BeMenu now called Zeta-Menu) are not localized, means here you have to know how a Preference app is called in English.
And that’s not enough, also very dirty seems to me the zeta-network implementation. While with v1.21 it was good to remove the bone-profile folders when your network options are not working well, as it is on my system with an onboard forcedeth nic. Now you have to edit the file “/etc/network.conf” – never seen this folder before? me neither. But it exists , and was there also in the beos times, but i never had to look for it. While the system was developed by Be. Inc. all system settings where placed under /home/config/settings and it was easier to edit a configuration file when something went wrong. And now?
The network problem I wrote above, forced the the system bit by bit to crash. First thing that doesn’t worked was the Tracker the next was the app I started directly after the start and in any time in between the Deskbar crashed too. Before v1.5 I used a vmware image to get to the installation on the real hard disk partition and removed all folders under /home/config/settings/bone/profiles. But with 1.5? Zeta started to reconnect after a restart also without the profiles and i had to figure out what went wrong. I found the hidden settings telling Zeta how to continuously use the unsupported nic (“static ip” or “dhcp”). And because the crashes I wrote about before I couldn’t fix the prob in 5 min. 🙁
So the solution – if anybody else encounters this annoying behavior – open Terminal and enter “StyledEdit /etc/network.conf”. I commented out every line including “forcedeth” with a leading “#” and after the next reboot Zeta works fine again on my machine. But without network.
I also updated my VMware installation but now this isn’t a solution anymore, since 1.5 the mouse moved to the upper left corner after the first move, and stayed there for the whole session (restarting of the inputserver didn’t helped). So how to get to the Deskbar? I don’t know but it’s not really cool 🙁
Okay I tried it on the real system and an half hour later it was fixed, but to much time for an “easy and ready to use system”.
The next thing I’m missing, how to change administrative settings from a regular account? There is no way to do this currently. So every time you have to change an administrative setting you have to logout and login to the root account. If an OS behaves this way users will never change to a more secure environment. You just have to look to WinXP, how many users uses Administrator accounts? Argh, the next missing thing: how to set user privileges in Zeta? Theres no option in the new Administration prefs app for such tasks.
And another one I figured out were some entries in the Deskbar. First of all back in my regular account I saw the “network.conf” file under recently used files, although I modified it as root.
Additionally you have different entries under development in the ZetaMenu in root and user account: root has two entries “bdb” and “Install dev tools” and in the user account menu I found broken links to “Cortex”, “MeTos”, “Pe” and “Spy” and the working link to “bdb”. But where is MakeMe the new Zeta development environment? It’s in the app/development folder but there’s no link to it in the Zeta Menu.
And last but not to forget to mention MediaFire Pro, do you have a Serial for this app? No? But I have and I tried to enter this into the registration dialog that pops up the first time you open the app, “Serial is wrong” I read after I entered it and I tried it again and again. (BTW you have even to enter a company/organization that’s mantadory). Okay, here the solution. Close MediaFire Pro and open it again now your key will be accepted.
MediaFire Pro reached me two weeks before the zeta upgrade and the first thing that happened when I opened the installer I saw the MF Pro splash screen and after that the installer crashed. I tried many times on different machines but every where the same. So I tried to get support. On the Zeta-OS-website I found a support email address sent the mail and a few hours later I got an answer mail from the zeta-mailserver “no more mails accepted for this account” (or so). After some more investigations I found a mail formular in the zeta-shop and on this way i get contacted to the support. But is this the best way to keep contact with customers? I don’t think so.
The Problem with MF Pro was an old MakeMe version which doesn’t worked correct with the installer. I missed an error handler that shows a dialog telling me there was a missing lib or old version of app xyz. – Really not cool!
After all I’m disappointed and expected more after the delivering was delayed for some more bug fixing. And how about the price for an unfinished product upgrade? For me it smells a little bit like being part a public beta testing program for 29Euros.
But there is a good news to the information mentioned in the Zeta 1.5 preview article I’m replying to, all previously installed apps and some settings like the Firefox profile are not deleted. They are saved by the upgrade installer in an archive on Roots Desktop.
Yeah the 5 seconds default is a bit too fast
Using multiuser with apps never tested with that inherently exposes hidden bugs. Deskbar seems not to be free of bugs either. The multiuser support really needs more testing and many fixes but that’s a known fact.
I’m not aware of any change in the network configuration… network.conf has been there since the beginning of BONE, it’s nowhere new. the profiles folder appeared with Zeta, R1 or so.
“I’m not aware of any change in the network configuration… network.conf has been there since the beginning of BONE, it’s nowhere new. the profiles folder appeared with Zeta, R1 or so.”
It may be, but the question is, why do I have to find in the 1.5 upgrade a file in an invisible system folder when it was not necessary before? I just looked there because I played a little bit with haiku and tried to connect to a network. In the haiku rev I tested there was no networking prefs app and I have to edit two files to connect (my last test was a little time ago, sorry if it is included yet). But without this experience I had a system that crashes short after booting into it.
So I have to ask you, should a system behave this way or shouldn’t the Zeta programmers find a better way to avoid problems from the time they occurred the first time? This would make Zeta a little bit better.
They managed to get people to buy an upgrade that leaves you wondering what the heck you paid for. That is why I am no longer a customer. Over the last few years they have gotten me for over $250.00, between the initial purchase and then all the updates. What really surprises me is that they still have a user base.
According to…
http://www.zeta-os.com/cms/news.php?item.39
…”Magnussoft ZETA 1.5 Professional Upgrade comes with a state of the art solution for word processing, which has been successfully ported to magnussoft ZETA! AbiWord is one of the high-class word processor from the open-source market.” However, the reviewer reports that “Abiword was also promised but is not installed by the upgrade”.
I was hoping that magnussoft would not overpromise and underdeliver as yellowTAB used to, but it looks like thet are following the same steps.
So false adveritsing? Not that it’s new for them…