Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 7th Sep 2010 18:11 UTC
We already know quite a few details about Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft's upcoming attempt to retain - or grow - its market share in the browser world. Standards and speed are the main focus of IE9, and if a video of the upcoming beta release is anything to go by, they're doing pretty well. Just... Did they just manage to make the interface even less appealing?
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Member since:2010-01-21
Matter of taste does also factor into it. I'm very easily distracted, so I use a mix of fullscreening and tiling rather than Exposé-style helter-skelter stacking.
In fact, to ensure I always can, I wrote a simple X11 equivalent to WinSplit Revolution. (Though it's been sitting at "usable but not finished" for months now while I work on other projects)
If I can ever find the time to make them behave more like GTK/Qt than Motif, I plan to switch to a full tiling WM like AwesomeWM or XMonad.
Edited 2010-09-07 19:48 UTC
RE[3]: Comment by Kroc
by Thom_Holwerda on Tue 7th Sep 2010 20:01
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by Kroc"
Member since:2005-06-29
What does the lack of Expose have to do with maximising? People maximise because it's a habit and because many (I actually checked this) find non-maximised windows distracting. It has NOTHING to do with how window manages windows.
If it did, it doesn't explain why people who switch to a Mac STILL maximise their windows - and this time manually, because OS X lacks a maximise button due to thick-headedness.
Member since:2010-03-08
Because in Windows, without Exposé, the simplest solution is to just maximise everything and use the taskbar / alt-tab. But in OS X I never maximise anything, my browser stays at 1024x768 and I move it around the screen. I have no need to maximise it.
There’s just something wrong with seeing a 23" PC screen with IE maximised over the whole thing, the web page sitting in the middle with a vast sea of emptiness either side. I can’t explain exactly how, but Windows just breeds this behaviour where as OS X doesn’t (probably because OS X’s maximise button is completely broken).
There’s just something wrong with seeing a 23" PC screen with IE maximised over the whole thing, the web page sitting in the middle with a vast sea of emptiness either side. I can’t explain exactly how, but Windows just breeds this behaviour where as OS X doesn’t (probably because OS X’s maximise button is completely broken).
I think you just answered your own question, as Thom pointed out too. It's just too much of a hurdle to maximize a window on OSX, so people just get used to life without it.
As to why people like to maximize windows, I bet this has something to do with the need for a deeper web browsing experience (leave the computer and its problems and enter the web) and some concentration issues too. A computer desktop is now much more visually complex than the usual webpage background, since the web moved from the Geocities state to something which is much more usable.
Though you're right, a full-screened web browser on a widescreen monitor is just ridiculous, and can even damage usability when the page is not properly coded.
Edited 2010-09-07 20:19 UTC
Member since:2009-03-19
I maximize my browser windows, because there is no reason not to.
When reading an article or a thread in a forum I don't actually need to see anything else on my screen besides the page itself. If I didn't keep my browser maximized, then all the space wasted by whitespace on the page would just be equally wasted by my wallpaper.
Member since:2005-11-15
Member since:2007-02-22
Member since:2005-11-16
Put any random Windows user in front of any UI and they will maximise.
In my opinion a big part of the reason for this is that the Windows UI strongly encourages maximisation of windows. It's how Windows users learn to use the GUI, but that doesn't mean it's a particularly efficient way of doing things.
I never used to maximise windows when using RISC OS, or other GUIs with similar window management and application design. Back then I normally overlapped windows and dragged and dropped between apps; usage made easy and efficient by those interfaces.
It's only when using Windows, with its MDI apps, primitive window management, and massive toolbars/sidebars/panels attached to application windows, that I started feeling the need to maximise everything and alt+tab between windows.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2005-06-29
I think Microsoft have been experimenting with saving vertical space, betting on that fact that the average screen is now quite wide, and [because Windows’ window management is so bad] the browser is always maximised.
Uhm, you do realise it is PEOPLE who maximise, right? Why on EARTH would Windows' window management have anything to do with it? Put any random Windows user in front of any UI and they will maximise.