A common complaint heard from people who tested Vista, is that maximised windows turn black. At the Shell Blog, a fix has been presented: “In the end, we decided that we like the black and think it is the right thing to do, but we want to respect the user’s color choice for users who bother to make a change. So – starting in today’s build, we have significantly backed off the amount of black that is mixed in with the user’s color for maximized windows. This is not particularly noticeable with the default color, but with the more intense colors like Red and Orange, you will appreciate the difference.”
Thank you Microsoft. This was probably one of my biggest issue with Vista’s UI. (2nd only to the glaring inconsistencies)
Its not a bug…. Its a ‘feature’
hahahaha
But I digress…. Vista is a bloated cow and isn’t worthy of being on any of my machines.
It’s not that people haven’t liked it, it’s only because people thought it was a bug. And because of this they was forced to change it.
Bad thing since I think that it was a really nice idea to turn it black on maximising, this way user would focus only on a content of the window.
It’s still black, it’s probably a less obvious in your face black and it blends better with your color preferences.
There are however no screenshots atm so I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Edited 2006-10-03 23:44
?
My sentiments exactly. So I looked up what the hell this is about. Apparently when maximised all “glass”-portions of the window turn dark (almost black) :
http://blogs.msdn.com/cjacks/archive/2006/06/21/641735.aspx
http://www.mstechtoday.com/screenshots/vista/5342/maximized.PNG
Very difficult to find screenshots of maximised Vista apps, probably because it is indeed quite ugly 🙂
Also according to one blogger : “it is worth pointing out that when a window is maximized, any glass area appears black, which is the reason that most windows rendered fully in glass, do not offer a maximize button (to the dismay of Goths I guess :-p)” ( http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2006_07_01_mothblog_archive.html )
Leave it to MS to turn eye-candy into eye-poison 🙂
Edited 2006-10-04 00:44
Wow, I am SO glad to hear they listened to our complaints. It will honestly be so much easier on my eyes..and nerves 😛
edit: OK I think I need to see a screenshot. They say they significantly backed off the black and yet it’s not really noticeable with the default color…
Edited 2006-10-04 00:53
I liked it the way it was to be honest.
When a window is maximized, there should not be any window border at all. It should occupy the whole screen.
Of course there would need to be a small area for the minimize buttons in the top-left corner. But other than that, a border just eats valuable screen space.
we decided that we like the black and think it is the right thing to do, but we want to respect the user’s color choice
Oh, how nice of them. They think it looks nice, but they’re prepared to go 50/50 with those that don’t.
Erm, who owns the computer? Shouldn’t it be up to them to decide what they think looks nice?
Sounds an awful lot like DRM, in a way. We decide what you can do with it, but you are “free” within those limitations.
Edited 2006-10-04 10:11
It’s the transparency they need to remove! Look at the screenshots of WMP for example. It looks pretty confusing to have controls on top of a transparent surface.
I think it looks confusing to have the title bar transparent too.
I’d say that I hope they have an option to turn it off but I’ll (hopefully) never have to use it.
There’s a control panel that gives you complete control over the level of transperency, including “completely opaque”.
I haven’t used Vista but I can imagine how it is…No menu bars! I have IE7 installed and even though the menu bar can be shown, it is still not the top most control. I hate it and I can’t get used to it.
maximised? thom try firefox 2, it has a built in spell checker
maximised? thom try firefox 2, it has a built in spell checker
Mine is set to EN-GB. I write in RP.
“It’s not that people haven’t liked it, it’s only because people thought it was a bug. And because of this they were forced to change it.”
It’s too bad Microsoft didn’t solve real bugs with the same voracity. I’m sure the marketing boys simply jumped down somebody’s throat in an effort to avoid bad press before the launch. This is what got the job done.