“An early build of Windows Blue, the next version of Windows, has leaked online. Build 9364 has been made available on file sharing sites and includes some of the new changes that Microsoft is building into its significant Windows 8 update. Leaked screenshots show that the company is bringing smaller Live Tile arrangements to its Start Screen, along with greater control over the color personalization options. Other improvements include a number of new options in the Windows 8-style settings screen. SkyDrive options are present, which appear to show greater integration and control over device back ups and files. There’s also an app settings section that surfaces options to change default apps and information on app sizes.” Very welcome improvements – but unless there’s significant speed and performance improvements, this is all for naught. Update: Woah, a 50:50 split view! They are listening! Update 2: Steve Troughton-Smith details that the split can be any size, and that you can also split three and four applications.
WindowsRT is dog slow, Win8 on Atoms runs circles around it. I doubt Blue will change that.
Which Windows RT device have you used?
It’s 2013, in the World of Windows and for the updated *DESKTOP* OS the big exciting changes are 50/50 split view and a Settings pane. ok …
Edited 2013-03-24 13:37 UTC
You can say this of any modern mobile platform these days. Look at iOS and “multitasking” and copy/paste, for instance.
Sad, but true.
I did stress the words Desktop OS; quit an important difference.
You’re referring to Mobile Operating systems, which were running on single CPU devices at 500MHz until very recently.
You’re talking about Metro, which is an environment for *mobile*. Windows 8 can do snapping of any size in the desktop.
It is not called Metro but Modern (silly nitpicking)
It is not for mobile but for touch
And desktop cannot snap applications at all to each other. It can only snap applications to the left and right (50%) of the screen. You CAN manually line up windows any way you want but they are not snapped
Actually, you could (back when I used windows (until 2002 or so)) by CTRL+left client on the taskbar, than right click and select “tile”.
Edited 2013-03-25 02:51 UTC
That doesn’t sound flexible enough for what I want. It sounds more like a limited version of what WinSplit Revolution and QuickTile do. (Select a window, Ctrl+Alt+NumPad to snap them to a corresponding segment of the screen. Press the key again to cycle through various widths.)
So you’re all excited about these changes because you’ll be able to use them on your tablet. Gotcha!
Thom, don’t pull that crap. You’d only have a point if Metro was limited to mobile devices. Since it’s not, it’s forced its way into the desktop whether we like it or not and thus we have every right to judge it by desktop standards. And, by desktop standards, it’s a colossal fail.
I remember a single CPU computer I had back in the days. It ran 33MHz on “turbo” and yet had graphical interface, copy/paste, multitasking and was capable of displaying more than 4 application at a time.
Everything old is new again… patented with “on a phone”. Where is the innovation?
Aye.. lets not forget the Amiga OS could do that too on a 7mhz CPU with 512KB of ram.
Unstably / with quite a few Guru Meditation errors thrown in…
The Screen. Small, high resolution active matrix, capacitive touch, gorilla glass.
The Battery. High storage capabilities, multiple recharge, small size.
The CPU. Powerful, battery sipping.
You could call all of that hardware, but there is a ton of invisible code that makes all of that work together in a cohesive fashion.
Once all of that was brought together it ushered in a new frontier. Where everything that was old and good needed to be ported over. You can cry about how none of it is new, but I prefer to marvel at the whole package and the new possibilities opened up.
Is Microsoft slowly reinventing the tiling window manager? The early 2000s called, they want their GUI concepts back.
Stacked window management has never been terribly useful (perhaps excepting the occasional dialog), and nobody has ever perfected the tiling window manager, so I don’t see how this is a retrograde step.
A simple but flexible tiling window manager is arguably the best way to utilize large displays, particularly when it comes to content creation and other remaining use-cases for the traditional desktop.
If anyone is willing to make the case for stacked window management on large displays in the 2010s, by all means go ahead.
I am visually impaired, so usually run at lower resolutions, with apps like browsers, email programs, etc at full screen. Needless to say, I am not a huge fan of tiled window managers
However, my case is certainly the exception rather than the rule.
That being said, I think a modern OS should let you choose which option you prefer in the same desktop environment, so we don’t have to have these kinds of debates. You shouldn’t need to add another DE to the mix just because you want to change things like this.
Edited 2013-03-24 19:57 UTC
virtual desktops are the answer to proper management of windows. I personally always found tiling managers to be for me a flawed paradigm. The problem I’ve seen are that users don’t seem to immediately get virtual desktops and after switching will still trash up one desktop with a bunch of stacked windows and taskbar icons.
Edited 2013-03-24 20:44 UTC
I’d say the ideal solution is a mix. I always run my windows maximized, but that’s because I have two 1280×1024 LCD panels side-by-side.
If I had anything bigger or if I had only one monitor, I’d either set up a tiling WM or find some way to dynamically set up fake Xinerama boundaries so Openbox’s maximize would give the same effect.
I think the big issue with tiling WMs on Linux is that nobody has built a hybrid tiling-floating WM with familiar keybindings, intuitive mouse interactions, and theming at least on par with IceWM and Openbox.
(Bluetile claims to do the first two. When I have time to learn Haskell, I’ll probably try my hand at patching in the third. As is, I’m just using a minimal WinSplit Revolution clone I wrote for X11 named QuickTile.)
Heck, didn’t the nVidia drivers for Windows offer to fake up maximize boundaries back in the WinXP era? (I never liked it because it didn’t seem to let you grab a boundary and drag to resize or grab a window and drag to split a region or to make two windows trade places.)
Yes they are. Is that so bad, and why?
Early 2000s, you say ? I can think of older examples, and from no other than…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows1.0.png
Edited 2013-03-24 18:31 UTC
Ok, didn’t do my research there. Apparently there where tiling window managers since 1981/1982 (even before Windows 1). In the early 2000s there was a tiling window manager craze on Linux, though. At least I experienced it like that.
Anyway, it’s not “good” or “bad”. It just isn’t something new. And I wonder if there is a reason that tiling window managers didn’t caught on? Also I think overlapping windows are good for some things, tiling is probably good for something else. So a combination would be good.
An incremental release, which will be released free of charge contains incremental improvements and you seem surprised, why?
they haven’t changed course until the start menu shows up again
I couldn’t agree more. Without the Start menu; the ability to run Metro apps in windows (side-by-side if desired); or an ability to bypass the Metro nonsense altogether in favor of a “classic” Win 7 experience, forget about it. I realize there are third party apps that accomplish all of these things, but Microsoft needs to start listening to its user base instead of pulling a Gnome and going it alone.
Maybe Microsoft isn’t pulling a Gnome
and maybe Gnome isn’t pulling a Gnome.
Its quite possible, in fact, extremely likely, that your own thinking is at odds with what the majority of average users think, expect, or even desire.
I obviously know what Gnome is, but I had a mental image of what “gnome-pulling” may be… It involves reluctant garden gnomes and rope.
and maybe you are out of your god damned mind
I wouldn’t exactly rule it out.
Oh really?!? Then explain why Canonical decided to ditch Gnome in favor of Unity; why Linux Mint decided to fork Gnome shell to create Cinnamon; why MATE came into existence or why Miguel de Icaza, one of the creators of Gnome has ditched Linux altogether for a Mac genius?
Edited 2013-03-26 01:52 UTC
OMG! Soon you will be able to view as many apps as you want at once in any window size. Something we’ve never seen before! oh, wait…
Would you rather them not make this improvement? I don’t really follow the line of thought of these extreme positions.
Its quite obvious that Windows as we knew it will not come back. If you don’t like it, you’re free to not use Windows.
The better middle ground is incorporating features from the traditional desktop into the new Start Screen. Being able to do 50/50 splits, or even better, arbitrary splits with multiple applications is a definite improvement over what’s in Windows 8 now.
“Its quite obvious that Windows as we knew it will not come back” Microsoft have backtracked when they had a product that sucked or failed (MS Bob, Clippy, Windows Mobile) we can only hope they realize it here too. Though you may be right, they may over time add multiple window support, a status bar and the other features from the desktop.
*Yawn*
A “leak”, right.
I have used Server 2012 and in a remote session the start menu or whatever that thing in the corner is called now is nearly unusable. Without a button in the corner I have had to resort to using the key command alt + home. However the new management console in my opinion rocks.
I think hotcorners as a whole need to go. They’re stupid on a Mouse+Keyboard.
I am waiting for the SP that might eventually make the Tiles go away, or at the very least offer a control panel option to disable it.
Until then I will keep Windows 7.
50:50 split size? wtf is this? is it just window tiling?
If so, then it’s nothing new. In *Nix world we have many tiling window managers, like i3wm, awesome, etc.
Its obviously new to Windows, which is the point of this article.
I wasn’t aware, but do Windows people invade every Linux post and spam them with irrelevant garbage like this? I don’t think anyone is claiming this to be new or revolutionary, just a welcome improvement.
But I get it, you got your snipe in.
Yes. Yes they do. Spend a bit of time on Slashdot, and you’ll see as soon as someone utters the L word, everyone’s favourite old chestnuts of FUD and slander come out.
I don’t know what “Windows”, “Linux” people do. I’m not in their gangs. I don’t believe in “fanboyism”. I use many operating systems – both desktop and server ones, that’s why I was shocked tiling is so “shocking” to some people.
And you, sir – you just get off me. I don’t know you, yet you behave like you were knowing me.
Talk about the stuff that’s in this article, and put personal arguments aside.
Thom Holwerda: “…but unless there’s significant speed and performance improvements, this is all for naught.”
Really? When NT 6.2 hits higher benchmarks then 6.1 virtually across the board on old and new hardware? And when exactly historically has ‘speed and performance improvement‘ been the arbiter of success of ANY Consumer OS?
Edited 2013-03-24 20:05 UTC
He’s probably means to say he hopes devs get better at writing Windows Store applications.
Not that classic Win32 applications were much better, but touch has a way of amplifying any deficiencies an application has because you expect stick to your finger performance.
Also, there are limited issues related to scrolling on trackpads being choppy on certain types of Windows Store apps. This needs a fix and MSFT has confirmed its an issue.
I mean Metro applications.
Benchmark scores aren’t exactly the sole way of divining the speed and responsiveness of an OS. They don’t accurately simulate the issue of digging through a slurry of libraries to find exactly what you want, and then stumbling over version mismatches.
+1. Exactly this. Besides, perceived performance and responsiveness are arguably equally as important as raw performance, and that doesn’t show up in a benchmark half the time.
For example, animations can buy you a lot of computation time to do extra initialization. We’re not talking seconds, but milliseconds here, yet still it makes a difference.
Conversely, stuttery input handling can make even the fastest apps seem slow.
Do you remember all of these post-apocalyptic movies, where everything should be built again because of everything was destroyed?
That is exactly what is happening with Windows. They (and I actually do not know why) destroyed their best operating system ever (Windows 7) and tried to created something new from their ashes with a very retro (“retro” would be nice, “prehistorical” sounds more accurate) UI.
I do not know all of you, but in my case, I liked the times I was able to decide how to organize my screen, select the colors of my desktop and have mature user interfaces full of options and a whole of information instead of these colorful hippie times interfaces with giant icons and fonts using my whole screen.
Edited 2013-03-24 22:37 UTC
I concur doctor
Ditch. The. Metro.
I hear “Windows Blue Screen of Death” when they say Windows Blue. Or is that just me?
If they add support for Metro on multiple monitors, virtual metro screens and the ability to stack vertically then I might consider using it for my normal dev setup, provided that I could mix normal desktop apps & Metro apps in my tiling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows1.0.png
I have been using windows since 3.1, last fall I bought a macbook pro and I love it, sure there were some issues getting use to UI but for the most part you can figure it out. window8 not so much. unfortunately my wife had to get a new laptop this week with win8 got it dirt cheap tho.
Why was this comment voted down?
Here are all screenshots on one side:
http://winforum.eu/Temat-Dyskusja-o-Windows-Blue?page=11
And here a Video of Windows Blue:
http://winfuture.de/videos/Software/Windows-Blue-Build-9364-Die-Neu…
The Windows 8 UX team should talk with the Visual Studio guys in order to learn about how to tile, cascade, tab, dock, float, split or organize windows in a screen; maybe the former could learn something.
No kidding here; I do not know why the Visual Studio windows management was not adopted totally by Windows. It has one of the best windows management subsystem found out there.
Edited 2013-03-25 18:44 UTC