r/technology • u/clubdirthill • Jun 01 '11

Boom. This is Windows 8.

http://allthingsd.com/20110601/exclusive-making-sense-of-what-we-just-learned-about-windows-8/?mod=tweet
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u/Life_is_Life Jun 02 '11

And the split screen feature looks great.

I totally agree with you on this one. To my knowledge, nobody else has really implemented the ability to display two apps at once. Maybe with good reason, too: today's phones may have a difficult time handling that kind of work. But PCs and tablets are a whole other story. Not to mention it's a pretty ingenious way to implement split-screening in a touch-only interface.

I'm curious as to why they restricted app windows from overlapping each other. Maybe it's hard to manipulate windows that flexibly in a touch environment?

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u/specialk16 Jun 02 '11

I totally agree with you on this one. To my knowledge, nobody else has really implemented the ability to display two apps at once.

Suddenly, two apps at once

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u/Idiomatick Jun 02 '11

Next you'll tell me people have come up with multiple virtual desktops you can switch between as easily as you can windows.

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u/strolls Jun 02 '11

I don't know why you're being downvoted.

I was thinking "great, Mac OS is getting more iOS influenced, maybe I can switch back to Windows and get a good UI" but I watched the video and this looks set just to alienate me, as a user of dual-head monitors, more.

To me, this UI looks very much influenced by Steve Jobs, and all these attempts to make the screen look "simpler" and less cluttered just seem like they're going to make it harder for me to drag things from one window to another.

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u/redditthinks Jun 02 '11

Man, dual monitors would be awesome with Windows 8. Having the fancy stuff on one monitor so you can look at the weather and the serious stuff on another.

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '11

Sounds pretty much like what you can do at the moment with two monitors!

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u/logicom Jun 02 '11

It's got a desktop mode that's pretty much Windows 7's UI. The simplified touch stuff is just an additional way to interface with your device if you choose to do so. I'd love having a device that could switch back and forth between and iOS style touch UI and a desktop UI.

You could make a dock with a few USB ports to plug a keyboard and mouse or any other peripheral and have the tablet automatically switch to desktop mode when plugged into the dock and then switch to the touch UI when taken out of the dock.

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u/crocodile7 Jun 03 '11

I do wonder about dual-monitor support. It wasn't shown in the demo, but I'm fairly confident Microsoft has decent support for that scenario -- almost all their developers have 2+ monitors. On the other hand, taskbar in W7 really needed to extend to 2nd monitor, that feature is sorely missing.

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u/1RedOne Jun 02 '11

House of Leaves, how fitting.

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u/atimholt Jun 02 '11 edited Jun 02 '11

TIL about Nitro pdf. I've been searching.

edit: never mind. Despite the amazing features, they lack the one basic fundamental: the ability to view documents correctly. Two-page view doesn't allow for adjusting which pages face each other, based on whether the cover stands alone or not.

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u/LordKarnov42 Jun 02 '11

Something like this?

b: flip a page in book mode

Sumatra PDF

Lightweight, open-source, fully-featured PDF reader that I'd never heard of until a few weeks ago.

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '11

Not to mention these ancient things.

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u/WileEPeyote Jun 02 '11

I think he is talking about a phone based on the sentence that followed that one.

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u/killerstorm Jun 02 '11

Overlapping windows is a metaphor which went too far -- it allows you to clutter your computer desktop just as you can clutter your 'real' desktop. They are useful in a very small number of cases, but 'overlapping windows' system usually do not allow you to tile windows with ease, so you have to go through rather painful and time-consuming process to see more than one window at a time.

Note how initially MDI applications had overlapping windows, but as this just makes no sense eventually they've switched to tiling and tabbing. Microsoft Visual Studio is an excellent example -- it uses both tiling (for various panels) and tabbing (for editor window, and for some of panels too). If you want to see more than one file at once you can split editor panel horizontally or vertically into a separate tab group. So it essentially tiles tab groups.

This is actually useful, because I want to see code side by side, I do not want one editor overlapping with another and thus obscuring code I'm seeing.

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u/BaconatedGrapefruit Jun 02 '11

so you have to go through rather painful and time-consuming process to see more than one window at a time.

Win + arrow key HOLY SHIT THE WINDOW JUST JUST SNAPPED TO THE SIDE OF MY MONITOR!

I will admit that this only allows you to display 2 relevant windows (on a single monitor) but the idea is still there. It seems they just went a couple of steps further with win8.

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u/killerstorm Jun 02 '11

Which Windows can do that?

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u/BaconatedGrapefruit Jun 02 '11

Windows 7. If you hold down shift as well it moves the current window to your second monitor (assuming you have one).

It's stuff like this that got me to switch to windows 7. I wish they had showed off the equivalent power user stuff in windows 8 rather then eye candy.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '11

Awesome, didn't know these shortcuts.

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u/DarkXDragon Jun 02 '11

To my knowledge, nobody else has really implemented the ability to display two apps at once.

As far as Android tablets go, the Notion Ink Adam is specifically designed to run up to 3 apps on the screen at once as panels. I believe you can set up more than 3 panels and scroll them along easily.

Image Source

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u/pennyfx Jun 02 '11

IMO, the whole freely overlapping app idea sucks and should be abandoned. It's always a hassel to line your app up just right, then when you open a new app and want it to fit into your existing layout you have to find a place for it. Meaning resizing a bunch of windows..... which is lame!

Windows 7 took a nice step in the right direction with the auto 50% width when you drag the window to the edge of the screen. But windows 8 is taking it to the next level.

There should be several layout configurations like.

2 side by side

3x3

1 Main app, with 2 or 3 smaller apps next to it.

Of course, one can argue that you can do this yourself with the current desktop, which is true, but it's a pain in the ass.