Windows 8 discussion

[@ruantec]

Well, I've used Win7 on tablets and I can say that even if the touch were accurate the experience isn't that good as it don't feel well using your fingers.

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[SCHUMI_4EVER]

That's because the UI elements are designed to be clickable by a mouse, not tapppable by a finger. I have no doubt Win7 sucks on tablets, but Win8 is far more change than needed AND the file system retains the same suckyness that was on 7.

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[@ruantec]

I believe the change have a reason(may be wrong) as MS is sort of forced to take the risk... Reasons? Quite simple... They just can't come with two separate versions for desktop and tablets. It may work well for desktop but for tablets it will be seen as another version of WP7 which we all know it won't work well.

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[Princess Garnet]

Originally Posted by SCHUMI_4EVER

Because saying "as we know it" implies it's merely a viewpoint when actually the entire concept is being torn down and replaced with something else irrespective of our viewpoint.

Not sure what you're getting at. I said Windows as we know it is changing, and it is.

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[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by @ruantec

I believe the change have a reason(may be wrong) as MS is sort of forced to take the risk... Reasons? Quite simple... They just can't come with two separate versions for desktop and tablets. It may work well for desktop but for tablets it will be seen as another version of WP7 which we all know it won't work well.

Bringing desktop to tablets isn't a solution either. Look at Win 7 on tablets.

It's not that Microsoft doesn't have a choice, or that they are taking risks. I think they have simply lost all directions. They don't know what to do to make Windows on desktop better, and they don't know how to build something simpler than iOS for tablets that doesn't violate a bunch of Apple patents, so their only course of action now is to put everything together and hope for the best.

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

Originally Posted by Princess Garnet

Not sure what you're getting at. I said Windows as we know it is changing, and it is.

But it's not just changing as we know it, it's plain ceasing to exist in all but name.

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[Matis]

You all seem to be underestimating Microsoft here. They will by no accounts kill their desktop version. That would be silly. They DO seem kind of lost when it comes to making a good tablet/phone version of Windows, but remember that even Windows 8 comes with a number of small updates to the desktop version. They are not ready to let go of it, or else Windows 8 would have been a tablet/phone only upgrade.

Killing the desktop version would rule out the possibility of getting companies to use Windows, and if they do and the new path they are taking fails after a while then it would be hard to get back into the desktop business(I'm picturing a fall over a 10-year period or so in this case, meaning business would have moved from Windows to Linux/OSX).

Perhaps Windows 8 doesn't offer much for the desktop users, that's true. But it does give developers a new venue to make programs/apps for. And I'm kinda grateful for that.

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[Princess Garnet]

Originally Posted by SCHUMI_4EVER

But it's not just changing as we know it, it's plain ceasing to exist in all but name.

Yes, which is pretty much what I meant when I originally said that.

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[@ruantec]

Originally Posted by Matis

Perhaps Windows 8 doesn't offer much for the desktop users, that's true. But it does give developers a new venue to make programs/apps for. And I'm kinda grateful for that.

^Exactly my thoughts. The reason why tablets OS are so popular now is because they didn't appeared with all features people wanted and also because they lack a lot of stuff people needed including a proper file explorer. Because of that a lot of devs had the oportunity to develope those simple apps and gain some money aweakening the interest of those to develope further making the OS even more interesting and bringing tons of apps to the market place. If Win8 comes packed with all people need then the Windows market place will be useless as people just use desktop apps instead. In one way or another they have to make money and Windows been pirated way to much this days.

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

Bringing desktop to tablets isn't a solution either. Look at Win 7 on tablets.

It's not that Microsoft doesn't have a choice, or that they are taking risks. I think they have simply lost all directions. They don't know what to do to make Windows on desktop better, and they don't know how to build something simpler than iOS for tablets that doesn't violate a bunch of Apple patents, so their only course of action now is to put everything together and hope for the best.

Because there is nothing better than Win7 and simplier than iOS. Honestly is kinda hard to beat both of them in there own areas.

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Last edited by @ruantec; March 23rd, 2012 at 07:55..

[@ruantec]

According to the official Windows 8 building blog, the new Windows 8 will be able to handle resolutions up to 2560 x 1440 on screens as small as 10.1 inches. This is a density of 291 pixels per inch (The new iPad is at the 264 dpi mark).

Managing these kinds of resolutions is not an easy task but on Microsoft were clever enough to use SVG files (vectorial graphics) for the UI elements so, this way there is no need to chop or enlarge to a horrible size the desktop elements.

More info

This is the reason why WPF is very wonderful as the tools allows easy drawing of SVG objects in order to do all sort of things. For instance here is an example where i simulate the iPhone battery status presenter using paths and vectoring to create my own custom control that embeds a styled progressbar control in order to have the Aero animations and value level:


Because of the way i designed the control i can scale it to very high resolutions without any troubles. Since Windows 8 use the same design pattern i see a very important advantage in the near future if they use it wisely.

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[runawayprisoner]

But apps still have to be rewritten or tweaked to support that resolution. So you won't be able to grab Adobe Photoshop CS6 and make it work on there.

And there's no device announced that will feature said screen (nor does such a screen even exist anywhere) so it's more of the "we'll see" game.

[Princess Garnet]

Things should have been more vector long ago.

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[runawayprisoner]

Vectors kill processing power... by a lot, so it's understandable that they weren't popular back then.

In fact, it's also understandable that they aren't used now. ARM processors are still far from perfect to deliver acceptable vector performance. At least for games.

[@ruantec]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

But apps still have to be rewritten or tweaked to support that resolution...

Vectors in WPF are hardware accelerated and you don't have to re-write or tweak your app to support higher/small resolutions if you design your controls/UI propertly and i will show you an example using my battery custom control(look at the red marked areas):

Originally Posted by Princess Garnet

Things should have been more vector long ago.

Yes the problem is not many coders understand UI design propertly let alone vector design which is the reason why they just use plain images instead.

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Last edited by @ruantec; March 27th, 2012 at 23:15..

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by @ruantec

Vectors in WPF are hardware accelerated and you don't have to re-write or tweak your app to support higher/small resolutions if you design your controls/UI propertly and i will show you an example using my battery custom control(look at the red marked areas):

No, I mean applications that have already been published like AutoCAD and Photoshop.

I didn't mean that one application has to be written multiple times for different resolutions.

It was a rhetorical statement either way. I know some applications will be updated with a UI that will support Windows on tablet eventually. And I also know I won't be rocking a Windows 8 tablet on its launch day so it doesn't matter.

[Silenus]

Random:

Installed windows 8 on my main rig.
Getting used to it.
Mostly watch netflix, movies, browsing and document editing on it so is still good for that.

Installing Openoffice right now.

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[@ruantec]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

No, I mean applications that have already been published like AutoCAD and Photoshop.

I didn't mean that one application has to be written multiple times for different resolutions.

It was a rhetorical statement either way. I know some applications will be updated with a UI that will support Windows on tablet eventually. And I also know I won't be rocking a Windows 8 tablet on its launch day so it doesn't matter.

I know, all this discussion here gave me an idea for the concept shown in the pics i posted... i will grab Applications such as AutoCad, Photoshop or any Windows application and i will render them DPI scaled inside my app and they will still work plus for the record i will put them inside a 3D object while you will still be able to interact with them just for the sake to show that is possible i got the idea how to achieve that moments ago even if i knew how to do that years ago.... hmmmmm i have no idea why i never came to the idea to use "THAT" trick.....

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[runawayprisoner]

Yeah, give it a try. While I wouldn't own a tablet now, I would still love to see how that works out.

Perhaps if you would implement a fullscreen view of the entire desktop and allow pinch to zoom to get to smaller parts, sort of like a virtual resolution box, then I think it may just solve a few problems.

[Princess Garnet]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

Vectors kill processing power... by a lot, so it's understandable that they weren't popular back then.

In fact, it's also understandable that they aren't used now. ARM processors are still far from perfect to deliver acceptable vector performance. At least for games.

I didn't mean ARM nor games, although I didn't know that were that heavy. Can they not be hardware (GPU) accelerated?

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[runawayprisoner]

Well, the animation process of vectors can be GPU accelerated, but I think the rendering (actually taking the vector data and converting it to graphics) still has to be done in software (on CPU).

OpenCL and other GPGPU APIs might be able to help with that, but in general, I find that most vector-heavy operations still tax the CPU by far.

That's why they keep complaining about Adobe Flash performance being poor (especially on mobile), but it's mostly not Adobe's fault that vectors have to be treated that way. If Flash only had to deal with scalar graphics (bitmaps), then it would run a lot faster.