On 15 March 2012 00:42, Andres Muniz <andre...@gmail.com> wrote: > ----- Mensaje original ----- > >> A tangential one here. >> Someone made a video of his dad trying Win8 for the first time. Worth >> a serious watch. There but for the grace of God go I. (But not to >> Windows for me though) >> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4boTbv9_nU&feature=youtu.be >> > sorry following up on tangencial here. Did the same experiment with aero, > OSX and ubuntu 10.11. > What i take away was > that the mac close minimize animation helps answer the question "where did > my stuff go?"
Yes indeed. The little "zoom boxes" were something that PC types saw as "chrome" - as needless decoration, but actually, they really do help novices out. Apple is very good at this sort of subtle detail. Often, it is misunderstood and other companies' copies lose the function but retain the decoration - e.g. "wobbly windows" in Compiz, or gratuitous translucency. > The multiple desktop thing seen as cool but confusing to use. Also seems > that the side by side window feature is needed. It is probably not familiar to Windows users. > Did not know mac and windows had virtual desktops. It has been in Mac OS X since 10.5. The implementation is called "Spaces" and it is a very good one - better than Linux's, I think. It accurately remember where you put windows, unlike GNOME or Unity. Moving windows from screen to screen is easier than on GNOME and it did not repeat the GNOME 2 idiocy of not listing windows on other desktops on the taskbar. (What cretin thought that was a good idea?) It is not a built-in feature of any version of Windows I am aware of. In XP, there is an official Microsoft PowerToy that gives the functionality, for free: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/power-toy-microsofts-virtual-desktop-manager/ I use it, but it's not very good. The separate wallpapers get forgotten all the time - I now have no wallpaper at all. The functionality for sending windows from one desktop to another is clearly bolted-on and is very inconvenient. Some windows ignore the vdesktop manager & appear on all desktops. It's kind of half-assed, frankly. Better than nothing, but not much. In Win7, I needed this in a role I was in last year. I found several freeware tools - VirtuaWin, Dextop, and WindowsPager. I'm afraid I don't remember which one I settled on. It was, again, better than nothing, and worked better than on XP, but only the "main" desktop had Aero compositing - all the others were flat 2D, no translucency or anything. It also did not play nicely with Remote Desktop. But Windows aims at the common man, and virtual desktops, as those videos show quite well, are a concept that is very hard to explain to a novice or unsophisticated user. I think it's a mistake to leave them in such plain view in Unity (which has a fairly half-assed implementation itself, with no thumbnails in the Launcher or anything.) Linux Mint hides them away altogether unless you add the control. This is a good idea for newbies. It does leave the keystrokes active, though, and I've seen newbies accidentally hit ctrl-alt-left or ctrl-alt-right and wonder where everything went and why it had all gone blank. Believe it or not, this really is a problem. The desktop-cube animation helped a little, oddly. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
