mrforgetful Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 I believe some features in Windows 7 are hidden by default? Other than some more Themes would someone point me to an article about what they are and how to un-hide them? Cheers.
DrCheese Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 They were in the earlier beta's, i.e the PDC beta had the superbar hidden by default. You had to install “Blue Badge” tool available, unlocks all known protected features - Within Windows for it to work. However in build 7000 everything is on by default and it's pretty much feature complete now. 1
RabbieBurns Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 I know they've removed the classic start bar, but have they removed the Windows Classic theme as well? I cant seem to find it.
tmcd35 Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 My god! They've got rid of the classic start bar! Talk about pointless changes for pointless changes sake! Whatever happened to 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'? A swear M$ GUI decisions of late have been a bit suspect to say the least, and to force them on the end user! Maybe I'm just getting old and conservative, or maybe the ribbon bar is actually sh*t. I haven't quite worked it out yet (but I suspect the later!)
mrforgetful Posted January 13, 2009 Author Posted January 13, 2009 Aw no! I hate the Vista Start Menu.
jamesb Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 My god! They've got rid of the classic start bar! Talk about pointless changes for pointless changes sake! Whatever happened to 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'? A swear M$ GUI decisions of late have been a bit suspect to say the least, and to force them on the end user! Maybe I'm just getting old and conservative, or maybe the ribbon bar is actually sh*t. I haven't quite worked it out yet (but I suspect the later!) I actually find the ribbon a lot easier to use, now that I've got used to it.
DrPerceptron Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 Maybe I'm just getting old and conservative, or maybe the ribbon bar is actually sh*t. I haven't quite worked it out yet (but I suspect the later!) I felt the same way, but now I've got used to it and know my way around it, I'm finding it much easier to use the ribbon than the mini-toolbars and drop down menus... Admittedly I'm still not a fan of the Office Button however.
stratisphere Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 To be honest, I think it's great. Microsoft gets the biggest amount of flack for being crap and unstable. Thats because every OS they do, everyone demands it stays backwords compatible, which is fine for like 95/98 and then 2k/xp. But why the hell would you want to run a 16bit app on Windows 7. They have made alot of changes in windows 7, alot being old stuff removed. And windows 7 proves the effect of that. Fast, responsive, stable (in the beta! gunna be better when it's release i'd imagine) and a smaller footprint. As for the UI stuff... sure, the taskbar change seems strange. But so did the ribbon bar change, so did tabbed browsing etc etc etc. Because the new taskbar is so different, from what I understand by their blogs, keeping the old taskbar would have meant alot of old compatibility code would have to be kept... defeating the point really. If the new taskbar was rubbish, i'd agree. But I think it's quite good. Aside from the fact it looks good, it actually works faster aswell (in the way of if you have 20million windows open, it's easy to find what you want). The only thing i do say, is it's rubbish on it's default setting of large. Takes up way to much space.
RabbieBurns Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 yeh, ive kinda gotten over the old start menu thing now. But i really dont like the themes windows uses. Never have even with XP. I like the Classic Theme. If its gone too, I'll be sad. (Although its probably trivial for someone to knock up a custom theme based on the classic theme I guess?)
mrforgetful Posted January 13, 2009 Author Posted January 13, 2009 I hate the Windows XP themes, hence why I've always use the uxtheme.dll hack to instlal custom ones. I don't mind Vista out of the box though. I like the XP Start Menu as much as classic to be honest, it's the Vista method of having menus open in that small space I don't like, makes it hard to find things having to scroll through the menu instead of it being the whole height of the screen.
tmcd35 Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 As for the UI stuff... sure, the taskbar change seems strange. But so did the ribbon bar change, so did tabbed browsing etc etc etc. Because the new taskbar is so different, from what I understand by their blogs, keeping the old taskbar would have meant alot of old compatibility code would have to be kept... defeating the point really. It says a lot about the quality of M$ code if the design of the start bar relies so heavily on old code that effects backwards compatibility and overall OS stability! Surely the code that displays the start menu should be so far removed from this problamatic legacy code that it couldn't cause such issues. I don't mind M$ coming up with new ideas, themes, skins, way's of doing things. It's the fact that they are forcing people to use these changes that I don't like. The classic start bar arks back to Windows '95 and right through to Vista it's been fine, no problems with it. Like whys the Office menu system going back atleast to the Windows 3.1 days right up to Office 2003, fine it worked people liked it and new how to use it. It feels like change for changes sake! It's like the Linux world saying - Okay from now on you can only use KDE4! Forget Gnome, Enlightment, ICE, etc - KDE4 only - tough. My god I am getting old and conservative! <- That is actually quite a depressing thought
mrforgetful Posted January 13, 2009 Author Posted January 13, 2009 It's nothing like Linux saying that. Linux said here's some code to use as an operating system, you don't get a GUI. Someone esle went, fine I'll make one. Someone else went eugh I don't like that, I'll make it better. To be fair if you dont' like she Windows shell go find another, there are plenty out there! You can't compare an open source OS way of doing things to a company owned product. Also, the Ribbon in Office is waaaay better than menus, actually moved me away from OpenOffice.
mrforgetful Posted January 13, 2009 Author Posted January 13, 2009 For Classic Theme choose it under the 'Ease of Access' section in Themes. 1
DrCheese Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 I'd argue for keeping the classic start menu at least for this release, but saying "In Windows 8, it's gone for good" This is because they are going to have a large amount of XP to 7 migrations and in an organisation your unlikely to upgrade every system at once. For places like us who have the classic start menu still we'd want to keep both UI's looking as similar as possible during the upgrade. If they warned us that this was the final version it would be included in, it would give us time to move staff over to the new one once 7 is deployed.
Quackers Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 Its the GUI changes in Vista i hated most about it, and if 7 is the same i'm not going to like it
tmcd35 Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 It's not just my own dislike for recent M$ GUI changes that I need to think about. The bigger question is the wider teaching staff. The kids (as they always do) will cope fine with whatever is put in front of them. But the majority of the (mostly older) teachers are lot more conservative and resistant to change than I am. For this reason I'm advocating a change to OpenOffice here over newer releases of M$ Office. The suggestion of alternative shells for Windows (or skinning apps for that matter) just doesn't work. My previous experience with alternative shells for XP found them to make the OS more unstable - greater chances of BSOD's and incompatibilities.
Gatt Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 I Like the XP theme and the Vista Theme - and from what I've seen of Win7 I think I'll like it too.. Im not a fan of the Classic 9x theme but it does have its uses at times. [rant] Things change.. deal with it.. [/rant]
gibbo_ap Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 yeh, ive kinda gotten over the old start menu thing now. But i really dont like the themes windows uses. Never have even with XP. I like the Classic Theme. If its gone too, I'll be sad. (Although its probably trivial for someone to knock up a custom theme based on the classic theme I guess?) it does have the classic theme under ease of access
stratisphere Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 It's not just my own dislike for recent M$ GUI changes that I need to think about. The bigger question is the wider teaching staff. The kids (as they always do) will cope fine with whatever is put in front of them. But the majority of the (mostly older) teachers are lot more conservative and resistant to change than I am. For this reason I'm advocating a change to OpenOffice here over newer releases of M$ Office. The suggestion of alternative shells for Windows (or skinning apps for that matter) just doesn't work. My previous experience with alternative shells for XP found them to make the OS more unstable - greater chances of BSOD's and incompatibilities. Please note, this is only discussion, im not trying to cause an argument... but with that way of thinking, nothing will ever change because people claim they cant adjust. Short story is they will whine and bitch... but eventually they will get used to it. Lets not forget, there are settings in the new taskbar which makes it look ALOT like the old taskbar... so it's not even that much of an issue. About my previous post about the compatibility code. I didnt say the old taskbar code caused the whole os to be unstable. What i was saying is if you leave a little old code here, then some more over there... etc etc etc it quickly gets messy. MS are heading in the right direction. They wont get it perfect the first time (aka, vista), but windows 7 is certainly a step in the right direction. I have members of staff here who hate computers. They didnt smile when we said we were going to use sims for reports etc. They whined and moaned till they turned blue. 6 months later they are happy using it and are amazed at how much time they are now saving.
RabbieBurns Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 it does have the classic theme under ease of access Cheers. I'm glad they changed that from "accessibility" now
mrforgetful Posted January 13, 2009 Author Posted January 13, 2009 Cheers. I'm glad they changed that from "accessibility" now Oi dammit I said it first! *whine*
ICT_GUY Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 i would just like a small fast operating that was 64bit and just worked quickly and efficiently. All I want from an os is the ability to organise my files and run applications of my choosing. It should also be stable.
localzuk Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 i would just like a small fast operating that was 64bit and just worked quickly and efficiently. All I want from an os is the ability to organise my files and run applications of my choosing. It should also be stable. Sounds like you want Linux then...
gshaw Posted January 13, 2009 Posted January 13, 2009 (edited) There's some stuff that needed changing in Windows 7 - performance being one of the biggies but some stuff just needs leaving alone... what benefit is there in changing the taskbar honestly After using it for a while Vista looks slick and the Start Menu works ok if you type the name of the program rather than browsing for it. For me what they've done in 7 just looks odd and doesn't seem to make any noticeable improvement. Change for change's sake? And the one thing that does need changing, MS ain't got the guts to do... kill of 32-bit be brave! Sounds like you want Linux then... If only it just *worked* as easily as Windows does... had a few goes with different distros and none just went straight through Edited January 13, 2009 by gshaw
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