DirectX 10.1 Question

yes, and i say there aren't big changes in those parts of the os. so no, there aren't big gains from going to win7 because of that. dx11 by itself brings huge gains without needing a new driver model. and win7 doesn't have a much new driver model. low level optimisations where made for other things, where real gains could be gained. so has gdi+ now a complete rewrite, to not use gpu + system ram at the same time for the same picture => that's the main reason why win7 uses that much less ram by default.

win7 is a minor step up, and there are only minor gains, thus.

 

btw, it hasn't loaded the attachement first time.

so now select one of those windows, and then hover with the mouse over it. did it got better to read than non-selected? normally, it gets twice enbrightened (not a real world but you get it anyways). thus, contrast got lowered. this never happened that strong yet on any windows.

and there is no cleartype on your startmenu buttons

 

I can still read fine.

Sorry mate, clear type is turned off. This is off (see attachment)

Notice how the task bar text turn to light bold when ClearType is off, to still have a nice visibility.

[edit] hang on, let me give you a direct comparisoin please wait 1min[/edit]

 

no, this is antialiasing turned off. cleartype is one form of antialiasing (the one, when zoomed in, results in colourful fonts). but there is antialiasing without cleartype, which is inferior, and the one used in "all programs".

now make the taskbar less high, and the bright highlights start to bleed into the text. it is good readable, even then, but less so than on vista, f.e.. and with a bright wallpaper, it gets a problem. and microsoft supplies bright wallpapers including the one in the distro, resulting in the issue.

because of this, they made the taskbar in vista less transparent by default, actually. they made it specifically for contrastful easy reading of the labels on the buttons. and now, they removed that (the same as they removed the non-transparency, when maximized, which was implemented to help users, too).

 

ClearType is antialiasing.
The other version that you speak off, is "inferior" because it was designed for CRT's NOT LCD's. On my CRT I use that one and the text is all nice, but if I use ClearType like on my laptop, even after calibration, it not as nice, and vise-versa on my laptop.

Ok now I start to see, but then again, make the text white and the background white... the web browser has this ability to it must be a design flaw. It's the same thing. On a dark background or dark colored theme, it's fine. And that it was designed for the icons only view. See my last sentence of this post.

There was a blog post actually on Win7 blog form Microsoft, having a report on complains that "hover item" of the task bar was not bright enough, and showing a possible change and see if people liked it. And the result was very liked, therefor the changes was applied permanently on the RC version.

Yes, because during Vista bashing time, people called this system "A bug", saying "Look how Vista sucks, it can't do transparency when a window is maximized. A BUG! A BUG! A BUG!!!!!! (said like a donkey)", even after Microsoft explaining that it was by designed and it was to allow people to focus on the application. So, in Win7 the decision to please most people came true and now transparency is always on. I preferred Vista way, that is for sure, but I cope by making a dark colored theme. The new features and improvement at all levels, and to top it off with a great price (50% off Pro edition, 68% for Home), made me convince to order Win7 Pro 2 times (laptop and desktop), I saw it as a 2 license for the price of 1.

Personally all these little things is because Microsoft listened to the public, but how can they be blame after passing through Vista failed experience. Anyone, would have done the same, and probably even listen way to much and got ***-fest of a OS UI.

 

well, yes, cleartype is antialiasing. but the startmenu doesn't use cleartype in all of its text, while i "enabled cleartype". that is a bug. and an annoying one, for me, as i really appreciate the way Cleartype makes the A in All Programs smooth. (cleartype is perfect for exactly such cases, enhancing the sharpness and antialiasedness of such steep lines, like in the A).

well, obviously white text on white background is a fault by the user. but everywhere i get the answer "turn to old mode and it's the same as vista", and i say, no, it isn't. as the contrast is lower. and that is, not a bug per se, but a quality loss in user experience.

so, even by reverting to "old mode", i still have a taskbar that has a lower quality in usage than the one i had in vista.

and that was my point: not every change in win7 was for the better. espencially in the design choices in the new taskbar.

and those changes, mostly, happened (like the UAC 'fixes'), because of those "A BUG! A BUG! A BUG!!!!!! (said like a donkey)" people.

sad they went that low..

 

Well the screen shot I showed you was form ClearType on my laptop (LCD), as you can see it's fine on my side. Anyway, we can't comment on this as I have RC and you have RTM. It could also be the GPU drivers as now the UI is drawn by it. We will have to wait until October 22, or to be fair mid November for the set of updates, and properly optimized drivers. My laptop is powered by Nvidia graphics (see signature for both my system config).

[/quote]well, obviously white text on white background is a fault by the user. but everywhere i get the answer "turn to old mode and it's the same as vista", and i say, no, it isn't. as the contrast is lower. and that is, not a bug per se, but a quality loss in user experience.[/quote]
Get a ISP panel to jump to 8-bit and proper color accuracy
But seriously, I think it's minor thing and not a killer thing.

I agree. But hey! it's only 2-3 things, and not the hole UI nor the system of Windows. On the upside, it did made the networking system miles better, and based on my private home testing, seams to be better than XP by a visible difference, it did made Win7 run without tweaks on a Pentium III 800MHz with 512MB of RAM near smooth, and more. And it has to be considered that this a first for Microosft to do such a thing. Perhaps next time they will listen but still do their own R&D onto the mater before applying it.

 

LOL! Super off topic >.<!
Never mind. Keep discussing and ignore me.
I want to have some Games. XD

 

Right, so anyway as I was saying this a great cooking recipe to try. You can add melted chocolate for better taste.

 

btw, this is on a black background (as you see around the orb). and together with some slight gloss reflection from some window on the right, behind me (at around 9 o clock, that is?), it's barely readable.. with the BLACK wallpaper. with the white, impossible).

vistas taskbar in comparison (from some webgoogling):



and no, your screenshot does NOT show cleartype on "All Programs". if you zoom in, it's completely black-grey-white, that part. obviously, as you said, it's a minor thing. but it annoys. interestingly, it was that way on vista, too. just noticed now. i have different cleartype settings on vista, making the difference less profound.

oh, and the "new" networking you say? that's vistas new networking. the networking stack is still identical. and yes, it's awesome compared to winxp.

 

The BEST UI will be Vista's.
Combine with Windows 7 Theme in Vista. Everything will be freaking awesome.
Good Cleartype fonts with Bigger taskbar size without stupid useless functions of Windows 7.
Here is the screen shoot,

 

Sorry, I meant that Win7 network was improved.

Sorry that looks amateurish. :/

 

i can't comment on windows 7 networking over vista networking as, so far, i have not seen any gain, but only losses. but i guess they are not network related.

when booting up out of hibernation, the system is non-responsive for up to a minute, after the desktop showed up. and networking takes very long to connect to a wlan, then.

and, wlan drops quite often, compared to a rockstable always immediate online network with vista.

but, i guess it's the wlan driver, not win7. not sure about the hibernation-behaviour. (but annoying nontheless).



to darksilver:

that's crap. it ads all of the features that i disagree with in win7, and removes a lot of the features i talked about how i like them, in vista.

so it's a complete failure. i prefer the pure win7 over your mess.



btw, just for others to try out:

windows taskbar buttons at full width:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

add a new string called "MinWidth", and type in -99999 as value (as i don't think we will see a screen with >99999 pixels width anyways in our lives )

use it for a while (espencially, on vista, with enlarged preview windows), and report if you like it (report if you don't, as well)

 

Hahaha! I just like the style I put. Is better than original Vista's.
As long as it doesn't cause my eyes sick and I can click them easily, I will stick with it.
Well, I didn't said I am a pro, Goodbytes. I tried to modify a lot of stuffs last time. Taskbar height, taskbar icon adjustment(left), taskbar icon transparency(right) and so on. I don't like them and they looks ugly since the modification is not perfect. Not perfect for me = Not match in some aspects(example: taskbar menu, windows fonts and windows box and many more)

I can sense Davepermen loves spacial instead of stylish.

 

uhh i love stylish. but stylish with usability. and "style" is entierly personal. you might prefer, red, i might prefer blue, goodbytes yellow, who cares?

but the ui design (not the style) of win7 has more faults then the one of vista, some planned, some non-planned. and both of this result to a dislike of the win7 ui. the style of win7 is quite okay. it's more bright, and more "busy". i like the bright, dislike the busy, but it's my personal opinion.

i'm talking about design, design is about usability, and i care about that over anything. but i love, really love, how, starting with xp, continueing with vista, style got important, too. because usability does not mean it has to look ugly. most of the time, usability makes stuff look nice, too. and there, where it doesn't matter for usability, by all means, add all sort of stylish additions that make it look pretty, cool, nice, what ever

(but let users have a choise, as they might dislike the default style, of course.. and there, win7 actually went a bit further than vista, which is a good thing.. i really like the new wallpapers, and the theme collections).

 

Yea this is 100% driver related issues. I had the same thing on my desktop computer during Vista beta test. I had to wait for the nforce 4 Vista 64-bit drivers to be released, and that solved the issue.

 

yeah i guess so. still annoying as hell

i haven't heard really about improvements on the networking side compared to vista, though.. the ui improved and is quite nice. homegroups is new and, interesting (but with a windows home server, you don't care much about that feature at all). other improvements like directaccess and such are great for corporations (and i'd love to implement such stuff in a company). but all i find is ui related, and about simplifying networking for users. that's a good thing, but nothing performance-ground-breaking.

you have some links about what got changed on the technical side? i'm curious.

 

I lost the links to direct articles, sorry. I tend to not bookmark those. Sites that talks about Win7 (If I don't forget one)
- Ars Technica
- istartedsomething
- DailyTech
- Microsoft Engineering Windows 7

It is true that WIndows 7 has nothing ground braking. That is because it's like XP over 2000.
Windows 2000 brougth buisness and home world together (NT5.0). XP (NT 5.1) brougth imrpovements on Windows 2000, nothing revolutionary. Windows Vista has a new core and we can say restarted from scratch or close to that (NT6.0), Windows 7 is improvement on that (NT6.1).

The question is that Windows 8 will it be a NT7.0 or NT6.2 pack with int resting features. Only time would tell.
I read that Microscopist is already hard at work on Win8 (my guess is that they are at planning stages and will see reactions of Win7 once it goes live on October 22nd and based people reaction on Win8). I would not expect a new core at all.. I mean it took 6 years to make one, and as technology move forward it will take even more time.

 

win8 will be win7 based, yes. they even stated that. i know those pages, too, none talked about enhanced network performance much actually.

one key feature i can't wait about win8: with win7, they added tons of sensors, detecting if a user uses a certain os component or feature. with win8, they want to use that information to strip out old unused stuff, step by step, making it more slim. no clue how far they get, or if we have to wait for win9 for the first real slimdown, but it's at least a very nice plan for the future.


because win7 is nothing groundbreaking, while vista was, i laught about all those people coming with "woah, look at it, how great it is". because, honestly, that is how vista works for me since long.

still, win7 is progression on technical side. and a good one.

but on the non-technical side, ui, system setting defaults (say uac ), they failed this time. as they had to satisfy all crybabies (those *bug, bug BUGGGGGG* boys ), they made tons of desitions to satisfy those, instead of making a choice that is well thought out. and that is sad.

as i'm one who tries to explore user interfaces for usability, ease of design, and such, i'm shocked in how much details and big things the win7 ui is a backstep, compared to vista. i am espencially shocked, because those who made that, where the ones who made office 2007, which is an awesome redesign of ui...



anyways, nice talk in here.

 

I am sure Vista style UAC will be back at SP2 of Win7 or at Win8, when software makers will decide to read Microsoft documentation and learn how to make software work properly.

For the networking part, let me clarify, it's nothing groundbreaking or a super fast, it's just minor thing, it's certainly not a key feature/improvement, but any improvements are welcomed.

 

jup. it improved much over the years. to be fair, on win7, i have so far about the same amount of uac popups since installation, as on vista. two points where no uac pop up anymore:

right-click on my computer, chose "manage", and when editing a power plan setting. funny is, how you still have to click extra for the advanced options so even the uac "fix" is quite half-baked, as the double-dialogs still exist (same in taskmanager). so even while uac itself is gone, there, the extra-clicking still is.

and for any sort of installation, uac stays.

but what i don't know is, if uac now is faster at popping up. i know it could be terribly slow (together with the screen blank, very irritating, too) to pop up. not on my systems as i have ssd based clean installations. they are always instant at popping up uac. just as they are now on win7.

there will, for sure, be some major nimda style virus coming, that will have a microsoft sign (or a way to use another companies sign to get into the machine), that will hit all win7 users hard. as the way to hack win7 uac got shown even during the beta, it won't wait for long after it gets released to public.

for perfect media presence, i'd say christmas 2009. i sure hope not, as i'm happy for the good publicity microsoft gets for win7. even while it's because of the wrong reasons.

 

This is because in reality is auto-elevates for you, by-passing the dialog box.
Moreover they can't change the UI, this will add confusions to help documentation. I mean let's say you help someone over chat/phone, you tell to change something but oups it's not there or accessible because UAC is at a different level and he/she must click on that link for elevation, and that confuses users if they change systems using the same OS. The way it is is perfect. UAC is a kernel level protection system, it can't just be removed.

You can slide it all the way done and it will gone, but you reduce security, in fact any level under maximum (Vista style), is reducing the security. By default you have less pop-ups for instant if you delete items in the Start menu which affect all users won't pop-up UAC is an example of where it got reduced.

Yes, I did the comparison with my laptop (lack of driver + 5400RPM HDD) running win7 64-bit versus my desktop Vista 64-bit all drivers properly installed 7200RPM HDD, both system fully defrag with O&O Defrag 10. Win7 UAC pop-up is significantly faster over Vista's one, and also doesn't - on rare occation - loses focuses and feel like explorer "crashes" but in reality it's waiting the UAC dialog box on the back, where an Alt+tab is needed to solve the issue.

This was fixed, it's just Microsoft forgot (or simply not programed in at the current public release, as it's still in development) to implement the elevation system on the location where you can control the elevation level.

The only hack that I know off, that only exists in Win7 (not under Vista), is that there is a hidden trick that Microsoft implemented to by-pass UAC to allow badly programed security software like Norton to work better under Win7, and/or use a better integrated UAC replacement system (because a different looking dialog box is apparently needed - Symantec believes). In any case, it's undocumented and only released to security firms. So if you have a ex-worker there or someone leaking that info or is discovered, UAC will be useless until a patch comes in to close that purposely designed hole.

 

you know that i know how uac works, but thanks for the info anyways (not that anything of this was new).

i ment the newer hack, that uses system dlls to raise their own code to admin mode. as system dlls can get raised without uac.

that flaw still works after the fixes of the system control auto-elevation.

and this flaw is explicit because of the win7 design for uac and can't be, in general, fixed, except when you switch back to vista mode (a.k.a. trust no file for elevation, not even signed microsoft files).