On today's episode of "Stupid Use Of Glass"...



  • That's the latest version of Tortoise SVN. Anybody have any clue what was going through their heads when they made that login dialog?



  • BTW, anybody have a good IDE recommendation to handle .jsp projects, and isn't Eclipse? (And you know is likely to work on my Windows setup.)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    BTW, anybody have a good IDE recommendation to handle .jsp projects, and isn't Eclipse? (And you know is likely to work on my Windows setup.)

    NetBeans! :D

    I use it daily. It's not half bad.



  • Um, what exactly is wrong with it (no experience using that style window display)?  I mean the password text box running into the edge there looks badly laid out and having the standard looking things stuck inside the stupid ass glass stuff looking dumb.



  • Ah, TortioseSVN, home of one of the worst update UIs ever.

    "Hey, a new verison is available, you wanna upgrade?"
    (Clicking yes takes you to the website.  IRRC not even to the download page)
    "No, I'm working right now."
    "Well I'll tell you next time you try to do anything involving SVN."

    I mean at least VLC tries to download the installer for you.  FileZilla downloads and even runs it for you.  (But then when I try to update FileZilla the installer crashes.)



  • @Xyro said:

    I use it daily. It's not half bad.

    No it's all bad, like everything Java.

    That said, I'm using it anyway, because it seems to be the best of a bad option. Ugh Java sucks, EVERYTHING ABOUT JAVA SUCKS. Even installing Netbeans. "You don't have the right version of Java. I need 1.6.0." "Uh ok, let's go download... Java 7? WTF. Well I guess 7 is more than 1.6.0 right?" This installation experience is so awful, I swear it's a joke-- and the punchline is I know it'll fuck up in the same way Eclipse did and full my poor profile with gigabytes of roaming bullshit.

    I've been put on this death march project from another part of the company that does everything on Macs and in Java apparently (how can anybody with the good taste to use OS X have the bad taste to choose Java? MYSTERY OF THE AGES), and I've been spending the last 2 hours just getting the fucking thing checked-out and installed instead of actually working on it. If this was an ASP.net site, I'd be done by now.

    Edit: now when I try to open the project, I get this lovely error: @shitty open source products are all piles of non-working SHIT what the FUCK is WRONG with you open source shitholes said:

    org.tigris.subversion.javahl.ClientException: The path 'D:\anonymized' appears to be part of a Subversion 1.7 or greater working copy. Please upgrade your Subversion client to use this working copy.

    WTF does that MEAN!???

    Another Edit: Oh I dismissed the error, and it worked fine. So... what's the point of the error again?

    @locallunatic said:

    Um, what exactly is wrong with it

    Open your eyes and look at it! Geez.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @locallunatic said:
    Um, what exactly is wrong with it

    Open your eyes and look at it! Geez.

     

    OK, so it was the "it looks like crap" things I included.  Sorry for assuming that there may be something else there.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Edit: now when I try to open the project, I get this lovely error: @shitty open source products are all piles of non-working SHIT what the FUCK is WRONG with you open source shitholes said:

    org.tigris.subversion.javahl.ClientException: The path 'D:\anonymized' appears to be part of a Subversion 1.7 or greater working copy. Please upgrade your Subversion client to use this working copy.
    WTF does that MEAN!???

    Uh, the repository was created with a later version of Subversion than what you have?...


  • @locallunatic said:

    OK, so it was the "it looks like crap" things I included. Sorry for assuming that there may be something else there.

    Did you need more? The WTF is that a real, living, breathing human being looked at that and said to themselves: "I think this looks pretty good, let's ship it." Heck, he even signed his name to it.

    @Sutherlands said:

    Uh, the repository was created with a later version of Subversion than what you have?...

    1. There's only one version of Subversion on my entire system, unless NetBeans decided that wasn't good enough and installed another

      2) Why would it even check the Subversion version of a project I opened from disk and didn't indicate, in any way, I wished to use Subversion with

      3) Why is that a problem? Dismissing the error seems to cause no ill-effects


  • @blakeyrat said:

    1) There's only one version of Subversion on my entire system, unless NetBeans decided that wasn't good enough and installed another

    That might be the case, I'm not sure. I think they have their own built-in SVN client now (for people like you who would scream because you'd have to download one separately), but I'm not sure if it's activated by default. You can go into Tools > Options > Miscellaneous > Versioning > Subversion and change the SVN executable it uses.

    @blakeyrat said:

    2) Why would it even check the Subversion version of a project I opened from disk and didn't indicate, in any way, I wished to use Subversion with

    Source control integration, yo. It's pretty handy. It also gives you colors and icons and stuff to show you what you've changed compared to the repository. It's pretty neat.

    @blakeyrat said:

    3) Why is that a problem? Dismissing the error seems to cause no ill-effects

    For now, but you may not be able to properly update or commit from the IDE. If you just want to use Tortoise though, that's fine, too. I use both, depending on if the project is more than just what the IDE can see.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    EVERYTHING ABOUT JAVA SUCKS
    In my 10+ years of experience with it I've never had any real problems with Java, just Java developers.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    That's the latest version of Tortoise SVN. Anybody have any clue what was going through their heads when they made that login dialog?
    I'm not sure, it's pretty ugly.  Please, just click "Save Authentication" so you won't have to look at it again.



  • @boog said:

    In my 10+ years of experience with it I've never had any real problems with Java,

    Wow, you're delusional.

    @boog said:

    just Java developers.

    Yeah well, right now I'm hung up on whatever Java developer produced this error:

    @NetBeans said:

    Error loading property file 'D:\trunk\anonymized-web${filterFile}'

    It comes from something called "Maven", which comes from something called "Mojo", when I try to build the project. It also links to this page, which is not helpful.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    That's the latest version of Tortoise SVN. Anybody have any clue what was going through their heads when they made that login dialog?

    Is there anything to actually like about glass (this is a serious question)? To me, no matter where it is, it makes it more difficult to view the application's window that is made translucent. If I wanted to look at the window behind that window, I'd probably have brought it into focus.

    I could understand it if you get the translucency only when moving or resizing or something. But why is it a good idea to see through windows generally? I'm sure MS has some usability info on this, right?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @boog said:
    In my 10+ years of experience with it I've never had any real problems with Java,

    Wow, you're delusional.

    A compelling argument; please outline for me exactly what problems I have had with Java itself that I've overlooked.



  • @boog said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @boog said:
    In my 10+ years of experience with it I've never had any real problems with Java,

    Wow, you're delusional.

    A compelling argument; please outline for me exactly what problems I have had with Java itself that I've overlooked.

    Well this might not be exact enough for you, but there's all the wide-open security holes the JRE has introduced to your computer over the years, simply by having Java installed.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @boog said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    @boog said:
    In my 10+ years of experience with it I've never had any real problems with Java,
    Wow, you're delusional.
    A compelling argument; please outline for me exactly what problems I have had with Java itself that I've overlooked.
    Well this might not be exact enough for you, but there's all the wide-open security holes Microsoft has introduced to your computer over the years, simply by having Windows installed.

    FTFY



  • @zelmak said:

    FTFY

    OH SNAP! The unimpeachable Linux-user logic that Foo isn't bad as long as there exists Bar that is equally bad!

    When I tweeted "I hate Java", I got a response on Twitter that was basically, "then I guess you haven't used PHP!" Hahaha no. I hate both. Why is it that programmers, working in a job that requires logic, are so bad at logic?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    @zelmak said:
    FTFY

    OH SNAP! The unimpeachable Linux-user logic that Foo isn't bad as long as there exists Bar that is equally bad!

    When I tweeted "I hate Java", I got a response on Twitter that was basically, "then I guess you haven't used PHP!" Hahaha no. I hate both. Why is it that programmers, working in a job that requires logic, are so bad at logic?

    It really has nothing to do with programmers, but with people, who themselves feel attacked when someone attacks something with which they associate.

    Or, we could assume that zelmak was simply trolling you (garnering the same defensive reaction), since you often self associate with a product with a much stronger association with security vulnerabilities.



  • @boog said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    EVERYTHING ABOUT JAVA SUCKS
    In my 10+ years of experience with it I've never had any real problems with Java, just Java developers.

    Made me laugh. There is some truth in that, but I can't tell for sure what causes it. Is it the fact that most developers, and therefore most Java developers, are less than stellar in their coding? Or is it because of Java developers' obsessive need to find a third party library for every function they write, let's say one that loads a bit of XML, and then have to include the whole spring framework, and then preferably also include two incompatible xml frameworks?



  • @boomzilla said:

    Is there anything to actually like about glass (this is a serious question)? To me, no matter where it is, it makes it more difficult to view the application's window that is made translucent. If I wanted to look at the window behind that window, I'd probably have brought it into focus.

    I could understand it if you get the translucency only when moving or resizing or something. But why is it a good idea to see through windows generally? I'm sure MS has some usability info on this, right?

    I always turn off transparency on Vista/Win7 - maybe it's just my OCD or I'm being paranoid or something, but if I want to take a screenshot of a window and post it somewhere, I don't want to have to worry that someone can see some other window that I might not WANT them to see "hiding behind" the window I'm trying to show them!



  • Oh hey I just remembered why I tossed NetBeans in the bin last time. Not only does it save its working files in the wrong path (like apparently all Java apps), it either renders fonts at the wrong DPI, or for some reason doesn't want to let me use Consolas 14. (14 renders as 12. 18 renders as about 16... I think it's a DPI thing.) Jesus Christ, guys, it's 2011, and you can't draw fonts correctly.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Oh hey I just remembered why I tossed NetBeans in the bin last time. Not only does it save its working files in the wrong path (like apparently all Java apps), it either renders fonts at the wrong DPI, or for some reason doesn't want to let me use Consolas 14. (14 renders as 12. 18 renders as about 16... I think it's a DPI thing.) Jesus Christ, guys, it's 2011, and you can't draw fonts correctly.

    I can see how that would prevent you from getting work done. Seriously, though, you allow aero glass on your monitor, but you refuse to use a program that doesn't draw fonts the same size as other programs?



  • @boomzilla said:

    I can see how that would prevent you from getting work done.

    No, what's stopping me is the build error I quoted above. Nobody knows how to solve it.

    @boomzilla said:

    Seriously, though, you allow aero glass on your monitor,

    "allow" it? It's the default.

    @boomzilla said:

    but you refuse to use a program that doesn't draw fonts the same size as other programs?

    There's no wiggle room in fonts. Consolas 14 is Consolas 14.

    If the developers of NetBeans didn't get such an easy and basic detail right, how many other things do you think they got wrong? If they didn't even give the slightest FUCK to make sure the most basic thing worked, how little of a fuck was given over the rest of the product? Seriously, it's just shameful. Again: someone looked at this product, this product that can't even draw a font correctly, and said: "hey this looks good, let's ship it."



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    Seriously, though, you allow aero glass on your monitor,

    "allow" it? It's the default.

     

    Allow used in the way it was could also mean that you didn't change the super shitty default to something else.  Just cause it is the default doesn't excuse it being shitty.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    If the developers of NetBeans didn't get such an easy and basic detail right, how many other things do you think they got wrong? If they didn't even give the slightest FUCK to make sure the most basic thing worked, how little of a fuck was given over the rest of the product? Seriously, it's just shameful. Again: someone looked at this product, this product that can't even draw a font correctly, and said: "hey this looks good, let's ship it."
    Welcome to the Java community! Enjoy your stay.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    I can see how that would prevent you from getting work done.

    No, what's stopping me is the build error I quoted above. Nobody knows how to solve it.

    Yeah, I get that. I was referring to the last time you tried NetBeans. I've looked at maven briefly, and I think I'd rather maintain a build system using DOS batch files.

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    ]Seriously, though, you allow aero glass on your monitor,

    "allow" it? It's the default.

    Yeah. Program has shitty default, film at 11. So, why do you allow aero on your machine? Honestly, you're the most usability focused person I've ever "known." How does seeing through bits of windows not degrade usability? How is one program drawing smaller letters than others nearly a hanging offense, but this atrocity gets ignored? Is it just because it's Microsoft's default, so it's usable by fiat?

    Shitty default is also the answer to Netbeans (or eclipse) saving to a platform inappropriate default directory. Do you also hate that Word tries to save in your Documents folder (instead of directly to the desktop, where God meant you to save all of your documents)?

    @blakeyrat said:
    @boomzilla said:
    but you refuse to use a program that doesn't draw fonts the same size as other programs?

    There's no wiggle room in fonts. Consolas 14 is Consolas 14.

    Uh, so what? You fix it to look right once and never think about it again.

    @blakeyrat said:

    If the developers of NetBeans didn't get such an easy and basic detail right, how many other things do you think they got wrong?

    If the developers of Windows can't even get such an easy thing as a window border right any more, how many other things do you think they got wrong? Honestly, I have no idea what they're doing. I have no clue about what java GUI library they use, so who knows how difficult that is?

    @blakeyrat said:

    If they didn't even give the slightest FUCK to make sure the most basic thing worked, how little of a fuck was given over the rest of the product? Seriously, it's just shameful. Again: someone looked at this product, this product that can't even draw a font correctly, and said: "hey this looks good, let's ship it."

    This reminds me of people ranting about how Vista couldn't copy a file. I've never used NetBeans, but I'm sorry it exceeds your OCD levels.


  • Garbage Person

    @blakeyrat said:

    There's no wiggle room in fonts. Consolas 14 is Consolas 14.
    That's PRECIOUS. I work with font professionally. Technically, font size is a meaningless measure on a screen. They're measured in points - which are 1/72nd of an inch. Inches don't exist in the realm of rendering (thank the gods I only have to be right on printers, where inches very much exist). Different rendering systems all have different ideas about how many pixels should be in a point (generally based upon the whims of whatever clever bastard held a ruler up to his monitor while writing the font rendering code). Sane operating systems have a setting for it - Windows does. But, of course, Java ignores it because Java hates Windows.

     

    Of course, there's also the likelihood that NetBeans is just ignoring fontsize altogether because they're ignorant pricks, rather than this actually being Java suckitude (I can't even remember if NetBeans is written in Java).



  • @blakeyrat said:

    That's the latest version of Tortoise SVN. Anybody have any clue what was going through their heads when they made that login dialog?

    I don't know. It looks pretty good to me. Then again, I have been making use of the new TortoiseSVN "Cleanup" dialog:


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    BTW, anybody have a good IDE recommendation to handle .jsp projects, and isn't Eclipse? (And you know is likely to work on my Windows setup.)

    I'm slightly partial to jEdit, but it's only slightly better, and you probably wouldn't like it.

    First thing I do is change the fonts and look'n'feel.



  • @boomzilla said:

    How does seeing through bits of windows not degrade usability?

    It doesn't matter as long as you can tell which is on top. So... no change from before. Some Microsoft usability engineer could probably give a long speech about how it increases the spatial continuity of the desktop by ensuring things don't simply "disappear into the background" or some shit, but eh.

    I'd reverse that and ask: how does it degrade usability? My default position is: Microsoft's not fucking stupid, so they wouldn't be using it if it weren't measurably superior.

    @boomzilla said:

    How is one program drawing smaller letters than others nearly a hanging offense, but this atrocity gets ignored?

    Because it's clearly wrong?

    If Aero moved your windows when you weren't looking, and periodically decided to cover up information you were looking at, and sometimes spawned 26 fake mouse cursors that moved randomly, making it impossible to find yours-- then it would be clearly wrong and I'd be complaining about it.

    @boomzilla said:

    Uh, so what? You fix it to look right once and never think about it again.

    I can't fix it because none of the whole number font sizes corresponds to Consolas 14, and they don't allow fractional font sizes.

    @boomzilla said:

    If the developers of Windows can't even get such an easy thing as a window border right any more,

    You wanna maybe back up that assertion?

    @boomzilla said:

    This reminds me of people ranting about how Vista couldn't copy a file.

    That was a genuine, measurable, obvious bug in a shipping version of Windows.

    @Weng said:

    That's PRECIOUS. I work with font professionally. Technically, font size is a meaningless measure on a screen. They're measured in points - which are 1/72nd of an inch. Inches don't exist in the realm of rendering (thank the gods I only have to be right on printers, where inches very much exist). Different rendering systems all have different ideas about how many pixels should be in a point (generally based upon the whims of whatever clever bastard held a ruler up to his monitor while writing the font rendering code). Sane operating systems have a setting for it - Windows does. But, of course, Java ignores it because Java hates Windows.

    You don't get the pedantic dickweed rant if I know you're doing it on purpose just to produce the pedantic dickweed rant.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    How does seeing through bits of windows not degrade usability?

    It doesn't matter as long as you can tell which is on top. So... no change from before. Some Microsoft usability engineer could probably give a long speech about how it increases the spatial continuity of the desktop by ensuring things don't simply "disappear into the background" or some shit, but eh.

    I'd reverse that and ask: how does it degrade usability? My default position is: Microsoft's not fucking stupid, so they wouldn't be using it if it weren't measurably superior.

    It makes things in the top window more difficult to read. It makes it less obvious where that window starts and stops. I guess it doesn't bother other people as much as I do.

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    Uh, so what? You fix it to look right once and never think about it again.

    I can't fix it because none of the whole number font sizes corresponds to Consolas 14, and they don't allow fractional font sizes.

    OK, I guess that's legit.

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    If the developers of Windows can't even get such an easy thing as a window border right any more,

    You wanna maybe back up that assertion?

    OK, this should be totally fucking obvious. The answer is that I see stuff in the border of the window that isn't a part of that window.



  • @boomzilla said:

    It makes things in the top window more difficult to read.

    That's because you're not supposed to have text on top of glass. Remember, the screenshot above is a WTF post, not a "hey everybody, do this thing because it's the best thing to do!" post. So at best, you hate "people who implement glass wrong".

    @boomzilla said:

    OK, this should be totally fucking obvious. The answer is that I see stuff in the border of the window that isn't a part of that window.

    Like what? What are you talking about?



  • @boomzilla said:

    I could understand it if you get the translucency only when moving or resizing or something. But why is it a good idea to see through windows generally? I'm sure MS has some usability info on this, right?
     

     @Microsoft said:

    The glass window frames are a striking new aspect of the Microsoft® Windows® aesthetic, aiming to be both
    attractive and lightweight. These translucent frames give windows an open, less intrusive appearance, helping
    users focus on content and functionality rather than the interface surrounding it.

    User Experience Interaction Guidelines

     I know that's not "usability info" in the sense of the results from whatever focus groups and surveys and tests were involved in them reaching the above-quoted conclusion, but I haven't found them publishing that information anyway (probably because I haven't looked for it).



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @locallunatic said:
    Um, what exactly is wrong with it

    Open your eyes and look at it! Geez.

     

    I like aero glass.

    I think we need more of it.

    MORE glass, please

    No, seriously, MUCH more of it.

    ALL the glass, thank you!

    Yeah, that's about right.

     </sarcasm>

    (Really, I like it, i don't see the "we seriously need it" point of it, but i doesn't hamper usability in any way to me, and the effect is nice, and feels 21st century-y. Its usage in OP is a little... redundant and not executed well, but still somewhat justifiable, to me, the effect tells something like "this is not the main content area of the window". And Microsoft's UX guidelines are kind of similar: "Glass can reduce the weight of a surface by focusing on the content instead of the window itself." IMO, they're right. If it's used correctly, it makes the borders blend in, and content stand out. The additional attention i need to work out the elements on the aero glass I'm already giving when i switch from "i'm working with contents of a window" to "i'm working with the window itself".)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I'd reverse that and ask: how does it degrade usability?

    Can't speak for anyone else, but I found it [i]really[/i] irritating when I got my Win 7 box at work. Yes, I might have gotten used to it in time, but it was easier and quicker just to turn it off.
    @boomzilla said:
    I guess it doesn't bother other people as much as I do.

    Quoted for funny. Exactly how much do you bother other people? :) (I assume you meant "as much as it bothers me"...)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Scarlet Manuka said:

    @boomzilla said:
    I guess it doesn't bother other people as much as I do.

    Quoted for funny. Exactly how much do you bother other people? :) (I assume you meant "as much as it bothers me"...)

    Oops. That's what I get for posting after being woken up by a puking child. I think the statement is possibly correct, but you're right, it's not what I meant to say.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Watson said:

    @Microsoft said:
    The glass window frames are a striking new aspect of the Microsoft® Windows® aesthetic, aiming to be both
    attractive and lightweight. These translucent frames give windows an open, less intrusive appearance, helping
    users focus on content and functionality rather than the interface surrounding it.

    User Experience Interaction Guidelines


    I know that's not "usability info" in the sense of the results from whatever focus groups and surveys and tests were involved in them reaching the above-quoted conclusion, but I haven't found them publishing that information anyway (probably because I haven't looked for it).

    Thanks. What they're saying makes sense, or sounds like a nice goal, but it totally misses me. While I often mock blakey for his obsession with standard UI components, he's still mostly right about that, and for me, the translucent glass stuff makes every window at least a little bit non-standard. But everyone has different levels of toleration for distraction, too. I've read that a lot of people can't focus when there's music playing with lyrics in a language that they speak. That doesn't bother me at all.

    I suppose it's no surprise that eye candy has been abused. Does anyone know how easy it is to specify whether a particular element gets this effect? I would also wonder how much of this abuse is due to not developing or testing on a machine running glass vs people who think it actually is a good idea.



  • I find the glass borders more pleasant looking than the non-glass ones in 7. Something about the pastel colors just irritates me. XP's blue borders are even uglier; one of the first things I used to do when installing an XP machine was to switch on the classic theme. I'd order them from best to worst as: Win7 Aero, WinXP classic, Win7 basic, WinXP Luna.

    TRWTF is Microsoft allowing applications to put stuff in the glass area in the first place.

    For reference, on my various Linux machines I currently use this, this and this. The last one I've adapted for Sawfish myself, with minor differences to original (which is made for Metacity).



  • @boomzilla said:

    I suppose it's no surprise that eye candy has been abused. Does anyone know how easy it is to specify whether a particular element gets this effect?

    If memory serves, you have to explicitly say you want the frame effect to extend into the client area.

    @boomzilla said:

    But everyone has different levels of toleration for distraction, too.
    I've read that a lot of people can't focus when there's music playing
    with lyrics in a language that they speak. That doesn't bother me at
    all.

    Some people think visually and are more easily put off by visual distractions while others are more auditory. Personally I'd be more irritated if the lyrics were in a language I [i]don't[/i] understand, because part of me would be constantly trying to make sense of it.Ditto if people nearby are talking in an unfamiliar language.



  • @Scarlet Manuka said:

    Can't speak for anyone else, but I found it really irritating when I got my Win 7 box at work. Yes, I might have gotten used to it in time, but it was easier and quicker just to turn it off.

    The problem with getting criticism from the public about UI changes is that most people simply hate change. I've ranted about this before. So if you ask people if they like X, you have to filter out all the people who say, "I HATE IT BECAUSE IT'S SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT!" Like Manuka here. So I tend to not take anybody seriously when they criticize UI changes.

    @boomzilla said:

    While I often mock blakey for his obsession with standard UI components, he's still mostly right about that, and for me, the translucent glass stuff makes every window at least a little bit non-standard.

    Not really; it just makes the standard more flexible. You can use more glass, or less glass, and still be within the standard. That said, Tortoise here is WAY out-of-line.

    @boomzilla said:

    I would also wonder how much of this abuse is due to not developing or testing on a machine running glass vs people who think it actually is a good idea.

    That would be a pretty "open source developer" move to not bother testing your software on the most popular OS in its default configuration. It would not surprise me to learn that's what happened.

    @tdb said:

    TRWTF is Microsoft allowing applications to put stuff in the glass area in the first place.

    Agreed, but the catch is some things are "allowed" in there. Like tabs. There's also the "you can't stop bad developers from drawing whatever shit they want" factor, so you always rely on some amount of trust.

    Thunderbird, which also abuses glass horribly, "solves" the "you can't read text over glass" issue by lightening the glass to an annoying white bubble under the text. For its menu headers. Because it puts the MENUS in the glass.



  • @boomzilla said:

    I've read that a lot of people can't focus when there's music playing with lyrics in a language that they speak. That doesn't bother me at all
     

    I can't focus when there's music playing with any lyrics, usually, as I tend to enjoy the rythmics, melodics, etc. of a voice pretty much and it takes too much of my attention. If it's english or my native language it's even worse because i automatically focus on the meaning too. The only option then is to filter out the music completely at which point it becomes just a noise so it's better for me to turn it off, if i can.

    @boomzilla said:

    Does anyone know how easy it is to specify whether a particular element gets this effect? I would also wonder how much of this abuse is due to not developing or testing on a machine running glass vs people who think it actually is a good idea.

    it's not completely out of the box solution, most IDE's don't provide a way to do it, you have to do some tweaking/native win API calls but it's not particularly hard either.

    (but while googling for the images i found that Delphi IDE has a built-in feature to make window parts/whole windows to be glass)

     



  • @SEMI-HYBRID code said:

    (but while googling for the images i found that Delphi IDE has a built-in feature to make window parts/whole windows to be glass)

    IIRC, a couple years ago, Microsoft provided a Visual Studio plug-in that added the glass and a simple Ribbon implementation (the Ribbon they use in Paint, not the Office one) to WinForms and did all the correct window previews and stuff. But it didn't ship with VS2008, and I don't think it's in VS2010 either-- you have to download it separately.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    While I often mock blakey for his obsession with standard UI components, he's still mostly right about that, and for me, the translucent glass stuff makes every window at least a little bit non-standard.

    Not really; it just makes the standard more flexible. You can use more glass, or less glass, and still be within the standard.

    OK, I guess I'm not being clear about this. I'm talking about the default stuff that gets glassed, like the window title bar. And so my point is that, depending on what's behind your window at any given time, it looks different. I guess people seem to agree with the "lightweight look" or whatever, though I'm not sure why this is a good thing. I think the comment about making it more 21st Century is probably spot on. It really is mostly change for change's sake, utilizing modern hardware in a way that you really couldn't before. It also helps people feel that they're getting more for their money with such an obvious change.

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    I would also wonder how much of this abuse is due to not developing or testing on a machine running glass vs people who think it actually is a good idea.

    That would be a pretty "open source developer" move to not bother testing your software on the most popular OS in its default configuration. It would not surprise me to learn that's what happened.

    Often these things are a matter of what you, as a developer, have available to you. If you don't have a budget, you're a lot less likely to upgrade stuff that still works. I don't think that's the case here. Watson was correct. In order to extend glass, you need to make explicit calls to make that happen. The only thing I can imagine is that, being a shell extension, they want to obscure explorer as little as possible, so they extend glass in these crazy ways.



  • @boomzilla said:

    And so my point is that, depending on what's behind your window at any given time, it looks different.

    This is the second time you've said this, and you still haven't explained what you're talking about. I'm starting to think you don't have any genuine reasons to object to glass, other than "CHANGE IS SCARY DURP!", and at this point you're literally lying about what you're seeing on your screen. Your pants, on fire, are hanging from the nearest telephone wire.

    Either that, or you genuinely don't understand the concept of translucency. The window doesn't "look different", it's just translucent to the graphics below it. I'll explain, as you would a child.

    Think of it this way: Windows 2000, your window was a sheet of copy paper. Windows XP, your window was a sheet of colorful construction paper. Now, in Vista and Windows 7, your window is printed on high-quality vellum. Ooo, doesn't that look nice? Perfect for a resume, or the cover to your client report.

    Got it? The window doesn't look different. It looks the same. The stuff below the window shows through. Goo goo. Gaa gaa. Peek-a-boo! Peek-a-boo! Herp derp derp derp.



  • @SEMI-HYBRID code said:

    IMO, they're right. If it's used correctly, it makes the borders blend in, and content stand out.
     

    I guess I could buy that explanation.  But in my own experience, I've never found window borders to be all that distracting!  They've been in neutral, unobtrusive colors (since they stopped shipping the Hotdog Stand theme with Win3.1), and it's easy enough for me to tell the difference between the window with focus and the ones without.

    Maybe there's an eye-tracking study that serves as evidence that translucent borders do improve usability, but I think it's equally likely that the feature was added because attractive eye candy stimulates sales, and it's extremely cheap to implement on modern GPUs.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Well this might not be exact enough for you, but there's all the wide-open security holes the JRE has introduced to your computer over the years, simply by having Java installed.
    No, that's not very exact at all.  But why should you need to specify?  If you did, then I might be able to deny having such problems (remember, I asked you to outline problems that [i]I[/i] have had with Java).  If you specified what wide-open security holes there were, others might easily point out how there may be ways to prevent or alleviate such a risk, thus blaming the [i]developer[/i] who faces such a vulnerability for not learning how to use the technology properly.  No, I'm quite sure that being vague is serving you well here.

    Still, I did think you would specify a problem that was unique to Java, that is, unique enough to discern Java as "suck" when compared to other technologies.  But Java sucks because there have been wide-open security holes?  Then I guess everything else sucks too.



  • @boog said:

    Then I guess everything else sucks too.

    You're finally catching on.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @zelmak said:
    FTFY

    OH SNAP! The unimpeachable Linux-user logic that Foo isn't bad as long as there exists Bar that is equally bad!

    I'm not sure what his comment had to do with Linux at all, nor do I see how it argued that Java (Foo?) isn't bad.

    @blakeyrat said:
    Why is it that programmers, working in a job that requires logic, are so bad at logic?
    Yeah, I'm actually wondering the same thing right now.



  • @boog said:

    Still, I did think you would specify a problem that was unique to Java, that is, unique enough to discern Java as "suck" when compared to other technologies. But Java sucks because there have been wide-open security holes? Then I guess everything else sucks too.

    Hey tell you what. I gotta get work done today. If you can fix my Maven build error, or even give me a tip on where to look, I'll give-in and declare Java the BEST THING EVER. How'd that?


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