Chrome on Windows 8 is a trainwreck



  • To preface: I really love Chrome. I love the sync abilities, I love the addons, and yes, I totally am willing to trade more information to Google to use it. I really don't care who knows what I buy.

    All of that said, the Windows 8 version has been a total dumpster fire since I bought my XPS 18 nearly a year ago. It's my only Win 8 machine currently, so I suppose some of these problems could be it, but somehow, I doubt it. When I first got chrome, it was desktop only; no metro version. Fine, no big deal. I used IE when I really wanted to use the Metro UI for any reason (by the by, IE 10 is actually pretty nice.) After awhile, I decided to try again, and sure enough, they had enabled the Metro version. Every single time you scrolled, it would highlight all the text you passed by as though you were mouse-dragging down. OK, irritating, clearly they're still working out the kinks. Fine. Uninstall again.

    Fast forward a few weeks, try again. Now they have Metro enabled, the text selection thing still is broken a bit, but not nearly to the same degree. This is pretty damn good now, so I set it as default, and resume use.

    Today, I boot it up and it's been updated. Now...theres a bar across the bottom, like a task bar, with icons for Google's Apps...whatever. It now starts in a small window, which I'm assuming mirrors the look of Chrome OS. Fine. Maximize it, all is well. Until I grab Mail and stick it next to Chrome...now I can't see half the web page. Well that's weird, they must not have it listening for a resize event. Close it, re-open in the same slot in the screen...exact same behavior. Flipped Mail to the other side, now the right side is gone, and all the icons are hidden. Jesus fucking Christ.

    So we're on version who-the-hell-knows and Windows 8 has been out for what, a year and a half? And Chrome is still broken in the Metro UI. Get your shit together Google, good God.



  • When I first used Chrome on a new tablet in fall 2013 (Windows 8 was on the market for a mere 12 months by then), I noticed that the touch events were all placed wrong. I touch the screen and Chrome will handle a touch event at some coordinates that are certainly nowhere near where the screen was touched. That's in desktop mode, not Metro. Ok, locate the Chrome executable and change compatibility mode to "Disable scaling on high DPI settings". Then try to navigate the chrome setting page to do some default scaling, which means everything now works right, except the tabs on the top are really small.

    Fast forward a few months, install a plugin, only to have Chrome tell me that it won't install the plugin because Chrome does not support NPAPI. It turns out NPAPI is really not supported in Metro mode. Which I never used! I use the desktop mode, where according to Google, NPAPI is supported. Some developer confused Metro mode with Windows 8, and it seems Google doesn't have the cash to affort a testing department with even a single Windows 8 tester. So NPAPI is deactivated for Windows 8, even the users who couldn't care less about Metro Chrome, a.k.a. me. Back to the compatibility settings, set Chrome to run in Windows 7 compatibility mode.

    I do understand that mistakes happen, and that's what the compatibility settings are for. But not having fixed this stuff 12+ months after it's first been reported? WTF! 

     



  • @Master Chief said:

    [ . . . ] when I really wanted to use the Metro UI for any reason  [ . . . ]

    Ah, there's your mistake.  There is no reason for wanting to use the Metro UI.

     



  • @DaveK said:

    @Master Chief said:

    [ . . . ] when I really wanted to use the Metro UI for any reason  [ . . . ]

    Ah, there's your mistake.  There is no reason for wanting to use the Metro UI.

     


    New topic: complaining about metro sucking.



  • @Ben L. said:

    metro sucking
    "Metro" and "sucks" mean the same thing.@Ben L. said:
    Filed under: not a gay innuendo.
    Innuendo is not Italian for gay sex.

     



  • @Ben L. said:

    New topic: complaining about metro sucking.

    One of my young (10 year old) cousins got a laptop with Windows 8 (an Acer... ugh). He tried to open a photo, which opened with the metro "pictures" app or however it's called. Naturally this "app" only opens one file at a time, meaning you can't use the left and right arrows to switch to the previous and next ones  (I believe we already had a thread here about this?). Of course Microsoft will probably blame you for opening a photo that's outside the "Pictures" library.

    Yes, metro has severe usability problems, but at least Microsoft seems to starting to acknowledge it.



  • @anonymous234 said:

    Microsoft seems to starting to acknowledge it.
    Microsoft might be starting to acknowledge that people don't like Windows 8.  However, I serously doubt that they will do what they really need to do, which is announce "Hey we fucked up and we're going back to a Windows 7 style UI for real computers and leave the metro crap to tablets and phones where it's not such a big deal".  It's more likely that monkeys will fly out of my ass.

    I am betting that their "solution" to the problem will simply be trying to sell the same crap with a different name.



  • While we're talking about how shit Chrome is, Google are taking their great UI design of "hide useful buttons below a top-level button to add more clicks to common tasks" that they debuted with YouTube and Gmail and are adding it to their other products. In this case, the Chrome Dev Tools. Now, if you want to do anything with the "Network" pane (for example, filter by request type) you first need to click the button for the thing you want to do (in this case the "filter" button) and then the buttons that used to be visible at the top-level show up and you can actually do what you wanted to do in the first place.

    Wait, what's that? You closed the dev tools panel? Oh, sorry, you need to re-open the "filters" pane now. Enjoy doing that literally every time you launch the dev tools from now on.

    Fuck, Google. The buttons weren't hurting anyone where they were - a thousand submenus on all of your products aren't helping anything. Sure, choice is bad and I can kinda understand it in the consumer space, but in dev tools? Really? Fuck you.



  • @Sack said:

    I do understand that mistakes happen, and that's what the compatibility settings are for. But not having fixed this stuff 12+ months after it's first been reported? WTF! 

     

    Especially when Chrome is updated practically every damn day.



  • @dfcowell said:

    While we're talking about how shit Chrome is, Google are taking their great UI design of "hide useful buttons below a top-level button to add more clicks to common tasks" that they debuted with YouTube and Gmail and are adding it to their other products. In this case, the Chrome Dev Tools. Now, if you want to do anything with the "Network" pane (for example, filter by request type) you first need to click the button for the thing you want to do (in this case the "filter" button) and then the buttons that used to be visible at the top-level show up and you can actually do what you wanted to do in the first place.

    Wait, what's that? You closed the dev tools panel? Oh, sorry, you need to re-open the "filters" pane now. Enjoy doing that literally every time you launch the dev tools from now on.

    Fuck, Google. The buttons weren't hurting anyone where they were - a thousand submenus on all of your products aren't helping anything. Sure, choice is bad and I can kinda understand it in the consumer space, but in dev tools? Really? Fuck you.


    Everything is a phone...everything is a phone...



  • Well there was that time I used an FTP and SSH client on my phone to do emergency maintenance on a web server during my lunch break...



  • @Master Chief said:

    Everything is a phone...everything is a phone...
    @Master Chief said:
    Everything is a phone...everything is a phone...
     

    Yes, and you can be sure they tested such changes before applying them. You can also be completely sure that everybody liked the changes, except for those haters, that bash every change. But you can't take their opinion seriously, because they say bad words, and that's unprofessional.

     


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @dfcowell said:

    While we're talking about how shit Chrome is, Google are taking their great UI design of "hide useful buttons below a top-level button to add more clicks to common tasks" that they debuted with YouTube and Gmail and are adding it to their other products. In this case, the Chrome Dev Tools.
     

    They're just trying to keep up with how shitty Microsoft made their Web Dev tool in IE11.  Completely redone "metro" UI-- meaning that NOTHING is labelled and everything is a stupid picture, even though the target audience for this "app" is DEVELOPERS who crave information. All of the options are non-sticky-- options like "IE Mode". So if you open the dev tool, set IE mode to 9 to try to figure out why the fuck IE11 has fucked up again, and focus away from the dev window-- BAM back to IE11.

    There's more, but it was so literally useless that I uninstalled IE11 from my work machine and went back to 9.



  • @dfcowell said:

    choice is bad
    I'm going to put that on a tile and put it up in all the public spaces.

     



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @anonymous234 said:

    Microsoft seems to starting to acknowledge it.
    Microsoft might be starting to acknowledge that people don't like Windows 8.  However, I serously doubt that they will do what they really need to do, which is announce "Hey we fucked up and we're going back to a Windows 7 style UI for real computers and leave the metro crap to tablets and phones where it's not such a big deal".  It's more likely that monkeys will fly out of my ass.

    I am betting that their "solution" to the problem will simply be trying to sell the same crap with a different name.


    Surprisingly, I like it quite a lot better since the 8.1 update. Of course, I'm one of the lucky ones who was able to get the update (I heard many horror stories of bricked machines) and I have a touch screen (which makes Windows 8 much more bearable) so I may be wrong there. That said, would I use it on my standard workhorse desktop? Hell no. Feels like you're trying to work an iPad with a mouse, I've never had a user experience leave me feeling as if I were using a pair of bricks on some pipes to try and land an aircraft.



  •  I'm just still suprised that MS would make the cluttered desktop the unavoidable default by design.



  • @TGV said:

    @dfcowell said:
    choice is bad
    I'm going to put that on a tile and put it up in all the public spaces.



  • @dhromed said:

     I'm just still suprised that MS would make the cluttered desktop the unavoidable default by design.


    I'm surprised (and glad) they didn't remove desktop altogether.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @dhromed said:

     I'm just still suprised that MS would make the cluttered desktop the unavoidable default by design.

    I'm surprised (and glad) they didn't remove desktop altogether.
     

    http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/01/hp-offers-windows-7-on-some-new-pcs-by-popular-demand/

     



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @dhromed said:

     I'm just still suprised that MS would make the cluttered desktop the unavoidable default by design.

    I'm surprised (and glad) they didn't remove desktop altogether.
     


     

     

    Every Dell except the tablets is still available with Win 7, and most with XP. Hell, until very, very recently, they sold more computers with DOS than with Win 8.

     



  • @taustin said:

    Every Dell except the tablets is still available with Win 7, and most with XP.
    Not according to their website.  All of their "Home" compuers come with Windows 8 and I couldn't find any option to get Windows 7 instead.  You can get Windows 7 on their "Business" computers, but good luck with that.  I already know from experience you can't actually buy one if you aren't a business.  My wife wanted a new computer and wanted Dell.  I ended up buying one from someone on Amazon because Dell wouldn't sell me one of their "Business" computers so I had to go somewhere else to get one with decent specs and Windows 7.

     



  • @taustin said:

    Every Dell except the tablets is still available with Win 7, and most with XP. Hell, until very, very recently, they sold more computers with DOS than with Win 8.

    Well in that context, Win8 *is* very very recent.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @TGV said:
    @dfcowell said:
    choice is bad
    I'm going to put that on a tile and put it up in all the public spaces.

    I was thinking it was more Orwellian:

    [color=black;text-align:center;font-size:24pt]

    WAR IS PEACE

    FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

    IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

    CHOICE IS BAD[/COLOR]

     



  • @anonymous234 said:

    (I believe we already had a thread here about this?)

    By yours truly.

    And I doubt that Microsoft is going to get anything right anytime soon in terms of UI, given taht their current UI policy is to stick a middle finger up everyone's ass. "Hey guys, we've heard you wanted the Start button back - here's the Start button! Oooooh, you wanted a Start menu too? <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJxCdh1Ps48>*shrug*</a></p>


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    And I doubt that Microsoft is going to get anything right anytime soon in terms of UI,

    So, here's a question. Is there any application that get's it "right" in having desktop and metro modes? I've only briefly used 8. First thing I did was set up dual booting, and I haven't been back to the Win8 partition in a couple of months.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @Maciejasjmj said:
    And I doubt that Microsoft is going to get anything right anytime soon in terms of UI,

    So, here's a question. Is there any application that get's it "right" in having desktop and metro modes? I've only briefly used 8. First thing I did was set up dual booting, and I haven't been back to the Win8 partition in a couple of months.

    I have absolutely no idea, because in the couple of months I've spent having Windows 8 I haven't used anything Metro-based. Except for Skype, which sucks majorly (messages not appearing until a few hours later, files not being available for download until I send a message to the other person, closing randomly whenever Windows decides you're not using it), but I'm not sure if that's Metro's fault, or just a general problem.



  • I've been on 8 for a year, and there's nothing metro you want or need.

    Sometimes you have to go into the retardo UI to change some personal settings, but that's it.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    I have absolutely no idea, because in the couple of months I've spent having Windows 8 I haven't used anything Metro-based. Except for Skype, which sucks majorly (messages not appearing until a few hours later, files not being available for download until I send a message to the other person, closing randomly whenever Windows decides you're not using it), but I'm not sure if that's Metro's fault, or just a general problem.
    I believe you can still get the real Skype and not just the braindead Metro version. (Or at least that's what I used to set up my family, who decided — independent of my opinions — that the Metro UI utterly sucks.) However, the message delay issue might be because messages are only actually sent when both endpoint machines are online at once. Anything else would require that the messages get routed via other machines, and I think the NSA aren't willing to provide that sort of service.



  • @dkf said:

    However, the message delay issue might be because messages are only actually sent when both endpoint machines are online at once.

    What the fuck.

    Anything else would require that the messages get routed via other machines, and I think the NSA aren't willing to provide that sort of service.

    Every IM I know of does that. You don't need NSA for that, just a bunch of those big, noisy things called servers



  • I agree with the OP's premise.

    Incidentally, what's the deal with everyone moving shit (e.g. the address bar) to the bottom of the screen? Is that what's supposed to pass for innovation these days... just relocating things arbitrarily? Pretty damned pathetic IMO.



  • Seriously, why in the hell would you use the Metro UI on a computer?

    I don't care what MS says, a single UI for all devices is batshit crazy stupid.



    I applaud Chrome for intentionally jacking up the Metro UI version of their browser to prevent the Metro fools from being able to use Chrome. You don't deserve it.



  • Sometimes experiments work, sometimes they don't.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Sometimes experiments work, sometimes they don't.

    Are you the illegitimate son of Ballmer or Gates? Did Linus Torvalds run over your puppy as a child? You defend M$ beyond the point of being rational, almost like a hipster does with Apple. Somethings are indefensible - on both sides of the PC world. Metro UI is one of them. Unity is another. No one is infallible.



  • @DrakeSmith said:

    No one is infallible.

    I think that was implied by my "sometimes they don't".



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @DrakeSmith said:
    No one is infallible.

    I think that was implied by my "sometimes they don't".

     

    I once saw "no one" fail...this means that even no one is fallible!!!!!!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Sometimes experiments work, sometimes they don't.
    The problem is that some people/companies refuse to admit that their experiment failed. Instead of throwing away the test tube spewing noxious fumes, they send the formula to the factory for full-scale production.



  • @TheCPUWizard said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    @DrakeSmith said:
    No one is infallible.

    I think that was implied by my "sometimes they don't".

     

    I once saw "no one" fail...this means that even no one is fallible!!!!!!

    Nothing works faster than Anadin!

     



  • If you study microsoft history, you'll find each alternate windows is disaster in making.
    Windows 95 - Good
    Windows 2000 - Bad
    Windows XP - Good.
    Windows Vista - bad.
    Windows 7 - Good
    Windows 8.1 - Bad

    So next windows version will be good. I am purposefully left out server version which is having their own history.



  • NT? 98? 98SE? ME? 8?



  • Ah yes, the Texas Sharpshooter method of studying history, where you make up a bullshit theory, then ignore every event that doesn't correspond to it.



  • @Nagesh said:

    If you study microsoft history, you'll find each alternate windows is disaster in making.

    Windows 95 - Good

    Windows 2000 - Bad

    Windows XP - Good.

    Windows Vista - bad.

    Windows 7 - Good

    Windows 8.1 - Bad

    So next windows version will be good.

    There's a pattern other than just good/bad

    Windows 95 was OK (for the time)<font face="courier new,courier"> --></font> Windows 98 was a better version of Windows 95

    Windows 2000 was OK  <font face="courier new,courier">--></font> Windows XP was a better version of Windows 2000

    Vista was OK (not as bad as people claim) <font face="courier new,courier">--></font> Windows 7 is a better version of Vista

    You can go Win 95 <font face="courier new,courier">--></font> Win 98<font face="courier new,courier"> --></font> Win 2000<font face="courier new,courier"> --></font> Win XP <font face="courier new,courier">--> </font>Vista <font face="courier new,courier">--></font> Win 7  (which I did) and the transition from one version to the next is easy.

    Windows 8 is . . . . . . . .  WTF?  Windows 8 breaks the pattern. Instead of a smooth progression it is completely alien to all previous versions. It may be faster/better "under the hood" but the UI is completely broken and unusable.



  • @Buttembly Coder said:

    Ah yes, the Texas Sharpshooter method of studying history, where you make up a bullshit theory, then ignore every event that doesn't correspond to it.

    Right, Star Trek V is actually pretty entertaining.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @Nagesh said:

    If you study microsoft history, you'll find each alternate windows is disaster in making.

    Windows 95 - Good

    Windows 2000 - Bad

    Windows XP - Good.

    Windows Vista - bad.

    Windows 7 - Good

    Windows 8.1 - Bad

    So next windows version will be good.

    There's a pattern other than just good/bad

    Windows 95 was OK (for the time)<font face="courier new,courier"> --></font> Windows 98 was a better version of Windows 95

    Windows 2000 was OK  <font face="courier new,courier">--></font> Windows XP was a better version of Windows 2000

    Vista was OK (not as bad as people claim) <font face="courier new,courier">--></font> Windows 7 is a better version of Vista

    You can go Win 95 <font face="courier new,courier">--></font> Win 98<font face="courier new,courier"> --></font> Win 2000<font face="courier new,courier"> --></font> Win XP <font face="courier new,courier">--> </font>Vista <font face="courier new,courier">--></font> Win 7  (which I did) and the transition from one version to the next is easy.

    Windows 8 is . . . . . . . .  WTF?  Windows 8 breaks the pattern. Instead of a smooth progression it is completely alien to all previous versions. It may be faster/better "under the hood" but the UI is completely broken and unusable.

    You ignored ME.



  • @Ben L. said:

    You ignored ME.

    That's the whole point of this exercise - skip this version here, insert a not-really-mainstream version there, so that people would find a pattern somewhere where no pattern is to be found.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    @Ben L. said:
    You ignored ME.

    That's the whole point of this exercise -  attempting to ignore Ben L. when ever possible. skip this version here, insert a not-really-mainstream version there, so that people would find a pattern somewhere where no pattern is to be found.

     Fixed!

     (I wonder how many people have really tried Windows 8....At first I did not like the ModernUI experience at all. Now I realy miss it when back on a Win7 (or earlier) machine. And 90% of my usage is on desktops and "full size"/"non-touch" laptops... 

     



  • I guess I'm the weird one here. I enjoy Metro...on a tablet. I find many metro apps easy and nice to use...on a tablet. My point is, Windows 8 is a fantastic OS...for a tablet. Microsoft seemed to forget, we don't all have tablets just yet.



  • @bridget99 said:

    I agree with the OP's premise.

    Incidentally, what's the deal with everyone moving shit (e.g. the address bar) to the bottom of the screen? Is that what's supposed to pass for innovation these days... just relocating things arbitrarily? Pretty damned pathetic IMO.

    That's the one thing I don't get at all. Thankfully chrome on metro keeps the bar and tabs where they belong.



  •  1) "Start" - I have hit the command key and then the first few letters for many years....what I like about the start PAGE is the usage of LIVE ties so I can quickly see what needs attention. Once again, 90% of my usage is non-touch "bigger" machines..

     2) Moving the Address bar - When you look at a screen what do you focus on (the vast majority of the people it is the top, when a tendency towards the left). 99% of people dont care about the address bar at all (I rarely do). I have content on the page, I click links to bring me to other pages (somewhere), and more link,s and more links...It is only a few 100mS per page, but my eyes do focus on the content faster, and ovr time it adds up.



  • @TheCPUWizard said:

     1) "Start" - I have hit the command key and then the first few letters for many years....what I like about the start PAGE is the usage of LIVE ties so I can quickly see what needs attention. Once again, 90% of my usage is non-touch "bigger" machines..

     2) Moving the Address bar - When you look at a screen what do you focus on (the vast majority of the people it is the top, when a tendency towards the left). 99% of people dont care about the address bar at all (I rarely do). I have content on the page, I click links to bring me to other pages (somewhere), and more link,s and more links...It is only a few 100mS per page, but my eyes do focus on the content faster, and ovr time it adds up.


    On most favors of Linux, Mac OS, and windows when you browse the file system you always look to the top to see where you are. This naturally carried over into browsers, which all browsers have stuck with, even on the mobile platform. IE Metro is the first to break the pattern, and it screws me up every time I use it.



  • @Ben L. said:

    You ignored ME.
     

    I think I used ME once at a friends place and it crashed like 3 times in 20 minutes.

     


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