If I visit Notch's blog with IE, it keeps opening additional windows of the blog. You cannot shut them down fast enough. I have to go into task manager and shut down windows explorer.
Seems like a virus or an attack to me. Anyone else have this problem?
Chrome is an excellent browser, I just haven't been able to accept their blatant disregard of every single chapter in the book of User Interface design.
"Menus? No those are old! We'll use a WRENCH!"
It's like somebody took one of those pens from MIB and wiped everybody's memories about Why we have fecking toolbars and menus to begin with.
Unfortunately Both Firefox 4 and IE9 seem to be following suit. Although MS already sorta took that route what with Windows Live messenger allowing you choose which pastel crayon a 5 year old vomits on your Messenger windows.
If I run a windows Application. It should look like a windows Application. if I run a Linux Desktop Application, it should look like other applications running inside that desktop. If I run a Mac OS Application, it should look like a Mac OS application.
Firefox seems to respect this- at least with version 3. IE... well, it only runs on windows, and it can't even get that look right anymore. WTF is up with IE9? Seriously, what the HELL is wrong with big name app developers these days? You don't NEED to reskin your application windows. That's kind of what the window manager is there for. If you are developing a Linux desktop application, you let GNOME, KDE, etc handle the window. elements. That is what it is there for. If you're writing a windows application, it should look like a windows application. Chrome only runs on Linux via WINE so there <might> be a bit of a premise to say it can look like windows, but on Windows XP it has Vista-esque caption buttons. NO. Applications should look like applications, not bloody fashion statements. And hacking around with the NonClient area of a window is a surefire way to make sure you are entirely incompatible with new OS Revisions. Anybody run Chrome on Win7 before? The caption buttons don't match up with the window border. It's a minor nitpick but if they had acted like a normal windows application in the first place and let windows handle the windows they wouldn't have that problem. Instead they got Bill from accounting to take a day and learn how to subvert the correct window messages so that they could totally butcher any semblance of a standard Application UI. Which will of course cause a compatibility nightmare for future windows versions if they decide to change the layout of the caption buttons.
Take Minecraft. You run it on a linux desktop, it has the appropriate window trimmings. Run it on windows, it has the windows window trimmings for your version. Same with OSX. why? because it doesn't try to F around with the non-client area. The non client area should NEVER BE ****ING TOUCHED. Media Players are another example of idiots in the barn making bad decisions. "oh let's support skins!" oh, here's an idea winamp/WMP/iTunes/etc, how about you make a god damned media player, it's not a bloody fashion simulator that you can give different clothes. I need to "personalize" my media player about as much as I need to personalize a hole in the ground.
If I visit Notch's blog with IE, it keeps opening additional windows of the blog. You cannot shut them down fast enough. I have to go into task manager and shut down windows explorer.
Seems like a virus or an attack to me. Anyone else have this problem?
Are you shutting down windows explorer (explorer.exe) or internet explorer (iexplore.exe)?
If the former, it's got nothing to do with the browser. Even if it's the latter, it might not be a browser-based virus (the virus may just using the browser to create the pop-ups).
I mention this because the most recent Word of Notch mentions that there are some malicious mods out there; if you use mods you may have gotten something via that.
EDIT: I just realized that I pointed you to Notch's blog when the part that I quoted specifically says you can't read Notch's blog. I'm brilliant. Copy/paste follows:
Quote from Notch »
Warning: Some malicious client mods are stealing passwords
When you install a mod, the mods gets full access to your computer, and can do ANYTHING to it.
Make sure you absolutely trust the source before installing any such mods.This applies to both server mods and client mods.
I don’t know which mods are the culprits.
When the modding support is added, there will be support for sandboxing mods to give them less access to important stuff. You can chose to trust a mod if you want to, and if it needs to do fancy things, but the default will be to run the mod sandboxed.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
This forum ticked me off so much I went to random.org and set my password to something I'll never be able to remember, then switched my password reset to a throwaway.
Chrome is an excellent browser, I just haven't been able to accept their blatant disregard of every single chapter in the book of User Interface design.
"Menus? No those are old! We'll use a WRENCH!"
It's like somebody took one of those pens from MIB and wiped everybody's memories about Why we have fecking toolbars and menus to begin with.
Unfortunately Both Firefox 4 and IE9 seem to be following suit. Although MS already sorta took that route what with Windows Live messenger allowing you choose which pastel crayon a 5 year old vomits on your Messenger windows.
If I run a windows Application. It should look like a windows Application. if I run a Linux Desktop Application, it should look like other applications running inside that desktop. If I run a Mac OS Application, it should look like a Mac OS application.
Firefox seems to respect this- at least with version 3. IE... well, it only runs on windows, and it can't even get that look right anymore. WTF is up with IE9? Seriously, what the HELL is wrong with big name app developers these days? You don't NEED to reskin your application windows. That's kind of what the window manager is there for. If you are developing a Linux desktop application, you let GNOME, KDE, etc handle the window. elements. That is what it is there for. If you're writing a windows application, it should look like a windows application. Chrome only runs on Linux via WINE so there <might> be a bit of a premise to say it can look like windows, but on Windows XP it has Vista-esque caption buttons. NO. Applications should look like applications, not bloody fashion statements. And hacking around with the NonClient area of a window is a surefire way to make sure you are entirely incompatible with new OS Revisions. Anybody run Chrome on Win7 before? The caption buttons don't match up with the window border. It's a minor nitpick but if they had acted like a normal windows application in the first place and let windows handle the windows they wouldn't have that problem. Instead they got Bill from accounting to take a day and learn how to subvert the correct window messages so that they could totally butcher any semblance of a standard Application UI. Which will of course cause a compatibility nightmare for future windows versions if they decide to change the layout of the caption buttons.
Take Minecraft. You run it on a linux desktop, it has the appropriate window trimmings. Run it on windows, it has the windows window trimmings for your version. Same with OSX. why? because it doesn't try to F around with the non-client area. The non client area should NEVER BE ****ING TOUCHED. Media Players are another example of idiots in the barn making bad decisions. "oh let's support skins!" oh, here's an idea winamp/WMP/iTunes/etc, how about you make a god damned media player, it's not a bloody fashion simulator that you can give different clothes. I need to "personalize" my media player about as much as I need to personalize a hole in the ground.
I first giggled. Then, when I read it all, I laughed. After a few minutes of laughing, I started to feel sorry for you.
1) Google is trying to introduce something new. Go recycle your damned "how to make good UI" books. They are useless now.
2) Chrome browser was made for Chrome OS, which consists of just Chrome and a few little things. So why do the job twice? They are still overriding the UI... Plus, Firefox's UI takes up more space than the page itself. Combining tabs and the title bar was a very, very good idea.
3) HAHAHAHAHAHA! Do you know what is the kernel of Chrome OS? It is... L... Yes, you are right! Linux! Chrome runs natively on Linux. Don't state something you know nothing about.
4) Give me a picture of your "caption buttons" or whatever. I have seen Chrome run properly on Windows 7 (not like I care anyway, I switched to Ubuntu and I am planning to stay. I am sure it will become more popular than Windows soon anyway.)
5) Nightmare for Microsoft? Pfft. I think they deserve more nightmares than that (if you can call such a little thing a nightmare, because I can't)
6) Actually, Minecraft uses Java's swing. That is something like a skinning system (more or less). You can make your own L&Fs.
7) Don't like personalisation? Too bad. We haven't invented a time machine yet.
Chrome is an excellent browser, I just haven't been able to accept their blatant disregard of every single chapter in the book of User Interface design.
"Menus? No those are old! We'll use a WRENCH!"
Eh. I like it. I never really have a use for using the toolbar. I'm glad it's replaced with a wrench, off to the side. If I ever have a use for it, I know where it's at, and it doesn't get in the way.
Quote from BC_Programming »
Chrome only runs on Linux via WINE so there <might> be a bit of a premise to say it can look like windows,
wat? For one, if what you said is true (and it isn't), then it would look like Windows. Why in the hell would it look like Linux if it was running in a mini-windows environment?
And, like Nick said, Chrome was designed to run for Linux. Hello, Google ****ing loves Linux. You know Chrome OS? Guess what's that's a distribution of? You got it, Linux. Chrome runs natively in Linux. If you're using Wine, you fail.
Quote from BC_Programming »
And hacking around with the NonClient area of a window is a surefire way to make sure you are entirely incompatible with new OS Revisions.
Again, wut? Unless you're running on Linux, this is a necessity anyways. Windows uses a Dynamic Library (.dll files, anyone?). These change every time a Windows OS changes. Sure, a lot of applications (I'd even go as far as to say most) have a single executable to install the program, but inside of that executable is several other programs that have to decipher what OS you're running, and how to go about installing libraries. Thankfully, W7 brought a lot of libraries from XP along with it. Vista failed to do this, which is why a lot of programs failed miserably.
But, I digress. Messing with the UI has nothing to do with the functionality of the Operating System. They're handled completely separate.
1) Google is trying to introduce something new. Go recycle your damned "how to make good UI" books. They are useless now.
Better get these guys to change. And these.
And of course this. All of which still echo the same things covered in "About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design" as well as more desktop oriented publishings.
2) Chrome browser was made for Chrome OS,
No. Chrome Browser was derived from Chromium, and a major aim of that project is to be a tabbed window manager, or shell for the web, as opposed to its being a traditional browser application.
EDIT: actually, I think maybe chromium is the open-sourced version of Chrome. Either way, their design goals are no doubt the same.
The idea is for the application to be minimalist in the same way Windows Explorer or Mac OS X's Finder are minimalist. The developers state that it "should feel lightweight (cognitively and physically) and fast". Which I agree with. Chromium however doesn't (from what I can tell) decide to do the nonclient area it's own way. Screenies of it's Linux build seem to preserve whatever window decoration settings the user is using (Emerald, or compiz, etc).
which consists of just Chrome and a few little things. So why do the job twice? They are still overriding the UI...
Chromium was not designed for Chromium OS. Therefore Chrome was not designed for Chrome OS. It's still irrelevant. If it was designed to run with Chrome OS why are there Windows (and, since I just checked as a result of reading your post) Linux builds? No doubt Chrome/Chromium OS provide a window management functionality of some capacity, so why would Google Chrome or Chromium need to further circumvent that. It sounds like you are saying that since Chrome was designed for Chrome OS (which it wasn't, but I'll humour you here) it should look like it's running on Chrome OS on all Operating Systems. That's just stupid and ignores the rest of my posts relating to that. a application running on Chrome/Chromium OS should look like it's running on Chrome/Chromium OS; but if they are going to release that application for other operating systems, they shouldn't be overriding the native window manager of that OS just so they can look like they are running on that other OS.
Plus, Firefox's UI takes up more space than the page itself. Combining tabs and the title bar was a very, very good idea.
Toolbar,Menu bar, "bookmarks" bar, and Tabs: 128Pixels
page area: 691 Pixels
Find popup thing and Statusbar: 57 pixels.
That is on a 1440x900 screen; and the Workspace area is reduced by the taskbar, giving us a working space 850 pixels, if we ignore the title bar and taskbar elements. Therefore the UI elements of a relatively standard Firefox config (without a bajillion toolbar addons) would take up fewer pixels even in 640x480 (which would give us 430 pixels, -128 pixels for the toolbar menu and bookmarks and tabs, and another -57 for the find popup and statusbar (the former of which can be hidden easily anyway), which gives us a total page space of 245 vertical pixels, for the page which is still more then 185 that the FF UI consumes. And all of those elements can be hidden in FF3 anyways; not to mention full screen mode.
3) HAHAHAHAHAHA! Do you know what is the kernel of Chrome OS? It is... L... Yes, you are right! Linux! Chrome runs natively on Linux. Don't state something you know nothing about.
Sorry, my mistake. has nothing to do with Chrome/Chromium OS, I was more stating that there wasn't a easy way to get it running in, say, slackware (or any <REAL> Linux distro. You can get it running via downloadable packages it seems from the chrome site for Ubuntu (and I presume Mint) and Debian as well as Fedora and OpenSUSE. To be fair though if somebody can even get slackware setup to use a windowing environment they probably know enough to compile and install it from source anyway, so that's more a non-issue. I didn't realize there were packages for any Linux environment so I presumed such a task would require building from source, and from a quick google it seemed that the source was tuned for windows for whatever reason (clearly however the link I hit where somebody used google chrome with WINE was simply an idiot not a pioneer)
4) Give me a picture of your "caption buttons" or whatever. I have seen Chrome run properly on Windows 7 (not like I care anyway
The top is just Notepad. Button is Google chrome. To be fair to then they do at least use the proper Theme functions to draw the various caption buttons, but it looks like they are using a hard-coded offset from the right side of the window. Note that the chrome buttons are a few pixels right of the ones as they appear in the notepad title bar. It doesn't affect the functionality of the buttons, but it sort of conflicts with the entire concept of making things look better by subclassing and handling nonclient window messages by making it look silly. or maybe the X button sticking out was by design.
I switched to Ubuntu and I am planning to stay. I am sure it will become more popular than Windows soon anyway.)
Ahh, that old chestnut.
The same one Linux zealots have been saying for the last 15 or so years; much louder now that Ubuntu has appeared. Linux works great for everything I need, but if I was a gamer wanting to use Linux I'd at least dual-boot to Windows. And considering how good Windows is for damn near everything, I'd probably just single-boot Windows. Personally, I love Linux because it is a total pain in the ass. It's the ultimate tinkerer's dream. I realize it's come a long way in the last few years in becoming more user-friendly, but it is still a very mediocre replacement for Windows. Now when it comes to servers and embedded, Linux is better at holding its own, but 2012 is definitely not going to be the Year of Desktop Linux, just like 2009 wasn't, or 2010, or 2008 or 2007 or 2006 for that matter. And if 2012 is, well, the mayans warned us of the dangers, I suppose.
5) Nightmare for Microsoft? Pfft. I think they deserve more nightmares than that (if you can call such a little thing a nightmare, because I can't)
Have you ever subclassed a window before? Did you have all sorts of fun responding to NC_NCHITTEST and responding to WM_PAINT in such a way that you don't call the DefWindowProc() because it will repaint the caption bars unless you happen to use SetWindowLong() to change the style so that the DefWindowProc doesn't think the window actually has a border or title bar, in which case you need to do even more special handling in the mouse events so that you process this stuff you otherwise get for free. Go ahead, use spyxx on Chrome/Chromium. Oh that's right, you can't because you are using Ubuntu, and thus you are just making handwavery generalizations from a position of deep ignorance. You probably fit in well on slashdot.
6) Actually, Minecraft uses Java's swing. That is something like a skinning system (more or less). You can make your own L&Fs.
judging from the SDK examples of Look & Feel (that's as far as I've gone, I sorta game up on java, and AWT has left a bitter taste in my mouth since), it changes the look of default controls (still a bit frowned upon, but can be useful for some apps). It never changed the title bar, caption buttons, or any of the non-client area on Any OS's I've run them on. And either way, even if it did, Minecraft clearly doesn't take advantage of that whimsical and fictitious functionality because it's window frames and nonclient area look just like every other window on whatever OS you are running it on.
Don't like personalisation? Too bad. We haven't invented a time machine yet.
[/quote]
I have no problem with personalization, but it should be an OS level feature. If people really want to be able to make their Firefox windows bright red and their Word processing applications have a dark scheme, that type of thing should be added to the OS. adding it to Each Application individually just gives us people with mixed expectations. Why can we change the color of, say, Live messenger, but not Notepad? What good reason is there for that distinction? The thing here is that this sort of configuration is quite possible with Linux; it's useful to have applications that you've run as root appear with a different window border or other distinguishing element. It would be great if Windows would support this as well, but not yet. Probably too much testing (see, Linux get's away with less testing because they just make the users test, those users file bugs, and then those bugs are closed with the "Do not fix tag", much like Google Chrome bugs about how they mishandle DOM settimeout events. But Obviously you are well aware of these issues, being a well-seasoned and well-rounded developer across many platforms.
Chrome only runs on Linux via WINE so there <might> be a bit of a premise to say it can look like windows,
wat? For one, if what you said is true (and it isn't), then it would look like Windows. Why in the hell would it look like Linux if it was running in a mini-windows environment?
Yep, you got me there; I recently found the new google repositories; and I imagine it was fully possible to simply build it from source if necessary. I got the wrong impression from a quick google search.
And, like Nick said, Chrome was designed to run for Linux
Chromium was designed to run on a variety of platforms. Linux is one of them, though.
Hello, Google ****ing loves Linux. You know Chrome OS? Guess what's that's a distribution odssdff? You got it, Linux.
Probably. Can't find any references to that, though. It would certainly be easier to base it on an existing, working system then to write it from scratch. Of course for some reason Chromium states it was "written from the ground up to be..." which implies it is not based on Linux.
Actually, come to think of it, google has a nice thing going. They release the source as Chromium, and hooray now they have free developers. Somehow it's working for them, unlike Netscape's original attempts to get free labour.
Again, wut? Unless you're running on Linux, this is a necessity anyways. Windows uses a Dynamic Library (.dll files, anyone?). These change every time a Windows OS changes. Sure, a lot of applications (I'd even go as far as to say most) have a single executable to install the program, but inside of that executable is several other programs that have to decipher what OS you're running, and how to go about installing libraries. Thankfully, W7 brought a lot of libraries from XP along with it. Vista failed to do this, which is why a lot of programs failed miserably.
First: Not talking about installers. Installers are explicitly designed to have logic to make sure all the required files are available for the application. If you install said application on Vista and it doesn't work, that's the Installer-maker's fault for assuming that a library will exist on Windows Vista (especially one that MS had stated will probably not be included in the next version such as MSVBVM60.dll). I'm talking about applications. These two links provide some description of what I mean. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/arc ... 61924.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/arc ... 92088.aspx
Basically, The window manager is something Microsoft manages. They provide functions that allow you to sort-kinda hook into the default behaviour. Which is alright. A Prime example: Word 95. People old enough will remember that on Windows 95 word 95 had a gradient title bar. This might not mean anything but windows 95 didn't support gradient title bars. In any case, run that same application in windows XP and you get... a windows 95 looking window with a gradient title bar. Basically, it doesn't use either Luna or Aero themes, and it isn't skinned by Windowblinds either. This is a particularly funny example because it's made by MS themselves, but to be fair the Office team isn't exactly well-liked by the System and kernel teams for reasons like that. Anyway, my point is while an application can be "customized" so that it looks almost exactly the same as, say, the Vista title bar, if the next version changes the default setup (like, say, for example, changing the caption buttons) you end up with issues (like- oh, say, caption buttons that stick off the side because they are larger then the Vista equivalents upon which the hard-coded pixel offset was based)
Additionally, look at the name of DLL. as you said. dynamic link library. it links at run-time.
When you run a Windows application- wether it be for windows 95 or windows 7- it links to the version of kernel32.dll, user32.dll, gdi32.dll, etc on your CURRENT system. Compatibility settings for a program tell the various linked DLLs to act differently in some ways (usually by reintroducing bugs that were fixed since that version) but the application still links to the version on your OS. Whether it be as a result of Implicit Loader linking (that is, the functions are in the PE header import table) or whether the link is done at run-time via LoadLibrary() and GetProcAddress(), it will still work; the functions are the same and have the same parameters and names and return same-meaning values.
When you run an application, it doesn't run other "little programs". It doesn't have to know your OS, unless it happens to have and use functions conditionally based on wether they are supported (prime example: process enumeration in the bad old days; you had to use TOOLHELP.DLL in windows 95 and PSAPI.DLL on windows NT, toolhelp.dll didn't exist on NT4 and PSAPI wasn't on windows 95, so the result was usually a unified and statically linked library that provided a consistent interface that would use the appropriate DLL depending on the OS. Of course this introduced a problem; you couldn't actually have those functions in the import table otherwise the Image loader would try to load those libraries; so if you had toolhelp32.dll and psapi in the imports table. It would try to load both, which wouldn't work (until windows 2000 which included both). So they had to go the LoadLibrary() and GetProcAddress() route and simply make sure they didn't try to lookup functions that don't exist in files that didn't exist. That's not a problem at all now; we just use the NT EnumProcesses API (which has since moved from psapi.dll to kernel32.dll) but some applications need to be backwards compatible and so need to have special casing for Win7/Vista and XP; for example, the EnumerateStreams() function available on Vista/7 for enumerating alternate data streams (might not be the name, I forget) doesn't exist on XP; it's possible to do the same via the backup functions or by using NTQueryInformationFile() but what I did was I cased it so that I would use my own version when running on XP and use the Vista/7 provided function on Vista/7, and it works well. To be fair, though, the NTQueryInformationFile() method works without a problem on Vista and 7, so it's more a fancy hat then it is a necessary garment of code. Aside from including MSVBVM60.dll, I cannot think off-hand of any XP DLL files that Windows Vista didn't include. It doesn't have DX9 installed by default but then again neither did Windows Vista. The only different IMO between Vista and 7 is that 7 had a lot better marketing.
1) Google is trying to introduce something new. Go recycle your damned "how to make good UI" books. They are useless now.
Better get these guys to change. And these.
And of course this. All of which still echo the same things covered in "About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design" as well as more desktop oriented publishings.
2) Chrome browser was made for Chrome OS,
No. Chrome Browser was derived from Chromium, and a major aim of that project is to be a tabbed window manager, or shell for the web, as opposed to its being a traditional browser application. The idea is for the application to be minimalist in the same way Windows Explorer or Mac OS X's Finder are minimalist. The developers state that it "should feel lightweight (cognitively and physically) and fast". Which I agree with. Chromium however doesn't (from what I can tell) decide to do the nonclient area it's own way. Screenies of it's Linux build seem to preserve whatever window decoration settings the user is using (Emerald, or compiz, etc).
which consists of just Chrome and a few little things. So why do the job twice? They are still overriding the UI...
Chromium was not designed for Chromium OS. Therefore Chrome was not designed for Chrome OS. It's still irrelevant. If it was designed to run with Chrome OS why are there Windows (and, since I just checked as a result of reading your post) Linux builds? No doubt Chrome/Chromium OS provide a window management functionality of some capacity, so why would Google Chrome or Chromium need to further circumvent that. It sounds like you are saying that since Chrome was designed for Chrome OS (which it wasn't, but I'll humour you here) it should look like it's running on Chrome OS on all Operating Systems. That's just stupid and ignores the rest of my posts relating to that. a application running on Chrome/Chromium OS should look like it's running on Chrome/Chromium OS; but if they are going to release that application for other operating systems, they shouldn't be overriding the native window manager of that OS just so they can look like they are running on that other OS.
Plus, Firefox's UI takes up more space than the page itself. Combining tabs and the title bar was a very, very good idea.
Toolbar,Menu bar, "bookmarks" bar, and Tabs: 128Pixels
page area: 691 Pixels
Find popup thing and Statusbar: 57 pixels.
That is on a 1440x900 screen; and the Workspace area is reduced by the taskbar, giving us a working space 850 pixels, if we ignore the title bar and taskbar elements. Therefore the UI elements of a relatively standard Firefox config (without a bajillion toolbar addons) would take up fewer pixels even in 640x480 (which would give us 430 pixels, -128 pixels for the toolbar menu and bookmarks and tabs, and another -57 for the find popup and statusbar (the former of which can be hidden easily anyway), which gives us a total page space of 245 vertical pixels, for the page which is still more then 185 that the FF UI consumes. And all of those elements can be hidden in FF3 anyways; not to mention full screen mode.
3) HAHAHAHAHAHA! Do you know what is the kernel of Chrome OS? It is... L... Yes, you are right! Linux! Chrome runs natively on Linux. Don't state something you know nothing about.
Sorry, my mistake. has nothing to do with Chrome/Chromium OS, I was more stating that there wasn't a easy way to get it running in, say, slackware (or any <REAL> Linux distro. You can get it running via downloadable packages it seems from the chrome site for Ubuntu (and I presume Mint) and Debian as well as Fedora and OpenSUSE. To be fair though if somebody can even get slackware setup to use a windowing environment they probably know enough to compile and install it from source anyway, so that's more a non-issue. I didn't realize there were packages for any Linux environment so I presumed such a task would require building from source, and from a quick google it seemed that the source was tuned for windows for whatever reason (clearly however the link I hit where somebody used google chrome with WINE was simply an idiot not a pioneer)
4) Give me a picture of your "caption buttons" or whatever. I have seen Chrome run properly on Windows 7 (not like I care anyway
The top is just Notepad. Button is Google chrome. To be fair to then they do at least use the proper Theme functions to draw the various caption buttons, but it looks like they are using a hard-coded offset from the right side of the window. Note that the chrome buttons are a few pixels right of the ones as they appear in the notepad title bar. It doesn't affect the functionality of the buttons, but it sort of conflicts with the entire concept of making things look better by subclassing and handling nonclient window messages by making it look silly. or maybe the X button sticking out was by design.
I switched to Ubuntu and I am planning to stay. I am sure it will become more popular than Windows soon anyway.)
Ahh, that old chestnut.
The same one Linux zealots have been saying for the last 15 or so years; much louder now that Ubuntu has appeared. Linux works great for everything I need, but if I was a gamer wanting to use Linux I'd at least dual-boot to Windows. And considering how good Windows is for damn near everything, I'd probably just single-boot Windows. Personally, I love Linux because it is a total pain in the ass. It's the ultimate tinkerer's dream. I realize it's come a long way in the last few years in becoming more user-friendly, but it is still a very mediocre replacement for Windows. Now when it comes to servers and embedded, Linux is better at holding its own, but 2012 is definitely not going to be the Year of Desktop Linux, just like 2009 wasn't, or 2010, or 2008 or 2007 or 2006 for that matter. And if 2012 is, well, the mayans warned us of the dangers, I suppose.
5) Nightmare for Microsoft? Pfft. I think they deserve more nightmares than that (if you can call such a little thing a nightmare, because I can't)
Have you ever subclassed a window before? Did you have all sorts of fun responding to NC_NCHITTEST and responding to WM_PAINT in such a way that you don't call the DefWindowProc() because it will repaint the caption bars unless you happen to use SetWindowLong() to change the style so that the DefWindowProc doesn't think the window actually has a border or title bar, in which case you need to do even more special handling in the mouse events so that you process this stuff you otherwise get for free. Go ahead, use spyxx on Chrome/Chromium. Oh that's right, you can't because you are using Ubuntu, and thus you are just making handwavery generalizations from a position of deep ignorance. You probably fit in well on slashdot.
6) Actually, Minecraft uses Java's swing. That is something like a skinning system (more or less). You can make your own L&Fs.
judging from the SDK examples of Look & Feel (that's as far as I've gone, I sorta game up on java, and AWT has left a bitter taste in my mouth since), it changes the look of default controls (still a bit frowned upon, but can be useful for some apps). It never changed the title bar, caption buttons, or any of the non-client area on Any OS's I've run them on. And either way, even if it did, Minecraft clearly doesn't take advantage of that whimsical and fictitious functionality because it's window frames and nonclient area look just like every other window on whatever OS you are running it on.
Don't like personalisation? Too bad. We haven't invented a time machine yet.
I have no problem with personalization, but it should be an OS level feature. If people really want to be able to make their Firefox windows bright red and their Word processing applications have a dark scheme, that type of thing should be added to the OS. adding it to Each Application individually just gives us people with mixed expectations. Why can we change the color of, say, Live messenger, but not Notepad? What good reason is there for that distinction? The thing here is that this sort of configuration is quite possible with Linux; it's useful to have applications that you've run as root appear with a different window border or other distinguishing element. It would be great if Windows would support this as well, but not yet. Probably too much testing (see, Linux get's away with less testing because they just make the users test, those users file bugs, and then those bugs are closed with the "Do not fix tag", much like Google Chrome bugs about how they mishandle DOM settimeout events. But Obviously you are well aware of these issues, being a well-seasoned and well-rounded developer across many platforms.
1) You can actually set Chrome to use the system title bar and stuff. There is no reason for the menus - I am sure every developer will agree that browsers don't have much to fit into the menus.
2) Still wrong, there was a project called Chromium OS. Also, you can do the same with Chrome. "GTK+ theme" option does it.
3) It was generally made for Chrome OS, but made to work with other operating systems to keep the functionality. There is nothing wrong with having good skinning support.
4) Chrome UI takes up a lot less space for me.
5) I can't see much wrong with the buttons. They are still functional.
6) I don't know, Ubuntu pretty much makes the life much easier for me... I don't have to do anything myself. I have a problem? Why make a solution? Just search for a solution on Google, copy something into the terminal and everything is fixed...
7) I don't even care about anything Microsoft does. They should stop doing games for the next release of Windows and get chopping on removing useless garbage from Windows. Ignorance? Naaah, more like I don't even want to hear about Microsoft's problems, because their problems are nothing compared to the problems that are caused by absence of proper development by them.
8) You can easily just remove the title bar and make your own simulation. Yes, for Minecraft, there is no advantage, but for Chrome, removing the title bar is a giant improvement.
9) Tell that to Microsoft, because they are so freaking smart that they ignore every single standard. If someone who develops applications/features for Linux does something smart, Microsoft will either ignore the improvement, or deliver it 3 years later (too late).
jesus christ guys, this is worse than the console-wars on /v/. stop doing that. No one cares about your arguments for browsers, everyone uses the browser they like.
All it does is making you look like a fanboy for one of the browsers.
reported etc
Seems like a virus or an attack to me. Anyone else have this problem?
2) Stop watching porn.
"Menus? No those are old! We'll use a WRENCH!"
It's like somebody took one of those pens from MIB and wiped everybody's memories about Why we have fecking toolbars and menus to begin with.
Unfortunately Both Firefox 4 and IE9 seem to be following suit. Although MS already sorta took that route what with Windows Live messenger allowing you choose which pastel crayon a 5 year old vomits on your Messenger windows.
If I run a windows Application. It should look like a windows Application. if I run a Linux Desktop Application, it should look like other applications running inside that desktop. If I run a Mac OS Application, it should look like a Mac OS application.
Firefox seems to respect this- at least with version 3. IE... well, it only runs on windows, and it can't even get that look right anymore. WTF is up with IE9? Seriously, what the HELL is wrong with big name app developers these days? You don't NEED to reskin your application windows. That's kind of what the window manager is there for. If you are developing a Linux desktop application, you let GNOME, KDE, etc handle the window. elements. That is what it is there for. If you're writing a windows application, it should look like a windows application. Chrome only runs on Linux via WINE so there <might> be a bit of a premise to say it can look like windows, but on Windows XP it has Vista-esque caption buttons. NO. Applications should look like applications, not bloody fashion statements. And hacking around with the NonClient area of a window is a surefire way to make sure you are entirely incompatible with new OS Revisions. Anybody run Chrome on Win7 before? The caption buttons don't match up with the window border. It's a minor nitpick but if they had acted like a normal windows application in the first place and let windows handle the windows they wouldn't have that problem. Instead they got Bill from accounting to take a day and learn how to subvert the correct window messages so that they could totally butcher any semblance of a standard Application UI. Which will of course cause a compatibility nightmare for future windows versions if they decide to change the layout of the caption buttons.
Take Minecraft. You run it on a linux desktop, it has the appropriate window trimmings. Run it on windows, it has the windows window trimmings for your version. Same with OSX. why? because it doesn't try to F around with the non-client area. The non client area should NEVER BE ****ING TOUCHED. Media Players are another example of idiots in the barn making bad decisions. "oh let's support skins!" oh, here's an idea winamp/WMP/iTunes/etc, how about you make a god damned media player, it's not a bloody fashion simulator that you can give different clothes. I need to "personalize" my media player about as much as I need to personalize a hole in the ground.
Are you shutting down windows explorer (explorer.exe) or internet explorer (iexplore.exe)?
If the former, it's got nothing to do with the browser. Even if it's the latter, it might not be a browser-based virus (the virus may just using the browser to create the pop-ups).
I mention this because the most recent Word of Notch mentions that there are some malicious mods out there; if you use mods you may have gotten something via that.
EDIT: I just realized that I pointed you to Notch's blog when the part that I quoted specifically says you can't read Notch's blog. I'm brilliant. Copy/paste follows:
I first giggled. Then, when I read it all, I laughed. After a few minutes of laughing, I started to feel sorry for you.
1) Google is trying to introduce something new. Go recycle your damned "how to make good UI" books. They are useless now.
2) Chrome browser was made for Chrome OS, which consists of just Chrome and a few little things. So why do the job twice? They are still overriding the UI... Plus, Firefox's UI takes up more space than the page itself. Combining tabs and the title bar was a very, very good idea.
3) HAHAHAHAHAHA! Do you know what is the kernel of Chrome OS? It is... L... Yes, you are right! Linux! Chrome runs natively on Linux. Don't state something you know nothing about.
4) Give me a picture of your "caption buttons" or whatever. I have seen Chrome run properly on Windows 7 (not like I care anyway, I switched to Ubuntu and I am planning to stay. I am sure it will become more popular than Windows soon anyway.)
5) Nightmare for Microsoft? Pfft. I think they deserve more nightmares than that (if you can call such a little thing a nightmare, because I can't)
6) Actually, Minecraft uses Java's swing. That is something like a skinning system (more or less). You can make your own L&Fs.
7) Don't like personalisation? Too bad. We haven't invented a time machine yet.
I use chrome and what I say to that is, WRONG.
It goes like this, "Every web browser is good except IE"
Eh. I like it. I never really have a use for using the toolbar. I'm glad it's replaced with a wrench, off to the side. If I ever have a use for it, I know where it's at, and it doesn't get in the way.
wat? For one, if what you said is true (and it isn't), then it would look like Windows. Why in the hell would it look like Linux if it was running in a mini-windows environment?
And, like Nick said, Chrome was designed to run for Linux. Hello, Google ****ing loves Linux. You know Chrome OS? Guess what's that's a distribution of? You got it, Linux. Chrome runs natively in Linux. If you're using Wine, you fail.
Again, wut? Unless you're running on Linux, this is a necessity anyways. Windows uses a Dynamic Library (.dll files, anyone?). These change every time a Windows OS changes. Sure, a lot of applications (I'd even go as far as to say most) have a single executable to install the program, but inside of that executable is several other programs that have to decipher what OS you're running, and how to go about installing libraries. Thankfully, W7 brought a lot of libraries from XP along with it. Vista failed to do this, which is why a lot of programs failed miserably.
But, I digress. Messing with the UI has nothing to do with the functionality of the Operating System. They're handled completely separate.
sizeoffirefoxui=sizeofchromeui*(5/3)
Plus, there is still that ugly search bar + some random button in the top left corner.
*fix'd, for those of us who don't like fractions mingled with our math.
I actually meant 5/3s... :/
Anyway, fractions are FTW!
Better get these guys to change. And these.
And of course this. All of which still echo the same things covered in "About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design" as well as more desktop oriented publishings.
No. Chrome Browser was derived from Chromium, and a major aim of that project is to be a tabbed window manager, or shell for the web, as opposed to its being a traditional browser application.
EDIT: actually, I think maybe chromium is the open-sourced version of Chrome. Either way, their design goals are no doubt the same.
The idea is for the application to be minimalist in the same way Windows Explorer or Mac OS X's Finder are minimalist. The developers state that it "should feel lightweight (cognitively and physically) and fast". Which I agree with. Chromium however doesn't (from what I can tell) decide to do the nonclient area it's own way. Screenies of it's Linux build seem to preserve whatever window decoration settings the user is using (Emerald, or compiz, etc).
Chromium was not designed for Chromium OS. Therefore Chrome was not designed for Chrome OS. It's still irrelevant. If it was designed to run with Chrome OS why are there Windows (and, since I just checked as a result of reading your post) Linux builds? No doubt Chrome/Chromium OS provide a window management functionality of some capacity, so why would Google Chrome or Chromium need to further circumvent that. It sounds like you are saying that since Chrome was designed for Chrome OS (which it wasn't, but I'll humour you here) it should look like it's running on Chrome OS on all Operating Systems. That's just stupid and ignores the rest of my posts relating to that. a application running on Chrome/Chromium OS should look like it's running on Chrome/Chromium OS; but if they are going to release that application for other operating systems, they shouldn't be overriding the native window manager of that OS just so they can look like they are running on that other OS.
Toolbar,Menu bar, "bookmarks" bar, and Tabs: 128Pixels
page area: 691 Pixels
Find popup thing and Statusbar: 57 pixels.
That is on a 1440x900 screen; and the Workspace area is reduced by the taskbar, giving us a working space 850 pixels, if we ignore the title bar and taskbar elements. Therefore the UI elements of a relatively standard Firefox config (without a bajillion toolbar addons) would take up fewer pixels even in 640x480 (which would give us 430 pixels, -128 pixels for the toolbar menu and bookmarks and tabs, and another -57 for the find popup and statusbar (the former of which can be hidden easily anyway), which gives us a total page space of 245 vertical pixels, for the page which is still more then 185 that the FF UI consumes. And all of those elements can be hidden in FF3 anyways; not to mention full screen mode.
Sorry, my mistake. has nothing to do with Chrome/Chromium OS, I was more stating that there wasn't a easy way to get it running in, say, slackware (or any <REAL> Linux distro. You can get it running via downloadable packages it seems from the chrome site for Ubuntu (and I presume Mint) and Debian as well as Fedora and OpenSUSE. To be fair though if somebody can even get slackware setup to use a windowing environment they probably know enough to compile and install it from source anyway, so that's more a non-issue. I didn't realize there were packages for any Linux environment so I presumed such a task would require building from source, and from a quick google it seemed that the source was tuned for windows for whatever reason (clearly however the link I hit where somebody used google chrome with WINE was simply an idiot not a pioneer)
The top is just Notepad. Button is Google chrome. To be fair to then they do at least use the proper Theme functions to draw the various caption buttons, but it looks like they are using a hard-coded offset from the right side of the window. Note that the chrome buttons are a few pixels right of the ones as they appear in the notepad title bar. It doesn't affect the functionality of the buttons, but it sort of conflicts with the entire concept of making things look better by subclassing and handling nonclient window messages by making it look silly. or maybe the X button sticking out was by design.
Ahh, that old chestnut.
The same one Linux zealots have been saying for the last 15 or so years; much louder now that Ubuntu has appeared. Linux works great for everything I need, but if I was a gamer wanting to use Linux I'd at least dual-boot to Windows. And considering how good Windows is for damn near everything, I'd probably just single-boot Windows. Personally, I love Linux because it is a total pain in the ass. It's the ultimate tinkerer's dream. I realize it's come a long way in the last few years in becoming more user-friendly, but it is still a very mediocre replacement for Windows. Now when it comes to servers and embedded, Linux is better at holding its own, but 2012 is definitely not going to be the Year of Desktop Linux, just like 2009 wasn't, or 2010, or 2008 or 2007 or 2006 for that matter. And if 2012 is, well, the mayans warned us of the dangers, I suppose.
Have you ever subclassed a window before? Did you have all sorts of fun responding to NC_NCHITTEST and responding to WM_PAINT in such a way that you don't call the DefWindowProc() because it will repaint the caption bars unless you happen to use SetWindowLong() to change the style so that the DefWindowProc doesn't think the window actually has a border or title bar, in which case you need to do even more special handling in the mouse events so that you process this stuff you otherwise get for free. Go ahead, use spyxx on Chrome/Chromium. Oh that's right, you can't because you are using Ubuntu, and thus you are just making handwavery generalizations from a position of deep ignorance. You probably fit in well on slashdot.
judging from the SDK examples of Look & Feel (that's as far as I've gone, I sorta game up on java, and AWT has left a bitter taste in my mouth since), it changes the look of default controls (still a bit frowned upon, but can be useful for some apps). It never changed the title bar, caption buttons, or any of the non-client area on Any OS's I've run them on. And either way, even if it did, Minecraft clearly doesn't take advantage of that whimsical and fictitious functionality because it's window frames and nonclient area look just like every other window on whatever OS you are running it on.
[/quote]
I have no problem with personalization, but it should be an OS level feature. If people really want to be able to make their Firefox windows bright red and their Word processing applications have a dark scheme, that type of thing should be added to the OS. adding it to Each Application individually just gives us people with mixed expectations. Why can we change the color of, say, Live messenger, but not Notepad? What good reason is there for that distinction? The thing here is that this sort of configuration is quite possible with Linux; it's useful to have applications that you've run as root appear with a different window border or other distinguishing element. It would be great if Windows would support this as well, but not yet. Probably too much testing (see, Linux get's away with less testing because they just make the users test, those users file bugs, and then those bugs are closed with the "Do not fix tag", much like Google Chrome bugs about how they mishandle DOM settimeout events. But Obviously you are well aware of these issues, being a well-seasoned and well-rounded developer across many platforms.
fixed, you can use chrome though if you don't care about malware.
http://lifehacker.com/#!5177709/chrome- ... wn-contest
Yep, you got me there; I recently found the new google repositories; and I imagine it was fully possible to simply build it from source if necessary. I got the wrong impression from a quick google search.
Chromium was designed to run on a variety of platforms. Linux is one of them, though.
Probably. Can't find any references to that, though. It would certainly be easier to base it on an existing, working system then to write it from scratch. Of course for some reason Chromium states it was "written from the ground up to be..." which implies it is not based on Linux.
Actually, come to think of it, google has a nice thing going. They release the source as Chromium, and hooray now they have free developers. Somehow it's working for them, unlike Netscape's original attempts to get free labour.
First: Not talking about installers. Installers are explicitly designed to have logic to make sure all the required files are available for the application. If you install said application on Vista and it doesn't work, that's the Installer-maker's fault for assuming that a library will exist on Windows Vista (especially one that MS had stated will probably not be included in the next version such as MSVBVM60.dll). I'm talking about applications. These two links provide some description of what I mean.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/arc ... 61924.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/arc ... 92088.aspx
Basically, The window manager is something Microsoft manages. They provide functions that allow you to sort-kinda hook into the default behaviour. Which is alright. A Prime example: Word 95. People old enough will remember that on Windows 95 word 95 had a gradient title bar. This might not mean anything but windows 95 didn't support gradient title bars. In any case, run that same application in windows XP and you get... a windows 95 looking window with a gradient title bar. Basically, it doesn't use either Luna or Aero themes, and it isn't skinned by Windowblinds either. This is a particularly funny example because it's made by MS themselves, but to be fair the Office team isn't exactly well-liked by the System and kernel teams for reasons like that. Anyway, my point is while an application can be "customized" so that it looks almost exactly the same as, say, the Vista title bar, if the next version changes the default setup (like, say, for example, changing the caption buttons) you end up with issues (like- oh, say, caption buttons that stick off the side because they are larger then the Vista equivalents upon which the hard-coded pixel offset was based)
Additionally, look at the name of DLL. as you said. dynamic link library. it links at run-time.
When you run a Windows application- wether it be for windows 95 or windows 7- it links to the version of kernel32.dll, user32.dll, gdi32.dll, etc on your CURRENT system. Compatibility settings for a program tell the various linked DLLs to act differently in some ways (usually by reintroducing bugs that were fixed since that version) but the application still links to the version on your OS. Whether it be as a result of Implicit Loader linking (that is, the functions are in the PE header import table) or whether the link is done at run-time via LoadLibrary() and GetProcAddress(), it will still work; the functions are the same and have the same parameters and names and return same-meaning values.
When you run an application, it doesn't run other "little programs". It doesn't have to know your OS, unless it happens to have and use functions conditionally based on wether they are supported (prime example: process enumeration in the bad old days; you had to use TOOLHELP.DLL in windows 95 and PSAPI.DLL on windows NT, toolhelp.dll didn't exist on NT4 and PSAPI wasn't on windows 95, so the result was usually a unified and statically linked library that provided a consistent interface that would use the appropriate DLL depending on the OS. Of course this introduced a problem; you couldn't actually have those functions in the import table otherwise the Image loader would try to load those libraries; so if you had toolhelp32.dll and psapi in the imports table. It would try to load both, which wouldn't work (until windows 2000 which included both). So they had to go the LoadLibrary() and GetProcAddress() route and simply make sure they didn't try to lookup functions that don't exist in files that didn't exist. That's not a problem at all now; we just use the NT EnumProcesses API (which has since moved from psapi.dll to kernel32.dll) but some applications need to be backwards compatible and so need to have special casing for Win7/Vista and XP; for example, the EnumerateStreams() function available on Vista/7 for enumerating alternate data streams (might not be the name, I forget) doesn't exist on XP; it's possible to do the same via the backup functions or by using NTQueryInformationFile() but what I did was I cased it so that I would use my own version when running on XP and use the Vista/7 provided function on Vista/7, and it works well. To be fair, though, the NTQueryInformationFile() method works without a problem on Vista and 7, so it's more a fancy hat then it is a necessary garment of code. Aside from including MSVBVM60.dll, I cannot think off-hand of any XP DLL files that Windows Vista didn't include. It doesn't have DX9 installed by default but then again neither did Windows Vista. The only different IMO between Vista and 7 is that 7 had a lot better marketing.
1) You can actually set Chrome to use the system title bar and stuff. There is no reason for the menus - I am sure every developer will agree that browsers don't have much to fit into the menus.
2) Still wrong, there was a project called Chromium OS. Also, you can do the same with Chrome. "GTK+ theme" option does it.
3) It was generally made for Chrome OS, but made to work with other operating systems to keep the functionality. There is nothing wrong with having good skinning support.
4) Chrome UI takes up a lot less space for me.
5) I can't see much wrong with the buttons. They are still functional.
6) I don't know, Ubuntu pretty much makes the life much easier for me... I don't have to do anything myself. I have a problem? Why make a solution? Just search for a solution on Google, copy something into the terminal and everything is fixed...
7) I don't even care about anything Microsoft does. They should stop doing games for the next release of Windows and get chopping on removing useless garbage from Windows. Ignorance? Naaah, more like I don't even want to hear about Microsoft's problems, because their problems are nothing compared to the problems that are caused by absence of proper development by them.
8) You can easily just remove the title bar and make your own simulation. Yes, for Minecraft, there is no advantage, but for Chrome, removing the title bar is a giant improvement.
9) Tell that to Microsoft, because they are so freaking smart that they ignore every single standard. If someone who develops applications/features for Linux does something smart, Microsoft will either ignore the improvement, or deliver it 3 years later (too late).
All it does is making you look like a fanboy for one of the browsers.
reported etc
Thread Closed.
Voyager of the Seas WIP ~~~~~ Big Book of Alchemy ~ Crafting Tech Tree