Vista 5308 questions

What are those 45 degree lines on the window that appear very faint
when you have glass on and appear solid when you disable transparency.
Is there a way to disable it.

Why does the glass effect turn off when you maximize a window. All
window borders / background as well as the taskbar turn black (no
transparency) when you maximize a window.

Thanks,
Vaibhav

> What are those 45 degree lines on the window that appear very faint
> when you have glass on and appear solid when you disable transparency.
> Is there a way to disable it.

'fraid not. I don't like it all that much either until I did some research
and some graphic design to prove my theory.. the lines are "glass
refractions" - but their static and don't react to the wallpaper like normal
glass would actually do.

> Why does the glass effect turn off when you maximize a window. All
> window borders / background as well as the taskbar turn black (no
> transparency) when you maximize a window.

They're working on it ) Got a friend on the Vista team and she can't stand
it either - I think she's going to do a stand-in-protest until it's fixed
;o)

--
Zack Whittaker
Microsoft Beta (Windows Server R2 Beta Mentor)
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: http://msblog.resdev.net
» ZackNET Forum: www.zacknet.co.uk/forum
» VistaBase: www.zacknet.co.uk/vistabase
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, mother or cat. Let's be clear on that one!


--- Original message follows ---
<vaibhav.kamath@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1141676933.317704.13150@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> What are those 45 degree lines on the window that appear very faint
> when you have glass on and appear solid when you disable transparency.
> Is there a way to disable it.
>
> Why does the glass effect turn off when you maximize a window. All
> window borders / background as well as the taskbar turn black (no
> transparency) when you maximize a window.
>
> Thanks,
> Vaibhav
>

That was my initial thought too, that the lines were to give it a glass
look, but they don't look any good at all, it has to be a lot smoother
than that. Hope this is the right forum to give feedback, and hope the
vista team lets the user disable. It looks really bad when you turn
transparency off.

It is good to know that they are working on the maximize issue.

BTW did you notice that when you open solitaire, it opens as a normal
window that does not take the entire screen (which is good) but when
you try to increase the size of the window it doesn't like it. The
dragging to increase the size of the window causes the content of the
window to zoom but the actual window shows a jerky behavior and stays
to the original size.

Thanks,
Vaibhav

The other important difference I saw was on Flip 3D. It looks simply
pathetic, may be it is my drivers and may be we will see better drivers
by the time Vista ships but right now the Flip 3D windows appear
without Anti-Aliasing which gives it a very bad look. The windows look
exactly like if you take a screenshot and reduce the size of the
screenshot where all clarity is lost. Hopefully the Vista team will
either fix this issue or take it off Vista.

- Vaibhav

Agreed. The aliasing along the top and bottom edge of windows in Flip3D
looks really tacky. What I'd rather see is the normal Flip (Alt+Tab) window
but as large (or nearly as large) as the screen itself, either one row
across or arranged in a grid like the QuickTabs feature in IE7. Basically
like Mac OS X's Expose but without its penchant for randomly positioning
your windows when activated.

"Vaibhav Kamath" <vaibhav.kamath@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1141682913.671389.251290@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
> The other important difference I saw was on Flip 3D. It looks simply
> pathetic, may be it is my drivers and may be we will see better drivers
> by the time Vista ships but right now the Flip 3D windows appear
> without Anti-Aliasing which gives it a very bad look. The windows look
> exactly like if you take a screenshot and reduce the size of the
> screenshot where all clarity is lost. Hopefully the Vista team will
> either fix this issue or take it off Vista.
>
> - Vaibhav
>

Good feedback on the glass highlights and aliasing on 3D stacking, both of
those are already on our radar.

In relation to the opaque glass when maximizing, the intent was to improve
usability. When you maximize a window, you are indicating that you are
focusing on a single application/window, the transparency would distract from
the work you are doing (you can try this yourself, just resize your window,
and work with the "maximized" application, then try it with the opaque border
- the opaque glass brings out the application you are working on and makes it
less distracting). Would be interested in how this works for you.

-Pablo

"Chris Altmann" wrote:

> Agreed. The aliasing along the top and bottom edge of windows in Flip3D
> looks really tacky. What I'd rather see is the normal Flip (Alt+Tab) window
> but as large (or nearly as large) as the screen itself, either one row
> across or arranged in a grid like the QuickTabs feature in IE7. Basically
> like Mac OS X's Expose but without its penchant for randomly positioning
> your windows when activated.
>
> "Vaibhav Kamath" <vaibhav.kamath@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1141682913.671389.251290@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
> > The other important difference I saw was on Flip 3D. It looks simply
> > pathetic, may be it is my drivers and may be we will see better drivers
> > by the time Vista ships but right now the Flip 3D windows appear
> > without Anti-Aliasing which gives it a very bad look. The windows look
> > exactly like if you take a screenshot and reduce the size of the
> > screenshot where all clarity is lost. Hopefully the Vista team will
> > either fix this issue or take it off Vista.
> >
> > - Vaibhav
> >
>
>
>

Yup, I tried the steps you mentioned and it was indeed distracting,
especially with applications like WMP and Calendar which have a big
transparent section at the bottom. While I think it does make sense to
take away the transparency I don't agree that it should be turned
black. Either changing the opacity to 90 to 95% or changing the
transparency to a shade of white may be a better choice especially
since glass itself is more towards white. The taskbar and the window
titlebar may be turned black, but then again until we see it we can
only speculate as to what would be a better alternative.

Also, were you able to recreate the bug with Solitaire. So far I have
only seen the bug with solitaire but fear it could be a problem with
certain other applications as well.

Where can I give feedback about the Explorer. I just hate the fact that
there is no Folders bar in explorer. I am sure there are a lot of
people who are used to Ctrl + F and then navigating around the folders.

The other problem I notices is with the icon on the top of the start
bar, it animates which is good but it is too slow. I have to literally
mouse over and wait to see what the icon is. The animation effect shown
at PDC 2003 was awesome where the icons animated very quickly and
smoothly as though they were being morphed.

Thanks for the feedback, Vaibah. Keep it coming!
I will send these suggestions to our designers.

Ivo

"Vaibhav Kamath" wrote:

> Yup, I tried the steps you mentioned and it was indeed distracting,
> especially with applications like WMP and Calendar which have a big
> transparent section at the bottom. While I think it does make sense to
> take away the transparency I don't agree that it should be turned
> black. Either changing the opacity to 90 to 95% or changing the
> transparency to a shade of white may be a better choice especially
> since glass itself is more towards white. The taskbar and the window
> titlebar may be turned black, but then again until we see it we can
> only speculate as to what would be a better alternative.
>
> Also, were you able to recreate the bug with Solitaire. So far I have
> only seen the bug with solitaire but fear it could be a problem with
> certain other applications as well.
>
> Where can I give feedback about the Explorer. I just hate the fact that
> there is no Folders bar in explorer. I am sure there are a lot of
> people who are used to Ctrl + F and then navigating around the folders.
>
> The other problem I notices is with the icon on the top of the start
> bar, it animates which is good but it is too slow. I have to literally
> mouse over and wait to see what the icon is. The animation effect shown
> at PDC 2003 was awesome where the icons animated very quickly and
> smoothly as though they were being morphed.
>
>