Tag Archives: Windows 8

I’ve grown to become quite opinionated about the recent Flat Design trend. Ironically at this time of writing my blog is using a rather flat design, however it still uses borders, dividers, and background colors which as you will see many flat designs ignore or drop.

Gripe with Flat Design

Microsoft chose grey on light grey on white with their new flat design in MS Office 2013. This is very hard on the eyes and makes finding sections / ideas in the UI take a bit of studying to understand. I won’t even go into Windows 8 start screen or new desktop UI which both have other issues. Apple in iOS7 appears to be choosing border-less white divs with section breaks just being a larger padding between items. There is little to no affordance.

If these are the leaders, I’m concerned.

Some are using Flat Design well

However, in my opinion some companies are pulling off flat design well. For instance AVG 2013, they chose very intuitive layout that makes the UI simple and understandable, I don’t use the product, but I would trust my grandma to run it. Other fine examples are the games OLO, Letterpress – check them out.

Some companies are going for a Almost Flat Design, which I can agree is a good compromise, making things a bit more intuitive and have substance. Examples include LinkedIn app, Google products, Facebook. And now with Google announcing Material Design that becomes even more clear.

What I’m saying?

It’s not about emulating the ‘real world’ as it is giving items a sense of sections, and layers. First sections, A menu bar or sidebar ought to look separate from the content. More specifically, static vs. dynamic content ought to be separate. Second layers, if a menu has a drop down that is going to cover content, there ought to be (even a subtle) hint/shadow that is is currently above the content and has a border to visually show its identity. Users will intuitively know there is content under it and not mistake it being part of the content. And not to say ‘Real world’ is what I’m suggesting, if I were then I would want SPST Push Button or NTE 54-533 Switch Rocker.

Where are we heading?

I could dig in further with some closer examples, but I feel User Experience seems unfortunately been placed on the side in many flat design cases. It seems we are in a UI counter-culture mood swing from our overdose on 3D buttons, and huge drop shadows. I get it. We just have to be careful to consider usability, intuitiveness, learnability, human errors, and other UX items. Maybe it is just poor flat design that I’m not a fan of or haven’t given it a full chance, but I’m concerned.

Thankfully with Google talking about Material Design, perhaps we can start to head in a smarter direction.

Tips

Tip: Hibernate – Sleep – Shutdown

December 13, 2013 Jonathan Stassen Leave a comment

Just to clear things up, I though I would quickly go through the differences of Hibernate, Sleep, and a full shutdown of any computer.

RAM makes the all difference!

The main difference has to do with how RAM is being used. So let me give a quick understanding of what RAM is and how it is used.

RAM is temporary ‘running’ memory. When a computer is booting up, it really is loading all the necessary files to work over into RAM. Now RAM also used to remember what programs you have open, what web page you are one, what you have typed but haven’t saved yet, and so on. Simply put, it tires the state of thing.

Now we can dive into the differences.

Shutdown

Scraps all data in RAM, forgetting the state of things on screen, then powers off all components (RAM chip, CPU, keyboard, screen, wifi card, etc).

Sleep

Continues to supply a little power to RAM chip keeping the state of thing. But powers off all other components (CPU, keyboard, screen, wifi card, etc). This means it can pick up where it left off very quickly, just need to power on all other components. Mac Laptops are well known for this, windows can do it as well.

Hibernate

Saves a copy of everything in RAM to the hard drive. This allows it to scrap everything in RAM and powers off all components (RAM chip, CPU, keyboard, screen, wifi card, etc) this consuming no power. When powered back on, it can restore the state to RAM as it was from the Hard drive, picking up where it left off. It can take a bit longer to save and restore the RAM, the benefit is mainly no battery drain.

What is best?

Which is best to use? Well that’s up to you. For me it largely depends on how long I will be away. Sleep short, hibernate long, shutdown long or weekly.

A rhyming rule of thumb:
Out for a treat – then sleep
Out for a date – then hibernate
Out for weekend cool down – then shutdown

Nevertheless, now you know!

Tips

Tip: Windows Alt+Tab Order

April 3, 2013 Jonathan Stassen Leave a comment

The revised Windows 7 and Windows 8 Alt+Tab has been bugging me for a couple years now. The Alt+Tab order is (or seems to be) ordered completely randomly. This prevents quickly ALt+Tab switching between two programs.

I finally took the time to find the the fix, Add the following DWORD key to the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AltTabSettings = 1

This enables the old Alt+Tab behavior. It does remove Aero Peak and thumbnails of each app unfortunately. It’s better to have something functional than shiny.

Note: I noticed a pattern, when you minimize a window, that window goes to the last in the order. I suppose the logic presumed is that you are wanting that application out of the way if you are minimizing it.

Source: SuperUser.com – Getting back the old alt-tab windows switching behavior in Windows 7?

Thoughts