andywhite37

Try looking again - maybe you caught a version that didn't render correctly. There is actually quite a bit of explanatory text, and it's quite good!

It's probably a free-tier heroku app, being hugged to death right now. I've used this site quite a bit in the past on FireFox, Chrome, and Brave, and it has worked perfectly before.

This article makes it sound like the slogan is just some marketing gimmick, but the slogan is actually just a fair description of the sad reality of the situation. HP is promoting Windows 7 over Windows 8 at this point - the default PC configurations feature Windows 7, and you can "customize" to get Windows 8.x. Good or bad, Windows 8 has been out for over a year, and is not making people want to buy PCs. I don't know if Windows 7 is making people want to buy PCs these days either, but it came out over 4 years ago, and has already served its purpose, which has nothing to do with today's PC market. If Windows 8 is supposed to be greater than Windows 7 in all conceivable ways, why is there still a demand for Windows 7, and why would a PC manufacturer need to market both versions, or even go so far as to promote the older version?

We've been using Backbone+Marionette at my company, and in general I like it, and it's much cleaner than just vanilla Backbone, but I still feel like it falls short for medium-to-large sized apps, and requires you to write a substantial amount of additional code, or include additional Backbone plugins. This might include things like "nested/deep" model support, two-way data-binding, etc. The main problem with the lightweight plugin model is that a lot of the plugins aren't necessarily compatible with others, or are not up-to-date on the latest Backbone changes, not to mention the varying degree in quality and maintenance of plugins, and the problem of choosing which data binding plugin you want, out of the 10+ available.

I think maybe we have just crossed the line from small, focused UI/interactions to large-scale single-page apps, and we would be better off with a more substantial/fully-featured framework like AngularJS or Ember.js.

Oh that's cool, thanks for the reply. I haven't looked at Q yet, but I've heard a lot about it. I guess it's time to have a look.

I tried on Chrome and got 6 days old. I then tried it on IE9 just out of curiosity, and got 579 days old. Also, the site doesn't seem to render or work correctly on IE9. The initial table appears at the very left-hand side of the screen, and the [+] button doesn't seem to do anything. (Works fine on Chrome though).

From what I understand, the HTML+Javascript WinRT APIs are really only supported on the "full" Windows RT/Metro environment, not Windows Phone 8. Windows Phone 8 supports C#/VB+XAML, C/C++, and you can use HTML and Javascript, but only in a web browser control, which is not the same as a true Javascript API with hooks into lower-level constructs. Apparently, you can also run legacy Windows Phone 7 Silverlight apps on Windows Phone 8 as well, but that is just a stopgap to not completely cut ties with the legacy apps.

It could also mean that "mom and pop" companies can no longer get into the hardware game at all. If there is no margin for hardware sales, only companies that can afford to setup the manufacturing processes and operate them at little, no, or negative profit will be able to stay in the game. This means only companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc. who can afford to support mass hardware production with software sales, will be able to compete in the hardware market.

Is that at the expense of the desktop and enterprise users? Only time will tell, but if the touch hardware ends up not working out, are they going to still have the desktop users to fall back on? I guess they probably will because they'll have the people stuck on XP and 7.

Also, if the point is to convince me to buy Windows 8 touch hardware, it has failed there too because the desktop experience was so uncompelling for me, I have no interest in exploring other options.

For one final edit - if they don't want me to upgrade from 7 to 8 on a desktop, what's the reasoning behind the massive price cuts for upgrades. If I bought a PC in the last year or so, I can upgrade from 7 to 8 for $15. Or if I have an old XP machine, I can upgrade for $40. If they don't care about non-touch desktop and laptop users, why would they slash the prices like this?

You could boil these observations down to "it's different," but that doesn't mean you're not also allowed to come to the conclusion that "it's awful" (or on the flip-side that "it's great"). Nobody would deny that the Windows 8/"Metro" UI and UX is different. Every window system is different, some more than others, and each has it's own pros and cons. Some people might like the Finder in Mac OSX, and some might hate it. It doesn't matter whether the hate is legitimate or defensible or not, what matters is whether your UI/UX and overall OS is compelling enough to convince users that it's worth switching from what they know, or simply worth putting up with in the bigger picture. I would also argue that it doesn't matter whether a user unfair-ably hates it after barely/ignorantly using it, or comes to the conclusion that they hate it after using it thoroughly for 8 months. First impressions are so important - not many people have the time or interest to really dig into a new UI/UX paradigm to find out what's it all about and whether it can improve their workflow. If you fail the first impression by not driving your users in the right direction or giving them some sense of excitement, most times you don't get another chance.

I think where Windows 8 fails is that it doesn't provide me with any compelling reasons why I would want to upgrade from Windows 7, or migrate from Mac OSX or Linux. It doesn't give me any sense of excitement - the paradigm shift from Windows 7 to 8 is not at all like the experience of shifting from something like a Blackberry to an iPhone. I agree with the author - I don't like the Metro start menu, I prefer the old start menu. Maybe that's just me clinging to an old beat-in paradigm, but I don't really see any benefits in the new paradigm. I don't like the full-screen metro apps with limited window management capability and hidden OS "chrome" (clock). I don't like having to use touch-like gestures or memorize new keyboard shortcuts for using all the wonky new features in the OS that don't seem to provide me with any real compelling value. The Windows 8 "optimists" that try to defend the OS by listing out keyboard shortcuts or alternate ways to navigate to different areas, or ways to "hide" Metro UX are kind of missing the point. Most people that provide a laundry list of what they hate are not looking for suggestions or tutorials - the OS has already failed to direct them, and they've simply come to the conclusion that they don't like it.

The marketing churn surrounding Windows 8/Windows RT/WinRT/Metro style/Windows 8 style/etc. is just confounding and embarrassing. Maybe I'm over-reacting as a somewhat-interested software developer, but this just seems like a complete fail. I agree with other commenters that the concept of "Metro" probably doesn't mean anything to the average consumer yet, so maybe this isn't a huge deal, but the concept/style/codename of "Metro" was definitely the only bright spot in the situation, so it's sad to see that term go.

The thing I liked about oh-my-zsh when I switched from another shell was that it provided a wide variety of pre-built "plugin" scripts for customizing the shell for various environments/tasks. It's worth a try to just get a tour of some features available in zsh, and have some examples to look at. I don't know enough about either bash or zsh to list out feature-by-feature differences, but if you want a practical, real-world tour of zsh, oh-my-zsh is a good place to start.

After spending a few weeks using the Windows 8 Release Preview (on a mouse and keyboard PC), I came to the same conclusions as this article. Metro is fine for touch devices, and Windows 7 is fine, if not great for desktop PCs, but the combination of the two simply doesn't work for me. I would be much more excited about Windows 8 if I had the option to turn Metro off completely and just go back to the Windows 7 UX when I'm running on a desktop or laptop. I'm also not a fan of the "ribbonizing" of applications that, in my opinion, never needed it, and don't benefit from the change (e.g. Windows Explorer). Microsoft can point out all the research and design goodness they want about the ribbon and Metro, but ultimately, the Windows 8 experience feels very clumsy and disjointed to me, almost bad enough for me to want to skip this version.

The final straw was the "Metro overhaul" that they did for Visual Studio 2012. I'm baffled by the decisions to remove all color from the application and turn it into a big, gray, amorphous blob.