Reply to post: Re: Meeeh

Re: Meeeh

>>"H4rm0ny, I really can't tell whether that third paragraph is a joke or not, because nobody with half a brain could possibly hold that view."

I make a joke here about one day a year. Today is not that day.

>>"Swipe down - will that scroll? Will it close and lose my work? Minimise and keep my work? How do I tell what will happen before it happens?"

You can tell because it does the same thing as last time, and every time. Might as well ask how you would know what the little flat line is supposed to do if you've never clicked on it before. Swipe down close, swipe from left to switch between apps. Or just Alt+Tab if using a keyboard. Very easy, no need to clutter screen with window bars or icons - more screen real estate.

>>"Gestures cannot be labelled, and as they depend on context they are completely undiscoverable."

There are four directions you can swipe. That's pretty easy and once learned, you know. There are a dozen things just as unknown to you about your current OS but which you assume are obvious because you've grown used to them. Where is the tooltip on your double-click?

>>"The "half dozen" programs I commonly use pop up in the first level of the Windows 7 Start menu."

Start Screen holds five or more times that without having to resort to nesting or scrolling. Thus is better for anyone who uses forty or less programs regularly.

>>"The hundred or so programs that I don't use very often but still need to have show in a hierarchical menu structure that lets me put "like with like"."

They are still easily findable with the Start Screen either by scrolling down to the full list or simply typing. It is far better to optimize for the 90% of the time than the 10% of the time, so all those "hundred" programs (seriously) aren't cluttering up your normal usage. I'm a power user and I use about twenty programs routinely, and that's significantly more than most people. So why make people hunt for them in a menu with a small target area?

>>"I can already hit "windows" then type to search. Guess what - it simply doesn't work"

It does. I do it all day long. Win key, "ex" and return, I'm in Excel. Four key strokes quickly entered in less time than it would take to reach the mouse.

>>"How do you search for something when you do not know what it's called?"

In that minority case, you scroll down to the full list of programs and read.