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Beside the nostalgic value, this hidden button has a very practical use when you use two monitors. I tend to have a window full-screened on each monitor. To clo
by b15h0p 10y ago
Beside the nostalgic value, this hidden button has a very practical use when you use two monitors. I tend to have a window full-screened on each monitor. To close the window on the right monitor, I just mash my mouse pointer to the upper right corner (without having to aim precisely) and click. The pointer will "stick" to the upper right hand corner of the screen.
That is not possible for the window on the left monitor, because there is something to the right (the other monitor), thus, the pointer will not "stick" and it is harder to close the window (you have to actually aim).
Enter the "invisible button": For windows on the left monitor, just mash the mouse into the upper left corner and double click. No aiming necessary.
In Windows 10, most apps still have this button. But it seems to be tied to using the classic Win32 APIs or something. Modern "Metro" apps like the calculator do not have this invisible button any more. Let's hope that that style never catches on ...
- IIAOPSW 10y agoAh the classic "everything is important to someones workflow" https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- b15h0p 10y agoExactly, this is the important lesson here: Every single little feature that you introduce will be used by someone and you either have to support it forever (the classic Microsoft-strategy) or take it out and risk the anger of a part of your users. Who will probably complain very loudly.
- akerro 10y agoor will just stop upgrading the software and reopen bugs that were closed in future versions. I do it. I still use KeePassX 1 because it's much more user friendly for me and provides more settings.
- BillinghamJ 10y agoThe main problem is that the longer you support it, the more ingrained it gets into the minds of the users. So the pain and anger of taking it away increases as it is supported longer. Everything will have to be taken away eventually, so Microsoft's approach of trying to support things forever is fundamentally flawed. They do seem to have made a decent shift away from that now though, thankfully.
- pjmlp 10y agoAnd you see the crowds getting their torches against UWP, while I see it how .NET should have been done in 2000 (Ext-VOS). https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dsyme/2012/07/05/more-c-net-generics-research-project-history-the-msr-white-paper-from-mid-1999/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dsyme/2012/07/05/more-c-net...
- Piskvorrr 10y agoShift+Del and Ctrl+Insert are still there, even though Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V have been the "official" keybindings for two decades now.
- retox 10y agoSee also: the recent removal of backspace to go back a page in Chrome And Firefox. Luckily I have a 4 button mouse with dedicated back/forward buttons or I would be mad as hell.
- amluto 10y agoGood riddance. The problem with backspace is that it means "delete one character" unless you managed to unfocus a text box, in which case it means "lose the whole form and maybe hose the whole application flow". It was actively harmful.
- JBiserkov 10y agoAs the joke goes: "The person who invented 'press backspace to go back' is still on the run".
- Senji 10y agoWhat you should be asking yourself is why don't forms behave as if the browser had the Lazarus extension (for firefox and chrome) already installed. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lazarus-form-recovery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lazarus-form-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lazarus-form-recovery/loljledaigphbcpfhfmgopdkppkifgno?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lazarus-form-recov...
- aidenn0 10y agoThe default behavior in firefox on linux is to go to a page when you middle-click anywhere that isn't a text box. This took me a while to figure out when I was trying to paste and missed the text-box. I never noticed until I got a linux laptop because missing textboxes on my desktop is a rare occurrence, but with a trackpad I miss all the time.
- MaulingMonkey 10y agoẄ̪͓́̐ͣ̔̏͜h̟͍̩̻͔̼̄ė͈̙̗ͪͩ͌ͫ̚r͉͈̥̎ͅe̥̥̻̹͓̘̋̏͆̓̽͢ ̸͖̞͚̖̒̉̈ͥ̌̚ͅo̵̬ͪ̌h͐ͧ̀͒͑̓ͨ ̢̖̜͙̺̺̏w̱̺͙͖̖̤ͤ͂̊̊ͨ͌̽ͅh͔̪̱̝̣̰̽ͮͩͧ̈́͢ḙ͉͓͉̖̩̰̋̀̽̚r͛͌҉̫̤̘͚e̐̄ͤ͆̓ͣͅ ̑̒̍̓̑͘h̫̤̭̥̜̦̪͐̋̏̚a̡s̞̝̳̅ͥ ̨m̡̻̮̞̗̥͖ͩy͚̘͖ͅ ҉̫̱͇b͙̥̠͈̂́͐ͮâ̦̗̙͙̲̦̹̕cͫ҉̘͕̹̖k̟̠s͔͌͛ͦp̲̝a̷̞̫͓̰̫̫̍̏ͣͦͨͩͅc͕̩ͤ̀ę͍̯͈̂̇̉̏̊͂ͭ ̯̠̼̹̭́ǵ̞̱ơ̞͙͓̱̩̳̺̑̆̆ͣͭ͑͆n͏̫̲͙͔̟̝͖ẹ͈̭͚ͯ̄̕ͅ?̸̒!̬̱͎̓͂ͅ?̳̰̭̫̽̈̔ͧ̚͞ͅ . The info popup to inform me that Alt+Left is an alternative was a nice touch, though. I'm still adjusting...
- tajen 10y agoExcept this person has a very straightforward workaround: Use the X button. Win95 could have removed the system menu when they replaced it with an icon of the application, but so many programs were fiddling with the frame drawing that some probably couldn't be closed without the system menu. > "Up and down" made sense. "Line and box"? Windows 95 brought a lot of advantages, but we lost so much of the little touches along the way. This is a typical migration problem: The line and box icons represent the Taskbar and the full screen window, so they actually make much more sense than Up and Down arrows, but this user still hasn't adapted. Hard to blame him: With Aero, windows don't look like rectangles anymore and bubbles would better represent the Taskbar than a line. For the same historical reason he likes double clicking for powerful actions, except click vs double-click doesn't have any logic or consistency anymore, mostly since we introduced the Web and the single click. <s>No click is even enough to upgrade to Windows 10 </s>. Heck, my parents keep double-clicking everywhere in Windows, including in web pages. Submitting forms twice is so much a problem in companies that jQuery plugins exist to discard the second click on links and buttons. Consistency and user migration path are hard problems. It's necessary to remove features sometimes.
- stuaxo 10y agoIt also contains options all the window options accessible by keyboard.
- aoloe 10y agoI guess that the button is indeed there to make it possible to use alt+space. It's probably not meant to be clicked. That's why it is invisible. Personally, I still use alt-space when somebody has managed to move a window out of the screen: you can still activate it, but you cannot see it. At least practical for me, who never uses Windows, but gets called when people are stuck.
- Senji 10y agoYou can use win+tab also. Or rightclick on the taskbar and move. It works for windows that are out of the screen as well.
- Guyag 10y agoSee Fitts'* law [1]. Buttons at the corners you describe can be modelled as having infinite width, making them much easier to aim for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
- dredmorbius 10y agoA year or two back, ranting at some website's idiotic abuse of Fitts's law[1], and actually read the background. Fitts, Paul M. (June 1954). "The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement". Journal of Experimental Psychology. 47 (6): 381–391. doi:10.1037/h0055392. PMID 13174710. * * * This shit dates from the nineteen-fucking-fifties. * * * And people fuck it up all the time. This is why we cannot have nice things. ________________________________ Notes: 1. I will be that guy and note you misspelled it. I've done that plenty myself.
- dghf 10y agoIs the form with apostrophe 's' definitively the only correct version? If so, do you have a link? In general, opinion seems to be divided as to whether the possessive form of a singular noun ending in 's' takes an apostrophe 's' or just an apostrophe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Singular_nouns_ending_with_an_.22s.22_or_.22z.22_sound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Singular_nouns_endi...
- tajen 10y agoWhen I have two screens, I disalign them so that the mouse has a 10px corner on the top right of the left screen. If I go to the top with my mouse, then to the right, it will always be stuck in the corner so I can click Close.
- Gracana 10y agoWindows 10 solves this by blocking the cursor from crossing over to the other screen at the corners. I find it works really well.
- Already__Taken 10y agoWindows 8 and 10 stick the mouse into the corner. It's a guide to help grab the silly corner hot bars from win 8 but win10 keeps the stick behavior. You have to hit the top first then the side and it'll stick.
- Lukas_Skywalker 10y agoI think to remember a particular version of Windows (7?) where the close button was a little offset from the right. The click target extended right to the edge of the window though, so your tactic still worked.
- Senji 10y agoThat doesn't seem to be an invisible button. Just the icon of the app in the title bar. It opens the context menu for the titlebar if you click it.