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Well, working on a larger monitor eventually weans you of the obsessive need to full screen everything. Once you get used to working with documents scattered a

Well, working on a larger monitor eventually weans you of the obsessive need to full screen everything. Once you get used to working with documents scattered all over, and clicking on them to move them to the front and so forth, it becomes a more productive way of working. I'm not sure what it was about Windows that drove everyone to the full screen way of doing things. I think possibly the thing is that all windows look so similar on Windows that there was never really any visual clue about where the window you wanted had gotten to, so it made doing that style of navigation much harder. I don't think the scaling is particularly good in Win 7. From memory it used to be better. I recently had a crack at using it, and I played around with different resolutions. Every single resolution that I tried other than the native one was blurry. Some were only a little bit blurry, but some were very blurry. I remember it being better than that (maybe I've just gotten fussier). I ended up in the native (highest) resolution because anything else was too horrible.

br1 16y ago
Don't change the resolution, only the dpi settings, say, frm 96 to 120.
Groxx 16y ago
>I'm not sure what it was about Windows that drove everyone to the full screen way of doing things For myself, it's because so many applications have massive amounts of chrome and tiny vertical scrolling content areas. Height is necessary. Add to that that you can drag things above / below the borders of your screen, and unnecessary borders on everything, and no shadows to show "height", and your desktop becomes a cluttered, disorganized mess with too much scrolling in almost no time. 7 fixes a lot of that. You can drag things to the top of the screen to maximize, and pull away to un-maximize. Height via transparency and shadows. And a regression to thicker-than-ever borders :\ I guess you can't have it all.
- nuxi 16y ago
  > And a regression to thicker-than-ever borders :\ I guess you can't have it all. You can, actually - the border thickness can be adjusted in the "Window color and appearance" dialog. The setting is called "Border padding" or something like that. And before you ask - yes, it works in Aero too (dialog says otherwise).
  - Groxx 16y ago
    Cooooool... /me sets to 0 Thanks! That's much better. Odd that one thing calls it "Window Color and Appearance" yet the control panel calls it "Window Color and Metrics"... the latter is more accurate, but wagh inconsistency.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  My experience with 7 was that it made the clutter worse, not better, especially in the Microsoft Office programs (not part of 7 I know, but first time I'd used the most recent one coincided with the first use of 7. But I'm thinking of things like how the buttons and toolbars are laid out in the UI rather than drop shadows. Didn't know that about dragging stuff to the top of the screen to maximise, that's a good tip, thanks. How does Win 7 perform with multiple monitors? Good? Bad? No change?
  - Groxx 16y ago
    Pretty well (I use two for work). The drag to top & bottom, and Windows + arrow keys (try it if you haven't) make for some pretty fast screen organization. You can also resize vertically to the top or bottom of the screen, and you'll make the window fill height but not width. Not that many applications have a rational layout if you drag them across two monitors' worth of width, or restrict them to a half-screen. Especially Microsoft applications. But omg is it nice to have full-width code from two sources side-by-side... it almost makes Visual Studio bearable (though I'd vastly prefer being able to rip windows out of VS). I still keep a decent programmer's text editor handy for quick changes and better side-by-side comparisons, but it's not too bad.
  - rodh257 16y ago
    I use 6 at home - it's awesome. Shortcut keys to move monitors around are great, dragging and snapping etc are awesome. Only thing missing is the multiple monitor taskbars which Ultramon provides for a fee.
blinkingled 16y ago
As br1 pointed out - scaling DPI is what Windows does and OSX doesn't - not resolution as you appear to have tested with. No LCD is going to look good at non-native resolution - what you want to do is use the native res of the display and up the DPI in Windows to 120%. Works unquestionably well for most apps if you use XP Style scaling.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  Well, that sounds great, but how do I do that?
  - recoiledsnake 16y ago
    http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Make-the-text-on-your-screen-larger-or-smaller http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Make-the-text-on...
    - Stormbringer 16y ago
      That's just making the text bigger, thanks but I already know how to do this. The other guys were talking about "scaling the DPI". Are they really the same thing? In which case, why on earth wouldn't they just say "make the text bigger"?
Raphael 16y ago
CRT monitors supported a range of resolutions, whereas LCDs are fixed in resolution.
Tycho 16y ago
I actually fear that the introduction of this 'full screen apps' feature is going to cause the death windowed usage on the Mac as well. The number of people I've wanted to slap for saying 'what's the point of having a big screen if you can't maximize your windows??'

br1 16y ago

Don't change the resolution, only the dpi settings, say, frm 96 to 120.

Groxx 16y ago

>I'm not sure what it was about Windows that drove everyone to the full screen way of doing things For myself, it's because so many applications have massive amounts of chrome and tiny vertical scrolling content areas. Height is necessary. Add to that that you can drag things above / below the borders of your screen, and unnecessary borders on everything, and no shadows to show "height", and your desktop becomes a cluttered, disorganized mess with too much scrolling in almost no time. 7 fixes a lot of that. You can drag things to the top of the screen to maximize, and pull away to un-maximize. Height via transparency and shadows. And a regression to thicker-than-ever borders :\ I guess you can't have it all.

nuxi 16y ago
> And a regression to thicker-than-ever borders :\ I guess you can't have it all. You can, actually - the border thickness can be adjusted in the "Window color and appearance" dialog. The setting is called "Border padding" or something like that. And before you ask - yes, it works in Aero too (dialog says otherwise).
- Groxx 16y ago
  Cooooool... /me sets to 0 Thanks! That's much better. Odd that one thing calls it "Window Color and Appearance" yet the control panel calls it "Window Color and Metrics"... the latter is more accurate, but wagh inconsistency.
Stormbringer 16y ago
My experience with 7 was that it made the clutter worse, not better, especially in the Microsoft Office programs (not part of 7 I know, but first time I'd used the most recent one coincided with the first use of 7. But I'm thinking of things like how the buttons and toolbars are laid out in the UI rather than drop shadows. Didn't know that about dragging stuff to the top of the screen to maximise, that's a good tip, thanks. How does Win 7 perform with multiple monitors? Good? Bad? No change?
- Groxx 16y ago
  Pretty well (I use two for work). The drag to top & bottom, and Windows + arrow keys (try it if you haven't) make for some pretty fast screen organization. You can also resize vertically to the top or bottom of the screen, and you'll make the window fill height but not width. Not that many applications have a rational layout if you drag them across two monitors' worth of width, or restrict them to a half-screen. Especially Microsoft applications. But omg is it nice to have full-width code from two sources side-by-side... it almost makes Visual Studio bearable (though I'd vastly prefer being able to rip windows out of VS). I still keep a decent programmer's text editor handy for quick changes and better side-by-side comparisons, but it's not too bad.
- rodh257 16y ago
  I use 6 at home - it's awesome. Shortcut keys to move monitors around are great, dragging and snapping etc are awesome. Only thing missing is the multiple monitor taskbars which Ultramon provides for a fee.

blinkingled 16y ago

As br1 pointed out - scaling DPI is what Windows does and OSX doesn't - not resolution as you appear to have tested with. No LCD is going to look good at non-native resolution - what you want to do is use the native res of the display and up the DPI in Windows to 120%. Works unquestionably well for most apps if you use XP Style scaling.

Stormbringer 16y ago
Well, that sounds great, but how do I do that?
- recoiledsnake 16y ago
  http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Make-the-text-on-your-screen-larger-or-smaller http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Make-the-text-on...
  - Stormbringer 16y ago
    That's just making the text bigger, thanks but I already know how to do this. The other guys were talking about "scaling the DPI". Are they really the same thing? In which case, why on earth wouldn't they just say "make the text bigger"?

Raphael 16y ago

CRT monitors supported a range of resolutions, whereas LCDs are fixed in resolution.

Tycho 16y ago

I actually fear that the introduction of this 'full screen apps' feature is going to cause the death windowed usage on the Mac as well. The number of people I've wanted to slap for saying 'what's the point of having a big screen if you can't maximize your windows??'