Snapping apps to the side of the screen - Windows 8 General

I've got a question about the feature of snapping metro apps on Windows 8
I'm multitasking almost everyday and constantly switching between apps and windows starts to get annoying from time to time, so i've read about this feature, but sadly it won't function on my laptop.
Can it (in some way) be enabled on a 1280x800 display?

Related

Multitasking or lack of!

Im new to android i was using iphone before i got Galaxy S with gingerbread and i've noticed that if i don't use an app for a while, it gets automatically killed. For example i quit browser, or the music player, or basically any other app using the home button. Than if after a few minutes i try to return to them, but they have to load up again. This can get annoying, since almost every time i open a link in browser to view my twitter feed/resume music playback after a while/open a book/etc. the app has to load up everytime.this never happend on iOS i could open many and go back to them will be right where left of but why dosent this happen on my galaxy s? is something wrong with my phone or is just android.
+1
seems to me Android hasn't fully matured yet
But when I take my former 3GS in my hands, now my wife's, it feels sluggish and I'm missing things.
i was using 3gs before this and honestly even now using 3gs such amazing experience compared to android no lag or thing like that,but is there any mod or app that can fix the multitasking issues? evertime i close the browser to go play a song or watever n open the browser again it has to load the page all over again just like pretty mch all of the apps
There is nothing wrong with your phone or android. You said that you leave the phone for a while and then go back and you had to open the apps up again and they had to re-load. This is normal because when you press HOME to get out of them, they are kept in the memory for a short amount of time before your phone kills them off as it thinks you're not using them anymore.
If you were using say.. APP1 and then press the home button to go back to your homescreen and launch APP2, then press the home button again to go back to APP1, everything will still be the same.
But if you don't go back to APP1 for a long time, the OS kills it off to free up resources and stop background apps from eating your battery.
iOS doesn't have true multitasking, it simply freezes the current state of the app and you can pick it up again when you switch back to it. For example, in Android you can press the home button to switch away from MSN messenger, but it will still be running, you can still receive messages etc. However on iOS, if you press the home button to switch away from MSN messenger, it will momentarily sign you out and freeze the app state and then re-sign you back in when you go back to it.
I hope that helps
I have often heard this argument of "Android is true multitasking" vs "iPhone only freezes the current state of the app" and (even as a veteran Android user) I think iPhone's solution works better in practical terms.
Most of the time, with mobile computing, users switch between apps but don't really care if they are actually still "running" in the background or not - they just don't want to have to keep reloading applications from scratch everytime. For this, iOS is perfect as it almost seamlessly resumes an application the user last accessed several hours before exactly where they were at that time.
Because Android has to keep the whole application in memory, it quickly runs out (even with 512mb RAM) and then has to decide what application it will close. If switching between games (which often require >50mb each) then the memory manager will likely close game 1 as soon as I load game 2.
To add to this, with push notifications, applications don't really need to run all the time in the background (with regard to the example of MSN messenger above). The application can "freeze", allow push notifications to keep an eye out for incoming messages, then resume when I want to access it - perfect!
Of course, with the advent of 1gb phones (such as SGS II), perhaps there is an argument to be had for Android multitasking as there will be enough free memory to keep 10+ applications running at once. Who knows!
surrealjam said:
I have often heard this argument of "Android is true multitasking" vs "iPhone only freezes the current state of the app" and (even as a veteran Android user) I think iPhone's solution works better in practical terms.
Most of the time, with mobile computing, users switch between apps but don't really care if they are actually still "running" in the background or not - they just don't want to have to keep reloading applications from scratch everytime. For this, iOS is perfect as it almost seamlessly resumes an application the user last accessed several hours before exactly where they were at that time.
Because Android has to keep the whole application in memory, it quickly runs out (even with 512mb RAM) and then has to decide what application it will close. If switching between games (which often require >50mb each) then the memory manager will likely close game 1 as soon as I load game 2.
To add to this, with push notifications, applications don't really need to run all the time in the background (with regard to the example of MSN messenger above). The application can "freeze", allow push notifications to keep an eye out for incoming messages, then resume when I want to access it - perfect!
Of course, with the advent of 1gb phones (such as SGS II), perhaps there is an argument to be had for Android multitasking as there will be enough free memory to keep 10+ applications running at once. Who knows!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never having used IOS can you tell me that if I am visiting friends and am talking to them in a call can I then pull up their contact details and use it to switch to navigation to get me there in the middle of which I get a SMS and read it without coming out of the call or losing my place in navigation?
Tehpriest said:
Never having used IOS can you tell me that if I am visiting friends and am talking to them in a call can I then pull up their contact details and use it to switch to navigation to get me there in the middle of which I get a SMS and read it without coming out of the call or losing my place in navigation?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lolz.
But going back to the previous post about iphones being more practical, I do agree with this point. Most users of iphones are not really tech savvy and just want a phone that works. No tweaking no technical mumbo jumbo, this is where the iphone shines. This "freezing" and its ability to bring the app back to the user seamlessly does appear to more desireable than androids "true" multitasking.
Heres hoping that future generations of android phones really provide a good multitasking experience thats both functional and practical

Problems with windows 8

Just a list of some small things I've seen wrong with Win 8 so far. Go ahead and share anything you've noticed, or if you know a fix for someone else's problems!
cant rearrange tabs in chrome (the second you do, it splits off and create a new window, that cant be merged back with the original window)
never tells you how to exit a metro UI app. found out that you mouse over the bottom left corner.
all metro ui apps never seem to close for me, they are just forced into a "suspended" state. (I've been closing them through task manager)
apps dont even suspend for me. How do you suspend them? they just kept running and annoying the hell out of me -.-
They stay in the alt-tab switcher, but in reality they're just cached in memory. They don't use any CPU when suspended.
If you have touch, swiping from the right brings up the charms, which allow you to go back to the start screen, among other things. If you don't, bringing the mouse to the bottom-left corner of the screen does the same thing. Hitting the windows key on the keyboard will also bring up the start screen. What I really hate is hitting Settings on that little popup menu, and having to go all the way to the right to connect to a wifi network.
The only program I've had issues with so far is Firefox. I had to disable hardware acceleration because it kept rendering badly and freezing the system. I installed Office and Quicken, and they've been working great so far. I'm gonna be using this instead of Windows 7 for a while.
GHacks.net have a nice article on Win8 problems...
http://www.ghacks.net/2011/09/14/what-i-do-not-like-about-windows-8/
There's also alternatively a good article on the good:
http://www.ghacks.net/2011/09/14/5-things-i-love-about-windows-8/
Sleep\Hibernation Problem
Windows 8 seems to have some problems with coming out of sleep and hibernation, has anyone else noticed this yet? a hard shut down is often required to become operational again.(I did install over Windows 7 to preserve User data.)
above error has been in builds post 7800 for windows 8
disable tablet settings and it should work again
I find that an easy exit from metro and such to be the windows key. Some problems I found is that my mouse track pad on my laptop doesn't scroll along the side anymore, which is starting to get bothersome. And closing apps is awkward.
I'm annoyed by the fact that the metro ie and the desktop ie are two different things. They act as two different programs - probably because they are. Aparently the metro version will be plug in free - no flash - wtf? It kind of ruins the point of running a desktop os on a mobile device when you have to switch to the non finger friendly ui in order to get full functionality. You fail microsoft. Hopefully Mozilla will release a metro-fied version of firefox. I hate ie anyways.
I'm trying to make this more finger friendly. I've got it running very nicely on my aspire 5610 hybrid franken notebook (the motherboard came from a european version with a geforce 7600) I installed the synaptics multi touch track pad drivers but it's a bit sluggish using gestures. Two finger scroll is slow and imprecise and three finger swipe is hit and miss but it is better than nothing. I want to reach out and touch this os. Anyone know of a good way to add multi touch to a notebook? I've been hunting for a 15.4in capacitive overlay to tuck in the screen bezel but can't find one. Other than that all I see are camera based solutions that seem a little iffy...
This is Windows
I just mentioned this in another post, thought I would re-post for convenience.
alt+f4 closes metro apps and will shutdown windows. Just like it has in previous versions of windows. When you close apps you will need to window key back to the start screen but the apps wont be cached or suspended.
I have to disagree with the above, Alt+F4 does NOT close Metro apps. (at least not for me.)
Metro is most definitely a separate application, since Win+D forced it away and gave me the desktop I know and love. Since Xbox Live is coming I would guess eventually the Start screen is going to see some form of Kinect integration... (which is sad because I don't really like Kinect for more than perhaps pausing/resuming Netflix)
And as for problems, anyone tried to access a folder you have to give permission for first? I end up hanging Explorer because I can't click "Continue" on that dumb permission folder. And with the "new" control panel I can't find where to turn UAC off.

share your views on windows 8

well i installed windows 8 devloper preview and I must say that it sucks big time .
dont want to comment more as going to uninstall it ,for those who want to test it dont do it stay happy with windows 7
I disagree. Makes for a new look, boots faster, internet explorer 10 is great. Its brought a7 year old PC back to life even more so than windows 7. Just needs a little bit more work. By the time the release date rolls around it should be much
More polished
What's a signature?
I think it's rough around the edges, but that Metro is the future of computing interfaces . When you've used Metro on a touchscreen, there's *nothing* better
I disagree too.
On my W500, it flies compared to Win7. As a WP7 user, I am into the metro look and style, it works well on a tablet. I installed on a spare laptop and the experience is diminished purely by having to use that horrible horizontal scroll bar at the bottom...god I hope that is gone by beta.
I thought that pinning apps to the metro screen (do we call that the start screen now?) would be as simple as press-hold on a app/program in the apps list...but that doesnt bring up a 'pin it' pop-up. You have to navigate to the prog file in explorer...another thing that should be as intuitive as the phone but isn't.
As a replacement for the traditional desktop, metro takes some getting used to. No quick way to switch apps...you can swipe open apps in from the left, but you have to scroll through them all to get to the one you want. I would have expected a long press to bring you to a page of all open apps (same as back key on WP7?) but I can't find such a feature, yet.
And I still haven't figure out how to exit those open metro apps. Maybe I need to rely on Win8 app management, like WP7 to close when the mem gets full?
The W500 has a windows hard key on the front, and that does fast switching from metro to desktop...I think it must be more clunky if you don't have that available.
Also, when placing a cursor in a text field, I get a little graphic of a keyboard popping up, which I have to press to actually get the keyboard...I would have expected to get the keyboard straight away if I enter a text field.
And another thing on the keyboard, if I want to minimise it it, I have to go to the language button in the bottom right, where you can switch language and there is a small down arrow to click to minimise. Not exactly friendly when you want to minimise the keys to see more screen real estate.
Let us remember it is a developer preview, a shell to allow devs to see how their metro apps will work. This isn't a day-to-day OS yet, I am sure there is much more glittery goodness to follow.
But I like what I see so far.
Thumbs up
I have to agree. I love the new setup. I don't have a windows phone, but I have thought for a while that it was certainly the best layout option for smartphones.
Certainly, there are some bugs, and it's in desperate need of more apps, but that's the point. The iso wasn't really put up to be played with. It was put up so that we can make apps for it. Not to mention the thought of having a fully function (i.e. I can program on it) tablet is awesome. I'm not much for these consumption devices that are the current tablet offerings.
Especially for pre-beta software, I feel that this is a really strong showing. And I'm digging the updated VS 2011. Minor changes and all, but it's definitely a little speedier as well.
Windows 8
Performence of Winodws8 is awesome but the tablet layout on doesn't sound Good.Tablet is Tablet & PC is PC.There are alot of differences between them.You can't make tablet layout comfortable on PC that M$ shuld know.
Anyway i liked this Windows 8 Layout
twisticles said:
I disagree too.
On my W500, it flies compared to Win7. As a WP7 user, I am into the metro look and style, it works well on a tablet. I installed on a spare laptop and the experience is diminished purely by having to use that horrible horizontal scroll bar at the bottom...god I hope that is gone by beta.
I thought that pinning apps to the metro screen (do we call that the start screen now?) would be as simple as press-hold on a app/program in the apps list...but that doesnt bring up a 'pin it' pop-up. You have to navigate to the prog file in explorer...another thing that should be as intuitive as the phone but isn't.
As a replacement for the traditional desktop, metro takes some getting used to. No quick way to switch apps...you can swipe open apps in from the left, but you have to scroll through them all to get to the one you want. I would have expected a long press to bring you to a page of all open apps (same as back key on WP7?) but I can't find such a feature, yet.
And I still haven't figure out how to exit those open metro apps. Maybe I need to rely on Win8 app management, like WP7 to close when the mem gets full?
The W500 has a windows hard key on the front, and that does fast switching from metro to desktop...I think it must be more clunky if you don't have that available.
Aflso, when placing a cursor in a text field, I get a little graphic of a keyboard popping up, which I have to press to actually get the keyboard...I would have expected to get the keyboard straight away if I enter a text field.
IAnd another thing on the keyboard, if I want to minimise it it, I have to go to the language button in the bottom right, where you can switch language and there is a small down arrow to click to minimise. Not exactly friendly when you want to minimise the keys to see more screen real estate.
Let us remember it is a developer preview, a shell to allow devs to see how their metro apps will work. This isn't a day-to-day OS yet, I am sure there is much more glittery goodness to follow.
But I like what I see so far.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if this is the developer preview I cannot wait till final seriously. its just that good ❤ ? and emotes works w00t
well my comment is on devloper preview not the final build as definately it will come up with lots of stuff and changes so i mean to wait for the final release .
to get a proper hand on it
I'm quite pleased with it overall..
I like the new start screen, the ribbon is useful in explorer, I like the new task manager.. and the performance is fantastic.
With some polish and the new features they showed us (that this build doesn't have) I think Windows 8 will be in very good shape for launch.
I actually prefer the metro IE 10 to the desktop version.. it makes for a much more pleasant reading experience for reading articles on the web, etc and it's really fast.
Can't really say it sucks cause it's only in dev preview. There are more things will be done.
Love the Metro UI, Ribbons, Charms and the cloud integration.
Not to forget the performance and features/tool available for developers.
I really wonder windows 8 will bi good or bad, win 7 was very good because of it is a fix version of vista, but win 8 will be very new and must have erros, important point is to make them fix fast

[Req] Launcher that supports Windowed Apps or a BlackBerry PlayBook Launcher for N7

I posted here as a request, rather than annoy the Dev thread with a wish.
I recently bought my N7 and I can't leave it alone. My previous tablet was a BlackBerry PlayBook ("BBPB") 16GB. I still use it once in a while and I have to say that there is one thing I love about the BBPB that I think would be a great improvement Android tablets anywhere; QNX's multitasking and the BBPB's multitasking interface.
For anyone not familiar with the BBPB; here's a quick video explaining what I would love to have on the Nexus 7 or any other tablet running Android;
BBPB is heavily gesture driven; a screen swipe will wake up the device; a bottom swipe will zoom out the app and show the desktop and all opened apps at the same time. Switching from one app to the next is rather easy.
I know the "Recent App" softkey is a close approximation, but I'd love to have the actual switching back and forth experience.
Is this doable?
I'm not expecting all the apps to be active at the same time. I'm assuming that has to do with the QNX OS rather than the interface, so I'd be willing to part away from that.

Windows 8 Controller

Windows 8 Controller lets you control your Windows 8 PC as if it is a tablet. Just using your Android phone, you can experience the Windows 8 gestures like pinch, stretch, rotate, swipe, side gestures etc.
Easily scroll through web pages, pinch to zoom in your photos, cycle through open apps...
It's fast and fluid! Give it a try, you'll love it!
Please search for Windows 8 Controller in Google Play or Youtube
Some features of Windows 8 Controller includes:
- Multitouch gestures (pinch, stretch, swipe, rotate)
- Natural Scrolling Experience (Scroll horizontally and vertically as you scroll on a tablet)
- Use as a mouse (move, left/right/middle/double click, drag)
- Side gestures (Swipe from left/right/bottom/top to switch to next open app, show charms, show app options, close app respectively)
- Tiles Screen (A tiles screen including most needed shortcuts like show start, show desktop, open computer and much more)
- Power Options (Don't you think it's not so easy to shut down the Windows 8? Not anymore. Windows 8 Controller includes power shortcuts. Shut down, restart, hibernate, sleep, lock, log off your computer with one tap)
- Volume Control (Do you need an easy way to adjust the volume of your Windows 8 PC? You've got it! Windows 8 Controller has a volume controller by which you can adjust/mute/unmute your computer's volume from your phone. Also you can use the hardware volume buttons of your phone)
- Virtual Keyboard (Type text by using your Android's keyboard. Take advantage of auto-complete feature of your keyboard or use swype keyboard. You can even type text to your computer by using voice-to-text feature of your Android phone's keyboard)
- Easily go back/forward (Tilt your phone left/right to go back/forward in your favourite web browser or file explorer)
- Four (or five) fingers pinch (to reveal start screen easily)
- With auto-connect and quick-connect features, it is very easy to connect your phone to your computer and start using Windows 8 Controller.
kerimka said:
Windows 8 Controller lets you control your Windows 8 PC as if it is a tablet. Just using your Android phone, you can experience the Windows 8 gestures like pinch, stretch, rotate, swipe, side gestures etc.
Easily scroll through web pages, pinch to zoom in your photos, cycle through open apps...
It's fast and fluid! Give it a try, you'll love it!
Please search for Windows 8 Controller in Google Play or Youtube
Some features of Windows 8 Controller includes:
- Multitouch gestures (pinch, stretch, swipe, rotate)
- Natural Scrolling Experience (Scroll horizontally and vertically as you scroll on a tablet)
- Use as a mouse (move, left/right/middle/double click, drag)
- Side gestures (Swipe from left/right/bottom/top to switch to next open app, show charms, show app options, close app respectively)
- Tiles Screen (A tiles screen including most needed shortcuts like show start, show desktop, open computer and much more)
- Power Options (Don't you think it's not so easy to shut down the Windows 8? Not anymore. Windows 8 Controller includes power shortcuts. Shut down, restart, hibernate, sleep, lock, log off your computer with one tap)
- Volume Control (Do you need an easy way to adjust the volume of your Windows 8 PC? You've got it! Windows 8 Controller has a volume controller by which you can adjust/mute/unmute your computer's volume from your phone. Also you can use the hardware volume buttons of your phone)
- Virtual Keyboard (Type text by using your Android's keyboard. Take advantage of auto-complete feature of your keyboard or use swype keyboard. You can even type text to your computer by using voice-to-text feature of your Android phone's keyboard)
- Easily go back/forward (Tilt your phone left/right to go back/forward in your favourite web browser or file explorer)
- Four (or five) fingers pinch (to reveal start screen easily)
- With auto-connect and quick-connect features, it is very easy to connect your phone to your computer and start using Windows 8 Controller.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
side stepping the paid/free differences
The problem with wifi for this is that TCP sucks big time! there is so much redundancy built in for error checking that for anything like this, the slightest hiccup can just make it feel laggy and generally crap compared to using the real thing., ive tried to use similar programs for years and they all just annoy the buggery out of me after a while
Bluetooth offers a better solution but would have limited range and still isn't perfect, also bare in mind that everything under the sun uses 2.4GHz meaning a next door neighbours cordless phone can give you a headache too.
its just food for thought, perhaps you may live in a faraday cage and have no issues with interference, dropped packets and don't mind the slight lag that cant be removed, but not everyone is in such a fortunate position.
a Bluetooth option would be cool and of course a WP version for the grown ups
something's to keep in mind for the masses
Tempting ....
I just gave the Free "try it out app" a whirl.
I have an older laptop with non-multi touch touchpad so I was really excited about this app.
I have to echo the request for a bluetooth version of the app as well, there was definitely some odd lag going on ...
... But I can't be sure the lag wasn't being caused by the cascade of "This feature is only available in the paid version" messages I was getting.
Look, I think this app could be awesome, and I would happily pay for it, if I thought that it would work well enough to use daily. However, the experience on the Free app is really bad due to the restrictions. I understand not wanting to give away your work for free, but I think that the Free app paints a very unflattering picture of what the Full Version might be.
You may want to consider re-vamping the Free version, allowing for fewer restrictions or going to a 30 day trial, or just look at the code for how it displays the nag-message.
I'm not trying to be mean or rude, I think its a great idea, but when I say "cascade" of nag-messages I am being literal. There was a backlog of messages after closing the app so that for the next minute and a half I had "This feature ..." flashing on my home screen even after closing the app.
Good luck and I look forward to trying this again in a month or two!
I just gave the paid version a try and I'm not having any lag. It's very smooth. I haven't had a chance to dig too deeply into it, but so far it's very nice.
Anyway, whatever you do, don't drop the ball on this. Routinely I buy a paid app from a dev here and the development goes stagnant. There's a ton of potential for this app, please keep going!
Sent from my HTC One S using xda premium
Specter597 said:
I just gave the Free "try it out app" a whirl.
I have an older laptop with non-multi touch touchpad so I was really excited about this app.
I have to echo the request for a bluetooth version of the app as well, there was definitely some odd lag going on ...
... But I can't be sure the lag wasn't being caused by the cascade of "This feature is only available in the paid version" messages I was getting.
Look, I think this app could be awesome, and I would happily pay for it, if I thought that it would work well enough to use daily. However, the experience on the Free app is really bad due to the restrictions. I understand not wanting to give away your work for free, but I think that the Free app paints a very unflattering picture of what the Full Version might be.
You may want to consider re-vamping the Free version, allowing for fewer restrictions or going to a 30 day trial, or just look at the code for how it displays the nag-message.
I'm not trying to be mean or rude, I think its a great idea, but when I say "cascade" of nag-messages I am being literal. There was a backlog of messages after closing the app so that for the next minute and a half I had "This feature ..." flashing on my home screen even after closing the app.
Good luck and I look forward to trying this again in a month or two!
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+1
Sent from my LG-P500 using Tapatalk 2
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