Re: Override OnNcHitTest and return HTNOWHERE not working

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Thanks. That is very good information. I had only heard that the quick-launch bar was
gone, but had not heard there was an improved replacement. I've gotten so tied up in the
current project (and a 10-day vacation) that I haven't even had time to put my new Win7
version into a VM (real soon now...) and had only heard these complaints from others.

Explorer keeps getting more and more broken, as far as I can tell. Although I never, ever
care about artist, ratings, and other crap, and I keep trying to say "Apply my styles to
every folder", but in spite of this I keep getting folders opening with these useless
misfeatures. And the old "filmstrip" display, one of the most useful displays of pictures
in XP, is gone in Vista, and is not replaced by anything useful!

Again, this largely comes from ignoring the actual community while concentrating on
12-year-olds and beginners. There are some filtering tests that Microsoft should apply
to user studies, such as "if the person is chewing gum and wearing earbuds, and has
downloaded more than 5 songs in the last month, let nothing they say influence what
professional users need". Yes, it is a generalization, but I think that's where they are
looking. They ignore the millions of us who have real work to do. Or to put in another
way, we had Vista Home, Vista Business, and Vista Ultimate, why don't they just come out
with Win7 Home, Win7 Business, Win7 Ultimate and Win7 Teeny-Bopper and put all the crap
they're coming up with in that last version? They need to look at the real needs of
Business users (which also means: no changes that require retraining unless there is a
bottom-line justifiable business-logic reason to make the change).

But hey, it *must* be "improvement" because it is "different".
joe

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:20:12 -0500, "Doug Harrison [MVP]" <dsh@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:53:55 -0400, Joseph M. Newcomer
<newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The loss of the quick-launch bar in Win7 illustrates the levels of stupidity that the UI
tems exhibit. Not ONCE did they ever ask if this is important to experienced users! I
rarely launch anything from a menu; my 20 most popular programs all have quick-launch
icons. My next 20 most popular programs are in my own custom menu ("Flounder Goodies").
The several hundred other apps are in "All Programs". But nobody said "What do
professional users need?"; instead they say "If there is a feature that a new user with
two weeks' experience doesn't use, we can get rid of it".

The Quick Launch bar was always inadequate. For over 5 years, I've used
abandonware called "jetToolbar" in undocked mode as a program launcher. It
provided a set of tabs where I could drag shortcuts. This was great, except
MS came out with funky shortcuts in Office and other programs, which old
programs couldn't resolve correctly. So I would always have to create
old-style shortcuts for those programs. Even so, it was better than Quick
Launch and Toolbars.

Enter Windows 7 and the Superbar. This is a genuine improvement. I have it
set up two rows high, so about 25 of my most used programs are always
available, and they are always in the same place on the bar. Moreover, I'm
not stealing space from the old-style Taskbar, as programs pinned to the
Superbar consolidate open windows under their program icons. In addition,
the context menus for these items are customizable by the programs, and old
programs at least get a jump-list. Finally, I have created a toolbar with
multiple folders corresponding to my old jetToolbar tabs, which I couldn't
do before without severely cutting into my taskbar space, or, if I made the
taskbar two rows high, wasting a bunch of space, because the old taskbar
mostly would not have been occupied by running programs. With the Superbar,
I still have room for 6 or so unpinned "transient" programs to display
their icons only when running, and I've yet to have more than 3 of these
oddball programs running at once, which means no scrolling or chevrons. The
system tray also offers much improved control over its icons.

So the Windows 7 Superbar is a *great* step forward, the first real
improvement to the taskbar since it was introduced in Windows 95. I
voluntarily quit using jetToolbar, which I never expected to be able to
say. That said, this being Windows, I fully expect it to someday randomize
my carefully ordered pinned programs, toolbar folder positions, and system
tray icon positions, but 10 days in, so far, so good.

However, other things remain half-realized or dumbed-down at best, the most
prominent perhaps being "Libraries", which suffer because their views are
not independent of one another, they don't respect custom views that
otherwise work in the folders they contain, and once you add a folder to a
library, you can't rename the library's symbolic link to it. Another
annoyance is the default is now to not expand the folder tree in Windows
Explorer, which would be a lot less bothersome if the breadcrumbs supported
the standard folder context menu, which they don't. And I can no longer
maximize my Music folder window to make all the non-default columns visible
without also maximizing all Explorer windows, because Explorer no longer
remembers individual window sizes.
Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm
.

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