Too many tabs?

[webwit]

Yes the money is into mainstream, mobile and consumer products. And lots of "professional" use involves simple computer work using whatever gray box, and doesn't need better. That leaves us, either real professional users or computer hobbyists, with nothing. We used to be the market, now we're not. Still I think there is lots to be won for a brand which recognizes that as a new market. If you don't want to be like Dell or HP but also don't want to be like Apple either, but want to produce top of the line pro hardware/software, I'd pay for that. And a whole market of pro users with me. Won't be as big as Apple or Samsung, but not all companies can be like that. Still the margins would be better than selling plain gray boxes.

[7bit]

I'd be fine with a granite grey monitor case.

I don't care about the monitor width in the office, as long as it is tall enough, but at home I don't want the monitor to cover my view out of the window too much.

[JBert]

I believe Eizo still makes monitors in most display ratios using IPS or PVA, it's just that they cost you 4 to 10 times more. If the site is slow, use a local one, they seem to have domains in most European countries.

It's an investment, but then again so are keyboards...

[kint]

... Still I think there is lots to be won for a brand which recognizes that as a new market. If you don't want to be like Dell or HP but also don't want to be like Apple either, but want to produce top of the line pro hardware/software, I'd pay for that. ...

Ain't that the business model of Thinkpads and Dells precision line? Sure with quadro and fire pro graphics those have a certain clientele in mind, yet still they are clearly aimed at professionals. What top of the line pro hardware are you looking for (out of curiosity) ?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I don't know about webwit, but I'd like to have a usable amount of vertical screen space without the bulk of a big widescreen laptop, eyestrain-inducing high DPI (though it seems to be my hands that are packing up, not my eyes), or a screen that's only usable at 200% DPI mixed with the Windows world's awful failure to understand DPI.

Netbooks are funny — someone thought that abusing everyone with 768 px high panels wasn't cruel enough (I was running 1024×768 on my 486 for goodness sake, and 800×600 in 16-bit colour) so they figured what everyone needed was a 600 px high display to guarantee that nothing actually fits on it, while Microsoft have introduced us to the ribbon, which is like a toolbar except it wastes a load of space, plus the new taskbar is twice as tall, and window decorations are getting fatter and fatter.

Adobe Reader preferences on a netbook:



It's actually a sizeable, scrollable window, but they made a complete hash out of it in that way only Adobe can:



Note that this is Windows 7 Starter, a cynical product intended for third-world countries where you're banned from changing the wallpaper (and MS even intended to restrict the number of open programs), yet this is being sold on a netbook in the West! Nothing reminds you how much of a load of Scrooges Microsoft are that they could produce a product like this. They realise they they're gouging most of the world, so they relent for poor countries but then cripple the OS, to stop anyone buying Windows at a fair price. And I hate that pathetic shade of blue you're stuck with without Aero — at least with unsigned themes you can replace it. I use an unsigned theme in Windows 8 just to get white title bar text, as they removed that option too.

[mr_a500]

I never understood why Microsoft insisted on wasting so much vertical space, with stupidly thick toolbars, tltlebars and menus - and putting menus in every window. Back when I was forced to use Windows for work (late 90's/early 00's), I always put the Start menu on the left and arranged toolbars vertically rather than horizontal - keeping only one toolbar at top. The annoying thing is that they would revert to default after a random amount of time and I'd have to redo all my settings.

I was disturbed when I saw that Linux distros (with Gnome especially) started copying this stupid waste of vertical space - with thick toobars everywhere, big fonts and blank unused space all over the place.

Mac OSX is far from perfect, but at least there isn't too much unnecessary wasted vertical space. (not counting the stupidly placed Dock at the bottom - I keep mine on the left)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I have the taskbar on the left of my 1024×768 laptop at work, but it's still a bit cramped, especially with websites. Normally I have it at the top, which confuses a lot of programs as apparently the "window manager" in Windows doesn't have any sort of mandatory (with CW_FORCE_POSITION to override) or opt-in validation of window bounds to keep them on-screen and not partially obscured by top taskbar¹; some programs "crawl" — every time you re-open them, they're one taskbar height further up the screen until the title bar disappears under the taskbar at the top. Nothing I've written ever does that, so I'm confused as to how people are screwing that up.

¹ For resizable windows, clicking the border shrinks the window such that around 1/3 of the title bar is now visible (so you can now grab the window and move it into view), but not fixed size windows, where you have to hope alt+space, M works.

[mr_a500]

Oh yes, I remember the crawling disappearing window problem.

That's one thing that most operating systems screw up - they appear to be configurable, but if you choose anything but the default the odds are that something will screw up because it hasn't been properly tested.

Check out the space with 2880x1800 on my 15" MacBook:

ishot-1.jpg

(converted to low quality jpg because the png was too big)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

That's 18.5" when reduced to fit my 20.1" display. It would be a stretch to deal with that at 15", although I see you've already put up the browser text size to compensate (or the browser full-page zoom, as most sites break if you enlarge the text). Mac OS X also helps by having a much larger menu and control font than Windows, so you can reduce the pixel density further before blood starts coming out of your eyes.

[7bit]

...
I was disturbed when I saw that Linux distros (with Gnome especially) started copying this stupid waste of vertical space - with thick toobars everywhere, big fonts and blank unused space all over the place.

Mac OSX is far from perfect, but at least there isn't too much unnecessary wasted vertical space. (not counting the stupidly placed Dock at the bottom - I keep mine on the left)

You should not use Kde or Gnome. There are a zillion of better window managers available, like Windowmaker.

[kint]

I can spot myself in that pic! Would be too cramped for my feel though, since I need those:

...You should not use Kde or Gnome. There are a zillion of better window managers available, like Windowmaker.

Will take a look at it, thanks for mentioning.

[damorgue]

Lol, I didn't think there were many people with the same trait. I had 3k tabs at one point but managed to get them down to about half. I made this thing a while back wishing that someone would make it. It is sort of a combination of a vertical and horizontal bar. http://i.imgur.com/OM5okx7.jpg

Edit: People ask me why and I say why not? Why use bookmarks? Tabs are not all loaded, and they save history, forms and states unlike bookmarks.

[Muirium]

Check out the space with 2880x1800 on my 15" MacBook:

ishot-1.jpg

(converted to low quality jpg because the png was too big)

How did you get OS X to render at native resolution? "Best for retina" is perfectly fine for my needs, but I like to know a trick when I see it!

[mr_a500]

There's a little utility called RDM (direct download link) that allows you to select resolution from the menubar. I wanted something faster than selecting a menu item though, so I took the command line program out of RDM (SetResX) to run in an Applescript on keypress with Quicksilver. When I press the key sequence (curly "a" plus "a with a hat" - weirdo beam spring keys ), it does "SetResX -w 2880 -h 1800 -s 1 -b 32". Another key sequence sets it back to normal with "SetResX -w 1920 -h 1200 -s 2 -b 32".

[Muirium]

Ah, of course. I remember using SetResX by AppleScript (and Quicksilver!) back on my CRT and G4. Never realised it would work with modern retina Macs. I'm off to grab the binary, thanks!

Edit: yes most amusing!

Here's the forum spy in full resolution. And I have it set to large text, too:

Screen Shot 2013-12-02 at 07.28.19 pm.png (895.16 KiB) Viewed 3473 times

Meanwhile Daring Fireball looks much the same as usual.

Screen Shot 2013-12-02 at 07.27.47 pm.png (323.74 KiB) Viewed 3473 times

11 point Verdana. Pfft.

I'll definitely try this for Celestia, Stellarium and a bit of photo editing though. Great tip.

[mr_a500]

Some programs I have look much nicer or work better in native 2880x1800 - such as Celestia, SuperTuxKart, Stellarium, Overgrowth, Google Earth and some image viewers. So even though I can't keep it at 2880x1800 (because of the eye-killing small text), I still like being able to switch it to that resolution when I use those programs.

[Findecanor]

You should not use Kde or Gnome. There are a zillion of better window managers available, like Windowmaker.

I use WindowMaker with Gnome 2 and that works well. I don't know if you can use another window manager with Gnome 3 than the built-in.

I have the Dock, a pinned Workspace menu and a pinned Window menu at the right side of the screen. That's 64 pixels of width. Part of the menus are outside the screen, but they pop back in if I place the mouse pointer over them and on the right screen edge.

I usually browse the web with two windows side by side. On my 1920×1080 screen, each window is 900 pixels wide, but most web sites (including this one) are made for 1024 width, so icons on the right edge of the web page sometimes get a bit annoying. If I did not have the dock, the windows could have been a little bit wider.

[mr_a500]

I'll definitely try this for Celestia, Stellarium and a bit of photo editing though. Great tip.

You use Celestia? I hope you got all the best high-res addons:
(off topic thread polluting screenshots follow )







(aw damn it - the image host converted png to blurry jpg)

[Muirium]

Oooh! Reminds me of Kerbal, only nicer looking and you don't have to build and launch your own ship! A list of what you have in mind would be most appreciated. I've only used Celestia the same way as Stellarium so far: to observe.

[7bit]

You should not use Kde or Gnome. There are a zillion of better window managers available, like Windowmaker.

I use WindowMaker with Gnome 2 and that works well. I don't know if you can use another window manager with Gnome 3 than the built-in.

I have the Dock, a pinned Workspace menu and a pinned Window menu at the right side of the screen. That's 64 pixels of width. Part of the menus are outside the screen, but they pop back in if I place the mouse pointer over them and on the right screen edge.

I usually browse the web with two windows side by side. On my 1920×1080 screen, each window is 900 pixels wide, but most web sites (including this one) are made for 1024 width, so icons on the right edge of the web page sometimes get a bit annoying. If I did not have the dock, the windows could have been a little bit wider.

In GNU/Linux there is no such thing as a buit in windowmanager. I have no problem to run Gnome or KDE programs from MWM or TWM if it must be.

Here is how it looks:

[scottc]

I use WindowMaker with Gnome 2 and that works well. I don't know if you can use another window manager with Gnome 3 than the built-in.

You can in the fallback mode, but not the swishy, fancily-animated "GNOME Shell" session. The fallback mode is basically a less customisable, GTK3 version of GNOME 2, with some functionality removed.

I mostly use i3 these days since I don't really like any of the desktop environments.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we're off-topic. Sorry.

[7bit]

Sorry, but my Windomaker can also play stupid tricks, but seriously who wants animations, like 3D-flipping when iconify a window etc.


PS: This is in the off-topic section, so if you are not posting off-topic stuff here, you get banned!

[mr_a500]

Here is how it looks:

Look at all that wasted vertical space.

Oooh! Reminds me of Kerbal, only nicer looking and you don't have to build and launch your own ship! A list of what you have in mind would be most appreciated. I've only used Celestia the same way as Stellarium so far: to observe.

First, you definitely have to get this 2001 addon. It's brilliant - unbelievable detail, right down to the instructions for how to use the zero gravity toilet - inside the Aries spacecraft. (Who would even think to go inside that model? ...well I did, but I was bored) There are scripts that run through the main scenes of the movie.

Also get real life spacecraft models from here and lots of textures from the Celestia Motherlode. I've got about 20Gb of addons.

If you're interested, I'll even give you my plist, which has all the locations I've saved. (camera angle, speed, time)

[scottc]

Sorry, but my Windomaker can also play stupid tricks, but seriously who wants animations, like 3D-flipping when iconify a window etc.


PS: This is in the off-topic section, so if you are not posting off-topic stuff here, you get banned!

You don't understand, these 3D animated desktop cubes and wobbly windows are integral to my workflow! I can't work without them!

[7bit]

That's why there are way more than one choice!


I bet there are more different windowmanagers available for X11-based systems than you can have configurations for Windows or Apple together!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I have all the animations off — I dislike waiting for the computer to dither about animating things. I know what I want, so gimmeh!! I'd be more tempted to leave animations on if they could be speeded up, but MS still haven't figured out vsync to prevent horrible tearing with their screen fade animations. That's a schoolboy error. I guess OS X has an animation speed setting somewhere — you can't even turn animations off on that.

Not sure about editing essentially vector graphics in the GIMP — isn't that what Inkscape is for? Vector graphics are open source graphics, after all. (Although my keyboard layout images are kinda sucky, each one contains a copy of every previous image as a hidden layer, so you can download a recent one and play about with it. The down side is that you have to know which one I uploaded the most recently :-)

[Muirium]

I bet there are more different windowmanagers available for X11-based systems than you can have configurations for Windows or Apple together!

I don't doubt that for a moment. What draws some of us, drives the rest of us away…

[scottc]

I bet there are more different windowmanagers available for X11-based systems than you can have configurations for Windows or Apple together!

I don't doubt that for a moment. What draws some of us, drives the rest of us away…

But then you can install X11 in Mac OSX and then...

[7bit]

...
Not sure about editing essentially vector graphics in the GIMP — isn't that what Inkscape is for? Vector graphics are open source graphics, after all. (Although my keyboard layout images are kinda sucky, each one contains a copy of every previous image as a hidden layer, so you can download a recent one and play about with it. The down side is that you have to know which one I uploaded the most recently

If you speak of my screen shot:

I use GIMP to mark key caps when I try out which keys I need from which kit, or sometimes only as an image viewer. I generate them with LaTeX and turn them into PNGs with ImageMagick, all done by scripts.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

We do of course now have ijprest's editor, but that doesn't yet have the required SVG export for the wiki. (More frustratingly, I'm not sure what to do about fonts if/when we get SVG generation. For single keycap images I duplicate the text layer, hide the original layer and convert the duplicate layer's text to SVG outlines so that it's not dependent on any font being installed on the DT webserver.)