Windows 10 Thoughts
I know I bashed others for reviewing tablet related features in Windows 10 earlier. But while I still believe it is futile to complain about lack of new features in an area explicitly excluded from this early release I have to contend that I'm a bit baffled.
Having installed Windows 10 on my tablet what struck me is that it is not at all true to say that Microsoft didn't make changes aimed at tablets in Windows 10. Or rather, some of the changes directly impact tablets and go a ways to making them unusable.
For instance, you cannot launch Modern apps in the old container at all, as far as I can see. They always launch on the desktop. Why not make this configurable? Modern IE is gone, it makes sense given the previous move I guess, but the two together make for a big usability issue; the on screen keyboard. In modern apps (prior to Win10), when you touched an input field the on-screen keyboard would automatically appear and the app would resize/scroll to keep the input in view. With modern apps on the desktop this disappears.
So, even though you can backdoor your way into getting Modern IE to run still, because it launches on the desktop, it isn't functionally any better than the desktop version was on the tablet due to near zero touch support.
I won't log a bug or complain to MS at this stage because I know that this version wasn't intended for tablets. And I'm interested to see how they address this. I can think of a few ways, ranging from a virtual keyboard within the modern app, or resizing the desktop when any .Net/Modern input gets focus from a touch event. But neither approach is ideal. In either case it either works better for modern or better for desktop apps, but rarely both.
I don't mind Modern apps on the desktop, especially not with a KB/Mouse combo. But, on a touch first device I prefer my Modern apps to run as they did on Windows 8 and I prefer to have Modern IE on those devices as well. Perhaps a part of the continuum feature will be a toggle-able mode that controls where Modern apps are launched.
Having installed Windows 10 on my tablet what struck me is that it is not at all true to say that Microsoft didn't make changes aimed at tablets in Windows 10. Or rather, some of the changes directly impact tablets and go a ways to making them unusable.
For instance, you cannot launch Modern apps in the old container at all, as far as I can see. They always launch on the desktop. Why not make this configurable? Modern IE is gone, it makes sense given the previous move I guess, but the two together make for a big usability issue; the on screen keyboard. In modern apps (prior to Win10), when you touched an input field the on-screen keyboard would automatically appear and the app would resize/scroll to keep the input in view. With modern apps on the desktop this disappears.
So, even though you can backdoor your way into getting Modern IE to run still, because it launches on the desktop, it isn't functionally any better than the desktop version was on the tablet due to near zero touch support.
I won't log a bug or complain to MS at this stage because I know that this version wasn't intended for tablets. And I'm interested to see how they address this. I can think of a few ways, ranging from a virtual keyboard within the modern app, or resizing the desktop when any .Net/Modern input gets focus from a touch event. But neither approach is ideal. In either case it either works better for modern or better for desktop apps, but rarely both.
I don't mind Modern apps on the desktop, especially not with a KB/Mouse combo. But, on a touch first device I prefer my Modern apps to run as they did on Windows 8 and I prefer to have Modern IE on those devices as well. Perhaps a part of the continuum feature will be a toggle-able mode that controls where Modern apps are launched.
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