Windows 8 and the lost configuration options

Windows 8, or Mountain Lion as I’m starting to think of it, seems to have lost some config options.

I noticed when I went to move windows around with the mouse that I’d end up grabbing the top edge and resizing it. It turns out it wasn’t my mouse skills at fault, there’s a bloody great border around the window now. In the olden days of Windows 7 and XP you could change these settings, but now you need to go to the registry.

 

In case you want to:

Run regedit,

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/WindowsMetrics

PaddedBorderWidth change from default to 0 (My default was -60)

 

I’ve now regained some of the wasted space and no longer accidentally resize the window when I go to move it.

 

Visual Studio 2012 RTM. Not quite there yet.

I’ve just migrated to Windows 8 RTM (A little on that later) and decided initially to only install Visual Studio 2012 rather than both 2010 and 2012. This has not worked out.

I use a lot of Visual Studio extensions, and it seems the one I rely on most heavily (after Resharper *heart*) is “Productivity Power Tools” which currently isn’t available in 2012.

If you haven’t used it, the most invaluable feature involves overlaying useful information onto the editor scroll bar. If you do a Ctrl+F find, small orange dots appear in the scroll bar showing the position of each of the occurrences of that entry. It seems I really can’t live without that.

The other thing I’m struggling with in 2012 is the colour scheme. It fits in with Microsoft’s new look, and I don’t like it. I’ve been using Office 2013 as well and don’t like that either.

Some of it will be familiarity, and I imagine will improve. Right now however I find my eyes hunting, desperately seeking visual cues from where they can start looking for the feature I want. And on that search they are assailed by brash, retro, iconography, each one, all sharp edges, hurts.

Windows 8 however I’m quite enjoying. The RTM release is good, a solid step up from the CP release and a bit of a “Phew” moment if I’m honest. Some bits of software didn’t work, but were under active development, AVG anti virus for example. So while it was annoying I couldn’t use it under CP, I knew it would be fixed. Some games however didn’t work, and they don’t tend to get patched after a certain age. GTA IV wouldn’t work for me under CP, it works under RTM, so that’s positive.

It’s worth upgrading to purely for the speed at which it starts and stops. Reboots fast, start up from sleep is instant. These are significant to me.

Look and feel wise, it works. Almost. While it reboots quicker, It takes me longer to get to the restart option than it used to. I do however avoid anything that uses the “Formerly known as Metro” mode of operation. I’ll choose how many app’s I can see at once thanks. I’m not a sufferer of ADHD, so I don’t need MS enforcing artificial blinkers on my experience.