The woes of Windows 8 Mail begin with the standardized login screen for all those Microsoft-metro apps.

This screen which insists on Microsoft credentials block some degree of my progress. Previously, I don’t think Live Mail needed any special accounts to the application. This has something to do with the new sync feature of Windows 8, where you can log in anywhere and everything will just be like it is at home. The screen prompts:

Sing in with a Microsoft account
Enter the Microsoft account you want to use with Mail, Calendar, People and Messaging.

Incidentally, I have an account I never use save for Live Messenger once in a blue moon. I don’t know what that password is by memory either since I use the wonderful LastPass – only the best security for email accounts, right? I open up the LastPass site editor via the vault and bring forth the details, and then copy right password right out like I do for other non-webapp apps on Windows.

Then back on the log in screen for Windows 8 Mail, I enter my Microsoft account username, which is of course is my email address, and then I go to the password box ready to paste in my very long and secure password. Except it does not paste. So I assume I waited too long and maybe it was cleared by LastPass for security reasons. I leave the metro side and copy the password again, and return, and try again. No difference.

It turns out that Windows 8 will keep the clipboard separate between the Windows 8 desktop and the Metro-interface. You know, to be secure and all – to prevent mischievous things from happening.

That’s ridiculous. In order to the use the Mail application on Windows 8, I need to have an intentionally short and memorable password just so I can log in a sync service I do not really intend on using. That’s absolutely unacceptable.

To change the tabs setting go to: Settings > Preferences > Language Menu/Tab Settings. Then on the right, you can set a global default for tabs or spaces, and the number of spaces per tab. You can additionally specify customized tabs/spaces settings for each language supported with the menu above.

Once again, happy tabbing.

Buttons, Buttons, Buttons!

I’m a power user. I use shortcuts as much as possible because they save time and relatively easy to remember. Actually, I can’t remember what shortcuts I use other than copy, cutting and pasting in Explorer. What else is there? There is no other purpose than to move files around either by copy or simply moving. I suppose it’s useful for opening files up too, but that doesn’t require any shortcuts.

I showed my mom today the new UI in Windows 8 for Explorer. She has used Office 2007 and Office 2010 at home, but uses 2003 at work. Here’s what she said:

Well, I don’t know what any of that means.

She can figure out how to move her pictures on her own, but only as long as that little pop up comes up when you plug in a USB camera. She gets confused with folders but generally manages well. When she needs to copy something, and I’ve seen her do this, she will not go to the menu but instead she will right click and hit copy. She had no reaction to the UI changes. I don’t know if this means it doesn’t matter until she uses it or if she doesn’t care how it looks.

But you know, when I showed her Word in Office 2007 the first time, she hated it. She liked her menus. She loved them. She protested slightly less with Office 2010 but still disliked it. In contrast, in Office, I think it makes sense to have the ribbon. Advanced tools are brought to the forefront. I always set paragraph styles via a context menu in Office 2010 but it’s also much easier to add page and column breaks in Office 2010 than it ever was in Office 2003.

Here’s a comment I wrote to someone on Google+ about this.

I like the ribbon in office. It exposes a lot of useful things buried in menus. The ribbon makes sense when there was no other way to get to the functionality, e.g. a context menu. I always change paragraph settings by high lighting my text, right clicking and then selecting the paragraph style settings. I have no idea how to do it from the ribbon because it doesn’t have anything to do with the ribbon, it’s based on context. On the other hand, there is no better way to insert different types of page or column breaks than by using the ribbon.
I almost feel like the ribbon makes more sense now that I have a Mac. OSX had right clicking, but it didn’t embrace it, instead there would be palettes, menus and buttons.

I like the idea of exposing functionality but all it needs is a cleaner presentation.

In two weeks, this will die down and nobody will care. That’s what Windows 8 will be like unless their is a massive overhaul; that won’t happen. I assume most Normal People™ will not care what it looks like. If a button says copy instead of right clicking, they will hit the button.

When I get a chance, I will ask some real Normal People™ what they think of these changes.

People like buttons.
Didn’t someone say 90% of people only use 10% of the features?

I did the typical define("RELOCATE", true); in the wp-config.php file, along with the proper mysql credentials. Everything appeared to work when I logged into the admin panel on the local development server. I changed the site address because RELOCATE had already set the WordPress address to the proper URL: 192.168.0.5/blog-ryanrampersad/.

Everything worked. Everything was great.

Then; I thought it would make sense to turn off Jetpack, WP-DB-Backup, Google Analytics and WP Super Cache because those only need to run on a live server running the live blog. Right? How do I turn them off? I go into Plugins > Installed Plugins, checked the plugins I didn’t need anymore and simply deleted them the local development server.

I then proceeded to code up a new theme and do some tinkering, all safely and securely without messing with my live production blog. Or so I thought.

I logged into my admin panel today here, on my live production blog and look at what I discovered!

Notice only two days of data, not weeks or months!

The dashboard stats widget stated that I only two days of data. Well, maybe that was a fluke? So I check the full summary.

The stats summary agrees that there is only days of data

Even the monthly charts are wiped.

Monthly chart data claims only 31 views!

Okay, so great. It was a JetPack problem? So I go over to the JetPack section on WordPress stats and there’s no information there, in their feature card. On the bottom of the JetPack page, there’s a support link.

The JetPack support page has some common issues listed, but none of them were my issue of missing data. On the bottom, there’s a Contact Support link. That sounds promising. But clicking on it gets you a bunch of additional support avenues, none of which have anything to do with JetPack and WordPress.com Stats.

There wasn’t a final place with a real contact link.

Now, honestly, if I can’t get my data back, it is okay. It’s okay. I have Google Analytics and they are intact. Whatever caused this was my fault and if I can’t get my data back, I know now to do it a different way. WordPress is awesome and it’s great they bundle all those great plugins inside JetPack. WordPress.com Stats is fantastic too, it keeps tracks of less data than Google Analytics, but it presents it on the blog in the admin panel in a beautiful way.

Are there any solutions I should be looking for? Anything else? I’m not terribly desperate, but I felt this problem merited a good rant.

Thanks.

I wasn’t expecting the Windows 7 FTP access manager to be down right ancient. It looks like it crawled out of Windows 2000. So what, ten years after the initial release of New Technology, we’re still using the same icons?

Look at those icons - Ancient

No, it’s not a big deal but I wanted to mention it because it’s out-of-place. And if something as subtle as the icons are out of date, what does that say about the code that powers these features? It could be just as old if not older. At least Windows realized it couldn’t log in with the first credentials I supplied.

To start, the new default UI is based on the current generation of Windows Phone 7 phones. The basic UI is built in blocks instead of Android and iOS’ icons. Unlike the original Metro-UI, the textual design has given way to discrete spaces. These tiles leverage two ideas that icons of old did not have: interaction and updating. Tiles can display information while not be used, but if they are tapped or clicked, they can do things in response to the user, not just opening the app itself. In addition, by using web technologies, these tiles can display more information than just is available locally. It’s more than just weather and twitter integration, it could be anything.

Since the purported applications will be basically HTML5 apps running in an IE10 sandbox, the possibilities aren’t quite endless. Actually, the news has been quite heated about this. The future of Silverlight and .net technologies are in intense debate now about how they will be used in Windows 8. That’s scary if you invested in .net, which is something I did back in 2007, for a short period.

In Windows 8, the default UI will be optimized for touch based input. Oddly, there will be full support for keyboards and mice. Huge blocks are great targets for fingers but for mice? Really now?

There probably won’t be too much multi-tasking whining. Windows 8 default UI offers a touch gesture to switch between apps just by sliding the fingers across the screen. And then there’s pinning, or snapping which is basically Aero-snap but for the new default UI. But the original feature is that the snapping can snap an app at a two-thirds position on the screen. The feature maintains the traditional one-half position too, of course.

Web browsing is completely encompassed in whatever a touchy Internet Explorer 10 turns out to be. Internet Explorer 9 was good but did it matter? I gave up supporting IE6 a while ago and I couldn’t really care less about the future incompatibilities with IE7 and IE8. Depending on the market penetration of IE10, it could turn out to be the future of the web for the next ten years. But I doubt it, for right now anyway.

The keyboard is nice. I’ve been using the little-android keyboard from Froyo. It’s terrible compared to the keyboard in iOS. It’s shocking at how much a bad keyboard can turn you off from an operating system. The Windows 8 UI allows for the traditional virtual keyboard but it adds a split version for thumb-typing. And then those Microsoft guys were flustered when the iOS iPad stole the feature three months ago.

Everyone was remarking that the video called the classic desktop the Windows 7 view. I think that was probably for the best at the time when they still have to figure out the marketing for the new default UI. In addition to that, they don’t want us to know the new codename, but it really should just be Windows 8. Or Windows Grapefruit. That’d be good. Switching back to the now-normal desktop is a good thing to have, but does that mean it’s always running? If that’s the case, then that’s a serious drain on resources.

Quickly mentioned aside features: Windows 8 apps work with now-normal Windows 7 apps and they work with the same Aero-snap/snap feature in two-thirds/one-half views. The file system is still visible through explorer, but apps are sandboxed so they have to be given an explicit permission to access the file system. Finally, apps can use the local system but additionally leverage some cloudy-storage.

As per the video narration, this is only the first look and a small taste. So far then? It’s less exciting than it should’ve been for a first look. It doesn’t impress the right people at a technology conference either. It’s up in the air still if the new default UI is really going to be the absolute new default UI – in other words, will it only apply to new certain form factors or will it be for everything?

The old Post UI can be described as dark due to the gray background and inspired in part by classical print traditions. With WordPress 3.0 and following the trends of the day, rounded corners were all the rage.

WordPress 3.1.3 Post UI - Current State

The new Post UI follows a different track. For instance, the post text style in the HTML editor is strictly monospaced, which makes sense when editing HTML. The background is now white which lightens the entire UI. Instead, the darker elements on the page become the elements that are interacted with, the movable widget boxes that contain the Post Tags and Categories selectors.

WordPress 3.2 Post UI - Coming Soon

I’ve never used it before, but coming soon in the new release is a fullscreen HTML editor. In fullscreen-HTML-mode, uploading images and the new link-selector is available as well.

Fullscreen Post UI - WordPress 3.2 - Coming Soon

Some things have not changed however. Setting up a scheduled post style requires that lame time selector and still does not offer standard American AM/PM times. The post-editor overflow problem was fix a long time ago and it remains fixed here too.

Overall, the new Post UI is certainly a step forward.

I know how to copy things in linux, cp src dst is the simplest syntax. In Windows of course, nothing is that easy. Windows does not use cp and I wanted a fool proof solution. Robocopy has been an ever favorite, but I never really understood all the switches, I wanted a prebaked solution. A quick google found me an excellent Serverfault article about it.

One answer suggested this:

xcopy source destination /E /C /H /R /K /O /Y

Which would do these things:

The command above will copy source to destination, files and directories (including empty ones), will not stop on error, will copy hidden and system files, will overwrite read only files, will preserve attributes and ownership/ACL information, and will suppress the prompting for overwrite existing destination files.

All those switches to just replicate what cp does. My files copied as quickly as they could, probably faster than they would have if I had used the Windows copy interface.

Happy copying.

I thought the Windows 7 automatic repair system would kick in eventually, but it didn’t. Moving along, fixing the problem is incredibly easy. You’re going to need a Windows 7 installation disk. I had a Windows 7 Home Primium disk lying around, so I used that. I don’t know if a recovery disc you made will actually work, but you can try it.

Put your Windows 7 disk (W7D) in the optical drive and start up the computer. Then, boot from CD. Since I was using an HP laptop, I needed to hit escape and then hit F9 to boot from disc. You’re computer may be different. Once you boot into the disc, it’ll ask you to pick a language and keyboard setup. Just pick whatever you like and hit next. Now, you’ll see a huge Install Now button. Don’t click it. Look below it for Repair.

Once that comes up, you’ll see a few options but look for open command line. You’ll be entering a frightening command line. Once the command line opens up, enter Bootrec.exe /FixMbr. If the command works, it will say it was successful. That should be it, close the command line window and hit the restart button.

Good luck!

The Windows 7 Sidebar in the past has been more or less static. In Windows XP, you were given the option to jump to predefined places within the operating system file space. This was useful in some situations but didn’t work well when you wanted to jump from My Computer view to a Desktop folder. Vista offered some help with the new always present address bar. You could use the triangle handles to navigate quickly to disparate folders or places. You still couldn’t absolutely set the sidebar.

Windows 7 Explorer Sidebar

In Windows 7, the Windows Explorer Sidebar is now customizable. You can easily drag items into the Favorites section. The sidebar also contains always present links to the My Computer and its sub-drives, the network and any visible computers and also the new libraries. This makes the sidebar incredibly useful now.

I love to, for instance, drop my blogging material folder in my sidebar so I have quick access to it at all times. So it saves me time. It would be nice to be able to rearrange the sections, but I’m not holding it against anyone; I can easily imagine people messing that up.

OSX Finder Sidebar

You can compare this to the Finder’s sidebar is OSX. It functions in a similar, collapsible sections and arrangeable items within those sections. Places takes the role of favorites though in the new sidebar. So at least you’ll feel at home when using Windows 7 if you’re an OSX user.

Have a good week!