As a developer when I am working on Windows Desktop programs I take lots of screen shots. (The Snipping Tool is very handy for this by the way.) Then when I want to view a sequence of them I have just double clicked and had the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer open the photo. I would often use it to scroll through a few screen shots and zoom in and zoom out. Occasionally I may print a shot or two out to discuss with others and write some notes on.
In Windows 8 the default image viewing program is the Photos "Windows Store App" by Microsoft. When I double click a photo it takes over and goes full screen. That was a little jarring to my normal work-flow but manageable, I could drag it to the second monitor. The real trouble started when I wanted to view more than one photo. I could not figure out how to get more than one to show up to scroll through. The Pictures Library said it had two ("Pictures library 2") photos on the app's start screen, and when I clicked Pictures Library, it then said it only had one ("Pictures library 1 file"), despite the fact that my Pictures folder is chock-full of images. I read in the store reviews and other places online that I am not the only one experiencing this issue. One guy in the store pointed out that you can't print a picture from the app (at least there is no obvious interface that he or I can find.) I tried both fix solutions suggested by Microsoft Support Engineer Nithyananda J, re-installing the app and running the Modern UI App troubleshooter. No dice.
My fix for the Photos app is to avoid it. Just go to the Default Programs control panel and Associate a file type or protocol with a program and change as many of the image types that are currently associated with the Photos app to Windows Photo Viewer that you want. Now forward and back navigation buttons and printing are all right in front of me and they all work the way I'm use to.
Do you have another built-in or Windows Store app that works better?
Showing posts with label thebad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thebad. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
O Messenger, Messenger, wherefore art thou Messenger?
A day into re-configuring my computer and re-installing all the main development applications I use and I've come across my first "the bad", with a potential to also be one of "the ugly". Messaging.
Since some kind of Windows Messenger client has been pretty ubiquitous with Windows starting with XP we have come to enjoy the convenience of the client around the office. When lunch time comes we pull together a quick multi-person chat and place our order. When someone wants to share a screen shot or a file, it's a simple drag-and-drop operation and then chat a little about what you are both looking at.
From time to time Microsoft's messenger servers are not available and over a month ago they were doing something very odd that was killing not only Messenger sessions but computer performance on a few computers at the office. Some people worked around the issue by using the Web interface for the day or two of trouble. Others just shutdown messenger during the event. I tried third-party clients and found none of them to be affected. (This lead me to believe the issue was with some advertisement being sent to the client.) These issues make me occasionally dream of a local messaging service, either using a peer to peer local network auto-discovery system or an XMMP based system hosted with our mail server. The rest of the time Live Messenger serves us well.
The Windows Store Messenger app has not served me well. It all started out looking simple enough. A purple rectangle on the Start screen says Messaging. Giving it my Windows Live ID pulled in all my Live Messenger contacts into People and I could chat. Success, but it was short lived.
When the call for lunch came, I didn't get a single message. Several tests showed that I no longer get messages that are sent to multiple recipients and I can't figure out how to invite multiple contacts into a conversation that I start. No soup for me I guess.
Later in the day one of my co-workers seemed to start babbling out of context. I couldn't figure out what in the world they were talking about. Finally they asked about the screen shot they had started the conversation off with. I never received it, or even a notification that one was sent and failed. Now I have to watch for this and warn them that the Microsoft Windows 8 Store Messaging App is even more gimped than the third-party program I was previously using.
Finally, and most troublesome, if I miss the noise and the little alert text that flashes into Desktop mode for a moment, and don't occasionally switch to the Messaging app, I have no idea that people have sent me something. I miss my glowing toolbar button!
I have searched, so far in vain, for a reason or a fix or a replacement. I think I can install the old Live Messenger client in Desktop mode, but people complain about getting duplicate sign-in notifications a lot going that route.
I wonder if Microsoft even cares about the feature drop, seeings as they seem intent on pulling the plug on the Messenger client anyway.
Since some kind of Windows Messenger client has been pretty ubiquitous with Windows starting with XP we have come to enjoy the convenience of the client around the office. When lunch time comes we pull together a quick multi-person chat and place our order. When someone wants to share a screen shot or a file, it's a simple drag-and-drop operation and then chat a little about what you are both looking at.
From time to time Microsoft's messenger servers are not available and over a month ago they were doing something very odd that was killing not only Messenger sessions but computer performance on a few computers at the office. Some people worked around the issue by using the Web interface for the day or two of trouble. Others just shutdown messenger during the event. I tried third-party clients and found none of them to be affected. (This lead me to believe the issue was with some advertisement being sent to the client.) These issues make me occasionally dream of a local messaging service, either using a peer to peer local network auto-discovery system or an XMMP based system hosted with our mail server. The rest of the time Live Messenger serves us well.
The Windows Store Messenger app has not served me well. It all started out looking simple enough. A purple rectangle on the Start screen says Messaging. Giving it my Windows Live ID pulled in all my Live Messenger contacts into People and I could chat. Success, but it was short lived.
When the call for lunch came, I didn't get a single message. Several tests showed that I no longer get messages that are sent to multiple recipients and I can't figure out how to invite multiple contacts into a conversation that I start. No soup for me I guess.
Later in the day one of my co-workers seemed to start babbling out of context. I couldn't figure out what in the world they were talking about. Finally they asked about the screen shot they had started the conversation off with. I never received it, or even a notification that one was sent and failed. Now I have to watch for this and warn them that the Microsoft Windows 8 Store Messaging App is even more gimped than the third-party program I was previously using.
Finally, and most troublesome, if I miss the noise and the little alert text that flashes into Desktop mode for a moment, and don't occasionally switch to the Messaging app, I have no idea that people have sent me something. I miss my glowing toolbar button!
I have searched, so far in vain, for a reason or a fix or a replacement. I think I can install the old Live Messenger client in Desktop mode, but people complain about getting duplicate sign-in notifications a lot going that route.
I wonder if Microsoft even cares about the feature drop, seeings as they seem intent on pulling the plug on the Messenger client anyway.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)