Windows 10 Creators Update

[Daniel Beardsmore]

In the space of the last 16 hours, I've just updated Windows 10 twice, from the November Update to the Anniversary Update, and then to the Creators Update.

I already knew that they'd finally added an address bar to Registry Editor, and that you could finally get rid of the waste of space between the edge of the Start menu and the tiles (a massive empty space originally, and the generally worthless All Apps list in the Anniversary Update). Both useful improvements.

Otherwise, it's largely unchanged. 3D Builder is still as laughably useless :P

The ability to revert to the classic UAC prompt is now scrapped, but now I can connect to my work VPN using the native UI, instead of having to fall back to the Windows 8.1 network connections UI.

The most noticeable change is that the downscaling algorithm used for taskbar thumbnails and alt+tab thumbnails has been dropped in favour of nearest neighbour. These thumbnails now look horrible. Edge, I noticed, also uses nearest neighbour now.

Curiously, the stupid new "Set up Agenda" control on the taskbar calendar has a reveal/hide arrow that faces the wrong way up. Something to do with having a top taskbar I guess.

I do wonder, if after all these years of 8 and 10, they've finally resolved the bug that causes one (and briefly, two) frames of the busy cursor to repeatedly get corrupted. This happens at home with an ATI Radeon card (in both 8.1 and 10) and at work with Intel onboard video, so the only thing in common is that computers just hate me personally.

Still no way to officially have a bright green title bar independently of the accent system. I don't want all my Start tiles in bright green!

[seebart]

3D Builder is still as laughably useless

Everything else that I've read about it comes to the same conclusion. Before the Creators Update I had my mouse arrow corrupted to the "comb" half a dozen times in about two years, it has not happended since. After a recent clean install it seemed to me the start menu contained more links to the windows apps store.

[chuckdee]

On one of my machines, it prompted me to uninstall a game in order for the update to happen. As that game is quite a few GBs, and works currently, but many people complain that it doesn't work after, that won't be happening.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Incidentally the taskbar/alt+tab thumbnail scaling affects desktop applications but not modern apps!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

3D Builder is still as laughably useless :P

Everything else that I've read about it comes to the same conclusion.

I'm heading towards beyond useless. The program itself reminds me of Workshop for the BBC Micro, which I still have on cassette: something so primitive as to be completely pointless. OK, so 3D Builder isn't anywhere near as stupid as Workshop.

However, 3D Builder actually renders objects incorrectly dependent on view. The relative positions of objects changes as you rotate the view. For example, in the model I've been playing with, object A will be on the far side of B when the model is viewed from one side, but viewed from the other side, A is still on the far side of B! It reminds me of those Wolfenstein-era games where objects in the level always rotate to face you.

I would expect anything built into Windows to be simplistic to the point of irrelevance, but I would however expect the basics to work. Like being able to draw two objects the correct distance apart!

I always felt (for many years) that making a 3D model should involve drawing it in 2D in all 6 views (top, bottom, front, back etc) and then computing the shape from that. I tried Blender, but that requires you to think in 3D, and it turns out that I can't, even though I perceive that I can.

My ultimate goal is to have "SVG for 3D", where I could model something like a Cherry switch and upload it to the wiki, where the file is its own source, just like with SVG: you can both view it and save it for editing. I guess it's possible with the appropriate MediaWiki extension, should one exist.

(That's not what I hoped to get from 3D Builder; I was merely curious to see whether it was of any remote value at all. It isn't. It doesn't even have clone, or align objects, or extrusion of 2D shapes, or really anything of any use.)

[bellyman69]

The most noticeable change is that the downscaling algorithm used for taskbar thumbnails and alt+tab thumbnails has been dropped in favour of nearest neighbour. These thumbnails now look horrible. Edge, I noticed, also uses nearest neighbour now.

Upon installing Windows Creator at work - where I always have many windows open (telnet/XLS/other apps/PDFs) - I instantly saw the poor downscaling. My telnet app in thumbnail before - I could easily read all the screens across my terminal. After Creator - utter trash as you stated. I ended up removing the update and "disabled" installing new Windows features on two of my home machines. Tonight my main home machine installed it --- saw the same crap and uninstalled it. To what end I do not know. A real bother since this impacts my productivity and up to now I have been pleased with Windows 10. (my main machines have Win10Pro)

I mention this because Googling this issue has yielded only two people complaining - YOU and your post, and ME searching for this issue. That suggests nothing will improve with this "problem". I already posted a message in their feedback hub.

Cheers!
belly

[Daniel Beardsmore]

We'll have to see. The cursor corruption bug is finally gone¹, and Active Window Tracking is now compatible with JujuEdit. Still no fix for the mangled colours in thumbnailing.

Maybe one day I'll be able to pin things to the secondary taskbar. I guess that's prohibited because it would break on temporary displays (e.g. laptop + docking station) but in my case, I have a permanent second display where I'd like to pin programs that open directly on that display. Microsoft could even tag shortcuts with which taskbar they should appear on if they can.

What I do want back is the full-size previewing during alt+tab, as that was really useful. It still exists when you hover over a taskbar thumbnail, but not in alt+tab any more.

Very gradual progress though!


¹ Microsoft don't fix bugs, they bury them. A colleague with Creators Update now has the bug where the Shell Experience Host hangs constantly (that's your Start menu, taskbar button context menus, clock/calendar etc). Not as bad as what I had in the November Update where the whole of metro would die so hard that even a reboot was borderline impossible.

The bug where Explorer constantly loses its thumbnails database is back on my home PC. Another "fixed" bug that was simply buried and it's crawled back out of the earth like the gravediggers from Catacomb Abyss.