Why are the Windows 7 system notification icons colorless?

re: Why are the Windows 7 system notification icons colorless?

Horst Kiehl — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:28:23 GMT

David Walker: The "Basic" visual theme has solid-colored window borders but the same window shape as the Aero themes including the rounded upper corners. Alas, it seems to be fixed to that light blue.

LeoDavidson: I have looked closely at some rounded tooltips' corners on a few computers, some with an Aero, some with a Basic visual theme (the Classic theme doesn't seem to have them), and none produced the white artifacts you describe. Maybe it's a problem with some display drivers.

aylivex: You also could set Windows Update to "Download updates but let me choose whether to install them". In practice, that is "Download updates but let me choose when to install them and whether to install each" (i.e. not as "binary" as it might seem).

re: Why are the Windows 7 system notification icons colorless?

David Walker — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:39:28 GMT

@JamesNT: It looks like Kwpolska thinks that a feature can be assigned to a "team" without any specific person being in charge of it. Kinda like "they" in "that's what they say".

re: Why are the Windows 7 system notification icons colorless?

aylivex — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:08:59 GMT

@André Only the system notification icons that always sit on the taskbar went colorless. Windows Update and USB devices icons are usually hidden, by default.

I prefer to see Windows Update icon as soon as Windows detects new updates are available. Then I can install before the scheduled time and avoid undesirable automatic restart.

re: Why are the Windows 7 system notification icons colorless?

David Walker — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:56:27 GMT

I like the blinken network lights; I installed the free program that you can find for Windows 7. It uses WinPCAP to see all network traffic. This is not a laptop, so I don't have battery life issues (although I should worry about global warming, I suppose).

re: Why are the Windows 7 system notification icons colorless?

Leif — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:20:55 GMT

> Because Ubuntu needed something more to copy.

No... because everyone is copying iOS. Actually, I guess it really started with the system menus in OS X (WiFi, volume, etc.).

What makes Linux desktops original is that they are a copy of a copy.

re: Why are the Windows 7 system notification icons colorless?

JamesJohnston — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:09:35 GMT

"Very unfortunately true. Worse though, is that you can more or less extend that to be "Most (all?) shell UI bugs get WONTFIX'd". The scrolling folder pane in Win7's Explorer is a great example."

I recall reading somewhere that they fixed that in Windows 8. Of course, I'm sure Windows 8 will introduce a boatload of new bugs, what with the significant redesigns, new interfaces, etc. in that version. It would be nice if they could release some service packs so that a version of the operating system can mature to a relatively bug-free state without any big annoyances like that.

@Sean:

"would prevent often prevent network devices from going into low power states. Coupled with the fact that with the advent of broadband, and apps that constantly used the network, the blinking was not really telling the user much anymore"

While ideally the change was a good one, what's the practical point? Is there really any practical benefit? I can't imagine that going to a low power state is even possible in most cases, because there are so many apps now that assume always-on Internet and frequently do stuff for the dumbest reason. And then, even if your computer is nice and clean, the other computers on the network are talkative - I would think the broadcast traffic out there would constantly wake the card up.

The only practical reason I can think of would be if the blinking light code was preventing the driver from sleeping if the network cable was unplugged. Or maybe if the time/cost of transitioning to/from low-power state is extremely low, such that the card can change states in a few microseconds (milliseconds?). Given that a polling interval of 1 second prevented the transition, I doubt it - otherwise you wouldn't have noticed.

re: Why are the Windows 7 system notification icons colorless?

Brian — Tue, 08 May 2012 18:48:28 GMT

@AndyCadley: I'm not entirely sure when it was added, but it's there. See "Minimized single-instance application": msdn.microsoft.com/.../aa511448.aspx

re: Why are the Windows 7 system notification icons colorless?

alegr1 — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:09:45 GMT

@Sean [MSFT]

"in order to blink the lights accurately, the indicator would poll the network drivers once a second, which as a side effect, would prevent often prevent network devices from going into low power states."

Are you trying to tell me that NDIS is so stupid the simple act of sending OIDs to query the current link state and adapter statistics would have forced the hardware to D0? I'm pretty sure that NDIS.SYS knows when a miniport is in Dx, and can act accordingly for those queries.

re: Why are the Windows 7 system notification icons colorless?

Quppa — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:52:35 GMT

The tooltips for the network icon and the clock are a bit off - the corners blend differently to standard tooltips, and there's no fade-in/out animation.

I'm holding out hope that Windows 8 will include 20x20, 24x24 and 32x32px versions of the notification area icons - the 16x16px icons really look awful when scaled up at 120/144/196 DPI.

re: Why are the Windows 7 system notification icons colorless?

Skyborne — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:50:21 GMT

The blinkenlights were also entirely pointless with VNC. If traffic ever did stop, the "lights out" screen update would trigger them again.