Requires Aero Desktop Theme... Really guys? C`mon!

[slackard]

Listen.  I am admittedly pretty set in my ways, especially in the way I have my desktop environment setup.   I use the Windows Classic theme, and that is that.  Switching to Aero is not something I want to do, ever.   Seriously, not ever.

 

When a new program heralds itself as the best of the year, the developers and project managers should realize that messing with peoples preexisting environments is massively inconvenient, and will definitely stand as a giant barrier to adoption of their software for those users.  

 

I'll try your beta version, but given that you are forcing me to alter my desktop settings just to start the app, i can promise i wont end up a regular user, let alone a paying one.

 

Good software should integrate seamlessly with the host OS, and not "cause rendering problems," or rely on kludges like Aero Themes to accomplish your goals

 

By relying on aero hooks to accomplish your UI goals you've automatically ruled out a sizeable swath of your potential market. 

 

Lazy design at the cost of user experience..  D- on day one --- not a good start guys.   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[MEB]

Hi slackard,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

This was already discussed and explained quite a few times. Please check Mark Ingram's reply here for details why this is required for the Beta.

[Patrick Connor]

It is only required on a Windows 7 PC, which is I assume what you have. Most users will not have to alter any settings, as they are on Windows 7 with Aero, or 8 or 10. It's not Aero itself that is required it is Desktop Windows Manager composition.

[slackard]

"During the beta we aren't interested in bug reports from people who don't have DWM enabled, as those bugs are out of our hands."

 

OS Market share by % (source: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=market+share+windows+7 )

Windows 7 48.38%

Windows 10 22.59%

Windows 8.1 8.40%

Windows XP 8.27%

 

Your software is causing user hardship and youre not interested.  It is within your grasp, you're just too lazy to design software that can work independently of DWM.    --- its been done, you are just lazy.

 

A lot of users will experience this issue, and you're simply not interested.

 

Asinine!

[cgrantmccool]

Win7 has seen a 15% market share drop in 12 months, has a phase out date, and isn't as good as Win10 for the majority of design/photography programs I use. In fact, Win10 has been the first version of Windows I've enjoyed using since XP and have been a Linux/Mac person for most of that time for OS customization and development/cross platform purposes. Win7 was trash comparatively, in my experience.

​This is a Win7 problem, only, which, having tried to develop a few things for XP-Vista/Win7/Linux/OSX all at the same time, I can say the Affinity team's response to this issue on Win7 is reasonable.

[Mark Ingram]

"During the beta we aren't interested in bug reports from people who don't have DWM enabled, as those bugs are out of our hands."

 

OS Market share by % (source: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=market+share+windows+7 )

Windows 7 48.38%

Windows 10 22.59%

Windows 8.1 8.40%

Windows XP 8.27%

 

Your software is causing user hardship and youre not interested.  It is within your grasp, you're just too lazy to design software that can work independently of DWM.    --- its been done, you are just lazy.

 

A lot of users will experience this issue, and you're simply not interested.

 

Asinine!

 

And what percentage of 48.38% will have Aero disabled? 

Our software does work independently of DWM composition, the problem is that Microsoft reverts to a legacy driver model, meaning that your current graphics card driver isn't being used, and instead you end up using a fallback driver. This results in performance and rendering problems.

We don't rely on DWM for our UI, or anything else. 

 

Also, those statistics depend on which site you browse, looking on Wikipedia you'll see it's only 38.97% for Windows 7 vs 24.81% for Windows 10.

[slackard]

"Also, those statistics depend on which site you browse, looking on Wikipedia you'll see it's only 38.97% for Windows 7 vs 24.81% for Windows 10."

 

Even at a purported 38% market share, win7 still has an overwhelming majority of users vs any other OS, and you are writing those users off.

 

Also, you can assume that a lot of corporate/AD environments have Aero/wdm disabled via group policy, and have no plans to migrate those users to win8 or win10 in the near term or at all.  Users in such environments would be unable to enable aero/wdm even if they wanted.  So again, a sizable portion of your potential market is being written off because of this.  To read your responses to this issue, you dont want those users and they obviously doing it wrong anyway..

 

What's really obvious is that you guys feel you made all the right decisions. I'm telling you though, (and this is free advice) writing prospective users off as effectively "youre doing it wrong"  just because you failed to design software that could work independently of wdm is totally and completely lazy & asinine.   Photoshop is able to leverage my GPU just fine and I dont need to enable WDM/aero.. so who is to blame here?

 

Go ahead and rebut your positions all you want -- I've already uninstalled your beta & I will never use or pay for this software, so long as such restrictions/changes to my desktop environment are forcibly imposed.

 

Poor show old chaps.  Poor show indeed.

[Andy Somerfield]

slackard,

 

So ok.. I actually agree with you - although I would appreciate it if you treated us with the respect with which we treat you (and all users)..

 

As I (and Mark, and others) have said many times - this a restriction of the beta. We disable it because we do not want the noise created by 10,000 old, broken graphics drivers at this point in the beta. Surely you can understand how what we are trying to do here is reasonable and temporary?

 

I will ask the Windows team if they can add some method for beta testers to "opt in" to non-Aero in future..

 

Thanks again for taking the time to use this beta,

 

Andy.

[verysame]

slackard,

 

I can see your points, only asking politely would sounds better.

Calling the devs lazy is definitely unfair.

You said you were just going to test it out, so it seems you haven't followed the development, because if you would have you would know the amount of work these guys are doing.

Just check AD's forum and you'll see how often a new beta comes out.

[slackard]

"We disable it because we do not want the noise created by 10,000 old, broken graphics drivers at this point in the beta. Surely you can understand how what we are trying to do here is reasonable and temporary?"

 

I will grant that this reasonable stance for an early release candidate, but to read your marketing info, the (beta) software is pretty much ready and it's been released it into the wild -- so at this stage its reasonable to assume lots of users will want to evaluate, and it should mostly just work.

 

However, in my view this is a major usability issue & nothing in the marketing email I received  or on the homepage said anything about the restriction or its temporary status.  Additionally, the startup error that I received simply says I need to enable Aero/wdm.  Perhaps it was covered in these forums, but the error popup does not state this is a temporary/beta-only restriction..  Maybe you guys could have worded that a little differently (or added an opt-in feature as Andy suggested)?

 

I do feel I've been respectful, if also direct and honest. [edit: I will retract "lazy". A lot of good dev work here too, which I do not mean to minimize. Aside from that, non-wdm "classic" users were thrown under the bus when the decision was made to rely on wdm instead of an engineered solution like that of your competitor's.]  Early on, I had a lot of hope for this software, as have others.  So, if users have negative impressions, its important that you guys know, so you can nail it -- isnt that what beta testing is all about?

 

I appreciate that you guys have engaged me on this issue and have not just written me off entirely, as i feel my concerns regarding AD environments and OS market share are valid and will be for at least a few more years until corporate environments migrate beyond win7.. 

 

Often times, it's the squeaky wheel that gets the more opt-in features, so just doing my part to help others in the same boat as myself.    I'll stay tuned to see if the opt-in becomes an option, etc.. but for now, adobe still has my dime.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[slackard]

FWIW, this copy is from the marketing email I received this morning, which (in light of the issues outlined in this thread) is misleading...

 

"The Windows version matches the Mac version feature-for-feature, so all the thrilling speed, sophisticated tools and pinpoint accuracy which have earned Affinity Photo its formidable reputation are now available to Windows users too without compromise."

 

Lets read that last part again...

 

....now available to Windows users too without compromise.

 

One more time for good measure...

 

...without compromise.

 

Not sayin.. just sayin.. 

[sturdyd]

I agree with Slackard, though not so stridently. Having a piece of software dictate to me how to configure my machine is definitely a deal breaker. I'm running two Win7 machines, one Win10 machine and one Linux. I'm much more productive on my Win7 machines and I really, really don't want to monkey with how they're set-up. Maybe someday i may get the Win10 machine working the way I want and I'll gravitate to it. But for now I guess I'm stuck with Photoshop on my primary machines. *sigh*

[jorismak]

It's a beta. They want DWM since it's an improvement for a lot of things, while without DWM graphics drivers can cause issues.

 

So they want to know everything works fine in pure DWM mode, because that way they know it's their code which is OK at the end. After that, if they enable non-DWM mode and things start crashing and glitching, it's clear it's the drivers fault and not the program in that case. Seems reasonable for a beta, although I never saw another program do it this way.

 

Note that this doesn't exclude Windows 7 at all, it excludes Windows7 with the classic-windows-theme enabled. If you leave it to the default Windows 7 look it works OK.

 

The only serious issue of this all is 10bit support on older Pro-gfx cards in Windows7, which disable DWM most of the times.

 

No clue how this is in Windows 8 / 10.

[Mark Ingram]

On Windows 8 and above DWM is always enabled, so it stops being an issue.

 

Apparently you can enable DWM without enabling Aero. I've not tried this, and this link is not our content, nor is it validated by us, but feel free to try it - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/127411-desktop-composition-enable-disable.html

[slackard]

On Windows 8 and above DWM is always enabled, so it stops being an issue.

 

Apparently you can enable DWM without enabling Aero. I've not tried this, and this link is not our content, nor is it validated by us, but feel free to try it - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/127411-desktop-composition-enable-disable.html

 

 

I gave his one a shot and its a no go.  Actually, I tried all 5 methods and Affinity is still throwing the Aero message.  It seems just enabling DWM without an Aero theme isnt enough to satisfy Affinity's startup checks.

 

I had to use photoshop to crop this down... D`oh!

 

I still have high hopes for this software, and do understand this is intended as a beta restriction..  Willing to wait it out, and appreciate the continued engagement.  I'd just like to see you guys reach as many users as possible so we can have spirited competition in the market place.  When companies compete effectively, consumers always win.

 

 

 

Thanks guys!

[Patrick Connor]

I gave his one a shot and its a no go.  Actually, I tried all 5 methods and Affinity is still throwing the Aero message.  It seems just enabling DWM without an Aero theme isnt enough to satisfy Affinity's startup checks....

 

Thanks guys!

 

No, thank you for checking.

 

We should be able to emulate this ourselves and change the startup checks if it works ok, but for now it is what it is.

[Mark Ingram]

We won't be removing that message, but, there is a secret command line option which will disable the check when you startup. You have to understand, that this is completely unsupported by us, and any problems you report here will likely be ignored! 

 

--no-dwm-warning

[slackard]

We won't be removing that message, but, there is a secret command line option which will disable the check when you startup. You have to understand, that this is completely unsupported by us, and any problems you report here will likely be ignored! 

 

--no-dwm-warning

 

Perfect!  So far so good, able to run classic and no "rendering problems" thus far..

 

At least now I can get to evaluating the software!  If I do experience issues I will validate/replicate them on my own, with and without an aero theme (and further, with and without WDM)  before posting any results to the forum..  That is to say, I'll be sure to cover my bases.

 

 

Question about the methodology behind this "--no-dwm-warning" switch...  Does this simply disable the startup check? or does it change the way the software functions internally?  

 

I ask because as shown in my previous post, DWM is technically enabled on my system (even if not using an aero theme proper)..  So, now that I've bypassed the warning message, will Affinity utilize DWM, since it IS enabled? Or does this switch actually disable DWM utilization entirely (e.g. driver reversion, as discussed earlier)?

 

Thanks again!

[Mark Ingram]

The switch simply disables the error message, we continue to use DirectX 11 as normal. Under the hood of Windows, without DWM, it will use a different (legacy) driver model. Often there is no suitable legacy driver, so Windows will emulate it's functionality, hence why you can see rendering and performance problems.

[MikeW]

Mark, a question about the DWM.

 

Is it possible to simply force DWM to start by changing its properties in Services? I don't have a Windows 7 computer to try on.

[Mark Ingram]

That's what one of the links above suggested, but I've not tried it myself. I use Windows 10.

[slackard]

On ‎11‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 9:45 PM, MikeW said:

Mark, a question about the DWM.

 

Is it possible to simply force DWM to start by changing its properties in Services? I don't have a Windows 7 computer to try on.

 

I attempted modifying the startup properties for the service in question to no avail.   The Affinity startup check is looking at something else, and still throws the "requires Aero" popup, even when the service is running (see: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/27817-requires-aero-desktop-theme-really-guys-cmon/?p=135691 )

 The workaround is to enable an Aero theme, or execute affinity with the --no-dwm-warning switch.  Using the latter option, as the moderators have clearly stated, will preclude any support responses you seek during the beta period.

What I'll be doing is running the app with the --no-dwm-warning switch on. If I encounter issues, I'll enable an aero theme and test again.  If the issue persists in both environments, or in Aero alone, I will report it. 

If the issue only presents in classic mode, I will honor the Mod's request to not comment during the beta period...

Hope this helps