T
tonaros
Hi,
I've "upgraded" from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and noticed a small (but very frustrating) change in the way the taskbar behaves. Most games that I play on my computer are set to use a "borderless-window" mode, which is like fullscreen but not exclusive, and will still allow rendering of the game window underneath other windows, rather than simply minimizing the window.
In Windows 7, if I wanted to quickly access one of the many other windows I have open at any given time while playing a game, I'd simply click anywhere on my second monitor, or ALT-TAB, and the game would lose focus, bringing the taskbar into view over the game, and I'd use the taskbar to select the window I'm looking for. I'd use this same method to quickly check the time, or any other action I would need the taskbar for.
In Windows 10, the rendering layer priority of the borderless-window application is respected even when focus leaves the primary monitor. For example, if I ALT-TAB to a window I have on my second monitor, the taskbar stays underneath the game. I know that this is intended behavior, because if I bring a window from the second monitor to the primary monitor, the taskbar appears as soon as 51% of the window is being shown on the primary monitor.
To give some context to my frustration, here are all of the ways I have considered as options to bring the taskbar on top of a game:
The reason I put "upgrade" in quotes in the first sentence is because this change (as well as many others, but that's another story) does not feel like an improvement to me. It is, in fact, quite literally taking control away from the end user. I'm certain that I could get used to it, but that is beside the point. This functionality of only showing the taskbar if the focused window is on the primary monitor while a borderless-window app is running should absolutely be optional.
I still post this as a question, because perhaps there is something I've missed, some obscure registry entry to change or something of that nature. I have been searching for a few days to fix this and have found a couple of other posts asking the same thing, but none that have gone into enough detail so that others can fully understand the problem. Does anyone, or any Microsoft developer, know of any way to change this new functionality?
Continue reading...
I've "upgraded" from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and noticed a small (but very frustrating) change in the way the taskbar behaves. Most games that I play on my computer are set to use a "borderless-window" mode, which is like fullscreen but not exclusive, and will still allow rendering of the game window underneath other windows, rather than simply minimizing the window.
In Windows 7, if I wanted to quickly access one of the many other windows I have open at any given time while playing a game, I'd simply click anywhere on my second monitor, or ALT-TAB, and the game would lose focus, bringing the taskbar into view over the game, and I'd use the taskbar to select the window I'm looking for. I'd use this same method to quickly check the time, or any other action I would need the taskbar for.
In Windows 10, the rendering layer priority of the borderless-window application is respected even when focus leaves the primary monitor. For example, if I ALT-TAB to a window I have on my second monitor, the taskbar stays underneath the game. I know that this is intended behavior, because if I bring a window from the second monitor to the primary monitor, the taskbar appears as soon as 51% of the window is being shown on the primary monitor.
To give some context to my frustration, here are all of the ways I have considered as options to bring the taskbar on top of a game:
- Using ALT-TAB to find the window I'm looking for by trying to recognize it in an array of all open windows is not preferable to clicking the icon of the desired application on the taskbar, which is always in the same place.
- Using ALT-TAB to cycle through windows in order of most recently focused (and needing to remember or observe that) is less preferable as well.
- Using ALT-TAB to switch to a window on the same monitor will bring up the taskbar, but I would still need to try to remember which windows are on which monitor, and often the purpose of moving to another monitor is to not obscure the game window.
- I can press the Windows key on my keyboard to bring the taskbar into focus by opening the Start menu, but the keyboard I use does not have a Windows key on the left side, and this is still not preferable to an established habit.
The reason I put "upgrade" in quotes in the first sentence is because this change (as well as many others, but that's another story) does not feel like an improvement to me. It is, in fact, quite literally taking control away from the end user. I'm certain that I could get used to it, but that is beside the point. This functionality of only showing the taskbar if the focused window is on the primary monitor while a borderless-window app is running should absolutely be optional.
I still post this as a question, because perhaps there is something I've missed, some obscure registry entry to change or something of that nature. I have been searching for a few days to fix this and have found a couple of other posts asking the same thing, but none that have gone into enough detail so that others can fully understand the problem. Does anyone, or any Microsoft developer, know of any way to change this new functionality?
Continue reading...