Running Zionworx on Windows 7

[brainier]

The next version of the Windows operating system is now available to trial from http://www.microsoft.com/windows-7. I have been using this on my laptop since Jan 2009 and am now using the final test release before this product is released to market some time late 2009.

I also have been running Zionworx on the laptop as a test. The PC at our church still runs Windows XP and is not good enough for an upgrade to Vista - but might be good enough for a Windows 7 upgrade, as the hardware requirements for Windows 7 are less than Vista!

I also used Zionworx 2.6 on Windows 7 live during our church weekend recently, as we used my laptop and not the church PC as we were not at the church.

So how did it fair, and what do you need to watch out for and does Zionworx need upgrading to work with Windows 7.

Well, as Windows 7 is very similar in its internal architecture to Vista, Zionworx's operates with just two issues that I have found, as the developers have produced updates on the product to work on both XP and Vista.

The first issue is to do with a new user interface feature of Windows 7 that fades out all applications apart from the one you are trying to locate if you hover your mouse over the taskbar icon or do an ALT+TAB key sequence. Hover your mouse for a few seconds or do not release the keys during ALT+TAB and all the applications fade to a border only, and only the application window you have hovered over is present. The problem here from the Zionworx viewpoint is that this series of steps fades out the presentation screen too. So move (maybe accidently) the mouse over the application view on the taskbar or spend too long doing an ALT+TAB and the presentation screen vanishes to be replaced by the desktop. I'm not sure if this feature of the UI can be turned off.

The second issue is with a feature called Aero Peek, which can be turned off. If your mouse goes to the bottom right of the taskbar then all windows fade out to the background. Aero Peek can be turned off in the Taskbar properties, and it might be possible to turn it off programitically during the running of Zionworx, just like the screensaver can be turned off. I can imaging the case where a mouse drifts across the screen (as they can do if dirty) and ends up in the middle of a service touching the bottom right of the left hand screen and all of a sudden the entire view disappears.

For completion on my report of issues found so far, Windows 7 Business, Enterprise and Ultimate will also support a feature called XP Mode. XP Mode runs applications in a virtual copy of Windows XP on the machine, but they appear to run on the desktop like any other application - its a cool feature that makes Windows 7 almost 100% compatible with Windows XP before the product is even released. Zionworx operates fine in Windows 7 as it operates in Windows Vista and so there is no need to run it in XP Mode. But if you do it does not work. XP Mode sees the two monitors as a single display and shows the presentation screen on the entire desktop (not just the projector) and the management screen on the projector screen. So don't attempt to run Zionworx in XP Mode even though it is a program that runs on XP. Older versions of Zionworx that do not work on Vista will also exhibit the same issues in XP Mode.

[brainier]

I noted above that I did not think that you could stop the UI fading out when mousing or ALT+TABbing, and that this affects the presentation screen of Zionworx.

I have now worked out how to stop this happening, but it is a bit drastic - you need to disable the Aero interface and this "problem" goes away. So pending an update from Chris et al with a later version of Zionworx, version 2.6.50 on Windows 7 ought to be run with the Basic User Interface turned on. Maybe automating this when Zionworx is running is possible, or prefered would be to see if there is a way to persist the presentatation screen regardless of what the Aero interface is doing.

To set the UI to Basic: Click Start, type person and choose Personalization. Scroll down to Basic and High Contract Themes and choose Windows 7 Basic as your theme. Then, though this is nothing to do with the subject of this post, click Start, type calibrate and choose Calibrate display color (sic). Move the program that starts onto your projection screen and run through the steps to correctly set the brightness, contract, colour cast, and gamma. Move the program to your management screen and repeat.

Note that the above is all based on Windows 7 Release Candidate, and there are rumours the the version that will go on sale in or around October 2009 will have a different user interface!

[brainier]

Now that Windows 7 has been released it is time to update this post. The product goes into general availability on Oct 22 2009 (that means you can get it from you local software vendor), but as I work in the industry I have a copy already.

To run Zionworx on a Windows 7 machine all you need to do is right-click the program icon and choose Properties. Select the Compatibility tab. Click Change settings for all users and in the dialog that appears check the "Disable desktop composition" option. This puts the display into basic mode when Zionworx's starts, and means that the above issues about the presention screen disappearing if you mouse-over the "Show Desktop" area or do ALT+TAB or hover over another program on the task bar.

If your computer supports Aero mode (transparent graphics and a few other things) then it will return to Aero mode about 5 seconds after the Zionworx exits. There is no need to configure your computer to run in Basic mode all the time (unless its a low end PC, in which case it will anyway).

[brainier]

And of course not to forget a new keystroke

Windows Key + P to enable "Projector Mode" - it allows you to turn on the second monitor in extend mode - exactly what Zionworx needs.