how to get around misfeatures

[wfrancis]

I love vmware player except for two, imho, major faults:

Firstly, the bar at the top does not truly obey "auto hide".  Almost every time I move my mouse to the top of the screen to click on a tab in my browser the !#!&!( bar drops down and hides some of the tabs I wish to use. I have to click the push pin to pin it down and then again to unpin it to get it to go away.  I know you can completely disable the menu bar in the config, but this is not what I wish to happen as sometimes I really do wish to use the bar.  I mearly want it to properly auto hide when I move my mouse away from the top of the screen(or no where near the bar at all).  This breaks very basic design principles and vmware should know better.

The second significant misfeature is that when I have multiple player machines running and I minimize one it will minimize the other(s).  This is EXACTLY the behavior I don't wish to happen.  What other application minimizes windows you didn't tell to minimize? Again, imho very poor design decision.

If it were not for these issues it would be a high recommendation of mine.  Is there any way to address these?

Thank you.

[WoodyZ]

I don't disagree with your design assessments however don't forget that VMware Player is free for personal non-commercial use.  Have you tried VirtualBox, it's free too.

[wfrancis]

Woody,

I suspect if you agree with me, then others may as well.  Ask for these things to be fixed! :smileygrin:

Yes, vmplayer is a free product, but the Workstation version is not.  It's my understanding that Workstation is Player with some added features.  Some of those Workstation features are compelling and I would consider buying it if I thought the issues I've described were addressed and more consistant with good UX.

You're right though, maybe I should check out VirtualBox. Looks like VirtualBox will support vmware images, uh, right out of the box. Thanks!

[WilliamR]

I totally agree with the original poster.

Unexpected minimisation of VM windows is a practical problem for me.  Certain applications that I am testing reformat their windows upon a screen resize (such as minimisation) and I have to go to the trouble of rearranging to my absolute preferred positions/sizes.  Normally I don't have a problem if I use the VMware Player minimise button to get back to the host, but switching to another concurrent VM and causing it to resize can upset the first one.

I also find the inconsistent behaviour of the the VMware bar at the top to be frustrating.  The Auto-hide just does not work all the time.  I frequently have to pin/un-pin it to get it out of the way.  I am currently using Player 4.0.3 but I have seen the behaviour since V3xxx.

Bill

[wfrancis]

Bill,

You touched on another frustration I didn't mention.  Often when maximizing a VM (sometimes one that was unexpectedly minimized) it doesn't maximize back to the original size, but rather a much smaller version.  This, as you say, corrupts the window placement I had in the VM before it was minimized.  Very frustrating indeed.

[wfrancis]

The autohide bug appears to be fixed in the latest release, I haven't looked at the others yet.  Thank you, vmware!

[wfrancis]

I take it back, the bug has not been completely resolved.  This morning before I left for work it was working like a champ!  However, now that I'm home again, I'm noticing the old behavior is not completely gone.  I installed the latest version of the vmware tools and rebooted and the problem is back.  I'm not suggesting the event is related; it seems unlikely.  I did notice that the autohide appears to work when I switch between vm's though (I have multiple monitors) and don't recall that happening before, so it appears maybe there's a partial fix.  sigh.

[khdetwei]

The well known autohide bug has NOT been fixed in Ubuntu 13.04 / VMware Player 5.0.2. This one has been around for years and is a complete deal killer for me. When will it be fixed?