pref.fullscreen.v5 = "TRUE" no longer works

[goodnamertaken]

In previous versions of Workstation, adding the line pref.fullscreen.v5 = "TRUE" would allow a virtual machine to be started in exclusive mode. This was a useful way of disabling the annoying toolbar. No other setting in Workstation allows you to disable the toolbar. Even if you unpin it and tell Workstation not to show the edge, it will still pop up when your cursor gets close to the top of the screen. Workstation 8 now forces you to enter exclusive mode manually! This is either a bug or an extremely annoying change. If you chose to take out pref.fullscreen.v5, please at least add an option to always start a virtual machine in exclusive mode in that machine's preferences!

If this is not a bug, for this reason alone I would not want to use Workstation 8.

[mdunn-vmware]

v5 full screen mode was removed in WS 8.  We changed how full screen mode works to make it more usable in more situations, and we felt it was a good time to remove the v5 code too.

[John_Leask]

I'm getting hit by this too. I couldn't use the v5 preference setting to force exclusive mode on workstation 7 as it didn't work with multiple monitors, but at least the tool bar was much smaller then, and so it didn't cover all the stuff I'm trying to get to when it pops accidently up. I wish I could go back to version 7, but I upgraded to 8 as I needed windows 8 support.

It is extremely annoying to be forced to wait a few seconds every time I hit the top of the screen, especially as by the time the menu vanishes, what I was trying to get to may have also vanished - such as a remote desktop toolbar.

Why is the toolbar now so big? More than half of it is blank (even with the toolbar icons added). Was there no consideration given to usability? I've been using VMware for many years now, and each new version seems less usable than the previous one...