Windows Longhorn Beta Screenshots 886
An anonymous reader writes "A few screenshots of Windows Longhorn Beta 1 have surfaced on the net showing off many of the new transparency features, Internet Explorer 7 and Avalon or WinFX."
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Windows Longhorn Beta Screenshots
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Sigh.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hi.
I agree with you that transperency is indeed a great deal of hoopla. That said, I can suggest a couple of things that might be of help to one's productivity. There aren't many that I can think of - be it a lack of imagination on my part or because I actually agree with you're point of view.
Having a transparent terminal running vim (or other editor window, e.g. a transparent emacs) hovering over your browser, PDF viewer, XML editor or some other documentation as you enter source code from it or run interactively in an interpreter. On most X window managers that support multiple workspaces, you can just switch between the two virtual desktops as you read and type - but this is annoying! Also the copy 'n' paste doesn't work for entering statements into an interactive interpreter session. You can c'n'p each single logical line as you go, but who really wants to do that?!
So, from this very unimaginative POV, I guess it is only of help to programmers such as many of us on /. For the everyday users, however, I think it might just be another way of doing a desktop without virtual workspaces (e.g. see everything you're doing on the one screen without visually impairing overlap).
None of this takes away from the fact that I agree with you that most of the 'transparency' gimmick is a load of bs.
Thanks.
Re:Copying Apple again? (Score:3, Insightful)
But only Microsoft can 'borrow' from one of the greatest (visually) UIs on the planet and still manage to make it so... butt ugly
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as these features don't decrease productivity, why not have them? After all, given two UIs with the same productivity, one with eye candy and one without, I'd take the eye candy...
Re:Close Window 'X' (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Close Window 'X' (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't they give the whole thing a once-over and just do it right?
Oh, yeah, sorry, it's Microsoft...
Re:Longhorn more like Copland. (Score:4, Insightful)
They let me and themselves down.
Frankly it looks like Windows XP with a new UI and alpha tranceparancy.
Actually, come to think of it i cannot in words exspress my dissapointment. I don't hate microsoft (thats a mod down) but i'm starting to think they that why linux and mac zelots say is actually grounded by some evidence.
Common Microsoft, wheres the new File System, the, the sidebar with add-ins, the new user experience?
Please don't tell your customers we waited 6 years for a new desktop theme and background.
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:5, Insightful)
However these window managers did not remove the window that was being dragged, you still saw the opaque window, plus the moving rectangle. So it was not the same as transparency, nothing was revealed while moving windows.
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I think GUIs make people less productive but I know I am in the minority in that regard. GUIs make things easier to learn but harder to use.
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:5, Insightful)
For some reason it's accepted to choose furniture based on how it looks as well as how it works, but when it comes to computers you are being frivolous if you want it to look nice. Just imagine if every technology we have were built only with its most narrowly conceived function in mind. It would be like the whole world was made of those cookie cutter housing complexes. Maybe they're great for housing people, but don't they also slowly suck the inspiration out of us? Sorry, I don't want to live in one of those places.
Re:Copying Apple again? (Score:5, Insightful)
By the way if you don't think free software innovates you are just plain ignorant of what's going on out there.
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:1, Insightful)
it's that simple!
Strange UI design (Score:2, Insightful)
1. The Computer Management window has two sets of min/max/close buttons in the top right, one of which looks like Windows 95 stylee!
2. The Control Panel has a search box in the top right, straight out of Mac OS X Tiger [apple.com]. Or is it just the search box left over from a normal Explorer window? What does the search box do when you're looking at the Control Panel?
3. The menu bar in Internet Explorer is vertically even further from the top of the window that usual. Clearly Fitt's Law [wikipedia.org] has been thrown out of the window, or maybe they really don't expect people to use the menus much anyway.
Re:start to shut down (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, it was little more then "cool for cool's sake." Transparent interface elements have practically been eliminated from OS X. Menu and sheets are at around 98% opacity (almost solid compared to OS X 10.0), and the dock's boarder is transparent, but that's about it.
Transparent interface elements were causing major usability problems. It was hard to grab windows when multiple transparent window bars were layered on top of each other. Moreover, transparent elements were incredibly hard to read when they were drawn over text documents.
I could go on and on, but in short, it was a bad idea then and it's a bad idea now. Microsoft should scrap this garbage on the default theme. I know it looks "cool" and some execs are probably attached to these stupid effect... but people will complain and they will be killed by sp1 anyway. There are other ways to make an interface hip and cool.
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whizzy minimize effects?, the rotating cube effect when using fast user switching (on a Mac). Eye candy, nothing more? Maybe? but just perhaps this type of stuff provides useful visual cues that make using the machine just a little more intuitive
The ripple effect when you 'drop' a dashboard widget? Doh you got me - eye candy.
You say "people just like eye candy". well maybe they do, maybe it make using the machine subjectively more pleasant in some way. Might that 'pleasant' interface not also aid productivity?
Not exactly exciting from a UI standpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
In no particular order:
(1) Explorer seems to have taken a cue from PathFinder's [cocoatech.com] directory browsing, a concept which has also been integrated into the GTK File Open Chooser Widget in the Linux world. Definitely a step in the right direction, but perhaps bundled up with a couple steps backward. Notice the new "My Computer", which sports all sorts of useless widgets everywhere, a mixture of task- and object-oriented interfaces, and more panes than one can possibly be expected to comprehend quickly. Typical Microsoft "toolbaritis," now applied to the file manager.
(2) Media Player continues to amaze in how far it distances itself from any UI sanity. Yet another argument for why toolkit consistency does not matter to normal users. File menu: gone, or just "annoyingly mouseover hidden"? I can only imagine what that menacing "Online Stores" button is for (can anyone say software-as-advertisement money?)
(3) Transparency: ooh, eye-candy. But wait, why does my desktop look like so many stained glass windows, who are, at the same time, light sources? Yet another Microsoft imitation gone bad. Notice how the borders of applications turn into transparent "stained glass" areas, serving to do nothing but make it more difficult to see, grab, and interact with the border of an application. For some reason, toolbar areas are also "semi-transparent," I guess just so you can make sure your graphics driver is working. Notice also [elliottback.com] how even when the eye candy features are enabled (transparent borders, shadows), Media Player refuses to comply! Stubborn lil' guy, aren't ya? heh heh.
(4) I'm utterly not surprised to see that Windows still makes use of dialogs whom cannot be resized, as in the displayed (and New) Copy Dialog. Yet another great "feature," as my 1920x1280 screen real estate can't even be utilized to show me the full directory name of a the path I'm copying from. Instead, I must make due with two halves of a path concatenated by three dots '...'
(5) Internet Explorer 7. Does this even need comment? What a UI disaster. First, the "toolbar" area is a different color than the rest of the application, which gives us some sort of Carbon/Cocoa hybrid in a single application. Then, the menubar exists below the tabs, implying that these options are on a per-tab basis, when this is clearly not the case (It's true sometimes, like in View Source or Save As, but not true others, like Work Offline or New Tab, which alter the whole application and not just a single tab).
In conclusion, Longhorn, at least from a UI innovation standpoint (but probably from others, too), looks to be the vaporware we were all expecting. Let's keep our eyes and minds pointed at where the real innovation is happening: in ANY of the alternative OSes, proprietary or Free. Maybe by the time Longhorn is released, we won't even need it anymore. We'll just send Microsoft a memo: "Dear Sirs, you can have it back."
It's a fake? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't believe that such images can come from real Microsoft source, unless FF is on radar of MS future purchase list.
Re:It's a fake? (Score:2, Insightful)
To top that one of the ads is: "Is Longhorn Secure?".
No way that it is real!
Be patient (Score:4, Insightful)
You will get your UI innovation in beta 2, because it's not a big priority. And when you do, you will have a completely replaced library of icons, games, and dialogs. UI can be done overnight, internal changes can't. This beta was ment for IT departments, not for consumers to scrutinize the interface.
Re:Be patient (Score:5, Insightful)
It's exactly that attitude that will keep me on OS X for the foreseeable future.
While it's true that a UI can be whipped up quickly, a good UI is the product of testing, testing, and more testing in order to smooth away rough edges, figure out where users are confused and make the application better fit to how one would expect the application to be. None of that can be done quickly.
I'll stick with OS X, thanks, (Score:3, Insightful)
Some criticisms:
Why is the close box larger than the minimise and maximise/restore buttons? I can see a lot of accidental closing of windows simply by flicking up to where the buttons 'ought' to be. Why emphasise a destructive task?
In the Internet Explorer window, why are there still several different icons for a web page? The icon in the title bar is older than that in the address bar.
In Computer Management, why have the icons still not been updated to match the rest of the interface? In Windows XP, for example, there are still some folder icons (Downloaded Program Files, for example) which maintain the Windows '98/2000 appearance. This just looks sloppy.
In Internet Explorer, why are the File, Edit, etc. menues below the tabs? That makes no sense at all.
Windows Media Player. 'nuff said, really.
I think I'll stick with Mac OS X. Eye candy, stability, and complete immunity from the masses of Windows viruses/trojans/worms/spyware? Yes please.
Re:Longhorn more like Copland. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:start to shut down (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet again I'd have to be an Apple whore and say that OS X wins on that one - one little window pops up asking you what you want to do.
Re:How does transparancy improve my productivity? (Score:4, Insightful)
Longhorn's immediate failings... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Take a look at the 'Computer Management' window and you begin to understand just how little has actually changed concerning the UI. It's almost like you're running it in a Windows XP emulator frame as it retains the old window controls inside the new fancy ones. Is this the way older programs will look?
2) The screenshot with the drive listing is intriguing. I like the colored progress bars representing drive space - but why is the CD-ROM in red? Because you can't write to it? Doesn't red strike you as being a color that should indicate that something is wrong?
3) The taskbar - it's soooo 1990's. What did I expect? Oh. I dunno. Maybe a better way to express when you have 5 programs open at once. Most displays today start at 1024X768. It seems to me that it should be possible to manipulate the size of the tasks listed rather than make them entirely unreadable. Minor, yes, but then this is supposed to be the 'next best thing' from MS.
I sure hope there's more to this than simply cosmetic changes. I'm trying to keep an open mind about it, but so far I have to say that 3rd party enhancements to XP seem to have more originality.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
New hidden features (Score:2, Insightful)
Avalon and WinFS won't be there.
But what about the stability ? What about the security ? Maybe they are going to be improved, but we can't see this on screenshots.
Actually, I'm a bit disappointed with these screenshots, but screenshots doesn't show the whole new features.
Re:start to shut down (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been doing support for nearly 10 years now and I've come across the most retarded humans bad genes can supply - and not one of them has ever had a quibble with the "start" for shut down.
Start implies you're starting to do something - even if it's shutting down.
Correlation (Score:5, Insightful)
You contradict yourself. As you say, there is a correlation. An inverse one. ;)
Re:start to shut down (Score:3, Insightful)
My point is that there's a clearly visible choice - and sometimes (IMO) choice is actually a *bad* thing. Now, I know that's a very unpopular view on a Linux-biased site, but that's how I see it. Because in this case, some computer manufacturers set it to shut down, some set it to stand by or hibernate, some even have it ask. So as a person uses a computer at work or college, or uses a friend's machine, they won't know what'll happen. So they use the menu instead.
What would be better behaviour is if it just always asked, and to have it do something else by default (which let's face it, only a geek would really care about) required a small registry tweak instead.
Rebuttal. (Score:2, Insightful)
Naw. I'd say that's BSD ;)
mean, why is it that everyone is getting so 'uptight' here about that anyhow? I don't see Linux with a DB driven filesystem either!
Honestly, I don't think that DB is the way to do it either. I find indexing (ala Tenor/Spotlight) a much better solution. Regardless of that, though--you must admit that the Windows search engine blows.
And, in a related topic: Most filesystems are, in fact, database driven. They use many of the same algorithms, provide atomic operations, and have queries (file locations). It just so happens that they don't use SQL to do it.
(Windows NT-based Os' are built to have an extensible filesystem)
May I be the first to plug Reiser 4 [namesys.com]?
However, it's obvious many here have never written code & certainly not of enterprise class size, because expecting to be able to do it in a heartbeat or miracles as others stated about doesn't happen overnight
Well, the expectation can happen overnight, but the programming certainly can't. ;)
Personally I think the current filesystem arrangement on Windows Server 2003 is just fine and it has been fine for ages. Windows Server 2003 is the core code of the next release, LongHorn, it's foundation. It is stable and solid as a rock imo. I have been using it for all of this year 2005 and much of 2004 as well. I can safely make that statement.
And you could say the same for HFS+, ext3, & reiser3. What's your point here?
However, again, the more I come to slashdot, the more it seems it is just ammo for the pro linux zealot's jihad against Microsoft with it not being in these Longhorn beta
Are you new here? I've been around for a few years now, and it's always looked this way, to me. ;)
Note: most of this made purely in jest :)
Looks good, but how bloated will it be? (Score:1, Insightful)
Also, will there be a Longhorn Server or will they continue the Server split that they started with XP? Not that it really matters to me in particular since I use DrangoflyBSD-powered servers, but it would be interesting to know.
Re:Longhorn more like Copland. (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. Microsoft could have a puke green background, chartreuse 20pt font, and nails on blackboard as the default beep, and still people would not migrate to other platforms. Maybe when the user interface requires roach clips connected to the nipples and plugged into the USB2.0 port, people will switch...maybe.
Not from Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)