Windows Vista, More Than Just a Pretty Face

Nash writes "Ars Technica takes a look under the hood of Vista, discussing the need for a new API and comparing the graphics engine in Vista to that of Mac OS X. 'With Windows Vista it will be possible to implement Exposé properly-with live window updates and low system overhead. That said, it doesn't thus far look like Microsoft will be doing anything so useful as Exposé. Though the blurred glass effect is rather attractive, it's not exactly useful. Other visual effects include miniature window previews when the mouse cursor is hovered over taskbar buttons and an upgraded alt-tab device, and Flip3D.'"

Glass Effect and Screenshots

[snowgirl]

It's kind of unfortunate that the Glass effect is transparent. If you take a screenshot of a single window, it will pick up whatever is behind the window.

So, say you have something you don't want to show up in your screenshot, but it's behind the Glass effect. It will show up in the screenshot.

Not normally that big of a deal, but it's kind of annoying taking a screenshot of a "single window" and picking up content from other windows.

Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[walterbyrd]

I don't know if Vista is a "train wreck" but I don't see any reason what-so-ever to upgrade.

I know some idiot is going post some "why don't you just use a horse and carrage" message. But, really, specifically, why on earth should I spend all that money, and go through all that trouble, for nothing?

W2K runs all of hw and sw. It's fast, and stable, it's not obtrusive, I know how to use it, and I don't need a new PC to run it. Not only do I not need that "eye candy" I hate it, I want my gui to look serious, not like a toy. W2K does not have all the DRM, WGA, and authentication cr@p.

So what does Vista do for me? How will Vista make me more productive? How will Vista save me money? Seems like paying money for an additional annoyance. I am not saying msft sucks, I am not saying vista sucks. But, this seems to be the worst "upgrade" imaginable.

Gnome + Beryl

[solevita]

My laptop does all the effects mentioned in the article summary and more, even though the specs of it are far below what Vista requires. And I owe it all to Ubuntu, Gnome and Beryl.

There's no easy to find minimum required specs for Beryl, so I thought I'd just try it anyway and see what happens; I only really wanted it for Exposé anyway, so I wasn't too worried whether the rest of it worked. It works better than I had hoped and all effects work with no noticeable stress on my system.

Ubuntu, Gnome and Beryl, more than just a pretty face. I'm very happy with it all.

Vista==more vendor lock-in

[UnknowingFool]

While there were some interesting notes about the history of Windows API, it hints at the real motives of Microsoft. It seems that at every turn, MS has created a proprietary technology to force vendor lock-in. Rather than use OpenGL, MS has developed DirectX. Rather than use Adobe's PDF printing subsystem, they developed XPS. While there might be technical reasons for those decisions, the pessimist in me says part of the reason was for vendor lock-in.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[mackyrae]

A Windows tech asked me if I was running Vista when he saw Beryl. He tried to claim Vista could do all that stuff (cube, burning windows, Expose). Obviously, he was wrong. He was also shocked by how low my RAM usage was.

Re:Vector-based UI? Where?

[SEMW]

I use Vista every day at work, and I have never seen such an app. All the built-in Windows apps look just the same as they did in XP

I'm fairly sure that all of Vista's built in applications use WPF and are thus DPI-independant. If you're running at the default 96dpi, I'm not sure in what way you expect them to look different to in XP. I think the point is that when you change the dpi, they scale smoothly and unblockily (I assume you don't see it with magnifier because it just enlarges the pixels, it doesn't redraw everything). IStartedSomething [istartedsomething.com] has a nice gadget where you can see the same screenshot at different DPIs, if you want to compare them.

There's a list of WPF-based applications here [slashdot.org].

Re:Abyssmal I/O Performance and Usability

[FltrGrpher]

Thanks for the heads up, I've done that before, and would leave it that way if I were using it personally. But since we're developing for machines that will most likely have this on, or at least this is the worst case they would, I have to leave it enabled to work through the heartburn it gives our application.

This still doesn't fix the problem of editing of config files in notepad. Still have to run as admin, drag and drop is disabled... same for cmd prompt using drag and drop to cd to a specific directory...

Agree WTF is up with I/O in Vista?

[bogie]

I shouldn't constantly be staring at the stupid green bar at the top of Explorer waiting for Vista to finish displaying the files in a directory. I love it when some of the photos never get thumbnails. Explorer in Xp for all of its warts is noticeably faster at displaying directories and copying data around.

You just know there is some insane DRM checker running 50,000 a second to check to make sure that your actually allowed to view you own files.

Re:Expose clone for the DWM already exists

[xswl0931]

Microsoft has a Expose clone already. Just install the Intellimouse software and press the middle mouse button.