Another Windows 8 Pre-Beta Surfaces 534
angry tapir writes "While Microsoft has not announced the release date of its follow-up to Windows 7, an early pre-beta version of Windows 8 (although its official name has not been confirmed) has surfaced on the Internet, the second version to appear within a month. It is the second milestone release that has showed up on the Internet this month. Users of this Windows 8 software have said it features a Ribbon-based user-interface, similar to the one used in recent editions of Microsoft Office. This specific milestone build also has software for a Webcam, a new task manager, a PDF reader and an immersive browser." "Surfacings" like this tell me that Microsoft sees the value in crowdsourced opinion gathering far more than they're sometimes given credit for.
Re:The Ribbon: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh come ON! We're geek here, and my non-geek fiance was able to learn how to use the ribbon in a few minutes.
Are Linux nuts so incapable of learning a UI? Or is it a UI in a Microsoft product that automatically puts up a mental blinder that they cannot push through?
Ever day that passes I have less and less respect for geeks who can't remain impartial.
Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature (Score:4, Interesting)
Poppy cock!
I have setup a lot of machines for a lot of people over the years. I have found most users really confused by the current Task Manager, especially if it's something that isn't a window. I've tried setting up setup Sysinternals Process Explorer for many of these users, especially the ones who just don't understand anything, and I have found that they find it easier, or just as hard. The Process Explorer shows nesting well, doesn't obscure things, doesn't jump around in the list, and is more self-explanatory.
The learning curve on the Process Explorer, because it shows us the data in a more logical way, is MUCH smaller.
Re:Ribbons? (Score:5, Interesting)
I could not disagree more strongly. Office 2007 was the first office suite that I didn't hate. Word et al. no longer have a clutter of shortcut bars that take up a quarter of your effective screen, no longer is there a series of pop up dialogs for every simple action, I think it's great. The features you actually use are now one or two clicks away. The UI even works on a laptop, with a much smaller screen. Just give it a try, once you get used to it, and unlearn the office 95 ways, it's quite good.
I have seen computers before by the way; I started programming them when I was about 10 yrs old, in the mid 80's.
Re:Ribbons? (Score:4, Interesting)
ribbons hide different tools behinds 6-8 separate ribbon sections that are usually clicked through where all the buttons have a similar background and 'icons' making it hard to search through as opposed to a File - menu - list with text that a person can scan through in about 2 seconds.
Let's take a look at Excel 2010 [dropbox.com]'s ribbon, and then at Excel 2000 [dropbox.com]'s menus. I can't believe an Excel user would find File/View/Data menus intuitive, yet File/View/Data tabs incomprehensible.
But, for the sake of argument, let's accept as a given that finding what you want in a menu (and its submenus) is easy because it's "text" you can scan in "about 2 seconds." Taking the "wouldn't recognize a stop sign if it wasn't labeled" demographic into account, they labeled every one of the icons.
This is why it's a major improvement over the toolbar, which was dozens of tiny (unlabeled) icons, almost entirely hidden behind chevrons so they wouldn't take up half your screen. It's also the only significant "improvement" they've made to the Office UI since 1994. It really shouldn't be incomprehensible.
Re:Ribbons? (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny enough. I agree with you and the parent.
the ribbon does suck. And yet it's a huge improvement on the office 95 ui concept. Using the ribbon in firefox 4 and ie showed me the ribbon works as a ui element.
The problem you and the parent are running into is that perhaps simple word processing isn't simple anymore and nothing will succinctly untangle the ui mess that office style productivity suites present.
Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, the Linux on the same machine that I used to read the disk (and run UAE) couldn't read it afterwards either. And it wasn't some fancy "image mount under emulator". Linux, using AmigaFFS system would mount the Amiga partitions within its own filesystem, using standard AmigaFFS kernel module shipped with vanilla kernel, making them normally, natively accessible, R/W mounts I could normally use from Linux. Then I would launch UAE with "local directory as hard disk" pointing to these mount points. So, no, the operating system that ran on that hardware, with PC