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Microsoft's New Windows Terminal Update Is Out and It's 'Huge' (zdnet.com) 152

Posted by BeauHD from the new-and-improved dept.
Microsoft has released Windows Terminal Preview version 0.3, the recently launched command-line interface, which it wants to be the newest and best experience for developers who use Windows Command Prompt and PowerShell. ZDNet reports: It launched in June amid concern that it might replace the familiar Command Prompt and PowerShell. Microsoft is allowing Windows Terminal to co-exist with Windows Console but it believes Terminal will become the favored tool among those who need command-line apps. The latest version of the Terminal app is available from the Microsoft Store but it's also available on Microsoft's Releases page on GitHub.

Among the improvements in v0.3 is that the interface can now be dragged regardless of where the mouse pointer is positioned on the title bar. The title bar itself has also been updated with a resized dropdown button with new colors and stays to the right of the last opened tab. There are also new colors for the minimize, maximize, and close buttons. Terminal is inheriting some accessibility features that allow tools like Windows Narrator "to interrogate, navigate, and read" the Terminal's user interface controls and text content, according to Kayla Cinnamon, program manager for Windows Terminal, Console and Command-Line. Terminal users can now define the tab title of each profile within settings, which takes priority over the shell-provided tab and should make it easier to tell the difference between profiles. There are now more choices for configuring the background image, with an option to add a background image on an acrylic background, as well as position the background anywhere on the screen. Additionally, Terminal users can now connect to the in-browser command-line called Azure-hosted Cloud Shell, which provides shell access to Azure. Kayla Cinnamon, program manager for Windows Terminal, Console and Command-Line, calls the update "HUGE," noting that the new accessibility features are still a work in progress.
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Microsoft's New Windows Terminal Update Is Out and It's 'Huge' More

Microsoft's New Windows Terminal Update Is Out and It's 'Huge'

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  • Can it be started quickly on the fly? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rashkae ( 59673 ) on Monday August 05, 2019 @08:29PM (#59048064) Homepage

    Even on modern fast hardware, power shell takes seconds before it actually starts up. I know, I know, what's a few seconds.. but for firing up a command prompt??? come on! Even emacs OS is more efficient.

    • My PowerShell terminal takes less than one second, and my PC is three years old. Perhaps you are full of crap?

    • Time to open powershell on a 2-core i5 here is less than one second.

    • Running an i7-4770, 16GB RAM, Corsair m500 mSATA. Windows 10 build 1809. Visual Studio 2019 installed.

      Windows Key->Powershell->Enter

      Startup time is less than one second.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It seems to be an issue on certain systems. My older Windows 8.1 laptop does take a couple of seconds to give me a prompt, but my other Windows 8.1 desktop and the Windows 10 machines I use at work all show the prompt in a fraction of a second from clicking on the Powershell icon.

    • I've had that problem too, but it's been years since I kicked the tires on it. I always wondered what it was doing that could possibly take so long and/or if I had a debug version installed. Glad I'm not the only one. I don't really care about it that much though, because I'm not interested in this little corner of MS's proprietary world and I'm not in a situation where I need to use it professionally.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      power shell takes seconds before it actually starts up. I know, I know, what's a few seconds.. but for firing up a command prompt???

      Microsoft could bloat up the controller for a clapping toy monkey. It's one reason their smart-phone attempts fizzled.

    • Code written by h1bs is all spaghetti, you can't make spaghetti move at a decent speed, you're having a really good day if it moves at all.

    • Try running antivirus. Ps Ise takes minutes. My work boot is actually 15 minutes to be productive.

      • Get rid of all the malware you picked up from surfing porn sites.
        Do you REALLY need that browser bar with the oh so cool icons?
        Or maybe you should just add more coal to your laptop and get the fire nice and hot so it will have more steam.

    • power shell takes seconds before it actually starts up

      You fucked up your computer badly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Yep, about ten seconds with PowerShell on my decade old, updated 64-bit W7 HPE SP1 PC. :( Cmd.exe was instant! Frak you, MS!

  • Drag, minimize, maximize, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Monday August 05, 2019 @08:41PM (#59048108)

    Aren't these functions of the underlying Window manager? Or does each app get to build it's own unique UI for these behaviors? Thereby confusing the user.

    • Re:Drag, minimize, maximize, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by caseih ( 160668 ) on Monday August 05, 2019 @10:17PM (#59048426)

      Yup each app is allowed to confuse the heck out of users. The trend of removing the titlebar and letting the app do its own thing was started by MS Office years ago, and Chrome popularized it by putting it's tabs where a titlebar should be. And then of course don't get me started on the Linux Gnome desktop... sigh. It's like a game. Try to figure out where you can click in the tilebar area to move the window without causing any side effects!

      • Re:Drag, minimize, maximize, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @03:13AM (#59049164)

        was started by MS Office years ago

        Oh lol not even close. The "trend" was started back in the Windows 98 days which is how long the ability to do it has existed. Think to nerd favourites like Winamp, and ICQ, or nerd's old foes such as Realplayer.

        • MusicMatch Jukebox and iTunes did the same stuff. Late 90s, early 2000s.

        • Re:Drag, minimize, maximize, etc. (Score:4, Funny)

          by geek ( 5680 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @08:51AM (#59050130)

          God damnit man. I just stopped having nightmares about RealPlayer and you had to go and bring it back up

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gTsiros ( 205624 )

          what 'trend' ?

          the default (Windows') window decoration is explicitly optional. When creating a window you explicitly declare if you want the window to be decorated by the window manager or not.

          it's exactly as it is on x11, iirc.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by malxau ( 533231 )

          was started by MS Office years ago

          Oh lol not even close. The "trend" was started back in the Windows 98 days which is how long the ability to do it has existed. Think to nerd favourites like Winamp, and ICQ, or nerd's old foes such as Realplayer.

          Note that Office was doing this in Office 95, before each of these.

          • No it didn't (unless you're talking about the splash screen). Office 95 looked and acted like every other windows program on windows 95 and was completely dependent on the theme of windows. What it does do is look completely different if you run it on Windows 7 and most of that has to do with MS's legacy features launching and handling old programs in a different way.

             

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by caseih ( 160668 )

          Yes true. But I don't think RealPlayer and the like had as much influence on general-purpose Windows application design as MS Office. There were always lots of little applications such as the ones you mentioned that drew their own weird controls. Antivirus and anti-malware software were the worst. In my opinion that was a fad for particular types of applications. But once MS Office, and maybe moreso Chrome, started doing it, it became a real trend, probably helped along by the tabletization of everythin

    • Aren't these functions of the underlying Window manager? Or does each app get to build it's own unique UI for these behaviors?

      Yes and yes.

      The underlying window manager does this for Windows applications. Applications can also override them (the windows console did not).

      What you along with many people are missing is that the windows console was *not* a normal windows application. It did not rely on the window manager to draw on the screen (which is also why in safe mode it looks the same as it always did regardless of the fact the window manager may not be running).

      The console is a legacy application with hooks deep in the kernel.

    • Windows 10 Apps based on UWP draw the individual components themselves. This makes sense since the window manager issue was a bit of a cludge.

      So, when you're writing a Windows 10 app, if you want to use the title bar area (which tabbed applications generally do), then you switch from using the stock components to drawing into the title region itself. It's not difficult under normal circumstances to handle normal title bar behavior, but when you're implementing a tabbed view, it can be tricky.

      One of the most

  • I don't get it (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Draggable window no matter where you click in the titlebar?! So fucking what? All Windows applications have that. What is so "huge" about this?

    There is only one feature that anyone really cares about them adding: Unicode output in the terminal. Everything else is fucking bloat.

    It's 2019! When do we get to use Unicode?!

    • All Windows applications have that. What is so "huge" about this?

      That the console has up until now never been a proper windows application. With any luck this change also means that if the console crashes it will no longer bluescreen windows. At least with Windows 7 they introduced a feature that full-screening the console while the video card was doing anything other than drawing a window would not crash the application (video player, 3d application etc) currently drawing.

  • I shouldn't have been drinking my tea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by djbckr ( 673156 ) on Monday August 05, 2019 @09:30PM (#59048274)

    I shouldn't have been drinking my tea while I was reading the summary.

    the interface can now be dragged regardless of where the mouse pointer is positioned on the title bar

    I just about spit it out when I started laughing. This is a significant improvement?

    • Re:I shouldn't have been drinking my tea (Score:5, Interesting)

      by caseih ( 160668 ) on Monday August 05, 2019 @09:54PM (#59048346)

      It's a great improvement as it restores functionality we used to have until the UX experts started messing with things and decided in their widsom to eliminate actual window title bars from modern application. Either MS Office or Chrome seems to have started the trend, and the Linux Gnome desktop took it to 11, giving us the "be careful where you click" method for moving windows. So being able to click and move anywhere in the titlebar area is a vast improvement! Maybe eventually we'll get back to uniformly-decorated windows again.

    • Re:I shouldn't have been drinking my tea (Score:5, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @03:20AM (#59049182)

      I just about spit it out when I started laughing. This is a significant improvement?

      You may not realise this but the windows console is fundamentally different from every other Win32 application in how it operates, and how it renders on the screen. It is a throwback to a legacy application that functioned at the lowest levels even after everything failed.

      There are reasons why the following happen or used to happen:
      - Crashing the UI would cause the loss of all windows except the console.
      - Applying UI themes would not affect the console.
      - Fullscreening the console would in the past bypass the video driver causing some other programs to crash.
      - Booting into safemode showed the console even without starting the window manager.
      - Crashing the console would bluescreen a computer 100% of the time.

      The changes they are making are not only cosmetic, but they are actually bringing the windows console in line with other modern windows programs and in doing so things we take for granted and quirks that exist are being are actually very significant changes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        That hasn't been true for decades, and was never true for Powershell.

        Up to Windows ME the console window was special. Windows 2000 and beyond it was just a normal window, although it had a special super fast text display control and a hack to only allow resizing to multiples of the font height.

        Powershell has a new text display control that supports reflowing lines as the window is resized, more colour, unicode and better copy/paste. It supports high DPI too.

        • I give you some points. You talk of ignorance with the authority of Trump which is truly impressive. Unfortunately you lose all those points again due to being completely wrong.

          No sorry you're dead wrong on all accounts except for Powershell (which is a completely different and perfectly normal program). There were fundamental differences between Windows ME and Windows 2000 but they were more alike than you know. The text rendered wasn't changed between Windows ME and 2000, it was only depreciated in Window

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Do you have a link for that blog post? I found one but it doesn't support your claims: https://devblogs.microsoft.com... [microsoft.com]

            I wrote a fair bit of console software. I don't mean text only apps, I mean apps that opened and then interacted directly with a console window, via its handle. It certainly had a special API for console specific stuff, but for example I managed to crash the console tasks a lot and never experienced a BSOD.

            Of course Windows 10 broke a lot of those apps by replacing the console window with

  • I have to use Windows for work (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I know, I know. We all do.

    I use it mostly as a terminal. I would swap it for a VT100 in a heartbeat. For an Xterminal in half a heartbeat.

    I know this is a great huge bunch of code which does a whole bunch of things. That's the problem. Instead of writing a good window system with some flexibility and a sparse text presentation device, then running all their bullshit under that, they write a crappy presentation layer you can't customize and make every app have to redo everything. Then to compensate, th

    • I'm not sure what your rant has to do with the Windows console seeing how the windows console doesn't use the window manager at all, and doesn't render like a normal GUI app.

    • Just out of curiosity: are you required to use MS terminal? If not, why not use Windows Subsystem for Linux and use a real terminal?

  • Blatantly from GNU repositories and/or Linux and BSD

  • I haven't used Windows on my own computers for decades. Avoiding it on other peoples computers isn't always possible.

    Because microsoft structures their software in a bad way from software-engineering point-of-view, you get all sorts of bad behavior that leaks through so that the user can see it.

    > Among the improvements in v0.3 is that the interface can now be dragged regardless of where the mouse pointer is positioned on the title bar.

    So the app is involved in where the mouse is in the title bar to allow

    • That's been a window-manager feature from before Linux was first released.

      The windows console has thus far never used a windows manager to draw on the screen. This isn't "MS is bad" this is "MS is eliminating an old legacy system that worked differently from the rest of the whole OS".

      This is why you could crash the window manager without affecting a console, why themes were not applied to console windows, and why crashing the console would bluescreen windows.

  • within seconds i hated it.

    font rendering is garbage (i bet my ass it ignores the system-wide antialiasing settings and doesn't support bitmap fonts), as is line spacing (there's this "UX advice" that line height should be 20%-30% bigger than font height, which might make sense for textbooks and the like, but just wastes space on screen) .

    wasted screen estate (can i get rid of the margins?) and incoherent UI (why are there tabs where i expect the title bar? actually, why are there tabs? can i get rid of them

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Most applications these days draw their own controls and blend together controls like tabs with window management controls in place of the traditional window title bar. I personally think it's a step backwards in terms of consistency and usability. This is true on Windows and Linux. I've noticed apps on MacOS that also do this, but not quite to the same degree; they tend to still leave a bit more strip to click and drag on.

      As for antialiasing, it's always been the opposite of how you say it should be. Hi

    • Even the headline feature -- being able to grab anywhere in the title bar (lol) -- is made idiotic.

      Because you can grab anywhere in there that THERE'S NO TAB. If you grab where a tab is, now you're moving the tabs around. But the tabs occupy the same space that the title bar should so that space will change size with more tabs open. Yay?

      I just tried launching konsole (the nearest thing I can think of to windows terminal) in KDE. It opened in 0.5s, and if I open a tab, the tab shows up along the bottom. Or a

  • Some info about the Windows Console (Score:4, Informative)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @03:36AM (#59049234)

    It seems a lot of the posts here are wondering why the Windows Console is getting "features" that have been a standard part of Window's window manager for decades. The answer is simple: the Windows Console is *not* a normal windows program.

    It is a legacy application that used to interface directly with the kernel. It is independent of the windows manager which is why it has a quicky full screen mode. It used to draw directly to the GPU bypassing the standard windows drawing mechanisms. It appeared as a window even in safemode where no window manager was started.

    And my favourite: Crashing the console caused windows to BSOD until Windows 8.

    This is the latest step in a long line of eliminating the legacy of the Windows Console. There's been many moves to change it in the past. e.g. In the past the console process was managed by the client/server runtime subsystem (csrss.exe) a process which really only handled windows shutting down and rendering the console. Windows 7 separated this function out to conhost.exe and Windows 8 separated conhost.exe from the CSRSS (yay no more bluescreens).

    This is just the latest in a long road of replacing this legacy application.

  • Why the hell does this app require Windows 1903? I will wager there is absolutely zero reason for this requirement.

  • Announcing features that everyone had for at least a decade as the best thing since sliced bread and the invention of the century?

    What's next, replacing the black cables with white ones?

    • Most of us have moved beyond that. Try colored cables. Make you spaghetti mess much more manageable.

  • and return them to Microsoft and their spying overlord the U.S. government. What could possibly go wrong with using this terminal?

  • Redmond Washington - Today Microsoft release a HUGE update to terminal. This new terminal allows the user to experience some feel-good features while not realizing the main purpose of releasing this new product is to capture everything you do. A Microsoft spokesmen said "We werent getting enough telemetry and feel we needed to screw/spy on the customer even more".

  • My monitor is only 25", so it won't fit.

  • So Microsoft is finally creating a usable command-line terminal?

    1995 called... Wants to know why the hell it took so long?

    • So Microsoft is finally creating a usable command-line terminal?

      1995 called... Wants to know why the hell it took so long?

      Priorities. Honestly I don't know why they are messing with the terminal at all when they have Powershell. The terminal is a legacy application with deep hooks in the system. Think of it as a TTY run entirely by systemd.

  • It may be HUGE but it's buggy as fuck, but then they did say it was an untested Alpha so...
  • If I click where a tab is....I still can't move the Window, have to go to the right of the +. And the only way to switch tabs once the top bar is filled is to use CTRL+TAB / CTRL+SHIFT+TAB?

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