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Windows Whistler Screenshots
syf0n writes: "While most are raving about Mac's OS X, Microsoft has covertly launched their latest attempt at an operating system...Windows Whistler. Some screenshots have finally been posted over at m0ss...I have to say, some of the GUI changes they've made are incredible. The shutdown menu and some of the dialogs in the Control Panel are kind of disturbing -- it looks a bit too user friendly for me! I'm dying to see how the giant folder icons work! Also, you'll notice the "hide the contents of this drive" option. Sounds interesting! Some other info about the beta is available in the root." Annndd...if there are any good themes, they should be made into themes for us, a la Aqua.
And as for X, you're totally missing the point. I said, "let's throw X away, there aren't any good X programs." You said, "what about all that KDE/Gnome stuff." I said, "I mean native X, not X using a toolkit." Now you're, like, "That's not a drawback!" I didn't say it was a drawback. It's an advantage. It'll make it easier for the community to get rid of that horrible piece of shit that is X without having to recode the whole of every KDE/Gnome application. Duh!
My reasoning about X is nothing like what you mention. In case you hadn't noticed, X is the foundation upon which all graphical programs in Linux are built. It's more like me complaining that my house is built on a plague pit which is causing gradual subsidence. Fortunately, moving a KDE app to another foundation is easier than moving a house! X isn't like "a hammer" it's much more fundamental to a modern Linux system than that.
But surely you must agree that X is primitive by modern standards, and it's sub-optimal to have the Linux GUI built upon it?
I'd like to see how good X can get with e.g. the decent drivers you mention, but I know too much about X's fundamental design to expect too much.
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
> Finally, to me it really looks more and more like a mac. Give them a few years and they'll only 20 years behind!
And then, if they were to go with Linux at the core, it would have a 30 year old kernel design to compliment the 20 year old UI
Found this out there in the ether Nathan's Toasty Tech Page Don't knoiw if genuine, but hey...who really cares?
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Gnome is very buggy, so is KDE.
hehe, thats why I use windowmaker.
Its as stable as X.
Auto path completion already works and has worked for ages in NT. You just have to turn it on, which you do from the registry. software-microsoft-command line-completion char if i recall right. Yes, cumbersome.. but it works just fine.
Yeah, but I personally LOATHE the one common menu for all apps at the top of the screen. I access my application's menus just fine thank you. Fact is, it doesn't slow me down very much at all, because I almost always have a right-click context menu available for more 'direct manipulation' without cumbersome key-mouse combinations. And talk about minimal mouse-travel!
In particular, I can't IMAINGE why MS hasn't taken the task-bar tip... or at LEAST made it an option (i.e. you must put your mouse down to one of the corners for the task bar to un-hide). That is probably one of the single biggest annoyances in the Windows UI.
The other one is the sub-menu item mentioned. I agree the apple way is superior than the 'wait half a second' hack.
But god forbid they should ever force all apps to have one common menu along the top the way the Mac does. Ugh. In maximized mode, that's great, and I think they should take advantage of it. But in over-lapped windowed mode... I want each app to have its own menu, and have that menu visually associated ONLY with its corresponding app. I'm sorry, but since I never NEED to 'throw' my mouse around, I never have any real problems with over-shooting (since I rarely use non-context menus anyway).
And dont' get me started on circular menus. Those are just stupid. They're a perfect example of how ivory-tower isolation can lead to stupid ideas. Sure, on paper, they're faster. But in real life, they just look stupid, ugly, and there's still an issue of the narrow end of the pie-slice (you have to move more than a few pixels, or else you still run the risk of slipping to a new pie-slice when you don't mean to, 'cause the pointy end is SMALL). And labling a pie-slice just looks sloppy no matter how you do it (and if you have to read text at angles, you're slowing things down). About the only place I'd agree they have value is in selecting color from a 'color wheel' or something like that, where what you're selecting isn't text labeled, but is more visual and abstract.
Personally, I think MS would do as well to focus on consistency in the UI (ever try to find certain info or settings? Is it in THIS control panel or that one? On this tabbed dialog or that one? Why doesn't my System Properties list how fast my CPU is? Why are some network settings under "Internet" and others under "Network"... why are some UI settings under "Display" and others under "Internet"?!?). I think a better organization of information and functionality would make things infinitely. But aparently MS is stepping backwards on this one, as there are several things (Dial Up Networking configuration) that were much easier to find and change in NT4 than in Win2K.
But damn, I wish they'd make that 'only activate hidden taskbar when mouse is thrown to a corner' option available....!
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Notice also that your ntuser.dat (which contains the HKCU portion of the registry) lives under here.
You know, there's a very simple and quick registry tweak that enables tab-completion in the NT command line (and most other command lines like in the mks toolkit already do command completion). I have never experienced it to be 'unreliable' and am not sure what you're refering to there. So why are you complaining about carpel tunnel syndrome? Just to hear yourself whine?
;-)
:-) It's either that or prove the saying that old dogs simply are incapable of learning new tricks... ;-)
And nobody else in the world gives a damn about 8.3 any more (in fact, everyone else in the world is glad to be rid of it), so why on earth should MS do anything to service that request? The demand level is mighty low... Maybe if you'd do as I did -- learn to selectively use the GUI where it makes sense. There really ARE things that are faster in the GUI from time to time
Why not advance into the late 90's
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
4NT totally rocks (gives you great scripting ability but with a DOS-flavor syntax for those that are use to the NT command line instead of more unix-like ones).
Of course, there are full bash, csh, tcsh, and ksh shells out there for you to use at your whim if that's what you're used to. Just like there are emacs and (shudder) vi editors for those that know them well.
So what if NT doesn't ship with these things? The target demographic doesn't have a clue what these things are in most cases. And they're readily available from third parties for reasonable prices...
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Shorter names = more efficient.
And 'Shorter names = longer to learn'. Look at the different demographics the original command-line-only UNIX was aimed at, compared to 'default-GUI for the masses' Win9x and NT-Pro.
The differing demographic shows that your idea of 'more efficient' is totally irrelavent to the vast majority of the users that Win9x/NT-Pro is for. In fact, for those users, it would be MUCH LESS efficient, because it would take so much more of their time to learn (and re-learn and re-learn) where things are and how to do things.
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
This has to be a prank.. there isn't anything new in these screenshots. It looks just like any other windows9x/nt4+ with windowblinds (the one screenshot with the different borders is using a hack called windowblinds) and with larger icons.. there is nothing pointing to me that A) anything in there is different than any other windows and B) that nothing different in there isn't possible with even mspaint.
*cracking up* if that was a freudian slip on your part.... wouldn't that imply some sort feeling of male inadequacy on your part : ) ? That's how i understand the theroy, at least.
btw, kudos on not flaming joepits out of the gate on his comment
moox. for a new generation.
Hmm, it looks to me like Windows 2000 with larger and better drawn icons.
Better drawn icons - good.
Large Icons - bad.
My screen space is expensive. Why do I have to throw away a few hundred pixels on the side of the folder just to be told it's name in big letters. I suspect this will be unusable at anything less than 1024 x 768
It's Windows 2000 Large Print edition.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Well, not that I want to defend MS or anything but bash looks exactly the same on kernel 2.4 as it did on 2.2.
This looks like Linux.
Exactly like Linux.
What's changed?
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
#include <ui_dos.h>
#include <ui_win31.h>
#include <ui_win95_98.hxx>
#include <ui_2000.hxx>
/* #include <ui_bob.h> */
Revolutionary things always fail when they come to market too early
I guess BackOrifice is now officially a "feature"
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
Err, well actually in my case, drivers, tools and applications that I'll want to install if I reinstall '98 (or add some functionality to someone else's setup).
Now my cd labelled "XXX"... ;)
Rich
this is the first fairly original anti-microsoft post in a while.
well, made me laugh at least.
moox. for a new generation.
That wasn't Windows ME ("Win 98 SE") in the screenshots, but a beta of upcoming Windows.NET (codename Whistler, RTM due date April 18, 2001 according to winsupersite.com).
I have to ask though... anyone know how much of a hard drive hog this thing is going to be? If it follows any other MS product, it's bound to take more space then needed, but some program stats, even at this stage, would help.
from what we've seen of MS's long-term direction (digital age lorentz transformation-> long-term=5 years) this problem, if you still consider it a problem in view of the growth rate of affordable, high-capacity drives, will be solved by net-delivered applications. if you're running usage-only-on-demand pay-per-click software, they may not even need your hard drive to store all those program files [of course, widespread broadband is a necessity, but it's coming].
Also, is this a new overall OS or just for certain products? (In other words, is it a PC OS, yet another NT upgrade, or what?)
given the MS.net vision, it would seem that after a few years of operation there need not be any further distinction between relatively configurable consumer Windows9x and the more restricted lock-down-everything-they-don't-need-to-mess-with business NT system.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
> it looks a bit too user friendly for me!
Hmm.. looks like you've still got to click "Start" to turn it off.
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Jakdaw
maybe some of the themes will be a little more attractive/radical ;P
I just hope they made the BSOD themeable too
This is not a new idea, but rather yet another case of Microsoft "innovating" by taking other people's ideas and hawking them as their own.
I've been using TraySaver for two years now, and it works like a charm. Another, slightly different implementation, is PC Magazine's Tray Manager. Both programs come with full source code, so you can customize them to your heart's desire.
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begin 644
Actually, out of all of win2k's new features, the ability of the OS to hide anything is the most annoying feature.
I constantly find myself looking for a program that I know that I have, but unable to find it because Windows has decided that I haven't used it in a week and that it should be hidden.
This leads to even more assinine cases in programs such as Word where undo may be shown in a menu, but redo is hidden. I've aready turned off the menu hiding option in every program that I own. (It took me a while to find the option tho... thanks to how deeply it is buried in Word).
Hiding options is just a stupid way to make an OS easier to use. It makes it nearly impossible to form a cognitive map of the system because everything keeps changing.
The search options all over the place
The "tasks you can do" after clicking on control panel (yeah, control panel isn't the filesystem, but before it was still icon based)
The extensive customisation options (hide icons, whatever, it's a start)
Lots of UI designers have been talking about no longer using the "filing" concept for a long time, but this is the closest I've seen to anyone actually doing it... Eazel is nice, but at its core it's still a system for users to put things in places. What I would like is a system for me to simply get what I want... looks like MS might be moving there...
JAMWiki Java-based Wiki engine
It matters to anyone intending to download themes containing such icons over a dialup line. :-p
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Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
... is surely the most exciting thing shown in these screenshots. From the name, it sound like a VNC-style system, although I suppose it's possible it's speeded up with some windows GUI commands. I'd be suprised if it's quite as flexible as X, but I don't think that's such a bad thing, given the poor performance of X.
As for the large folder icons, I imagine that they are the icons used in the 'thumbnails' view that explorer gives you - they're not just big folders for the sake of being big - it's just a shame that the screenshot doesn't show you a folder that has any files in it.
try editing the registry
.oO0Oo.
you cam remove them all
my computer & the lot
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
positive : too much grey & too Windowsss like
.oO0Oo.
paRat : not enough contrast
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Up comes a menu of everything that boots up at startup, including tabs for Config.sys, Autoexec.bat, system.ini, win.ini & the starup folder (plus system tray). This last tabs even shows the hidden apps, that don't appear in the system tray &/or the startup folder, yet are there any way. It give you the option of unticking all of them, including the windows system startup apps. There are 28 bloody apps in my system tray but I've unticked 18 of them using the msconfig app. So all I use now are the 5 system apps that windows, its GUI & filesystem need (taskbar, scanreg, taskmon, systray & powerprofile) , plus 3dfx tools, the Aopen system monitor, TweakUI & Norton System works, but I've disabled all the ones that inside the Systemworks tray icon, but cleansweep.
I got my first look at Windows ME today. I saw the desktop and thought to myself, "Hey, it's Windows 2000!" Clicked the "Start" button...said "Windows ME Millenium Edition" on it.
That was mostly because of the Recycle Bin icon...looks the same as the 2k one.
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Of course, it might be possible for you to squeeze a minimal OS installation, swapfile, applications, and data onto a single 2GB partition. For limited computing tasks, this might even be acceptable. But I'm a forward-looking person. My recommendations are so big because I like to install most of what's available in the OS, plus support for every language I can, with ample room for future expansion and space to spare. After choking Win98 on a ~700MB partition, I try to err on the side of allocating more space than necessary. (Hmmm, maybe that system partition should be 4GB, just in case... :)
I would like seperate 15-inch touchscreens for each of my icons.
My workgroup of NT4 workstations was a pain to manage until I discovered some tools in the NT4 RK that allow me to remotely administer users and shares. This functionality should have shipped with the OS, but I guess Microsoft prospers further from sales of its exhorbitantly priced resource kits.
The big problem is that this type of "user-friendly" desktop may alienate many system administrators. I personally run NT4 as my workstation, and am dreadding the upgrade to Win2K. Why? Because 2K will bring more wizards, more "user-friendly" features, and more garbage. I once had an old 486 DX2-50 with 8MB RAM. W3.11 worked fine on it, W95 crawlled. My biggest problem - wizards. I took a few minuts for each wizard to launch and do something. In NT4, You can manage most everything without many "user-friendly" features. With what I see in Whistler (and 2K), MS is taking a good operating system and slowing it down by adding tons of unneeded garbage. I can still run NT4 workstation on my old Pentium 100. I'm having qualms about installing W2K on a PII-400 with 256MB RAM.
The biggest loss for MS may be that System Administrators - especially those who prefer doing everything themselves, may stay with NT4 or maybe 2K. This may not hurt MS's revenues, but they will lose a huge following.
...warm milk and cookies with every BSOD...
"Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated"
Gotta had it to them, whatever Whistler may work like, M$ does a great job making it look pretty. If Linux had a User Manager that looked anywhere near as good as Whistler's I'd be happy.
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
Ah, you mean like the wonderful way they chose "Program Files" to demonstrate their "long filename" support "with spaces" which made it a pain to install all those old 16 bit programs. I mean, why not just call it "Programs"?
Yet another example of Microsoft ignoring all the lessons learnt in years before. Spaces have been available in filenames in Unix for forever yet people avoid them. Why? Because it makes things complex, breaks scripts and you have to escape them on the command line (or in the case of MS use quotes which complicates things even more if that means you have a script which then needs to be double escaped).
Not to mention of course that long directory names mean it's impossible to get more than a couple of levels in the directory tree in explorer. Of course, we're supposed to put things in "My Documents" anyway.
Anyway, I'm sure this has all been hashed out before so I'll just leave it there.
Rich
There are many important changes, most of which the user never sees. That is the way it should be done. No need to recompile the kernel or find patches, no need to spend time reading countless manuals etc. I sincearly hope that some day Linux achieve such "lack of innovation".
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Not to troll on my first post, but this is kinda dissapointing. Slashdot is always pretty up to date on things relating to *nix and whenever ESR sneezes there's a post about it, however now we find a post about the previous build of Whistler. This was news about 2 months ago, kids. Here's the lowdown.. The build number of the latest build that leaked out is 2257. They introduced actual theming (but still very restricted, nowhere near the level of customization that Windowblinds offers. Should /. users (and or admins.. lets keep the info current shall we) wish to keep up to date, here's a few URLS to keep you busy:
http://jotenet.koti.com.pl/
http://betaxtreme.hypermart.net/
and
http://www.wininformant.com/
(which is biased as hell but still useful)
It came on four floppies (I still have 'em kicking around here someplace...)
Of course, MS-DOS wasn't exactly feature-rich.
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Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
I checked out the site. What I see is that now, instead of just windows with new icons, it's windows with skins.
Apple is still so far ahead in design, it's scary.
Personally, I'm guessing that Sony and Palm and Nintendo will release the first true consumer OSes and we'll be done with this MS BS forever.
He doesn't need to be kidding. Screenshots tell you almost nothing; they just get publicized to keep people talking about the product and anticipating its release. MS is billing Whistler primarily based on its capability, not its look.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
It's supposed to be the merging of 9x and NT, but we've heard that song before.
I'd expect it to be the successor to win2000, so bloat should be to 2000 as 2000 was to NT4.
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Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
Laine Walker-Avina
"In
and I thought that MacOS's user-friendliness 'features' were sicky-sweet... Ugh. This is bugly.
:-)
Do we really want this? i mean, 'hide the contents of this drive'? geeez! It's hard enough to figure out where a Winbloat program has crapped itself as it is, without this junk... no-cluebies will eat this up, but techies will be too busy vomiting.
In a word: It's time for a cool change, and may it be brought by an Apple-toting horned penguin with a trident, if you grok my meaning
If violence isn't solving your problems, you're not using enough of it. - MAJ Misato Katsuragi
does MS even try? It's sickening.
That's right, they did the same thing with win2k, hacking Winnt 4 (it looked a lot like this with NT4 in the background and some extra hacks in the foreground)
Okay, I have to admit, the GUI does look nice. It looks like they actually took some time to do decent graphics.
I have to ask though... anyone know how much of a hard drive hog this thing is going to be? If it follows any other MS product, it's bound to take more space then needed, but some program stats, even at this stage, would help.
Also, is this a new overall OS or just for certain products? (In other words, is it a PC OS, yet another NT upgrade, or what?)
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Windows.NET (which is what it will probably be called now) Also has a new and completely different Start menu, a whole lot of new task-bar changes that are, in my opinion, past due, like stacking of similar windows (if you have 18 IE windows open, 5 Netscape windows open, 3 My Computer windows open and 3 Photoshop's open, you will see in the taskbar 4 items, and clicking on one pops up with all the collapsed items. Remote Desktop (Terminal Services stripped to only the remote-admin portion) is now installed by deafult on all versions from consumer to datacenter, making Administration far FAR easier. Windows SuperSite has some amazing screenshots (and have had them for AGES I'm surprised this made the news...) of the new OS, as well as but-loads of information.
It looks like so far, they have not changed much of the core of Windows 2000 code-wise, but I think thats probably a good thing, since it is remarkably stable for me right now. My server has been up since I installed Win2k (and down to reboot after installing SP1) without any problems, and my workstation has not crashed yet, save a spit with Creatives EXTREMELY poor drivers.
I really think Microsoft is getting things right these days.(MY OPINION!)
Or does each successive version of windows keep looking like MS ate gnome, and shat in the windows box?
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
That is nice - MacOS (from version 8.x onwards, IIRC) has the ability to turn any open folder into a tab - just drag it to the bottom of the screen, where it turns into a tab, and when you want to use it again just click on it, it slides up, and slides away again when you click somewhere else. I miss that feature in Windows and Linux, and looks like I'll miss it even more in OSX, as Apple, in their infinite wisdom, has removed that feature, at least from the DPs and Beta. Humph
Looks pretty nice. The people will buy it and thats all that matters isn't it?
Yeah, what's with the damn icons? The hi-colour icons that shipped with the original Win95 Plus! pack looked quite nice-- now they look all cartoony and horrible! It's... infantile. `My Computer', `My Network'... I think MS are using this as the model for their new UI.
Sure, Windows can be themed now but why the hell make it look so cheap and nasty out of the box? We're paying enough for it. MS went and paid some font designers to create some nice typefaces for them, and they got Brian Eno to do that Windows 95 start-up sound; why don't they do the same for the graphics in their default theme?
someone who is not visually impaired?
Beyond the colour-blindness I mean....
Simon
Simon
The real linux_penguin has Slashdot ID 101961. Anyone else is an impostor. Including Bruce Perens.
Microsoft has worked long and hard to create a GUI that is clean and usable.
This is the worst typo I have ever seen.
I'm not sure how, "M$ spent 2 minutes ripping off Apples GUI", turned into what you said though.
---CONFLICT!!---
Back to the future, I guess. :)
Edith Keeler Must Die
But for those of us who don't like to be patronized by cutesy OS "features", many of these annoyances can be customized into oblivion. You can use the View menu to display Control Panel as a list, to save screen real estate. Personalized menus can be disabled. The information columns in the right pane of explorer windows can be removed or substituted with better information in W2K by right-clicking them. Check out this thread more ideas.
The point is, Windows defaults suck but are fixable.
There is more to it that just renaming it. Have any of you folks actually used windows? or do you just bash it on principle alone?
network places now allows you to open ftp sites like explorer directories. I don't even have an ftp client installed on my machine anymore. It really has become a "network place", kind of like bookmarks for ftp sites, but with the same interface as explorer. No, an ftp client is not innovation, but a service that is consistent with the UI of the OS that allows for browsing of remote directories as if they were local, and even browsing ftp sites is very nice.
KFM is close, you can open an ftp site in a file manager window, but try dragging an entire directory structure into it or from it to transfer it and it will tell you that recursive transfer is not supported.
Windows is not the greatest, but its also not bad, anymore.....you just need to use the right version of Windows, 2000
I think....therefore I am
I reject your reality
In Windows 2000, right-click the desktop and click Properties. Then click the Effects tab. Uncheck "Hide keyboard navigation indicators until I use the Alt key". I assume/hope that Whistler can be fixed similarly.
Actually, the BSOD is themeable. Or, at least, you can change it's colors. IIRC, just add MessageTextColor= and MessageBackColor= lines to config.sys under the [386enh] section. ( At least, for Windows9x/ME ) The valid values are 0-F, but I don't recall what number/letter is what color.
Oh, come now. No real console-dweller would be without 4DOS or its big brother, 4NT. It almost completely removes the pain from the DOS command line.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Anyway, there's a couple of points here:
Firstly, it's OK to look at GPL code and see how it works, and then reimplement it ... isn't it?
Secondly, you can police code, because you can compile your code under MSVC and then run a binary diff between that and their executables. The binary diff will spot areas which are significantly the same as your code.
Mind you, in some cases there is only one right way to write the code, so you can't prove they didn't recode the same thing from scratch using the same, logically necessary, structure.
Anyway this is moot - Microsoft don't tend to steal code; they have plenty enough resources to write some lame themes manager themselves, and it work work with WIN32 GDI, rather than with X (as do the Linux ones).
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Found a bug in Konqueror :(
There is no reason to do a major UI overhaull, so they stick with the old -- why is that a bad thing? Why should Microsoft force 200 million people to learn some new obscure user interface paradigm?
Stop throwing buzzwords in where they don't fit. Nobody mentioned a new paradigm. It's just that the screenshots are almost identical to current version of windows. While, as you say, there is little need to change the interface, it seems that this small amount of changes could easily fit into a service pack. Which begs the question: why are we supposed to pay for the same operating system again?
No need to recompile the kernel or find patches, no need to spend time reading countless manuals etc. I sincearly hope that some day Linux achieve such "lack of innovation".
FFS, a random piece of FUD to take attention away from Windows. There's no need to recompile the kernel or find patches in most distributions of Linux. You need to read the manual or take a course with anything as complex as a computer system, which includes Windows.
Have a look at those explorer screen shots!
Capacity: 1.46 Gig Used : 932 Free : 570
I wonder if Microsoft is going for a 1 gig minimum installation this time round?
:)
Yes, they probably ripped WindowsBlind (which is _NOT_ GPL) for their themes stuff...
> I'd blame the bad refresh and redraw on the old graphics hardware in your machine.
Personally I'd blame the shoddy code. Back when I used to develop Mac applications, we'd make damn sure everything only drew when absolutely necessary. These days I can watch IE redraw a menu three times when under load (VC generating browse info;). There's no excuses, it's just sloppy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Say what? Well, I know what you mean.
My oven can cook a turkey twice as fast now that I'm running ME. I've also noticed that my answering machine now picks up on the 2nd ring, instead of the 4th ring when I was using Win98.
If ME is that good, I think whistler might be able to end world hunger, or stop inner city violence. I love microsoft.
Seriously man... get linux.
--cr@ckwhore
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
o.k. this is off topic but i just thought i'd point out that Whistler in sneaker was sorta based on a real person (unless i'm repeating an old (mid-80's was when i read about it) urban legend) who being both blind and possesed of perfect pitch could whistle all of the old ma-bells controll tones. he finally got caught playing with the system and was offered a job or jail by ma-bell (he took the job).
Mycroft
Well they're forcing sysadmins to learn some obscure directory paradigm requiring major network redesign, but then the PHBs never see that, just bitch about the system not working properly and blame the sysadmins. And if Windows is so easy to use, then why do I have to keep helping my dad, an accountant of thiry years with more qualifications than you can shake a stick at, to keep his Win98 desktop up and running. Oh I forgot, it's the third-party software like errrmm Flight Simulator 2000. Linux is hard, but so is Windows and at least with Linux a power-user can find out what's wrong and fix it - no reinstall required because it's all in well-documented text files not in an obfuscated, bloated database.
In whistler, with the size of those icons and web views, VGA safe mode will be completely unusable.
In Win98 I already have to move the taskbar to press the 'ok' of display properties...
Yes, I don't have any basic tools. Here, it's just sh, cat, ed and telnet (which I use for http).
Seriously though, I don't have such tools on the system I'm on right now (work, Win32). And I was rather interested on the exact color they use to calm down lunatics (I suppose that would alleviate my stress a little bit), I'm not sure whether mikkkrosoft got it just right.
Then, I could just put my wife in front of computer to play zangband whenever she started to bring up the topic of who is going to wash the dishes.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As you can clearly see from the screenshots, here is another example of how Microsoft's policy of constant innovation is changing the face of information technology. It's a brave company that does what Microsoft has done and risk losing customers by breaking away from the traditional look and feel of the WIMP GUI in order to provoke a real evolution in the way we use computers. You'll see: within two years we'll all come round to using an interface of the kind they've invented here. So come on, folks, stop knocking Microsoft and admit that when it comes to new ideas, they're the tops!
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
True. Whistler and Captain Crunch are old Heroes of (us) Phreakers.
it's in my head
Has anybody got a screenshot of this 'innovation'? I keep hearing about it, but all google turns up is a few gags about how useless it all was.
I sometimes debate making CMD my shell, but then remember how much i paid for my dammed mouse!
Err, well the linux machine is a Cyrix 133 actually but bang on about the Athlon. Though I do that because I know how much better Linux is. I need the Athlon for windows so I can get the quick reboot when it crashes ;). So I'm not one of the complainers.
Rich
yes, just make sure they don't forget the "ALT" parameters to the "IMG" tags...
Dear Microsoft,
Please could you increase the default width for filenames in Explorer. It's f*cking annoying that you have to reset it with every Explorer window opened.
Yours, etc.
semper ubi sub ubi
I don't think the designers of windows had users like you in mind when they designed the UI. Long, descriptive directory names can be useless and crap from the command line, but for people browsing the filesystem with explorer it has a different meaning: Click the sentence 'Documents and Settings' (in nice, friendly,non threatening letters) to go to the directory containing... Documents and settings!
Many years ago, there was a commercial command line interpreter (or whatever it was) for dos/windows that gave you file name completion similar to what tcsh and bash have (I think it was called 4dos), I don't know if that is still available, but it might solve your source of irritation?
Did anyone notice the WinAmp at the bottom? Scary stuff indeed.
Who else thinks Windows should slowly be regulated to newbies?
"I am so cool, you could keep a side of meat in me for a month
io hymen hymnaee io
io hymen hymnaee
Because I don't see any difference (other than cheap-looking icons) between this new beta and its predecessors.
It doesn't take a Einstein to come up with new graphics or fancy phrasing that might make an OS looks newer.
If you use their products long enough, you'll notice that each new version comes complete with re-arranged [more confusing] menus, new driver bases, and more annoying free crap to sort through and remove from the "out-of-the-box" distribution.
PS. If you're enraged or irritated by this post, try being amused instead.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
> FLAMEBAIT!? What the hell? This guy is making a good point!
You're right, and I was glad you said it, but you sure come off like a jerk with the rest of your comment.
haven't they hired a lot of Indians lately ? That could account for the grammar butchering ...
So pretty much Microsoft has done the same thing as with every other Windows release... Spiffed up the god awful HTML that the damn computer has to render for system tasks, and added new icons.
Yay let's all upgrade!
SuPz.orG
Half the icons look like cartoons. The other half look like 'normal'. What happened to consistent interface to help users learn the system? Why are all the folders starting to look like web pages now? Even the shut down dialog looks like a web page now. It seems MS wants to rewrite the whole OS in HTML and JS?
/register/ it and remove the ads if you like it.'
Anyway, the most interesting part is the big Whistler banner on the dialup screen. Is that going to be used for banner ads now? 'Windows is now shareware. You can pay $99.99 to
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If I'm not mistaken, Whistler is the IA64 version of Windows 2000. I've used whistler before and it 's the most unstable piece of crap I've EVER seen.
<dream sequence>
MARCH 18, 2001 - REDMOND, WA (AP) Microsoft unveils new "WinOS X" operating system
The Microsoft project once code-named "Whister" came to light today in a Microsoft press conference at their headquarters in Redmond, Wa. The computer industry was shocked to discover that, rather than continuing the trend of using their "NT" codebase for future OS releases, the core of WinOS X would be a version of the BSD family of operating systems. Gil Bates, project leader for WinOS X, explained the change by saying that "for a business like ours to thrive, one must constantly innovate, or in other words, copy what Apple is doing. Besides, that whole NT thing was really just an April Fools joke that had gotten way out of hand. Sure, we had a few laughs, all the way to the bank in fact, but we decided it was time to get serious."
</dream sequence>
heh.
--
According to the fish, that means 'old wine in new hoses' ?!!?
The Win3.0 control panel was very simple. Not many icons, always in the same place. It only changed if you started up in Enhanced mode or added network support.
Firstly Win3.1 allowed the Control Panel to be extended, which was a boon until some software companies (including Microsoft themselves) started adding extra control applets that should have been added to applications themselves.
Then Windows 95 added a control panel which allowed you to sort the order that the icons appeared in. Then if you also installed IE4 with that desktop integration, the control panel took up even more space, with a vast area of the screen doing nothing.
Now we have this abberation. Absolutely ghastly, all space and no real ordering.
The issue is, can they dumb things down any further.
it's already like that in Win2k...
If it is, then I give this a big yawn. It's only vaguely evolutionary, and certainly not revolutionary.
MS has always been 5 to 10 years behind in UI stuff, and I don't see it changing. I doubt we'll see this new whistler UI stuff any time soon anyway.
It's already the year 2000 and the biggest software company in the world still doesn't know how to make a toolbar API that can handle toolbar buttons with more than 16 colours (what the hell, do they think we're still in the 80's?), and is still struggling to produce windows API functions that can handle (what are now) such basic things as alpha maps in bitmaps. Sorry, but Microsoft needs to do more than just make a few vaguely pretty dialogs and menus if they are truly serious about improving Windows on the UI front. They need to overhaul their entire attitude and their entire set of API's. GDI is still too slow; Windows Me, MS's latest offering, still has a "Win16Mutex" and *still* doesn't use pure protected mode, etc etc etc - when is MS going to stop writing software for the 80's? I certainly don't think that the difference between WindowsMe and Windows95 constitutes 5 years worth of OS improvements.
Hiding options is just a stupid way to make an OS easier to use. It makes it nearly impossible to form a cognitive map of the system because everything keeps changing.
;-) I always turn of the "in-tray" option for any prog that offers it because I am afraid.
Wow, I couldn't agree more. Even non-computer people learn their system by repetition and when things change by themselves it never helps. You know even the IT guys won't be able to find this stuff after it disappears.
Also, why do people have so many tray programs running? How can you stand waiting for all of them to load when Winblows starts up? Sheesh, that combined with have 1 million useless apps running in the background just waiting to crash my OS makes me keep a total of 2 tray apps on my system: Winamp and Napster
I wish Linux's GUI was up to speed with Windows, I keep trying to get used to it, but the inconsistencies and awful screen fonts make me go back to Windows and wait for a revolution...I wish I had time to dig into coding again, I'd like to work with GUI technology...nuff already. Whistler pretty much exactly like 95, 98, etc. They need a total overhaul to make it look as neat as OSX.
Chris
+ the company's Anti-Netscape
Big deal, if you didn't tell me it was Whistler, I wouldn't have known the difference.
Ok so how soon before we have the features shown in the screen shots?
How soon after the release will Linux have ALL the features of Whistler.. and how soon after relase will BSD have all Whistlers security features?
And of course.. how long before the first bug is found? and how many years after that before it gets fixed...
Please note: Linux people have no problems with copying.. thats the Mac camp.. we just have a commen enemy.. Microsoft...
I don't actually exist.
Pardon my lack of artistical sense but there's nothing new in these snapshots
So what? Exactly why should there be any change in the basic WIMP interface of Windows or any other OS for that matter? It's not like there are leaps in interface design from successive versions of Unix, Linux or even the Macintosh instead most changes have been gradual over time.
OK, some icons are a bit bigger but I really don't understand where all that hype comes from ?
In this vein, nowhere have I seen MSFT touting their whizzbang new improved user interface but instead they have touted the improved reliability, scalability and robustness of their new systems which if making the switch from NT to Win2K is true. Maybe you are mistaking MSFT for Apple?
Did anyone else notice they had WinAMP installed, nice to see M$ workers have the same faith in Media Player as the rest of us :)
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
Actually, I find X with a simple window manager to be much more responsive than Win98 on my P166 with 32MB and Matrox Millenium II... unless it's doing something really processor intensive in which case the OS doesn't give the GUI higher priority like Windows does.
Of course the Millenium II drivers are very optimized, YMMV.
To me it's much more important that linux doesn't crash or thrash the drives for no reason and that I can script anything that I need to do on a regular basis.
But I'm an old school Unix hack who just uses X to hold up a bunch of terms and Netscape. I don't use DE's like gnome or kde which may being slowing you down.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
One thing MS has done right in Whistler is include a personal firewall (i.e. intended for desktops or laptops that are directly Net connected).
:) Amusingly, he wrote the details down in his Palm III...
This is important for the whole Net, in order to reduce the number of DoS attacks launched from compromised machines, particularly as cable modems and ADSL become more common.
I hope Linux distros and KDE/Gnome are going to include similar features - I know that ipchains is there by default, but what I want to see is that the basic firewall is installed as part of the install process, as a result of asking 'will this machine always be used behind a firewall?'
The Windows world is getting into personal firewalls - McAfee (formerly Conseal), Norton and the idiosyncratic ZoneGuard are some examples.
Probably MS were going to do this anyway, but I remember talking to a fairly senior program manager a year or two ago, who was on the Win2000 team, and saying how important it was to have personal firewalls, so maybe I can claim some credit
Uses about 20MB... so what? Linux has better memory management and caching algorithms, still runs great with 32MB RAM.
How's Win2000 with 32MB?
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
TFTs exist in two different colour pixel configurations, RGB and BGR (not quite since they are not in simple three pixel groups, but it will do for now), and Cleartype exploits the higher spatial resolution that can be gained from treating each colour pixel separately.
This of course means that ClearType needs to be told what configuration your panel uses, and if the wrong one is used it will indeed look horrible. Try mirroring the image, that should give you a better idea of what it should look like (presumably Whistler has a configuration option somewhere to set this).
http://grc.com/cleartype.html has some useful information and a little test program.http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/graphics/library/infogfx /0004whistler/whistler_pre.jpg
check this pic out... it's registered to 'w00t killa' and the company is 'Anti-Netscape'. i think that's pretty funny
i just climb trees, and look for rhythm everywhere.
They aren't writing this new OS from scratch. That's like saying Red Hat 7.0 was written from scratch, it makes absolutely no sense. (Maybe that wasn't the best comparison.)
Definitions:
XML: Leading the way to make the web a print medium
There's just a slight problem. Some of my icons are informational. They are not there because I use them frequently, but because they convey some information, such as CPU load or whatever.
How is that different from "Shut down"? Seriously, why does that matter? I use Win2k on my gaming box and I love it. The system is by far the most stable OS Microsoft has ever put out. It looks like Whistler is building on 2k so I have no qualms with that. I just wish they would kill off that damned Win9x line so they can quit kicking themselves in the nads by selling such a piss-poor crash-prone product. :-) I'll still use Linux, Solaris, and OpenBSD for "real" work but Win2k is fine for gaming and browsing the web when you're just in the mood to zone out and watch flashy animations and crap.
What do you mean locking them off with giant fences? You mean they can't be changed? You may not believe this, but I once changed "C:\" to "D:\" globally in the registry and got the intended result with not even a hickup. I should think you could do the same with these directory names, unless you know differently.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
In my eyes GNOME icons look waay TOO WASHED OUT. They have to little contrast and are thus hard to recognize. After all, they are not icons but almost real pictures. Real pictures are not suited for the job of conveying a message fast, that's what ICONS were invented for (icons = as simple as possible, not: as detailed as possible).
way behind. To me its just making more "excuses" for people to avoid learning anything about thier computers. I don't think that everyone should be a programmer or an admin. However making more "wizards" and "pretty, over sized icons", does not help people actually figure out what is going on in side the OS.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
Oh the irony.
no its ~/projects/project##/data, no one gives a rats ass what is in there
Read my plan to save the Bengals
Because they don't have to. The individual developers probably do want to produce good work, but the ones in charge are only interested in getting the thing out of the door and to hell with the customer. I've seen it many times where politics decides what the customer/user gets, not a product that's well-built.
If they did, they would experience the most massive DDoS "attack" in history.
I can only hope that MSFT's intentions are so noble. My guess is that the "remote desktop" functionality is just an early version of how they plan on implementing their .NET platform.
.NET connection, before they have all the server side stuff worked out, but if they provide the client/protocols under the guise of this "remote desktop" connectivity, then they can slowly roll out .NET, without having to get everyone to conver to a whole new OS just to get the O'Day subscription to the latest, client/server version of Word.
.NET would be to impliment somethign free, like Outlook Express, or IE under it...
Obviously, it would look bad, if they were to directly provide support for a
Probably an even better way to get the public hooked on
Occam's Razor, ameoba's Microsoft corollary:
Never attribute to benevolence what can explained by subversive market domination schemes.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
You can filter based on TCP ports, UDP ports, and IP protocols. It may not be a big & clever firewall, but it's better than nothing.
Win2000 has Tab Completion...so you only need to click *tab* once you have the "CD DOC" typed.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Microsoft is not absconding with the English Language, they are simply using language which is prevalent in another part of the world. If you examine the the H1B visa records on one hand, and Microsoft's hiring practices on the other hand, I think that you will soon see how all of this has come to be. You westerners are so very difficult to deal with, simultainuosly consisness and precision. What you see is really a reflection of yourselves as percieved by people who speak English as a second language.
Yet another peice of junk to find exploits in and not report them.......
This will be fun.
Apple, far ahead in design? What are you smoking? Apple hasn't even got preemptive multitasking yet! And when it comes to configuration, it's not good. All I need to make my Windows box look like Mac is either MacVision, or WindowBlinds and WinMac. So there.
Definitions:
XML: Leading the way to make the web a print medium
n.
-
- An ancient English meeting, especially a representative meeting of the freemen of a shire.
v. tr. mooted, mooting, moots.- Law.
A hypothetical case argued by law students as an exercise.-
- To bring up as a subject for discussion or debate.
- To discuss or debate. See Synonyms at broach1.
-
adj.- Law.
To plead or argue (a case) in a moot court."Free your mind and your ass will follow"
appart from some icons and stylesheet stuff, no real visible difference between Whistler and 2000
Thats what I was thinking...win2k with theams. I honestly don't want my os to look like a web page. I could see Whistler being like plus for 95...something with extra toys and some "flash" stuff. But in reality I've been more pleased with w2k than I thought I would, IT WORKS!!! Imagine my supprise when things that crashed 98 were dumped by w2k without crashing or corrupting itself. (I wonder how much reasearch the m$ programmers did in the linux sorce)
why their are server & workstation editions of 2000
well, in reality they are mainly the same thing, except server versions have extra software and default to giving the deamons/services more priority and cpu time. Also they charge more for the server..hehe, but I'm sure you know that. By default workstation doesn't have all the extra crap server does instaled. It takes an extra 1-2 minutes to boot server than workstation.
As for ME..a 98 upgrade with more problems...although I haven't looked at the details I'd bet its still 16 bit core based. I know two people who have tried it out...and went right back to w2k (the linux partitions never changed..hehe)...
I think I'll stay away from whistler till its shoved down my throat...or they put an off switch on it to turn off the ugly web look. If I want to see web pages I can come here...or to a billion other web sites.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
This is the *NEW* windows? I haven't yet installed me, but this looks like it should be called winTOY. Oh man. I hope that they put out some other options for us people who know how to tie our shoelaces.
BTW, Before you flame, I do know about linux, but until they can get Logic Audio, Cubase, + my fav games and audio programs running on it I'm suck w/ the blue sceen of death.
Click here to read too much about my personal life
Microsoft puts it in all their recent betas. I do see a good use for it, though. Every time Winodws successfully boots, write up a bug report. If it lasts five minutes without crashing, write up another one.
The simple proof that microsoft don't steal GPL code is that there software would come out on time, and it would not have so many bugs if it they were actually stealing Code. :)
:)
That said, you can't just slap in code from one app int another, and changing it to work with MS existing code base, as well as making it look and act diferently that the original would be more trouble than it's worth.
There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits the sharing the knolledge that the software contains. So if microsoft programmers want to learn how to code, they have all this free software to learn from.
This product is licensed to:
w00t Killa
Anti-Netscape
doesn't that seem a bit odd?
Are we sure this is legit? Huge parts of this thing look too much like Win2000 for me to be convinced this isn't someone's idea of "good use of free time" and Gimp. Yeah, the "enhanced" parts look good, but against the backdrop that looks almost exactly like w2k... It's enough to send up a red flag in my book...
Why does everyone think that Microsoft is going to change their UI when it has been making them so much money since win95 took over the desktop market in most distributed pc's? As much as i love gnome/kde/wm, many of these Window Managers emulate many of the things that win9x has done ever since they copied apple. Until the public is sick of the way windows looks/operates, no changes will be made.
"sigs are for losers"
...but now that you mention it, that shade of blue DOES look awfully familiar!
Eric
Where is Whistler's mother?
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Isn't the whole point to show screenshots of the standard desktop? ALT+PrtSc just defeats the purpose of showing an average Whistler desktop? Either that or a demo Whistler desktop?
Definitions:
XML: Leading the way to make the web a print medium
Coming soon the Yellow Screen of Death, and the Star Wars Screen of Death, and the Technoindustrial Screen of Death, and the...
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ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Obviously they are expecting to have lots of bugs -- I mean, you put things on the desktop you expect people to use often, right?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
It's Fucking Ugly.
--
Okay, should've checked that the NT5 settings had the same effect as on NT4. They don't. They're okay. Hrmph.
-~ ~- -~ ~-
__
Arse
That's only for hackers. It provides easy access for the sites they have installed back orifices on.
Well they're forcing sysadmins to learn some obscure directory paradigm requiring major network redesign
As well as continuting with a pradigm which expects end users to perform sys admin tasks, whilst making it difficult for sys admins to actually do them.
Linux is hard, but so is Windows and at least with Linux a power-user can find out what's wrong and fix it - no reinstall required because it's all in well-documented text files not in an obfuscated, bloated database.
Also you can do this without the admin needing to be sat at the computer or for that matter with the user still sat at the computer...
I agree, this whole bland, gray and light blue with "pretty" icons thing can kiss my hairy white irish ass. It's like staring at the front of a bare refridgerator door. And as long as I'm ranting I'd like to say something about those "we hid your shit" thingies. THEY SUCK!! When an OS take it's liberty and starts messin with my settings I get pissed. I tryed to disable it while i was using Win2k, but they kept coming back in IE! Not to mention all the settings are hidden. Stuff that should be in Control Panel (like Network Proporties) isn't (you have to right click on Network Nieghborhood, and then click a couple other things). Wizzards for the simplest task, grrr...ahhhhhh!!! JUST GIMME A PANEL SO I CAN ENTER THE SETTINGS I WANT. NOOOOO. DON'T. YES I'M SURE, AHHHHHH! Insert bootdisk, three fingered salute, fdisk, 4, 1, Y, Win2k, Muhaha. I'm using NT4 now (MS's best OS by far, well win 3.11 was alright, but I don't think It will run quake3, and I have no use for an OS that won't run my beloved quake3 ^_^ Maybe I'll give Linux another try. Which distro do you recommend? Muhahahaha!
A lot has changed but it still looks pretty much the same.
As opposed to "not much has changed but it looks different and we're gonna pimp it as the best thing since sliced bread."
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Well that depends who put what name into the installation of the beta, now doesn't it. We all developed a large brain for something, didn't we?
Definitions:
XML: Leading the way to make the web a print medium
Those are some fine-lookin' shots
You've been able to apply different themes to Win* for quite a while now. Personally, I like my litestep desktop better.
That aside, these shots still aren't anything to get excited about. They look like windows. Know what I always wanted and couldn't get with the explorer shell? A clean desktop. Have you ever tried to remove all the icons from your stinking desktop? The only two ways that you can do it either screw the underlying system up or take up tons of memory with the active desktop.
oh well, I'm too busy to be writing this.
_______________
you may quote me
Ding-ding-ding, we have a winner. "stuff" is too suspicious looking. OTOH, I would only look in "~/projects/project##/data" if I knew what was in there.
To understand what's right and wrong, the lawyers work in shifts ...
Ok, perhaps I'm one of the 0.0003% of people who would find this funny, but take a look at http://www.m0ss.com/Images/W histler2250/mycomputer.jpg. Under "Removable Media" there is an item listed as "3-1/2-Inch Floppy D..." I don't know what immediately pops into your mind, but I wonder if this is some sort of Freudian slip on the part of Microsoft coders.
P.S. All M$ coders reading this do *not* send me pictures confirming or disconfirming my observation.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Is it just me or is a desktop just a desktop? After a while, to me, they all look the same...whatever the OS.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
Damn! Those are some fine-lookin' shots. No offense - I like Linux, and my computer is now officially Microsoft Free(tm), but damn! The artist in me comes out when I see these. Seems like MS has finally realized "pretty" is in the eye of the beholder. Lots of the elements in those screen shots were not only done proffesionally, but done well. Especially the Control Panel. I had to stop myself from pushing the icons on my monitor with my finger. I guess that's the plus of controlling everything from the top-down. You can do whatever you damn well please. :) Ah well, I still love my Linux boxen. And I can still get work done with 'em ;)
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
The article is entitled 'Windows Whistler Screenshots'. And well, they are pretty lame ass screenshots for the whole story to be based off of it. Considering that fact, the screenshots are real snoozers. I agree with the poster you replied to. What is the big deal. Looks almost like it always has. Zzzz........
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Good point! Windows 95 has been around since.......1995. GNOME has been around since when? Quite a bit after Windows 98 came out, definitely not before Windows 95. KDE also came out before that, but Windows 95 was FIRST!
Definitions:
XML: Leading the way to make the web a print medium
They aren't fake. A little cheesy maybe but not fake. The Whistler beta is all over the 'net.
I do use it. I use Slack 7.2 and guess what, it works fine, but the gui sucks. When the gui gets better, Ill use it more. Dont begin to tell me "command prompt this, command prompt that" cause computers dont use command prompts anymore. I dont see the common user using a command prompt to play text games like back in the dos days.
In conclusion, I got linux, and prefer windows. Linux is a wonderful server and has potential for a desktop, but it isnt there yet.
I'm guessing that the giant folder icons are an attempt to make lusers feel a little comfortable by making folders look more like the folders in their meatspace filing cabinets, thereby suggesting that that's how they should be used.
I have a similar one but when I want to add functionality to someone's desktop I pop in my Linux boot CD...
:)
MS should do the Olympic coverage graphics.
---
Bob Fucking Costas. Does anyone else hate that motherfucker?
ftp the ISO from my waze site at ftp 31.33.7.00
Me leet hax0r dude
Muahahahhaha
I don't actually exist.
Pardon my lack of artistical sense but there's nothing new in these snapshots : Windows 2 thousands just seems as it always looked like.
OK, some icons are a bit bigger but I really don't understand where all that hype comes from ?
I read again the topic : no. It is not supposed to be a joke.
So : what's up ?
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Uhm, Windows ME is *WAY* better than 98SE. I don't know what kind of pipe you have, but on a cable modem the speed of transfer from, for example, a highspeed ftp is way faster. For ex, winamp downloaded at like 100k a sec with 98SE, but with ME it was easily 250k+ and that is just one example, there are more. WIN ME is a HUGE improvment from 98SE.
What is this?!
On the shutdown-menu, where's the possibility to use the keyboard to check an option? That has been possible in windows forever, but it seems they have removed the keyboard shortcuts there... Oh my.
Another thing... Have anyone managed to go to the themes.org-site? I'm having trouble with all VA-powered sites, linux.com, themes.org and sourceforge.net... Or is it just me?
people who cant even understand "regular" windows!? i would think that a GUI could only get so dumbed down and sugary sweet before the target audiences' mean IQ is low enough that they wouldn't even be interested in using computers at all anyway. and then .....who is going to use this software.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Yes, obviously they took a hint from Paint Shop Pro's browser, and integrated it into Windows Explorer.
They must be kidding !
Also, the big icons are not the default. You are able to change them back to the smaller size!
You're basically stating the obvious, and overstating things that we already know!
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Windows machines with so much stuff loaded in memory are even more unstable. The first thing I do when they come screaming for help is get rid of all this junk.
I love users who load their machines with crap downlaoded from the 'Net. When their machine crashes/hangs/turns to molasses, I can fix it by saying 'Well, you're working now, but I'm pretty sure it was caused by the cute little kitty and the cute teddy bear fighting for resources, so if it happens again, I'll just go ahead and uninstall them.' I never have to reboot their machines again.
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
Microsoft has made it clear that it is going to embrace the command prompt in Whistler even more than it did in Windows 2000. You should be able to do everything from the command line interface that you can do from the GUI. With tools included in the OS (and not having to use the Resource Kit or something like we had to with NT 4.0). With things like visual basic scripting support, ADSI, and XML support in active directory, you can manage 100,000 user directories from the command line much more effectively than in Windows 2000.
However, he consumer version may not come with all the CLI tools that the professional, server, DC, etc versions come with. Might have to get them elsewhere.
-witz
I'd blame the bad refresh and redraw on the old graphics hardware in your machine.
Sorry, but I mostly have to agree with the previous poster.. not that Linux wasn't made to run graphics apps, but that X sucks..
I use Linux every day, and on the same hardware, X is much less responsive than Windows any day of the week.
X _is_ slow (relative to Windows) even on modern hardware (PII 400 w/128MB and a Voodoo 3500) - yes, faster hardware makes a difference, but the point is that it shouldn't have to.
On the plus side, I find X to be much more usable than windows, even though it's less responsive - it just works more logically (cut & paste, for example.) Working in X makes me more productive, because things are easier to do.
I too, love Linux (I only use Windows because of a few router management apps that are Windows only) but I won't make excuses for it
There a few funny things in these screenshots, like for example the "File a bug report" shortcut. Are these guys trying to be ironic or what?
Also, the "hide the contents of this drive" is pretty much disturbing, and the "3 objects (3 hidden)" in the status bar as well.
Finally, to me it really looks more and more like a mac. Give them a few years and they'll only 20 years behind! (note: I'm not a mac user, and unfortunately I don't like their interface at all... sounds like I won't like this one better).
--
"Listen, [...], going to another country doesn't make any difference.
I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from
one place to another. There's nothing to that."
-- Ernest Hemingway in 'Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises'
Then rename My Computer if it really pisses you off!
Definitions:
XML: Leading the way to make the web a print medium
PRIASE THE LORD!
I agree with you completly. I use Linux for what it was meant to be origionally, a *SERVER*. It runs http/dns/mail, not KDE & Gnome. Which btw, KDE & Gnome need a MUCH LARGER software library. There are a lot of progs that you can find in windows and cant find an equiv for X.
Perhaps this approach will find the perfect balance between idiot-proofing (an impossible task, I know) and genius-proofing ("I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that").
Or perhaps it will fail like Bob did.
Lets just hope that behind the cute and cuddly exterior is a robust true OS that can be shaped to suit it's users warped preferences ("Come on Windows 98, I really do want 2 network cards").
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
http://betaxtreme.hypermart.net/winwhistler.htm
...or it looks almoust like it. :) )
ControlPannel is not bad, nice graphics. But "File a bug report" will be used extensively (if the user manage to run it
Why art they using 1.46Gb HDD ? Poor Microsoft.
So they have written this new OS from scratch, right ?
Enough with the trolling...
Just another coder...
I disagree.
:))
Although I accept that there is more functionality in X, I don't accept that it is more useable. I would say that the main problem in the GUI's (I did mean GUI, I just took it as read that as we were talking about X and Windows that we were ralking about the GUI rather than the command line) that I've used on X (mostly KDE and Gnome, with a bit of SGIs one for IRIX, whatever that's called) is not so much X itself (there my annoyance is with the speed and size of the app), but with the way the default install in the distros I've used (mostly Suse) is that there is no standard way to do most tasks (yeh yeh, i know that's what hackers want, but i'm talking about _users_. People slate the control panel, but I think it's a perfect idea for a gui, i mean does it not make sense that all the settings are in one place? instead of searching through a hundred different config files for the item you are looking for, without having to know which part of the OS deals with that setting?
Sorry for rambling (and the number of brackets) i've just been for a couple of lunchtime pints at the pub... *hic*
point:
- make it simple by default so _users_ can use it.
- give people who know what they are doing the option to hack away at the system, it doesn't need to be default, the default should be the newbie settings.
- the unix like OSs tend to have it too far the other way, leaving newbies (and not _so_ newbies) disorientated.
- burn X, or at least re-write it, it's big and sloppy, and smells
It seems to me that a 3.5 in floppy is a form of removable media.
*sigh* Windows 2000 Server (and versions up) already include built-in terminal services. This isn't new.
Nothing. But you also don't have to pay $89 (or whatever the upgrade fee will be) to run bash on 2.4...
How much hand-holding is enough?
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
Hell! Maybe your Mom won't know what C:\Windows is for so let's name it
C:\This Is Your Operating System So Do Not Touch This Folder Please Thank You
I still think that there should be an option somewhere to force Windows*.* to conform to 8.3 for no other reason that personal preference. Maybe your mom won't use it but I certainly would.
It's just my personal pet peeve and it was finally close enough to being on-topic that I could scream about it.
=P
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
For those wondering, the rumor has it that starting with Windows Whistler, the paper clip has become so intelligent that it refuses to show up for trivialities. Apparently, it keeps crunching some deep math problems in the background instead. Microsoft couldn't fix the feature before the release.
What next: 300x300 icons ?
The interface and the colors look like some "My frist tehme - this is mai frist try to make a tehme" at *.themes.org
At least they should change that sick-blue bacground. That kind of blue is used in psichiatric institutions to keep the loonies silent as it creates the sensation of a void mind.
--
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
who made the weird theme for [gnome|windowmaker]?
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
"[...] and we don't need Microsoft telling them 'computer' is a proper noun."
Anyone who's ever watched Star Trek knows that the word computer *is* a proper noun, as in:
"Computer, calculate the amount of time until that neutron star goes supernova!"
or now:
"Turn off, Computer!"
:)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Like the subject says, don't confuse "pretty" with "functional". The shot of the control panel sure is pretty, but look at all that empty whitespace and how far the icons aren't sorted in any sensible order!
If I had to guess, I'd say these UI changes were made by someone who does layout for magazine ads -- as a static interface, it's lovely, but I couldn't imagine having to interact with it with a mouse.
Go install Linux and help to get GNOME/KDE up to snuff.
PS: I've never seen real innovation on any platform in the past 5/7 years.
You can also do it under NT4.0
Run regedt32, edit the value \HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Command
Processor\CompletionChar and set it to 0x09 (it's a REG_DWORD value).
--
Power yes, disk space no. I don't need a 1 gig OS when its functionality takes much less space. You're better off using that space for your content than MS adverts.
--
When whistler comes out I might have to go completly 100% linix, fuck the games. What is with MS and all their graphics, i personally prefer using the command line for when I need to do quick tasks instead of taking ten minutes to get a simple thing done. Sure pretty graphics are good for the average user, but what about power users. Since whistler is a convergence of NT and 9x kernels then will this replace NT also? If it does then we will probably see a massive conversion over to *ix servers or nobody will upgrade. When will MS start to improve their OSs internally instead of just graphically and adding new features without fixing the current problems.
Looking at those screen shots, I almost get sick. Sadly to say my computer is running Windows 2000 Pro right now (I do have a slackware firewall setup though). I think microsoft forgot the fact that the NT series of machines are ment for Workstations and Servers. Its not ment for the standard idiot, err... consumer.
What Microsoft should do is take a completely different path, and make a distro of Linux. Design their own GUI and all the fun stuff. That way they will be starting off right.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Now what makes you think that a programmer from India, Finland, Russia or Mexico has to have bad english grammar?
I work at support, so I deal everyday with letters from all over the world. Usually the worst english spelling and grammar comes from the USA, since people using english as a second language tend to be more careful when they write.
Of course, this is a generalization, just like yours... Its just that my experiences differ. (and also your comment looks ethnically biased at first glance)
No sig for the moment.
Explaining the administrator/client model to the average home user, and why they "need it", is one of the biggest problems of OS's like Linux and Mac OS X today. If the OS makes it clearer in terms of descriptions and icons, I'm all for it.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
What's so special about that? I looks like GNOME icons on win95 desktop to me. What is the 'remote desktop' thingy? You mean windows 2006 will have transparent network apps like X now? Gee, they innovate a few decades behind the curve as usual. I so proud redmond can steal from GNOME as it did from MAC OS. "[Cloning] is the ultimate flattery" --- http://gooseegg.sourceforge.net
You are overreacting just a touch.... The definite article is fairly obvious from the context - why waste screen space and user time on 'Shut Down *The* Computer', when it's clear that you are not shutting down any other computer?
Or maybe there should be 'Shutdown A Computer', Shutdown Any Computer You Feel Like', etc?
I like to keep utilities like TweakUI and X-Setup around, too.
Actually, it can take me hours to do all the other things necessary to make Windows 2000 bearable and comfortable for me, but then it really is a mostly okay environment. Another minor-but-nice feature is the ability to auto-expand Control Panel on the Start menu, so I don't have to be opening and closing that folder all the time.
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator?
/etc /bin /dev folders.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
What the hell is this? Is Microsoft is actually going to force console-dwellers to type out this pig of a path every time we want to so much as touch our data? Or maybe sit there trying to count out six letters so we can ~1 it?
I am sick to death of Microsoft picking these assinine directory names and then locking them off with giant fences in the registry.
C:\Documents and Settings
C:\Temporary Interenet Files
C:\System Volume Information
C:\Downloaded Program Files
WTF!?!?
C:\Docs
C:\Temp
C:\SVol
C:\DPrg
WHY WHY WHY can't I do a massive registry search-and-replace and be done with this crap once and for all? I swear...it is this stuff that will drive me to UNIX more than any other problem Windows has thrown at me. I refuse to give up 8.3 compatibility for my older/dual-boot systems and I refuse to give myself carpal tunnel syndrome just because I like a console interface. I would kill for
Yes I know about the name autocompletion registry trick in NT but it is unreliable at best. I get used to file X being three TABs away but suddenly I make a new dir or new file and then I have to relearn its now four TABs away.
[/end rant]
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Um.. what's so neat about changing the way a couple of icons look? Now we'll get big folders... yippee! I bet the blue screen of death is the same. It seems like the control panel area is the real only improvement, making it a bit easier for the newbie to find what he/she is looking for.
~Bout Time for another tea party.®~
I really don't care what they *call* it (I use that other silly little linux thing anyway), as long as they keep consistant!
People are just now barely able to grasp what the network neighborhood is, and suddenly you want them to change? I have no problem with these changes, but it's the Other Stupid People(tm) that can't handle them.
Frankly given the far superior video drivers' performance under Windows, the display in Windows specifically does NOT make we want to vomit as I may be induced to do so by bad refresh & redraw under X. Don't get me wrong, I love linux, I just can't stand X. Linux was not meant to run graphical applications. Plus, there is nothing inherently wrong with the Windows UI graphics. They are reasonably customizable if they aren't to your liking, yet fixed enough to provide a consistent interface across applications and machine configurations.
Now, as to the relevance of this article to anything....
---
I am the dot in slashdot.org
What I did, since I have to use a PC w/ windoze at work (in addition to a sparc, woohoo!) I made one of them my desktop wall paper. Since we are not allowed to run annything but windows 95 I wonder how long it will take before some one thinks I'm breaking the rules!
Wheeeee
"My Network Places"?
Who's bright idea was this? "Network Neighborhood" was bad enough, but at least it got the idea across. What's wrong with "Local Network" or something similar? I know they're trying to make an OS that's usuable by idiots, but do we have to throw five year olds in too?
Visit the
get Helix Gnome.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Sorry if this is redundant...too many posts to read through :)
I had the displeasure of owning a copy of windows ME for a short period of time, and this "whistler" looks a LOT like it. Similar icons, control panel, exploring features, etc. The shutdown menu was different though...it was actually a MENU...so if you want to, say, shut down this time instead of restart, you can't simply hit the 'down' key and enter. You have to give focus to the menu, go down, and then hit enter. That extra step pissed me off. Also, the start menu is still the "traditional" grey.
As a side note, windows ME, as far as I can tell, is a big fat piece of crap. I had so many problems that I actually had to call tech support, and the techs with whom I spoke couldn't even understand half the shit that ms did with it.
What I would like to know though, is this: Why in the world is MS releasing yet another OS? When they just released 2 of them?!?? *SIGH* It's just unbelievable how they operate. What, win 95 is unstable and full of bugs? Well, let's make a new version. What, win 98 is unstable and full of bugs? Well, let's just make a new version. etc. etc. etc.
"It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it."
Time is fun when you're having flies.
-Kermit the Frog
Have you used KDE recently? Folders and files on the desktop, if you want, and a customizable panel. Sure, it lacks a NeXTSTEP-type icon dock, but beyond that, KDE is pretty slick. And so is GNOME, or XFCE for that matter...
If violence isn't solving your problems, you're not using enough of it. - MAJ Misato Katsuragi
The shots at m0ss suggest how cripled even the "administrator" account is. The review at winsupersite only has shots of Joe User's screens, which we might expect to be less privaliged.
Since it's a Microsoft product, it's very important to put that bug-report (read most used) link on the main screen.
we all know what a cd called "stuff" holds ...
well all i can say is , it looks nice and simple, but gimme a good Linux distro and blackbox wm and i am happy, *NOTHING* can look and run better than that!!! ________________________________________________ who the fuck is Microshit any anyway, oops did i mean Microsoft....
cd d*s*
Why your post was moderated as funny, I don't know. Maybe someone thought it was a joke. It's not. It really works.
I'd like to see someone (yeah - hi Billg@micro$oft.com) spend a little money on reducing the size and increasing performance of these operating systems.
I'd much rather hear that Whistler will be two times faster and two times smaller than previous releases.
No, we can't all be like Steve Gibson (grc.com) and write everything in assembly, but there is something to learn from all those computer science classes.
For example, has anyone compared how much RAM Windows Media Player 7 soaks up compared to, say, WinAmp?
It takes me 130MB of RAM to boot Win2k Pro with a personal firewall and antivirus s/w. What?
puh-leez!! Let's forget the cutesey-ness and focus on optimizing our resources.
-bp
windows users have been asking for huge icons?
Bigger folders.
Uh, if you have realized, hard drives are getting bigger by the month, today a 25-75 Gig hard drive is common. If you have big hard drives, they ship with bigger stored area (aka folders).
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
MKS makes the MKS Toolkit, which comes with teh Korn shell and the normal UNIX toolkit.
I personally use the Cygwin toolkit from http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/. It has bash, ash, and the entire GNU toolchain, plus some other stuff. Works great. Even works on UNC paths, which MS own shell won't. With UNC support, I get GNU bash working on my Samba shares on Linux and FreeBSD, sweeeeet.
It's enough to drive any tech support or admin mad.
And I think it's totally unnecessary. I can only hope that Apple will not go beyond Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server.
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Do you think the average person actually gives a rats ass *how* the computer works?
Looking around the office here, nobody really cares how the computer works. They care only that it does or doesn't work, and they pay me to care about details like "how".
The home market is the same way, people have better things to do with their time then care about just how their OS does anything. So long as it does it, they don't care. Just like a lot of people don't care about how the engine in their car works, provided that it does. They have a mechanic who worries about the details.
How many of us care about the details of how the phone works? I don't even think about it unless the phone isn't working for some reason.
Microsoft understands this. They're tuned into the average user home market, the people who want the computer to do what its supposed to do and not bother them with the details of "how". That may not make Windows a very good geek OS, but its precisely why its good for the other 90% of the market.
My mom is going to love Whistler when she sees these screenshots, because it looks neat and things are easy to find. And thats the market MS wants, because of how much bigger it is.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Did anyone else notice that this OS seems to take almost 1 GIG ? It must be all of those bitmaps that make this "bursting with usability".
Think of the pr0n! that 932MB is 600MB too much, which all of that can be used for pr0n! This is not a pr0n friendly OS.
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
television coverage of the olympics is outmoded. use the internet more often. olympics.com
Yes. Newspeak doubleplus good.
But I agree. The Documents and Settings folder is a deep mess. I would much prefer having them in seperate folders, with more manageable names. And I don't see how it would be any harder to back up two trees instead of just one. At least this user profile stuff is no longer buried obscurely under the WINNT folder.
Am I wrong here or is that GUI butt ugly?
All I want for christmas is a decent CLI
A decent CLI
A decent Windows CLI...
What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
Still not dead.
I've not used the latest MS products for a while (their the only company I know that can add some graphics and call it an upgrade).
Anyway, in previous their products doc*set* would retrieve the first entitity that started with doc. Anything after the first * would be ignored.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I couldn't find any discussion about the remote desktop
Does anyone know anything more about it? That would be a very handy feature. Windose terminals wouldn't be a bad idea. I doubt they would have the terminal software be less then the actual software, because that would be the way of MS.
My boot partition for 98SE takes up 228MB. Even after all my installed apps dumped their crap in the c:\windows directory.
Just to put things in perspective...
-- Liquor up front, poker in the rear.
It's out already. It's called KDE.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
how in the hell is taht insightful??
"Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
Those experienced with Windows 2000, know that its actually very remote-administration friendly. First there is MMC (Microsoft Management Console) which is a simple, plugin-based app which you can add and remove "snap-ins" for different services which can reside on any machine running Win2k+ RPC.
Personally, I LOVE MMC. The same thing needs to be created for *NIX. IMO its one of Microsoft's best creations. Its not too complex, but its quite useful.
The second, is the ability to run a telnet service with NMB authentication. Quite nice, although its not ssh+bash.
Hmm.. softer bevels.. flat look.. this is BeOS, baby.
I don't think this is a nice solution, I think its awful. Like you said in your second paragraph, the real problem is that people have too many taskbar tray programs running in the background. Hiding these programs is only hiding the problem. This certainly fits into M$'s modis operandi, however.
What I would like to see is a uniform way of managing these programs (?applets?) from the right-click context menu. I want a way to easily shut these things down and a way to keep them from auto-starting. A control panel option to restart a tray program and reset it to auto-start again would also be useful. M$ has left tray program management up to the (?applet?) developer, and I don't think that was the right choice.
To understand what's right and wrong, the lawyers work in shifts ...
Not that Linux desktop/gnome looks that great, but the bottom line is how it functions. Sure, it should look nice, but form over function has never worked for me - you just end up getting frustrated.
Personally, I like things simple, and people should be referencing the Interface Hall of Fame (and the follow the link to the Hall of Shame, too).
One good example: the logout screenshot. I don't see how it makes anything more simple - or easier to recognize right off the bat, more than the current one. I look at those icons, and I still have to read the text - now I've done two things instead of one. Sometimes you just can't convey a complex meaning in an icon, especially not without it being confused with other actions.
I'm not slamming MS here, though, they seem to be giving the people what they want, as can be seen on this board.
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
<shudder>
Think differently!
:wq
Think different" is probably correct in American english.
Wrong. "Think Different" is Steve Jobs English. He thought "Think Differently" sounded weird.
-- I've never seen electricity, that's why I don't pay for it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Arrgh! Microsoft is slowly and surely butchering the windows user interface. There is no indication of whether something is clickable or not. I personally do not want to move the mouse over every single object on screen, waiting for the cursor to change or for pop-up help to appear just so I can tell what's clickable or not. Computers are supposed to save time, not make you waste hours flicking the mouse this way and that for no reason other than the determine what is a button and what isn't when it would have been just as easy to UNDERLINE FUCKING CLICKABLE TEXT OR EVEN (GASP!) MAKE A FUCKING BUTTON!
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
...how they managed to grab these screenshots in between GPFs....
Simon
Simon
The real linux_penguin has Slashdot ID 101961. Anyone else is an impostor. Including Bruce Perens.
Are you sure? What about Remote Desktop Connection? Can you be turning off/rebooting some else's computer?
I suspect that in this case, they've decided to treat the text like something akin to a newspaper headline -- leaving out the indefinite articles makes it quicker to visual scan. You aren't supposed to delibrately read a message box title, but rather just skim it.
At the command line, type "dir /x" to see the 8.3 representations of long filenames.
Bigger folders.
:)
It disturbs me that people post changes like this in conjunction with the phrase "Operating System".
I'm in an Operating Systems class right now, and we're writing a little filesystem as a small project. No, there aren't any icons. You can't click it.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Is this a true networkable remote display capability ala X? Has Microsoft has finally realized (more than a decade after X) that being able to display graphical apps on a remote display is useful? How innovative! :-). If so, I guess it's bye-bye PCanywhere...
Why don't they go for a more drastic gui change other than a few dialogs and 128x128 folder icons? It'd be nice to see something different out of the taskbar/system tray too. Maybe something similar to GNOME.
"It makes ice cubes." -Tripping the Rift
Look at the logoff image or main2 image. They're systematically removing definite and indefinite articles from the English language. It's bad enough that Microsoft has to perpetuate the infantilism of "My Computer" and "My Internet" (gimmee, gimmee, gimmee!!!). Now, it's: "Uggh! Me Tarzan! Me want 'Turn off Computer'" The grammar of America's youth is shoddy enough as it is. We don't need Barbie telling our kids, "math class is tough", and we don't need Microsoft telling them "computer" is a proper noun.
These kinda shortcuts make life a little more bearable.
C:\Documents and Settings
cd doc*set*
C:\Temporary Interenet Files
cd temp*int*
C:\System Volume Information
cd sys*inf
C:\Downloaded Program Files
cd down*file
--zaugg
Or, as the Swiss Army puts it: if the map and the terrain differ, trust the terrain.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Yeah right, grammar, "OK," but Apple's ad guys, to Hell with them anyway! I saw this, they had the gall to illustrate an store ad for their merchandise, with a picture of Mohandas Gandhi, and that is not OK, not OK at all. Did Apple's advertising agency think, "Gandhi's safe in his grave and unable to sue and we're running out of celebrities, so let him spin there," do these people have no sense of decency at all?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Yeah, but the whole point of using Windows over Linux is that you don't have to use this incomprehensible archaic psuedo-standard for the files on your own machine.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
MS plans to ship Blackcomb, the sucessor to Whistler and MS' first fully .Net enabled OS, with a "headless" (i.e., no GUI) option. From this unprecedented departure, it is reasonable to assume that cmd.exe will probably gain some features as well as integrate further with technologies like WSH, VBScript, AD, etc. How long will it take MS to incorporate a simple feature like auto path completion into freakin cmd.exe?
You actually found coverage of the Olympics? You must not live in the USA, because all I've seen on NBC is a documentary on the Olympic athletes.
Or do regedit and under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor change CompletionChar to 9. It's a tab and then you will have tab completion with just cmd similar to bash although not as cool.
-Tat tvam asi.
'Interface Design'
:)
yes they are ahead, and ahead of linux GUIs too unfortunately.
Just needs MORE DAMN BUTTONS!!!
(and a proper OS underneath the GUI,.... hey what's that you say? BSD under OSX? kewl
No need to be insulting... I did get A's in citizenship. *wink*
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
This phenomenon, the loss of the distinction between adjectives and adverbs in colloquial usage, is very common-- it happens in tons of languages. Spanish and French, for instance.
The keyboard shotcuts still work in the "Turn Off Computer" menu. However, there is no indication of any short cuts. I just tried "R" for Restart and it worked. It would be better if the keyboard mappings were underlined to indicate that they are a short cut.
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
- C:\Documents and Settings -> C:\home
- C:\Temporary Interenet Files -> C:\var\iecache
- C:\System Volume Information -> C:\boot (NT systems have "system" and "boot" backwards)
- C:\Downloaded Program Files -> C:\usr\local (could be wrong on this)
As Richy_T wrote (#150), these shorter names are much easier on 16-bit programs.<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Remeber Windows 2000 betas? well MS will change this Whistler even more... I wonder if is built on Windows 2000 NT technology?
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Yes, this is the problem. :)
cd docset
Besides, none of this would even matter if DOS/NT had symlinks.
Wow, looking at Win2K and Whistler side by side it's like night and.. later that night!
C'mon, hiring icon artists does not a new system make. Oh, right. These are the folks who brought us Win2K, 98, and WinME! (Shouldn't that be called BuyME?)
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Clearly the folder was set to "Thumbnails" not the normal "large" or "small" icons. If there had been any other files there (i.e. images) thumbnails would have been visible, but because there weren't the folders get displayed at that size because that is the size used by the thumbnails.
Man, these guys just can't get it right. This seems (to me anyway) like MS getting a little ansy about Mac OS X's uber-smooth look. Trouble is, MS has *never* had creative graphics artists working for them - look at the default desktop patterns in win98 fer chrissakes! Not a single one is anything less than painful to look at!
And what's going on in the control panels? Why would I want huge buttons and massive text? I would hope they at least have the insight to make this appearance a configurable thing... Or simply dump the weird bits (practically all of screenshots really) and go back to something more like the more traditional windows look. They need to be consistant anyway.
then again, i'm very tired and pissed off in general about windows at the moment (you try using a beautiful icq clone for 18 months and then be forced to use the latest "real" icq client and try to keep a cheerful demeanor)
whistler was the blind guy in the movie _Sneakers_, and from the looks of it he had a hand in the design. :)
Actually, it's a perfectly fine looking GUI -- maybe some of the themes will be a little more attractive/radical.
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.... Long live WinAmp ... Snif... Snif ... (M$ Media Player is crying!)
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Nothing has changed, many will argue this is because it was done right in the first place and it doesn't need to change. Mind you, you could always modify the look of it if you wanted, since you have access to the source code.
The reason Microsoft won't write a brand new OS from scratch is backward compatibility with old software and hardware (and in the case of MS Office documents, data). Incremental improvements to the Windows platform allow not-too-old programs and devices to run. If Microsoft dropped this backward compatibility for a superior but incompatible new MS OS, then many people would not adopt it. Since users would have to start from scratch with a new OS, they might evaluate their options and choose Linux instead. :) So Microsoft keeps its user base through incremental updates.
yes
WinME isn't getting rid of the command prompt, it's getting rid of real mode.
Supposedly.
My guess is there's still 16 bit thunking going on underneath. But it's not the command prompt they're talking of getting rid of.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> This is not a new idea, but rather yet another case of Microsoft "innovating" by taking other people's ideas and hawking them as their own.
Remember that next time you call Linux revolutionary. It's UNIX. And a not terribly advanced one at that (where's the ACL's? Where's the MLS version? where's the hotpatchable kernel?)
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
At an arm's length distance, this covers a circle of roughly one inch in diameter.
If you make icons any bigger, the user must move his eyes to take in the whole image. Hence, a big icon slows down work and fun.
A lot of design issues are moot, but for some there is objective knowledge to draw from.
no, this is why you can now afford a computer...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Does anyone know what the official (and unofficial) plan is for the command prompt? I've heard that in Windows ME just about none of the normal apps (format, sys, scandisk etc.) work but is it (the commandline) going away? Does Microsoft want it to go away or do they officially consider it an effective tool (which it is for developers, system admins etc.) and keep it?
I had something like that on 3.1 called TabWorks. It was pretty nice. Every desktop folder was a tab on the screen.
Hopefully microsoft doesn't enable this for CRTs or it will cause a lot of eyestrain!
If they are forced to follow developement of OSS code isn't that good enough?
Spencer Ogden
They can name it whatever they want right out of the box, but c'mon - what possible reason could they have for forcing such stupid names on everyone, forever?
News Flash ! Attention Bill Gates ! There are still plenty of things in Windows that you can only do on the command line. Why make it so hard to use?
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
That control panel looks pretty half-assed to me. It looks like someone decided to throw some random clip art together so it would look "updated".
- Everything that you like, sucks.
I don't understand wtf screenshots tell us about an OS. If whistler was open source we would have partial, if not full specs about the expected performance of the OS. Sure, it looks 'new' but not really... I remember installing betas of 98 and (of course) finding them totally unreliable and thinking to myself... 'well, things look kinda different, but how does it perform?'.. it didn't (doesn't).
I decided to wait with W2k for the final RC and was pleasantly surprised. I found the most stable ms release to date and aside from the numerous driver updates I had to perform an overall 'ok' system. So, my point is, 'what is the objective of MS Whistler and what happened to Neptune?'
When I look at these screen shots, I cry really...cry at how sad Microsoft has become. Yes, we can all lacerate Microsoft for making our lives hell with the endless restarts, crashes and system failures...but what is worse than anything else is that you would expect that a company with as much money as Microsoft would actually IMPROVE on their product instead of making it worse. In the world we live in today, one good product only gets you to the top...and to stay there, you have to keep improving (take Linux for a great example). Going back to my point, win95, although by today's standards really doesn't cut it, was at least a sufficiently efficient operating systems, whose interface was based on what mattered, and not what didn't. Then Microsoft hired win98 to crash everyones computer and winNT just didn't function in a broad enough range to satisfy the average user. Enter win2K and winme. Win2k is definitely an improvement in stability and speed, but still things that worked on previous operating systems of Microsoft still don't work on win2k. And winMe is just a damn joke. I think one of the reason Microsoft is pushing for Whistler is because they realized early on how horrible winme is. Let me say it once and I need not say anything else about it beyond this statement. WINME IS A RESOURCE HOG AND IS NOT A VIABLE CHOICE FOR AN OPERATING SYSTEM, NO MATTER HOW COMPUTER INEPT YOU ARE!! Thank you. Quick comment about Linux...isn't it nice that when a new kernel comes out, your programs and hardware still works...Just a though. Thanks for reading!
I too hate having to type cd "Documents and Settings"/Administrator/"My Documents" (mounted NTFS volume under linux, that's why correct slashes), and also hate drive letters! Once I found NT5 almost understood mount points, I mounted another drive as "Documents and Settings", and set up a /mnt tree for floppy, zip, CD-ROMs, everything except network volumes (still need a letter!?!?). Why doesn't it just do this out of the box?
M$ free since 5-25-00, but "Douments and Settings" will haunt me until I cp -r /mnt/nt/"Documents and Settings"/* ~/
chris@xanadu:~$ whatis /.
/.: nothing appropriate.
Do? Or should? I think they should say "shutdown {computername}", or "shutdown {username}'s computer". I expect Microsoft just has them saying "shutdown computer".
*shrug* I didn't give it +5, and I wouldn't have. But I would have given it +2 easy. Maybe +3 if it cought me in the right mood.
I hope not. My only GUI apps are OSS. I expect a patch, not a bitch. Especally on things where even non-coders can find the quoted string and change it.
does anyone else rember a M$ project called chrome that was supose to have all this nifty multimedia stuff and I think at one time they said a 3d desktop is this what is left of that or was that directX6?
I don't know where you're getting your information, but I have never ever called Linux "revolutionary". I haven't even touched a Linux box for... oh, six years or so.
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begin 644
You are right that most people don't know or care how any of their tools work, but that's not a good thing! I've explained things like phones and cars to people and their reaction has always been something like "well that's not so complicated. Wow, why didn't anyone tell me before?" I fear people are becoming too dependant on "the system". They depend on the government to feed, cloth, house, and medicate them. They depend on their church to provide socialization, rules, etc. They depend on their mechanic to keep their cars running, they depend on the media to tell them what's cool. This is a broad over-generalization, and comes with the same caveats, but the trends are there.
:)
I propose that people should at least know how their tools work, even if they don't maintain them. They should be able to have an intelligent conversation with their technicians. Animals specialize for efficiency, but if you over-specialize you become trapped in your role and the group is less adaptable.
I won't claim things should be harder to use, but I will claim the automatic transmission should be deprecated in favor of teaching people enough about cars so that manual transmissions are preferred.
Apple is not telling your HOW to think (as in "think differently"). They are telling you WHAT to think (as in "Apple is different. When you think of Apple, think [of something] different").
cpeterso
dave?
Look at the bottom right corner of this screenshot for a nice solution to the problem of tray icon overpopulation: only the ones you use appear and the others are accessible through the "" icon. I know many windows users that have so many tray icons there is virtually no room left on the task bar. They keep downloading and installing "cool" stuff from the net and a lot of it ends up as new tray icons.
When I think of it, screen real estate is not their real problem. Windows machines with so much stuff loaded in memory are even more unstable. The first thing I do when they come screaming for help is get rid of all this junk.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Chill. I believe it was meant as a joke.
He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
i just think it's kinda sad the way things are going now-a-days.
Does anyone else think gui's like Explorer.exe, GNOME, and KDE are starting to look like something you'd find next to an E-Z Bake Oven at KayBee toys?
Sure, i want color in my GUI...but c'mon people, bright red, blue, yellow, and white isn't a color scheme...it's a frickin' circus. (i know they're changeable, but the defaults are whack)
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Come on, theme-makers! We can have this whole interface cloned MOTNHS before Whistler ever comes out! Heh heh...
Robert Dumas
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Isn't anybody going to make jokes about Whistler's mother???
Ben
Anyone else notice the first screen's start menu says "Logoff w00t killa" ? :)
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Am I the only one that notices that the borders look like 32-bit color TWM?
erik
Also slightly different is the text stating that this is a beta. The basic format is the same, but 2257 and 2223 state that this is for testing while 2250 says that it's for evaluation use.
It's kind of up in the air still since for every striking difference there is a similarity. The same control panel pops up, as do some very similar themes.
There are also differences in the way tasks are displayed. Either on raised buttons or not, but in both shots the text fades out. Might just be a theming option.
I think taken as a whole you can get a good feeling of what Win2001 will look like, but something about the numerous oddities between different screenshots kind of set me off.
treke
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You don't NEED to take multiple captures of the whole screen/desktop - one is enough.
:)
And once you've got that, you don't even have to CROP your images.
ALT-PrntScrn will capture just the active window - leaving background windows and objects out of the picture.
I hope someone finds that helpful.
Welcome back to my coverage of the 27th Olympiad. Anonymous Coward has just won the Gold medal for getting first post with the statement "poop off./poop" Congratulations. You have brought honor to your country.
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Bob Fucking Costas. Does anyone else hate that motherfucker?
You know, maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that if Microsoft were to stop concentrating on releasing a new (but not-so-new)OS every 2 years and just start from scratch, they, having a huge amount of manpower, and hopefully a large amount of intelligence, could conceivably build a great new OS. I just don't see why they waste their time with the classic re-hashing of their old systems. Sure, it doesn't matter to them because they will sell tons and tons of copies no matter what, but i can't quite understand why they don't seem to care, or, why they don't take more pride in the quality of their products. With the amount of resources that they have, I'm sure they could build a new OS that is still compatible with old Windows programs, but does not contain all of the bugs and memory leaks, etc.
"I would prefer not to"
This ClearType thing looks terrible on my 1024x768 13" TFT display. The color distortions are very visible. I would rather prefer normal antialiasing, which is currently not available for smaller font sizes...
Although your post is completly off topic, mine had nothing to do with karma, whatever that has to do with my post. And whoever said about the themes being missed, maybe I wrongly expressed myself. I'm saying what's to stop Microsoft from stealing GPLed code, the work done by mane, and sell it as theirs? That's my question, as the more Windows advances, it seems to follow the advances of OSS, yet the sheep think it's Microsoft who's so inventive. Before you bitch think about stuff.
Grab a copy of TweakUI for 2k - the official beta of it has expired, but there's a non-expiring version here, and elsewhere. This will let you change the location of system folders, so you can move "C:\Documents and Settings\Foo\My Documents" to "c:\foo\doc", if you want to.
You can also set filename completion from TweakUI, so you can use tab to autocomplete, a la Bash.
Renaming "Downloaded Program Files" to "DPrg" might work for you, but it's not going to do much good for, say, my father, who would just see "DPrg" as a random collection of letters, and further evidence that the computing world is determined to keep him from joining in...
Microsoft has kept its outdated metaphors in its graphical interfaces, yet changed basic functionality and flow with every other release. This is confusing to common users and expert users alike!
I have studied "HCI" - human computer interaction, and know that the only thing big icons are good for are:
(a) poor eyesight (common among older people)
(b) increasing mouse click speed which has become a mute point with all but the newest users, and modern optical mice.
I wish Microsoft would focus on either real innovation or real stability / reliability for the common user. Time and time-again I see the non-technical people at my past two jobs struggling with Windows.
Just because slashdot readers are comfortable with software/hardware installation, many users can't even figure out how to install a network printer - perhaps one of the most common complaints that our IS manager receives are the new hires !@#$ing up their printer settings. Then, there's the travelling consultants - have they ever been able to plug into another network without 2+ reboots, and a call to tech-support?
Now, I'm on win2k, and most of my games are broken, and my Cyborg 3D digital joystick is completely unsupported. I'm sure someone will flame this, as win2k isn't the 'gaming' platform, but let's face it - some developers play games, and Microsoft shouldn't disable 1 year old hardware with every release! I swear Microsoft not only want's your upgrade dollar$, they want licenses of their APIs by hardware companies with each release!!!
This looks like Windows.
Exactly like Windows.
What's changed?
Omitting "the" is pretty usual among chinese speakers. Maybe chinese doesn't have the concept of "the".
Indians have the grammar down better than americans most of the time. English is an official language of India. But the accent can be pretty hard to get sometimes, and the vocabulary a bit archaic for the american ear.
I have plenty of friend from both groups. So don't go there, OK?
"Think different" is probably correct in American english. It sounds funny to everyone else. Go to Tennesse: you'll find the people "real nice". Americans seem to be quite comfortable using adjectives as adverbs, dropping just about every "ly" ending they can! Interestingly, my Oxford dictionary (one of those little colour ones) indicates that the word "real" is an adverb in Scottish and US colloquial english. I've never heard a Scotsman use "real" like that, but I guess if they're talking talking colloquially, they would say "ken".
and all i can say is, new icons constitute a new OS? This is a Service Pack with a new skin. The only significant change i read was the built in ability to remotley administer another machine. Kudos to MS for recognizing a useful feature after a scant 30 years! I used to administer NT and i found the Dumbing Down of it disturbing.
-- Hail Eris
You obviously don't meet many people from areas other than your own. Your reply almost has a level of arrogance in your assumption that other people will be able to understand you.
/., you will not be able to communicate your thoughts so well if you take a lazier approach to your English. It's already hard enough for Brits and Americans to communicate, don't make it even harder than necessary for those who speak English as their second language.
I could easily use language that expresses my thoughts more clearly, but I doubt that you would find it very understandable. Thus I would defeat the purpose of trying to communicate to you. For example, I could talk like wot I would with me ol' chinas and ov-er geezas daahhn the nuclear sub. But that would just draw a blank stare from you.
The question is, where do you draw the line? When are you making too much effort attempting to be correct, and when are you just being plain lazy? Colloquialism's shrink the size of your target audience. For most people in the world, I could say "I'll come around and knock you up in the morning", and that would have nothing to do with pregnancy.
Use whatever language is appropriate for your target audience. In an international formum such as
A lot of people make mistakes such as your vs you're and its vs it's. Each time I encounter one of those mistakes, I have to pause my reading to try to understand the gist of what is being said (i.e. what thought the writer was trying to express). If something contains too many mistakes along these lines then I won't bother reading it as it is too much effort trying to understand it (it takes too long). Thus the writer has failed to express their ideas. Also, too many mistakes lead to an impression of ignorance, and lower the credibility of the writer
I just installed Win2k yesterday and the tag line on the login box is "Built on NT technology".
Is there an ATM machine around here?
-Scott scott@surrealistic.org
I *live* in an area other than my own, me old china. Communications problems are old hat to me, which is why I feel confident spouting about them on Slashdot.
You, on the other hand, are failing to see the importance of communication and you're falling in to the trap (typical of "intelligent" people) of assuming that good communication equals speaking the Queen's English.
And that, my friend, is complete arrogance. Our native language is dying, and in its place is rising a new globalized version. You and your linguist friends can toss off over the ramifications of this all night, if you like.
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
P.S. Yes, I am a UI designer and a Web designer.
Just a few cents...or maybe more
~KONala ^..^
My theroy is that they're trying to reduce hard drive clutter/organize the unorganizable (for me at least): the hard drive. for years now i've had a folder called "toast's world" sitting on the desktop that ALL my downloads went into, and various .docs i wrote, inside of that i have a folder called "midi", where i used to store all of my old digital music, now MP3's, and other subfolders in there for whatnot. I've been using that system since win 3.1, and when i found out about "my documents", i scoffed at it, and continued to back up "toast's world" to floppies, zip disks, and now even cd media. Microsoft also introduced the program files folder, which is handy, keeps the c drive from being one huge mess. Call the giant folders "silent ushers" to get you to organize things better if you'd like.
moox. for a new generation.
cmd /f on
cd doc [ctrl+D]
becomes "Documents and Settings"
But isn't the purpose of the Doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret!
First of all, Mr.P- provided this link, to winsupersite which has much newer screenshots from a later build (2257 as opposed to 2250 IIRC). Please go there and look at the newest Whistler screens and inflo before saying "hey this is Windows 2000 run through Paint". I've been sort of half-heartedly following Whistler through it's development because it will most likely end up on my Windows box next. I think Microsoft's OS guys have finally figured out that a forked development process is wasteful and bothersome. Whistler is based off NT/2000 and will have Personal, Professional, Server and Advanced server versions available. This eliminates the traditional separation between Windows for regular people and Windows for businesses. It also means developers can program for a single environment and API and sell their products to both home and professional users without spending the money for a port to a similar but slightly incompatible system. Whoa hey, I said something good about Windows someone better find a Stallmandroid to promote the GPL one more time.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Same thing, though.
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Pokéthulhu
Gotta catch you all!