New Longhorn Screenshots And Schedule

Mozillabird writes "WinSupersite has recently updated the Longhorn release schedule and has provided some new screenshots of Aero. The first beta of Longhorn is May 2005, though there is some speculation about how much of Avalon and Aero will be implemented in that beta. The "big beta" is scheduled for this Fall."

Comments

useless info in status bar

[selderrr]

at the bottom is a bigger-than-ever status bar with info about the selected item. It seems like very little info is in tat area that is not already displayed in the list itself.

This makes me think about the utterly stupid winXP feature that displays the number of files in a selected zipfile... is that usefull for anybody ? Why do you zip files in 99% of the cases ? TO REDUCE SIZE. so what do you want to know about the selected zip ? Right : it's size. For all other items, the filesize is shown, except for zips.... DUH !!!!

The person who suggested that feature should be shot with a ripe banana until dead ensures... twice !

Re:useless info in status bar

[MrHanky]

1.) The dialog that appears asking for an admin password to install software. Directly ripped from OS X.

Actually, this has been available in Windows XP as well. But since everyone runs as admin anyway, it's probably not very well known. That leads to one of the more interesting news items, though: In Longhorn, Microsoft will introduce the new least privileged user account (LUA), which is basically a secure code compartment in which most application code will typically run. When trusted applications need administrator-level access, they can temporarily run in Protected Admin mode.

As for ripping off, I think the similarity between Aero's back and forward buttons and the KDE Crystal icon set's is rather striking. Microsoft's version does look a tiny bit better, though.

Re:Avalon and Indigo Preview

[DaHat]

Remember that Avalon heavily relies on the .NET framework and like most .NET apps, they do use a lot of memory at first, but will give it back when needed.

Try running 50 copies of your calculator app and just watch as each one drops to hardly anything.

Nice fonts!

[Peter Cooper]

This proves that the Longhorn fonts news from Poynter was right, at least. The type in the screenshots looks particularly good, especially compared to XP. Perhaps XP will catch up (or exceed?) OS X in terms of font rendering? Corbel (I think that's the main sans-serif in these screenshots, look at the 'g's) and Calibri are gorgeous screen fonts. A significant improvement over the current XP Tahoma and Verdana fest.

I call fake on the screenshots!

[Peter Cooper]

Check out this one of an example search results page. Look at the file sizes. They're just duped between sections.. so are the dates! I'm sure you don't have 5 e-mails and 5 totally random files all with corresponding dates and sizes. Seriously, check it out.

Even if the interface work here isn't fake, there has been some copying/pasting going on OR Longhorn doesn't have file size and date functionality yet ;-)

Re:A little comparison:

[Dominatus]

Well I said it before and I got modded down as Troll, but I knew this would happen.

Regardless of the past, Microsoft announced and demo'd this feature BEFORE Apple even mentioned spotlight. I'm not saying Apple copied MS, I'm saying MS *DIDN'T* copy Apple, not this time anyway...

It's branding

[rsilvergun]

That's why the UI is getting button-bloat. When you see wmp 6.x, it's so minimalistic it could be anything. When you see wmp 10, there's no doubt you're looking at wmp 10 from Microsoft. Branding is far more important that usability.

Re:My take on the screenshots

[amliebsch]

Go ahead, try to remame a jpeg to .txt, and double-click on it, with or without showing file extensions. It will try to load in Notepad.

Maybe I'm strange, but I consider that a feature, not a bug. I like being able to change the perceived file type without having to edit the file contents or metadata or whatever. AND I can ascertain the perceived filetype in a simple console dir listing.