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Windows Longhorn Beta Screenshots
An anonymous reader writes "A few screenshots of Windows Longhorn Beta 1 have surfaced on the net showing off many of the new transparency features, Internet Explorer 7 and Avalon or WinFX."
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Good to see you still need to click start to shut down.
No no, you're misreading it. You need to "start the shutdown process". Makes perfect sense to me.. especially considering how long it takes to shutdown a machine these days.
Using some window managers on Linux as soon as you move the window it goes transparent. The result is that you only have to move the window a tiny bit to see what is under it. That saves you time, therefore increasing your productivity.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The screenshots are als on http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2005/07/09/long horn-5203-screenshots/
Mirror:
http://www.networkmirror.com/JOdkEXG2eLXwsioX/www
http://mirrordot.org/stories/38d3ca8d0f1450ecd904c fee28fb683c/index.html
Use the mirror which runs on a sane server:
. flexbeta.net/main/comments.php%3Fcatid%3D1%26shown ews%3D13839.html
http://www.networkmirror.com/JOdkEXG2eLXwsioX/www
My Linux - (L)ove (I)s (N)ever (U)tterly eXPensive
mirrordot is still happily serving it up here.
--- sig moved for great justice.
if the ' X ' button has moved for maximised windows as well then it will be the worst GUI decision EVER! Gone will be the quick hand flick up and to the right to close a window.
I doubt it... with winXP, the 'X' button on a maximized window isn't completely flush with the corner of the screen, but this is just graphically. In functionality, the button IS in the corner, thus utilising the infinite area.
Microsoft continually abuse the said space and assign these areas as no-action spaces.
Actually, this is one area that Microsoft actually do pretty good on. All corners use the infinite space (apart from the clock).
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Here are some more screeenshots that I found because the oother link isnt working for me
http://www.jcxp.net/lh_5203_shots/
I think it looks alright, but the transparency thing really doesnt seem like that big of a deal. As far as i know, there still havent been any major improvements except for IE 7.0 (and i am counting on firefox/safari to still be better). As for the other graphics, goood job Bill, you are finally starting to catch up to macintosh! NOT.
i heard another rumor that they might be taking the my out of my documents, my pictures, etc so it will just be 'pictures, documents, music' etc etc... dont know how accurate it is though.
mac will still prevail, especially since i expect a new OS release from them by the time longhorn is out (most likely not until 2008 because they are always so late at releases)
Longhorn Beta 1 does NOT include the major parts of the new longhorn UI, such as Aero. The main graphics stuff isn't to be publically seen until Beta 2 in early '06, and thus it's not too exciting to argue about screenshots of it now.
Black holes are where god divided by zero
There's lots of other visual effects that you don't notice from the screenshots. Like a subtle reflection map on the window frame that you notice when you move the windows around. And a glint of light that travels across the progress bars every few seconds. It's some really nice stuff, and they do it for free thanks to the 3-D desktop compositing.
But besides the effects the UI seems a lot more responsive than before. There's a centralized graphics server (it's not like X-Windows) that does all the compositing which can provide UI feedback even when the host program isn't responding. So you get a mostly responsive UI even when the programs aren't responding quickly.
Try http://mirrordot.org/stories/38d3ca8d0f1450ecd904c fee28fb683c/index.html
No it hasn't. Since Windows 2000 (and even more so in Windows XP), things in the Start Menu would periodically be re-arranged to help you find the one you wanted (or something). This completely destroys muscle memory, making the Start Menu significantly less usable.
The modern Start Menu has a much bigger set of usability issues than it did a decade ago...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I dont think there ever was an Office 98 for windows unless it was on the mac, there is 97, 2000,xp and 2003
I've got some photographs, I'd like to show them to you. Though you don't know the girls You'll recognise the view..
the WinHEC build + my 9800pro with "glass" enabled runs slow as hell.
I know it was a pre-beta build but all the LH builds so far are pretty laggy once you enable the 3D effects.
kawai
You gotta remember, you can change a whole lot that won't come out in screenshots. A good example is the difference between the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels in linux. Vastly different, but all a screenshot will tell you is they have a different version number.
However, 'just' a new UI and Transparancy actually required a rewrite of the presentation layer, that means most graphical programs (once they take advantage of it) will run much much faster, instead of the old fashioned GDI they used that had been around for years.
Still IMing in the stone age?
I don't know if someone saw this before, but the back and forward arrows in Longhorn are EXACTLY the same than the KDE Crystal (take a look on the comparison)e w=2&id=8341&file1=8341-1.jpg&file2=8341-2.jpg&file 3=8341-3.jpg&name=Crystal+SVG&PHPSESSID=b09161c27e 4dc69f957fca2b9ef44a81
= 213
KDE Crystal SVG look : http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?previ
(Also the replicant Plastikfox for firefox) https://addons.mozilla.org/themes/moreinfo.php?id
Longhorn long awaited innovative arrows: http://www.jcxp.net/lh_5203_shots/shots/lh11.jpg
Will MS release their skin under the GPL???
My mother, 63, uses a 1400x1050 laptop with Windows XP with large fonts. It doesn't look at all strange.
There are no scalability issues with Windows, only perhaps some windows apps. I know for a fact that most recent MS apps (certainly everything in MS Office) handle "non-original" font sizes just fine.
The only other thing my mother uses is AOL (yes, i know, teh suxx0r, but c'mon), and that scales just fine too.
Actually the close window button is still in focus and pressable when the mouse is on the top right most pixel, regardless of the small border between it and the button.
Wow.. after seeing the screenshots (and yes, I know there are a lot of comments already I know about that are like "OMG such a Mac ripp" but I'm not going to go into those right now... ), it actually looks like Microsoft could have gotten something right for a change.
In "Computer" (thank goodness they removed My, I've been doing that since Windows 95..), it shows a little percentage full box so that at a quick glance, you can get a good estimate of how much disk space you have left. If they floated a percentage over it, it would be better, but I liked that touch.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
http://board.msbetas.org/index.php?act=module&modu le=gallery&cmd=sc&cat=19
"Yet again I'd have to be an Apple whore and say that OS X wins on that one - one little window pops up asking you what you want to do."
Control Panel/Power Options/Advanced/"When I press the power button my computer"
Do nothing
Ask me what to do <- that's the one you want
Stand by
Hibernate
Shut down
You can debate the point of having your power button do different things based on user preference, but it certainly is a feature and Windows has had it for years.
Next time you think of pulling an "my X is bigger/better/hotter/... than your Y" you might want to verify that you're not just making an obviously uninformed statement.
It is the classic good enough today vs. great next week. Their market niche is good enough today and they know that. I wouldn't use it to run hospital heart monitors, but it is fine to run the hospital finance guy's pc.
A blogger on the MSDN blog gave the following two reasons as to why fast user-switching was not enabled on domains. In other words, when developing XP, no one at Microsoft thought of "Gee, let's enable the username / password box for fast user-switching." As to the second point, I've got a better question. Why are blank passwords even an option? Every user account should have a password, period.
Also, XP doesn't actually leave the processes running when switched out. I think it dumps the contents of the user-space memory to disk, in effect "freezing" the user's session in suspended animation. Once the user switches back in, it's like nothing changed. At least that's how I understand it. If someone has specifics, please feel free to correct / elaborate on my comments.
Mac OS X, on the other hand, just starts a new instance of the login window. All processes from a switched-out user are still running. You can switch among domain and local users without any problems at all. You can also have a normal username / password login window if fast user-switching is enabled. Mac OS X will also store domain accounts under the "Other" option in the login window if a list of users is being displayed. So yeah, Microsoft crossed the finish line first, but like sex, it's not about who gets there first. It's about how good it is when you do get there.
- Firefox
- Thunderbird
- Cygwin Bash Shell
- Emacs
- Trillian
- [separator]
- [reordering icons]
This leaves me with my most frequently used applications very close (Start menu, then hit the first letter of the application; sometimes twice if I have more than one that start with the same), exactly as I left them, and keeps the other ones that I use occasionally on a short list ready to go. I rarely expand the full set.While I do value a sensible directory structure, I am too lazy to maintain one.
In fact, sometimes it is not even possible to do this propely, as a tree structure generally fails to grasp the nature of the data you store in it. Should I keep my video files separate from my music files, or should I order them by creator, language, file format, date?
Tagging data and searching instead of sorting is simply a much more sensible idea IMHO.
Just like I consider Gmail to be a true godsend because it lets me tag my mail or just archive it however it wants to,
instant desktop search will be a huge selling point for me, probably THE reason to upgrade to Longhorn.
No, the classic line is "Microsoft: Yesterday's Technologies Tomorrow!"
I can confirm the second one, because I'm typing this on a Windows XP box, have just verified that the switch is on, and yet minimising and maximising windows (for several different apps, just to be sure) exhibits no perceptible difference to when the setting is off.
I can assure you the setting does work, so you must have a program running that overrides it, such as nVidia's nView desktop manager.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Do you all realise the saddest thing about this article and all those who have posted???
In about 3 years time(ha.. we'll see!) you will all be using this OS!
hang on... the sadest thing about that statement is that you i also will be using this OS!
Something has to be done! Its not you and I that is loosing the war to a company that refuses to inovate.. it my mum, my younger sister and my 12 year old next door neighbor.
THEY DONT CARE WHAT WE THINK!
They are happy having 98% percent of the population using their operating system because thats all they know.. thats all they've ever known.
There is only one thing that we can do. Push our families and friend onto other applications.
1) REMOVE THE IE ICON FROM THE DESKTOP
the majority of users wouldnt even know where to look for IE. Ive many times shown up to a clients house and said i have a new internet browser for you and had the reply of "but what about the internet? i cant surf it without internet explorer"
2) INSTALL SOFTWARE NOT MADE BY MICROSOFT
you ask anyone about "software" the number one response will be.. what? then you say "programs" they will reply with.. "oh! sory, like msn messenger and word?" we must show them that there are alternatives and prove to them that they "do the same thing" only better.
3)START EXPLAINING THE ADVANTAGES OF ALTERNATIVES
dont steal software... one of the reasons people use windows is because someone has given them the "free" version. show the average user how easy OSX is, that it is COMPATIBLE(oh you have no idea how many times ive heard it isnt!), show the user that there is soo much free and safe software out there, show them how fasionable these apps are and teach them to be an individual.
The only way that a multinational like microsoft will ever listen is if their quotas arent met, and you can see that with the tabbed browsing.
The only way we can make a difference is to
make sure that our workmates, family and friends are educated in their choices and not just "because every one else uses it".
we cannot be held ransom to the crowd.
This is a vital time in history towards the OS battle. Microsoft is lagging behind the competition and we must make them accountable.
- matt
(comments? matt.shadbolt@gmail.com)