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MS Vista Look and Feel To Go Cross-Platform
Robert writes "As part of the announcement of the next generation look and feel for Windows Vista,
Microsoft said that it will make a subset of the new presentation layer available for
other platforms. 'Windows Presentation Foundation', the look and feel which provides the rich front end for
Vista, will also eventually be available in compact form for other platforms such as the
Apple Macintosh, older
versions of Windows, and smart devices such as phones or PDAs."
No linux?
I use a mac and love the interface. How can you improve on perfection. If you have to have a windows interface on your mac, then you must be afraid to go out and learn something new, and mo' betta!
D'oh! I'm on Linux... *snaps* dang.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
When WPF/E becomes available, it will be in the form of an Active X control that can be embedded in applications or as browser plug-in.
Yep. Because we all know and love the concept of ActiveX.
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
What features are in Vista that would inspire me to upgrade besides the UI? Frankly the UI looks big and clunky like XP and flat out ugly... but what is the benefit of Vista?
Why have Vista?
I notice a few apps include a libcairo file... ..Its that because vectorial rendering can be per-application enabled? ..Its that usage posible with Avalon?
-Woof woof woof!
Don't they have anything better to do, like finishing (Hasta La) Vista? ActiveX is the biggest problem on windows. And now they think they can make it cross plattform by using an ActiveX component for a browser plugin?
If it was the first of April it would be interesting...
ActiveX on Mac IE? Has never worked. How about on Linux? Nobody wants that. Why are people using Firefox, well for one it doesn't have ActiveX support! (Okay there is an addon, but almost nobody is using it...)
Just like Windows NT. You could run it on PPC/Alpha (with no available programs) for a little-while. Then there was one.
What are they going to do, other than try to bring their DRM to Apple?
iirc Vista is said to take quite a chunk of hardware to run. from the article:
"However, 3D and hardware accelerators will probably not be part of the package."
how, then, will it be possible to put this stuff on even older comps? is this really thought through, or am i missing some obvious point?
Three rings for the Elven-kings in the sky
This is just what windows2000 needs is another windowsblinds only done by Microsft to make it complete.
The only funy thing about this comment is that I think I might be deadly serious.
I havent decided yet.
Will it be sold as XP Plus? This may sway my seriousness.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
I saw the announcement and a demo on the PDC (well, live through the internet that is). Anyway, the idea of WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere) is to be able to deliver apps using the WPF (codenamed "Avalon") API using JavaScript. So any OS capable running JS will be able to run those apps... whether it's a smartphone, MAC OS X or Linux...
Google's most exciting technologies are built on AJAX, for cross-platform, web-based, highly responsive user interfaces. This sounds like a bid to beat them at their own game, or force them into irrelivence by making their own technology dominant.
Of course, I wouldn't really believe that they were willing to deliver cross-platform apps. Steve Ballmer just wants to murder Google, and once that's done, they'll abandon the technology.
I use Macs too and I like most of the interface but there is one thing that this could lead to that I wouldn't mind at all.
...and quite simply, Finder blows.
I would love to see good old two pane Windows Explorer (circa 1998) on the Mac. it's still the best graphical file manager out there. Sadly, this will likely not happen. Even if they did bring it over, MS has been slowly moving Explorer away from the decent app that it used to be to something more like Apple's Finder.
(Yes, I know that there is Rage Software's Macintosh Explorer but although it tries, it just isn't there yet.
It won't be part of the Vista release, set for the second half of next year.
What I want to know is when they'll separate the virus, bug and backdoor bits of windows into layers, so I can use them on other platforms.
The question, for me anyway, would be whether or not this will allow users to use a different interface than the Microsoft-standard one.
The main reason I don't use Windows is that the GUI for it is incredibly annoying and unintuitive to me. If I could run something like Windowmaker on top of the Vista kernel, that would get me to buy my first Windows machine in years.
(Not that anyone gives a shit what I think, but hell, I just woke up and I'm feeling chatty.)
--saint
http://blog.opsan.com/archive/2005/09/13/1463.aspx
I've always thought XP and it's progeny were garish, geometrically bloated, and clumsy. Christ, in older Windows there's four, count'em, four different ways to close a window. Five if you include an app closing its own window; six if you include the system crash.
This all represents the train wreck of code that lies underneath XP's clown face exterior, but even if the OS it lays on is better why would I want to look at it?
Sometimes the most insight is gleaned from the chaff. Microsoft has shareholders are pounding at the gate; they need another revenue stream.
Near or far, nobody knows, but the end _is_ in sight.
Come on, my PDA is already a pain to use because it's the OS is trying to be desktop Windows on a tiny machine with a bad screen and no keyboard.
:)
Hey MS, If you're gonna make the PDA entirely unusable, why not go all-out and make it run DOS or *shudder* CP/M or something even more arcane and unsuited for a PDA touch screen. Gary Killdall, where are you!?!?! There is work left to do!
Yes, I know there are DOS prompt apps for PocketPC. No, I don't want to carefully peck in letters with a stylus. Thanks anyway.
My PDA currently has a flaky touch screen that has already been replaced once. When it finally dies, I'm going to get an iPod and get smug. I hear that comes packed in those Apple factory boxes.
Sig for hire.
I find it intriguing that the person on the picture appears to be either a male or a female.
So now Mac users can look forward to combo boxes, tab sets that flip around as you click them, and a start menu that eats half the screen just to choose a program...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The article makes clear that this is vaporware. Microsoft haven't got further than "scoping this out" and in any case it won't be part of the first Vista release. Besides, it could be a few years before someone works out how to stuff a 6800GT into a Nokia cellphone.
... the borg is stirring ... the mere threat of Vistarizing your watch, phone, toaster, camera, alarm clock, yay, the great globe itself, with dinky beeping sounds, natty symbols and rich interactive content from doubleclick.net ... I surrender, master.
Unless
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
The problem is, is that microsoft still doesn't look like they've added any real functionality. Why can't I add anotherpanel, along the left side of my screen. With the number of quicklaunch and tray Icon's it would be nice to have those easily accesible, without being crowded and small at the bottom, half of them hidden becuase they don't have the room. Still just one start menu, with all your programs stuck under 1 menu. Where you either have everything in 1 folder, and it's impossible to find anything, or you have organzied everything, and have to click through 4 levels just to get to the program you want. Also, when are they going to have multiple desktops. Like they've had in linux/unix forever. The most powerful interface is one that can be highly customized, so it can work the way I want it to. Windows just doesn't seem to realize this at all.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Microsoft doesn't know shyte about UI design.
I hope they stay the fuck away from the Mac, and if they still want to do stuff on the platform, they'd better comply 100% to the native UI, using native widgets and native APIs (Cocoa, or go to hell).
Contrary to popular belief, there is not one single MS app that is crucial for the Mac.
I always found something like Directory Opus on the Amiga to be about the most efficient graphical way of moving files around.. I don`t like most of the graphical file managers nowadays, finder and windows explorer not to mention kde/gnome`s efforts seem to get on my nerves.. so i use the commandline almost exclusively (tab completion, usefull)
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Reading the posts in this article make me realize that the community of Slashdot is very rapidly deteriorating. I've been reading and posting to Slashdot for many years (under another much older ID).
It seems that very recently, a lot of the good, throughtful regular posters are gone, and now we're left with nothing but "M$ sucks, so I don't care." trolls and Linux fanboys.
Now I know that Slashdot has always been a haven for Linux zealots and anti-MS zealots, but that's always been tempered with thoughtful posts, too, that weren't so A. Rabid and B. Clueless.
What I'm wondering is if anybody else has noticed, or if I'm just imagining things. Now, I know a lot of people were talking about giving up on Slashdot in the past few months because the editors have been doing such a terrible job (really bad articles, multiple, multiple dupes, not even correct spelling)... so I'm wondering if a lot of those people really *have* given up and left Slashdot. I'm starting to realize that I'm less inclined to hang out here now, and I've been coming here since... oh, about 1998. If so, where's the next real place for geeks to hang out, as opposed to *just* the anti-MS kids, although I know there will be *some* of that in any geek community?
Or is this all just in my head?
I don't respond to AC's.
At least Zonk is honest when he has to run Slashvertisements.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Believe it or not, my guess is that ms is getting the grip of multiplatform computing being the future. Their vision is growing beyond multiple versions of windows for different hardware platforms. The os market is getting more diverse every day, and ms will focus application development in the future.
Let a few years go by and you will see ms targeting all major os platforms with most of their product line, which will include linux next to apple...
By the way, most ActiveX comments are superfluos, as any foreign implementation of the technology is bound to be a nearly full reimplementation.
Microsoft has developed some software for other os in the past and those products have been little surprisingly way better than their windows equivalents... (think internet explorer or the unix frontpage extensions)
The benefit of Microsoft's patented Vista XAML UI is...
==> Developers who build software with it will be more locked into Windows than ever before!!!
Huh?
Oh, you meant what benefit does it have for you?
Well...
Why would I want to make my OSX 10.5 look and feel like OSX 10.4?
This is the kind of garbage which the $100 million in marketing is going to buy. It's amazing that ringtones, skins and wallpapers can be a successful part of a marketing strategy which will further entrench monopoly and strip computer owners of autonomy with their own data and hardware.
[
MS tried this before on the mac.
It was a dismal failure
MS Word 6.x on the Macintosh worked, but was heavily bloated, slow, and did not at all fit in with the way the mac worked.
Why? It used a subset of the Windows GUI. It didn't use Macintosh gui calls and was not only weighed down by using an untested (compared to windows gui elements on windows, which has the benefit of being used by hundreds of apps and debugged over time) gui, but worked opposite to how good macintosh apps should work.
It was regarded as a failure even at the time and many people stuck with Word 5.1
I really hate the use of the word 'rich' in "...which provides the rich front end for Vista." Completely meaningless term that is the kind of 'ad-speak' used by marketing people. The only thing rich about Vista are its creators.
Also, having and operating system that uses shorter names for standard system directories. In linux I can go to ~, or the more verbose, /home/username. In windows, it's c:\Documents and settings\username\My Documents, where they seem to want to store just about everything, including non-documents. in Linux, my settings are at /etc, and other useful directories include /var, /usr, /root, /boot, and others. In windows it's always /windows/system32 (where's my system64), /program files, and lots of other really long names. All this, and they don't have tab completion by default, and it sucks even if you do enable it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Must...have...primary...colors!
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
When WPF/E becomes available, it will be in the form of an Active X control that can be embedded in applications or as browser plug-in.
*pictures Bill Gates screaming "lalalala!" when presented with report like these*
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
As I have many times used Secunia as a source, I would of course like to know why you think it is useless.
Also, if you know (trustworthy) alternatives, links would be much appreciated.
Porting the Vista gui to linux would be a step backwards for us.
Also, from the article:
ah, another reason NOT to upgrade. So why are they doing this? Perhaps its to try to keep people from defecting to linux, or to OSX or another of the BSDs.Their market share has nowhere to go but down, and they know it. It's just a question of how far, how fast. With this anouncement we can say:
Its nice to have Microsoft as such a deep well for comic material.To reuse MSOffice look and feel under OSX. Look at the potential savings:
1. Full-time MacOS geeks on payroll eventually reduced by 90%.
2. No more OSX-specific marketing or tech support materials required -- all W32 Office materials will be perfectly suited to the Apple community (Just add "OSX" to the list of system req's, et voila).
3. Will greatly simplify porting of other strategic apps to the Mac (and eventually linux) platform. In order to properly compete with Firefox, IE must go cross-platform, period.
4. OpenOffice will soon gain critical mass. What Firefox is to IE, OOO will become to MSO -- lack of MSO cross-platform compatibility will become a liability (especially in the eyes of governments and orgs increasingly deploying linux to the desktop). Portable Vista should render porting MSO to x86 (and possibly PPC) linux a snap.
You're absolutely right. Linux is far too inferior to be able to handle the complex eyecandy Vista offers. I mean, heck, Windows won't be able to support it until a year from now. Yup, I'd reckon Linux won't be able to support that for a few ye... Wait, isn't X11R7 coming out in October? Linux can't have graphics! It can't be able to support as much eyecandy a year sooner! They're just a bunch of kids writing code for free! This is madness!
Do you Gentoo?
Microsoft stand to loose less business even if some of its customers migrate to Mac OS X, because the vast majority of Mac users have bought and use Microsoft Office:mac or even Microsoft Virtual PC. Targeting Mac OS X may therefore be a smart move on Microsoft.
As a matter of fact, the Microsoft Mac Business Unit is highly profitable and will bring in even more revenue as the Macintosh again is gaining market share. Because MBU has done a good job with Office on the Mac often introducing new functionality in this version, Mac users are less likely to jump ship and pick up the free OpenOffice which has a user-interface that would alienate many Mac users. Microsoft therefore has a vested interest in making sure that if a user migrates, the migration is to a platform where it is more likely the user retains a customer relationship with Microsoft.
This in stark contrast to rival open source alternative Linux, where Microsoft would loose both the operating system and potentially an Office license if a customer were to switch. It is therefore less likely that Microsoft will target Linux with their development tools.
Another thing is of course that by supporting OS X, Microsoft can claim multi-OS support, something that makes it easier to keep the US DoJ or European authorities at bay.
I blogged a longer comment on this yesterday for those interested in reading it here.
The future is in beta
How the hell can you transfer the Windows look and feel to other platforms?
It's as dumb as taking one culture's social norms and dumping them onto another's culture. Of course, we've learned in the past that such an approach leads to death and destruction.
There are only two options here: (1) Microsoft is stupid, or (2) Microsoft would like to encourage death and destruction.
I used to have Windowsblinds, too, but only to 'shave' the eyepoop from my desktop. I found it too ressource draining and unstable and uninstalled within a few days.
Ok this is a bit offtopic but, by looking at the beta screenshots, Vista UI looks like the kind of interface the Empire might like. The taskbar and the start button especially reminds me of Darth Vader helmet. Anyone else noticed?
nbody2002:If you can read this you may be addicted to the internet
I'm really curious why someone would want to copy windows look and feel... even macintosh users can't possibly be getting excited about this.
As I understand, Vista uses MFC as their widget set (or how else will it be compatible with XP-based apps?) or at least has MFC bindings to their new widget set.
If you ask anyone who has worked with MFC or tried to work with it, make sure the person doesn't get too angry and doesn't do any violence.
And now they're saying they're bringing good old MFC to other platforms. What did they do to deserve this?
To make the transition away from Windows easier, of course.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
The portability is possible because the underlying technologies of Expression...
When they say "Expression" in the article, are they referring to the (formerly Creature House) program Expression? And if so, is this implying that the Avalon presentation layer is essentially a chunk of that code grafted onto Windows? I admit that I haven't read up much on Vista (or Avalon), but it seems that this is a very poor way of creating an advanced windowing system...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
I can't help but wonder if the Mac angle is that they hope to be able to port their Apple apps again instead of writing them from scratch. I suffered through the horror of Office 6 for the Mac and wouldn't make that mistake again!
They say the mind is the first thing to
Spot on. Rich is a Marketingese word that covers a number of concepts which, in English, can variously be expressed using words like shiny, gaudy, flashy, non-standard, confusing, and, depressingly often, unreliable.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
Of course, the level of quality is not always very high on Slashdot, but don't we love the way Slashdot is, with a funny troll and flamebait here and a lot of nerdy humour there.
I always enjoy reading the Wikipedia articles about Slashdot, the standard trolls still make me laugh. Come on, this is just Slashdot, don't take it all too seriously, we're here for some "news for nerds" but still more, for fun!
Microsoft "targeted" Mac OS before. Sometime in the mid-90's you could use Microsoft's development tools to build cross-platform (Win/MacOS) applications. In theory.
The reality was that the barrier to entry was very high (IIRC, you needed a specially-configured version of NT to host the tools), and you could use only a subset of the Windows APIs (sound familiar?). AFAIK, Microsoft didn't even use them to build anything significant; my recollection is that the then-current version of Office was not built with them.
So what was the point? To the extent that anybody thought about doing cross-platform development, they could be answered with the line that "if we use Microsoft's tools, we'll be able to cross-develop if and when we want to." One more reason to consider using not getting locked into Microsoft's tooling was apparently answered.
Also, the "subset" qualification meant that you could make a choice: be cross-platform, or exploit every platform feature to build the best possible application. As soon as you were sucked into the latter alternative, you were locked out of the other platform(s). (This is the approach Microsoft took with their flavor of Java.)
Finally, the non-Windows implementations of these cross-platform application were marginal at best in terms of platform guidelines on the Mac. So, if you were to go ahead and deliver on the cross-platform tools, you were guaranteed a luke-warm reception at best from the Mac community, which in turn would probably make you think twice about developing for the platform again.
That attempt to go "cross-platform" by Microsoft was so choked with booby traps that it never got off the ground. I expect the same result here, even allowing for adaptations to lessons learned.
"WPF/E" seems a bit odd.
How about "WTF? / Eeeeeeeeeeee!!!"
(cue the eerie or pink-panther music in the background)
To confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image:hemostat
wtf is "hemostat" ?? Hemos? Someone's doing things to a thermostat named after you!!!
Digital rights management.
To reuse MSOffice look and feel under OSX. Look at the potential savings:
1. Full-time MacOS geeks on payroll eventually reduced by 90%.
2. No more OSX-specific marketing or tech support materials required -- all W32 Office materials will be perfectly suited to the Apple community (Just add "OSX" to the list of system req's, et voila).
3. Will greatly simplify porting of other strategic apps to the Mac (and eventually linux) platform. In order to properly compete with Firefox, IE must go cross-platform, period.
Microsoft has apparently learned nothing from the last time they tried to foist the Windows look and feel upon Mac users, Word 6.
It was a piece of shit that barely resembled a Mac application, and it was bloated and slow too, due to Microsoft being cheap and lazy and reusing too much code from the Windows version. It was a half-assed port, and it showed. It was overwhelmingly rejected by Macintosh users, to the point that Microsoft opted to resume selling the previous Mac version, Word 5.1, right alongside it. I worked at a university bookstore's computer department at the time, and I can attest to the fact that once the news got out about how bad Word 6 really was, it gathered dust on the shelves while we could barely keep 5.1 in stock.
It was this debacle that led directly to the creation of the Microsoft Mac Business Unit, which beginning with Office 98 started producing Mac software that Mac users deemed worthy of the Mac. They've pulled a boner or two here or there, IMHO their worst gaffe being the terrible Exchange server support in Entourage 2004 (support MAPI, dammit!), but by and large they do their job well-- there are plenty of Mac Office reviews that declare it to be superior to its Windows counterpart.
IMHO it would be a terrible mistake on Microsoft's part to try this miserable cross-platform look and feel experiment again. Especially now that there are viable alternatives to Mac Office, which there weren't the last time.
~Philly
http://www.dansdata.com/images/buildpc/320/hemosta t.JPG
Useful for moving jumpers, developed for holding blood vessels in surgery.
They will certainly start offering versions of office for mac which look and act identically to the windows version. It will pollute the mac interface...
1) No one here uses firefox
2) No one here reads the article
One of these seems more likely than the other
I've got a couple, but I never use them. Its always easier to grab whatever's close at hand (a knife, a paperclip, a folded business card) to pry them off.
What pisses me off is they're almost impossible to find if you drop them, and you can never remember where you've stashed them when you need to put them back a few months later and want to change the config.
What was so evil about dip switches, anyway?
Windows XP supports multiple desktops, all you need is the powertoys collection (which is free).
NT4 and 2000 also supported multiple desktops through the resource kit.
The only reason I can see to do this is to bring the
inconsistent UI that vista and other apps will have to competing platforms ( even older windows ).
It will be buggy, ugly and a excuse to switch to vista for older windows version users because the "PORT" will run really sjitty.
The way it's going is that the GUI will be more diverse and unusable that any other environment out there.
But who cares, it's vaporware anyway.
Just be ware of these tricks to trick you into going vista.
That's why you park them. Simply leave them hanging off of one pin.
Also, there's nothing evil about DIP switches, they simply cost more. And, mobo manufacturers will go cheap when they can get away with it.
Of course, I use Ubuntu now and my roommate has a PlayStation2, so these have become irrelevant to me.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
In your link to currently planned features, it mentions a "new sleep mode". What is that? I hopped onto a PowerBook years ago after being sick of Windows 98 constantly hanging upon shutdown. I was jealous of seeing friends who weren't into computers using PowerBooks and turning their laptops on and off like televisions. I had to wait 15 minutes for mine to start up and hook up to the internet, and to shut it down I would have to wait for the laptop to hang and the drive light to stop blinking, then unplug the AC power adapter and pull out the battery. This happened every time I used the computer. I thought that this would be fixed with laptops sold with Windows XP and they had sleep modes just like PowerBooks. Is this "new sleep mode" just like the Macintosh sleep mode that has been around for years?
Sometimes there's no spare pin to park them (esp.if there's more than one, like on some hard drives). Fortunately, sata drives are removing that problem.
Yeah but... does it run on linux?
My last sig was ridiculed
I took a look at the channel9 video of the Sparkle demo and was quite bowled over. The technology allows designers and developers to draw working interfaces using 2D, 3D and video as easily as one would draw some graphic objects in Illustrator or Flash today, except that the UI elements you draw are the immediately live interface elements. Not even Flash can really compare with this and OSX Cocoa's InterfaceBuilder is not anywhere near as flexible when it comes to custom elements.
.Net frameworks, thereby crippling any other implementation of .Net (Yes, Mono, I'm referring to you) and thereby getting technology chiefs to rather go with a Microsoft platform where the technology is complete and more or less guaranteed to work.
Once an element is drawn, it immediately exists as XML (XAML) and can be modified by a coder with C# data bindings. It's like InterfaceBuilder combined with Illustrator.
These animations/UI control sets can then easily either be combined with a real client application or be part of Explorer. It's very radical, with one big Caveat:
Microsoft, for all their failures learned a big lesson with ActiveX and propierty technologies: If they don't run on other platforms, as do Flash and Javascript, almost no web developers will use them as they have to cater to more than just Microsoft's platform. This is the very reason Microsoft made C# and the CLR an ECMA standard. It was an attempt to get their technology accepted as a standard that would be implemented on other platforms.
Of course Microsoft wouldn't be Microsoft if they didn't try and poison the pill by not opening their
And XAML and this WPF/E is exactly the same thing. Note that only a SUBSET of WPF will be ported to Mac and Linux. The Sparkle/Expresion/XAML technology has the ability to absolutely kill Flash as it is easier to develop for, much more extensible, and includes 3D, which doesn't exist on Flash. But Microsoft, being Microsoft, wants you to use their OS and their browser (and preferably all of their technology if they can get away with it.) The subset of WPF will only be bait to get people to move to Vista and IE where the implementation is complete.
What is even worse is that Microsoft wants XAML to kill html, since a XAML document will run as is in IE. Cringely was right when he said Microsoft wants to kill the web. Microsoft does not give a damn about html standards and XAML is the reason. They want EVERYBODY to use ONLY XAML. That way they would theoretically have absolute control over the internet and the web.
It would scare me silly, but I'm pretty sure that it will only be a partial success, as web developers will carry on using technologies that are cross platform (surprise, that is what the web is for!) such as Flash and html, and client developers are hardly going to use a technology that is only a subset of what is available on Windows.
Another reason why you see those spesific targets platforms for these development tools is of course that Microsoft needs to add functionality to their own on-line services while while keeping compatibility with their user communities.
The future is in beta
It's also probably the shoddiest, buggiest implementations of Multiple Desktops I've ever seen.
It appears to rely on a hack that sets the all the windows to invisible, removes the windows from taskbar, then re-adds all the windows and taskbar items that belong to the selected desktop. Neat idea to get around the single-desktop limitation, but the side-effect is that the ordering of items in the taskbar is completely messed up if you change desktops.
And there's no easy way to send a window from one desktop to another without minimizing everything, turning on the option that makes the windows from all desktops show in the taskbar, switching to the desired desktop, un-minimizing the window, then switching the option back off again. An utter pain in the arse, in comparison to Fluxbox's right-click -> "Send to..." window menu.
Also, sometimes it just ups and dies (browsing for wallpaper images, usually). Fortunately, when it crashes it re-shows everything so you don't lose anything on the other desktops.
Eventually, all of this drove me nuts, especially at the slow pace at which it switches desktops. So much so that I ended up bringing in my Linux laptop from home and using that instead (I'm lucky that my work lets me do that).
From the screen shots that I've seen, I think windows is taking a step backwards in it's UI design. I mean, I want a toolbar that takes up less space, not more. I really can't see anyone wanting to emulate this on any platform. I know I for one wouldn't "upgrade" my version of windows 2000 to this look and feel.
Porting the Vista gui to linux would be a step backwards for us.
And for all others it would be a step....?
ROTFLMAO!
Suuurrreee, I'm *real* likely to replace my Mac UI with a WIndows UI... just like I'm *real* likely to, oh, replace a BMW Z3 with a Dodge Colt, or my house with a tent trailer, or my righthand with a claw.
Come to think of it, a claw might be kind of cool... unlike Vista.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
This isn't about porting the Windows look and feel to other platforms at all. It's about Microsoft trying to replace HTML for the UI of Web-based apps with something they can control.
Those of you who grew up taking the web for granted may not realize this, but HTML and the Web were designed to create hyper-text documents, not apps. Thus, the "HT" beginning to HTML. Making applications in pure HTML was a lot like those old Create Your Own Adventure books where you choose your way through the adventure by turning to page X to do one thing and page Y to do another.
Since the whole web architecture was designed for reading linked documents, it has had to be mutilated with all sorts of add-on technologies (many of them proprietary) in order to make web applications feasible. And still, the UI and the method for creating that UI are inferior to native apps. But, since the benefits of web app deployment are just too appealing to give up, we just keep mutating and evolving a web document system.
And that's where XAML and this announcement come in. Microsoft knows there is a huge demand for a richer web application UI (Flash, I'm looking at you!) and has decided that now is it's opportunity to take over from HTML.
However, the only way it can take over the API for the web is to make sure it is cross-platform enough for web app developers to adopt it. In other words, this is about getting web developers to choose their API (and therefore often their tools) for web development.
From now on, I'm making my used toilet paper available for anyone else's use.
I can't wait to make my PowerBook look and act like a Waindows machine.
...sideways.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
KDE users already have translucent menus, translucent xterms, multiple-desktop pagers, completely configurable widgets, etc.
... older versions of Windows
Porting the Vista gui to linux would be a step backwards for us.
Also, from the article:
eventually ported to
ah, another reason NOT to upgrade. So why are they doing this? Perhaps its to try to keep people from defecting to linux, or to OSX or another of the BSDs.
Their market share has nowhere to go but down, and they know it. It's just a question of how far, how fast. With this anouncement we can say:
Wow, when did KDE get a 3D XML based programming and presentation layer, that uses hardware acceleration without letting the OS have OpenGL take over?
And when did KDE get an XML based screen to printer rich document subsystem - that is encapsulates color matching and media that Adobe has even yet to offer or make for the OSX for Apple to use?
Oh, that right, it neither freaking exist..
Reading these posts, especially after the bombshells that were dropped at the PDC, and the developers that GET what Microsoft is pulling off, just amaze me.
Even looking at the new presentation system in Windows, it replaces GDI, has abilities accessible via XAML and C++ programming that even many illustration programs don't support - multi-layer texturing, muli-level/layer transparency, mixed raster and vector composition, etc. - a document format based around it, and printer output that is an exact correlation. (A system years ahead of what even OSX and Abode.) (And don't even try to compare PDF/Postscript or tell me that Apple had color matching years ago. - PDF/Postscript doesn't compare to what these technologies are doing, as they are not just in a document structure, it is how the whole OS's UI works and support so many more advanced vector concepts than PDF, and as for color matching - even Windows 95 had native Screen and Printer color management profiles - this is something different.)
And then add on that the new LDDM driver model Microsoft has come up with. (It is something that is so over looked.) The LDDM model lets applications actually share and use GPU devices on the system at the same time, even if the GPU doesn't have the memory support for the applications.
In other words, 3D acceleration is being brought to applications and will co-exists with other applications and games seamlessly. It is like when Windows98 allowed multiple audio streams to be processed and play simultaneously. Not a single review even noticed this, but yet it was a big step ahead in consumer OSes. LDDM is basically doing this with GPUs and video - and on a much grander scale.
And don't tell me you can do this with OpenGL, or that some of the new 'pretty' project of KDE are doing these things, they simply are not. It would require abandoning the complete XWindows underlying structure of KDE to bring forth these features, unless KDE abandons XWindows and renders the whole OS and applications in OpenGL - and allows GPU and GPU memory sharing for OpenGL applications seamlessly.
At least if you are going to make smart comments, have half a mind about what you are talking about.
You have once again proudly proved what you are most capable of: Producing technology already created over 5 years ago to support Mozilla. Give yourselves a huge pat on the back.
Intel: Yes it is and by a huge coincedence it will also cost you at least that. Funny thing eh?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
3D-rendered desktops are a gimmick to get everyone to buy brand-new hardware to run Microsoft's new toy. Meanwhile, I'll save a ton of money by having a functional GUI that I can do things with on old hardware.
Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.
But occasionally I still come accross the odd IE only site, hell Fema made one just recently.
Will the web once again be split into "best viewed with browser X" style sites and a few brave ones just hanging on to pure HTML? Who knows. Humanity might have learned but so far humanity has always been ready to make the same mistakes again.
The only thing we can hope for is that the google lesson will hold. That a website doesn't need to have bells and whistles and sparkles. It just needs to do what it does and do it well. Yet I fear that many websites will in future be Windows Vista only. Not the big ones probably, not the important ones but enough to convince a hell of a lot of users that "The Net" is Windows Vista Internet Explorer. Just as many people today blame bugs in IE on the website on bugs in the website on Firefox.
MS doesn't need to own the net, they just got to stop anyone else from owning it. That way they might always succeed at owning it with the next attempt. MS is evil and evil only needs to get lucky once.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You can already have the Windows Vista interface on OS X. It's called Aqua.
All this, and they don't have tab completion by default, and it sucks even if you do enable it.
XP has tab completion enabled by default and works fairly well. It is not as good as *nix, but it gets the job done. 2000 does NOT have it enabled by default and once enabled completely sucks.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
They can improve on perfection; they can fix the f***ing finder! People rag on linux and windows all the time, but the mac has a lot of crappy sh** that gets passed off because the mac is so cool. I like Macintosh computers and use one all the time. Please people quit kissing Apple's ass! I always wonder reading Slashdot if it is not Apple's marketing team posting here!
/ 18
Examples of finder problems:
I love when you go to open a network drive and you get the spinning candy colored wheel and can't do anything else. Sometimes the finder will get frozen.
Also, any network based application that crashes in osx when accessing network resources results in the finder being unusable, even a bad disk such as a cdrom can cause this sort of thing. Then you have to reboot many times. I had typed up a paper and was going to save it and had the finder give me the nice spinning candy ball. Sitting forever. I had to then give it the ctrl-apple-option-esc after about 20 minutes, loosing all my work. Now some people would say that is not a "crash" or a BSOD. I disagree... It is just as bad.
I also love how cut and paste does not always work from application to application within the finder. I tried to cut and paste from a terminal session to Apple Works and it would not let me. I tried to cut from Internet Explorer to Safari and the same thing happend. Sometimes it works fine to cut and paste and sometimes it won't.
Also, the control or right-click context menus are not always consistant and the dock has a tendancy to get in the way of applications even when it is in hide mode. The UI can be confusing to new users because on the mac many people don't relize that often you need to do a close of the application instead of just click an X. And sometimes clicking an X closes the Applications. This gets confusing when you have a lot of applications open, and even causes me some problems at times. It shows lack of consistancy and some poor design. Classic mode applications can sometimes cause the finder to hang with the spinning ball as well and many carbon lib based applications have poor placement on the screen (don't work well with the doc) and get in the way.
If you think this is only my opinion you should read the internet. Here is a good one:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars
Of course all these bugs seem to be related to the finder and are directly caused by the UI. I would think after 5 years apple would fix them because they have been there since 10.0 and still seem to be there in 10.4.
With all that said the underlying system is very stable and even with the finder unusable at times shell scripts and unix related stuff seems to never have problems. Which tells me it is all the Finder and they should fix it.
-R
Until linux starts offering the same in 5 years. Then you'll be praising it.
Hardware accelerated desktop that can use shaders for windows?
It's a way different tab completion than *nix has, and doesn't get the job done very well. It's limited to completing filenames of files/folders in the location you're in, It doesn't seem to let you tab complete binary executable names stored anywhere on the system like *nix does.
Also the bash-like command history is useful sometimes, up arrow to page through them just like *nix. I think Windows is moving more in the *nix direction with the shell features in Vista, which is ironic.
I don't get why people like the Windows Explorer interface so much. I hate having folders on the left side. All it does for me is take up screen space. I don't understand the Norton Commander craze either.
Anyone else have a mental image of a monkey throwing its own waste, after reading that title?
M$ if you are reading this, please keep your own crap to yourself. No one wants it, thanks.
I can't believe you missed the most useful use: holding your roaches.
A windows os for apple computers may be an advantage to those who would love to have an apple but still need Windows for work. A possiblity is to dual boot if one does not want to use applications like VMWare. On the other hand, I doubt that anyone would completely replace mac os x with windows vista.
I've been using virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/ I found it better than powertoys.
As I said, KDE has had translucent menus, menu shadows, and translucent windows for years, something you STILL don't have, and won't have with Vista unless you get a top-of-the-line machine. Otherwise, you still end up with "Vista Craptic", oh, sorry, "Vista Classic".
And you are going to pay HOW MUCH for this "privilege" of being the last kid on the block to be able to do this stuff?
Your knee-jerk reaction about what Windows will have in the future compared to what we've had for years shows just how far Redmond has to go to play catch-up. And even when they include their own subscription anti-virus "solution" in Vista, it'll still be encumbered by all sorts of licensing issues. Like if your mb goes, you won't be able to recover all your data on your main partition if you were suckered into "trusted computing". And you'll have to buy another copy of the OS, since it was keyed to the hardware. Windows User == Sucker. That hasn't changed in a decade.
It's already there for everyone to use... http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/Desktop/lookingglass/
Oh wait, you wanted a 3d XML based interface. Try this one, it's highly customizable, and has been stress-tested by millions already. Solid db hooks, and every object you "interact" with on your "desktop" can be manipulated with thousands of pre-written scripts.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
let's not forget that M$'s definition of "cross-platform" is "multiple versions of windows."
They've pulled stuff like this in the past. saying things are a standard (when they're a standard part of windows), creating a cross-platform application (that works in the desktop and portable versions of their OS), and cross-platform programming languages (visual basic will work as a application development language as well as scripting for applications like VBA).
M$ is all about marketing and it's obvious from the way they present their products and technologies with so much drivel.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/microsoft .html
It is like when Windows98 allowed multiple audio streams to be processed and play simultaneously. Not a single review even noticed this, but yet it was a big step ahead in consumer OSes. LDDM is basically doing this with GPUs and video - and on a much grander scale.
Win98 didn't support multiple sound streams simultaneously. If you had that functionality, it's because you had a sound card such as the SoundBlaster Live that had hardware support for it.
Win2k, otoh, could do it in software.
I never seem to have to turn on tab completion myself whenever I open a command window using cmd.exe. What is your problem? I'm using XP Pro.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
If you're going to make 'smart' comments, at least try to come across as something better than simply a Microsoft zealot/apologist. It shows in this and previous posts of yours.
[ a document format based around it, and printer output that is an exact correlation. (A system years ahead of what even OSX and Abode.) (And don't even try to compare PDF/Postscript or tell me that Apple had color matching years ago.]
... 1987? almost 20 years ago. It bombed, but not for technical reasons (other than the performance of hardware at the time). It is nice to see the idea is coming back, but it is hardly an innovation. And Sun's version ran over the network too.
I won't tell you that Adobe and Apple did it years ago, but Sun did with their NeWS window system back in, lets see,
I don't know which Windows XP YOU use, but mine has always had real transparancy built in to it, and has worked with even my oldest systems. However, you seem infatuated with KDE, and after trying it on three seperate distros, I still couldn't get its transparency to work without crashing my computer. (XFCE4 is fine though)
Still IMing in the stone age?
Also, from the article:
... older versions of Windows
eventually ported to
ah, another reason NOT to upgrade. So why are they doing this? Perhaps its to try to keep people from defecting to linux, or to OSX or another of the BSDs.
No, it's quite simple: they've put a significant investment into a new API ('Avalon'), and they want developers to start using it. Now the developers have had a chance to play with the beta version, they're all saying, "that's nice -- maybe I'll start using it some time in about 5 years when most people already have Vista". But MS wants the developers to start using it now, because it will undoubtedly work *better* on Vista than previous Windows versions, and when apps start using it it will therefore provide more incentive to switch. Simple really.
You press return to select the default (Save).
Command-D selects Don't Save.
Command-. (period) selects cancel. (The origins for which are shrouded in antiquity.)
Compared with Windows, where (depending on the whims of the developer) you might get either
Do you want to save this document before closing?
[YES] [NO] [CANCEL]
or
Are you sure you want to close this document without saving?
[YES] [NO] [CANCEL]
...and push away from the table? How much money and marketshare does a company need anyway before it becomes gluttonous? I understand shareholders demand profits, etc, but a long forgotten part of incorporation -which is the license the public grants you to form this business concern, it is NOT a "right"- is to be of the public interest.
It is both these things, at least theoretically if you look way way back in our history.
Is the public really interested in making MS all powerful forever and ever? Can MS ever be happy already being billionaires and millionaires?
I guess I just don't get all the greed that leads to these corporate excesses. I know it's a human trait, and we shouldn't apply human-ness to corporations, but really, they get treated like living people legally, in terms of profits, but not for responsibility, nor for "neighborliness". Maybe they should have a little societal shaming, as in "you have eaten ENOUGH". A good friend would point that out to a neighbor, being tactful but firm. whether it's gluttony or excessive drunkenes, etc, sometimes people-and corporations- might need to be told they are overextending what is "right", just using normal ethics and some common sense.
This is like haliburton, I mean, do they REALLY have to get all the lucrative government contracts? Sucking down all the cash in afghanistan, iraq and now they will be in the devasted areas of NOLA. uhh-why? don't they get enough money already, can't someone else get it?
Does the business world REALLY need to keep shoveling money in MS direction for mediocre products? Or is this just inertia, lack of vision, and more than a touch of corruption and easy money? I can't help but think that broken or near broken MS products are a huge cash cow, keeping consumers perpetually in debt,trading broken machines for broken in advance promises of "corrections", and keeping half the IT workforce (and hardware vendors) employed doing what is in essence busywork instead of cool innovative and fun (and probably still lucrative) work.
i think you should read that interview of Zack who works full time on X and KDE.
it's here.
Basically it says that Qt4.1 will have full svg support and will be able to do its widget drawing in SVG. And once xorg 7.0 is out he's going to move xgl to xorg to bring it full 3d support.
At least if you are going to make smart comments, have half a mind about what you are talking about.
hehe
Zack even did a demo of 3d and animation stuff in kde, i dont think u can make any of this stuff on vista or even on macos:
here it is
It won't be the first time they've prematurely shot their wad about a product with the specific purpose of harming the competition (pre-emptive strike).
cd \do*\user*\my* alsways works on windows (2k+) ;)
Yes, you said that. You were wrong the first time and you're still wrong now. Windows has supported alpha blending natively since Windows 2000. Menus fade in to full opaque so that they're still readable, menus have drop shadows that are subtle and clean, any window can be made translucent with various tools but very few applications do that on purpose because it's not usable, etc. I'd say the fact that you don't notice them is a testament to how well Microsoft has integrated the eye candy experience into the OS. In KDE, the effects hit you over the head with a baseball bat.
Windows 2000's alpha blending worked perfectly fine on my TNT2 way back in the day, and if you're running something less powerful than a TNT2 now you're not running "modern" (as in, built in the last 5 years) hardware. That same hardware will still do alpha blending in Windows, just as it will still do so in KDE, but in both cases you're going to pay a performance penalty.
Anyway, all of your arguments are moot. As the poster you're replying to insinuated (in a little bit of a fanboyish manner), and what you'd get if you'd read the article, this is not and Microsoft porting the Aero/Aero Glass GUI look and feel to other platforms. It's about porting WPF (Windows Presentation Framework, formerly called Avalon), the vector-based, 3D-accelerated GDI replacement for Windows Vista. It's already known that Microsoft will port WPF back to XP and 2003 (it's already available now in beta form). This article is interesting in that Microsoft may port WPF to other platforms (OS X, portable devices). Given that WPF is all about .NET, this means that Microsoft will have to do something about porting .NET to those platforms as well, and that's a good thing.
Most people don't want Vista. They want Microsoft to fix the stuff they've got now.
Funny how the biggest deal is about eye candy, rather than fixing the suckage that is Windows.
I am so sick of hearing the word rich applied to everything in the Windows world. Yes, no doubt Bill Gates has an affinity for the term rich. But from recent usage in the real Windows world, it really means "overhyped, overpriced and bloated".
I don't even think you have to press Command... ymmv (I have "full keyboard access" enabled on my Macs).
... right?
Anyhow, anecdote: When I command-w something in Photoshop CS and it asks if I want to save it, I can just follow the cmd-w with escape (cancel) d (Don't save) or s (save, or enter as it's the hilighted button). I'll grant though that this is not obvious to Windows-only users because they have been trained so well with &underscored &letters (you wouldn't know that the typing the first unique string would activate a control).
Related side note, as this has an interesting benefit: Turn on UI scripting and you can do insane crap with AppleScript/osascript. I'd imagine Vista is going to bring GUI scripting to Windows
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
afaik, the X Windows System is not frozen in time as you seem to think. Far from it, cool and exciting modular technologies either building up on it or adding value are coming. Check it out:
r
http://www.freedesktop.org/
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fXserve
http://cairographics.org/introduction
Cairo, a 2D vector-based GUI backend. GTK2.8 is already built on cairo. BTW, GTK ( along with Mozilla's XUL ) also pionneered the on-the-fly translation of an xml-based document describing a GUI into a running GUI, via libglade.
I don't think the next generation of either KDE or GNOME will be taking a beating from either M$ or Apple.
As for graphics acceleration, that's outside the reach of most open-source projects, since the main hardware manufacturers do not undisclose the specifications and only provide proprietary closed-source drivers... the usual solution is to use OpenGL.
I don't feel like it...
(I know this whole thread is kinda trollish, so don't take this comment too personally.)
:-)
.qtz. Yay.
... you guessed it ... cross-platform. Just like Avalon will be marginally cross-platform or cross-platform in name only.
You could do this with Quartz Composer writing no lines of code.
Create the eyecandy swirling cubes with whatever resources you want (let's say quicktime movies mapped to the surfaces of the buttons). We'll add in keyboard and mouse hooks. We'll save the composition, launch Interface Builder. Put the composition on a window and save the nib. We'll open Xcode, start a new project, load up the resources. Save it. and then build it. We've written no code. To further the exercise -- we'll start writing code on the mouse and keyboard events from the
QC doesn't use a grid, it uses a coordinate space. Interface Builder can (of course) use a grid.
I don't know if I want spinning-movie-buttons, but if you did, you could have had them the day Tiger came out.
Finally, I know you were talking about (trashing) XUL, so this is mostly off-topic. I think it concievable to bind Quartz with XUL/chrome, but no one is doing it because it won't be
Full disclosure: I am largely platform agnostic. I use Windows and Debian frequently and OS X regularly. I don't like a lot of things Microsoft do. I have never bought a Wintel from a single source vendor. I donate to the EFF. You may see contradictions here. Cheers.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Okay hypocrite.
Yeah that's right. It's interesting that Vista has a re-written audio stack that's pro-level and entirely in user-mode. Almost 0 latency and high fedelity all across it. Another feature most will ignore except for the per-app volume control.
Sigh. You once again prove you know nothing. .NET is an intermediate bytecode language, virtual machine, and library of functionality. It's not being scrapped, and in fact is at the core of Microsoft's strategy going forward (the upcoming .NET 2.0 version is at the core of products like SQL Server 2005 and Vista). What you meant to say is that Microsoft plans to eventually scrap GDI (the native drawing library used by win32 conotrols) and Winforms (the .NET library that wraps win32) in favor of WPF (the device-independent vector-based drawing framework this article is about). WPF is a portion of WinFX (which also includes the Windows Communication Foundation, formerly known as Indigo, among other new bits), and it's all predicated upon .NET. So Microsoft is scrapping .NET? I don't think so!
If you think WPF is only about eye candy, you obviously haven't done your homework. As far as "fixing the suckage", the NT kernel that all Windows versions have been based on since 2000 is a very robust system. "Suckage" comes in several forms, but none of it falls to the kernel level:
Then again, it's okay for OS X to be all about the eye candy, but not Windows? Hypocrisy at its finest, I guess.
I know very few people who have XP who have not switched to the classic windows look-and-feel.
I noticed that there were no screenshots in the article.
Would people even want the Vista look-and-feel?
Now back to our regular programming ...
Byte code interpreters suck. They sucked with USCD Pascal, they still suck with java, and they'll suck just as much under all the crls that ms want to throw at you.
Also, their proposed solution to admin-all-the-time, of having people run as a regular user by default and pop up a dialog box confirming that they want to install software or change things as an admin user is not going to work. Look how many people click OK to everything.
The registry problem would be easier to fix by killing off the whole registry.
Glad to see that we agree that they should end the lie about IE being a core component of the OS. It's not, and grafting it into everything so they could pretend it was, was a stupid idea.
Nah, I still enjoy the ease of use of vim, mc, grep, tin, wget,People haven't changed since Win3.0. They still spend way too much time on fixing their wallpaper, html-izing their email, etc. Its funny to see people wanting 23" wide-screen monitors because they don't have enough room on a 19" monitor to display all the icons on their desktop.
It's sick. This is the real useability problem. People not taking 10 minutes to learn what a file system is and how to use it.
Windows attempts to isolate the users from the underlying file system have aggravated this (as evinced by the "everything is on the desktop - somewhere" problem).
Get rid of the "desktop" and "my computer", and open up the underlying fs, and you've killed several problems at once. But that's not "glitzy", so it will never happen.
WPF, a.k.a. "Avalon", is managed code. There's no managed code allowed in Vista, which is why it was delayed for an extra year while they ripped out all the managed code. WPF is not used to render any part of Vista - the Vista UI is generated with the same unmanaged Win32 APIs (both public and private) that have been in use forever and ever.
WPF is for people who want to play with managed code to make UI that looks like whatever they want it to. It's not about making apps that look like Vista at all.
Then again, it's okay for OS X to be all about the eye candy, but not Windows? Hypocrisy at its finest, I guess.
I didn't want to barge into this conversation, but after reading that line I pretty much have to.
How do you know that he likes Apple? He's never stated it as far as I'm aware (I didn't read the conversation fully I admit), but you assume that he likes Apple? Just because when something about OSX is posted, all the Apple fanboys come out and post, and when something about Linux is posted, all the Linux fanboys come out, doesn't mean everybody here likes both Linux and Apple.
I infact am a pro-Linux person that thoroughly hates Apple almost more than I hate MS. At least MS hasn't forced you to buy new hardware for their OS, it runs on standard hardware that lots of vendors create hardware for. Sure Apple is trying to switch over now, but the fact that they haven't for however many years it's been since the old days of Apple shows they really don't care about it that much.
This pretty much sums up what's wrong with your argument. You're still stuck in the 80s and early 90s of computing. Java and .NET (and Python and Ruby to some extent) have proven you wrong. Of course, the general sentiment of "suck" isn't very specific. Care to elaborate a bit?
And yet, that's exactly what OS X does, or various Linux desktops. They prompt you for an admin password (or your own password, a la sudo) when you're trying to do something that would need admin access. It's a bit more complicated than just tossing up an OK box that can be easily ignored. I'd love to see a better way of handling this, but right now that model is preferrable to the run-as-admin approach we have today.
Replaced by what? Various different text config files using various different syntaxes? The fundamental problem is this: There needs to be a centralized location for storing configuration options in a consistent manner. Whether that's a binary registry like Windows uses or a bunch of XML files stored in the user's $HOME, it's still the same problem -- you as a user should not be writing to global configuration sources (in the registry, that's HKLM; in the filesystem version, that'd be /etc or /usr/local/etc). The solution is not to kill the registry, but to teach developers to do the right thing. You'd laugh at a linux app that required admin privileges because it saved user-specific options in a file in /etc. That's exactly what poorly-designed Windows applications do when they try to write to HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) rather than HKCU (HKEY_CURRENT_USER). Throwing away the registry doesn't solve the problem.
Sounds like you'd be interested in Monad, then. On the other hand, stop being such an anti-GUI bigot.
And they're not going to change, either. Try as you might, you're not going to convert Joe Sixpack or Grandma to your vi, wget, /etc command line ways. They don't want to know their computer. They want to use it for specific, targetted applications (emailing pictures of the grandkids, browsing for porn, writing a high school paper), and otherwise go on about their lives. At the same time, they like customization, to make the computer feel like it's "theirs". Why not give them what they want? It comes at no expense to those of us who do like to play around with our computers, and it keeps them happy. Of course, with people like that it's now up to the OS developer to keep them safe (which Microsoft has been getting better at since XP SP2, and is the target of OneCare, for example). You and I don't need the han
Project looking glass is extremely weak. Seriously, look into what it does. It doesn't really do that much special.
"Wow, when did KDE get a 3D XML based programming and presentation layer, that uses hardware acceleration without letting the OS have OpenGL take over?"
Dude. Until you get a 3D XML based programming and presentation layer that used hardware acceleration without openGL you SUCK!. Anybody who does not have a 3D XML based programming and presentation layer is going to DIE.
evil is as evil does
When I was in high school we used to have these dorks who would always wear chevy T-Shirts and thought that they were the shit because they drove chevies. They looked down on people who drove fords. It never occured to them they were simply brainwashed by some corporation to provide free advertising for that corporation.
Apparently kids don't change. These days kids like you are brainwashed by Microsoft of provide free advertising for them.
How is that working out for you? Do you feel more powerful because you have aligned yourself with a powerful corporation?
evil is as evil does
That made me laugh. I wish I had mod points.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
I've already moderated this conversation, but this really made me laugh.
It is like when Windows98 allowed multiple audio streams to be processed and play simultaneously. Not a single review even noticed this, but yet it was a big step ahead in consumer OSes.
When I got Win98, my Mac had already been playing multiple audio streams for 6 years!
And as another poster pointed out, it wasn't even a feature of Win98, it was a feature of the soundblaster cards at the time.
I'm all for defending out favourite OS, but it really helps if you know what you are talking about.
>>
I am the director, and this is my movie
Not everything that glitters in 3D is necessarily an advance and an example to be followed.
In fact, due to the heavy duty video card needed for this "upgrade" along with other parts, systems are predicted to require a 1000 watt power supply. Just think of the extra generating capacity demanded of the world electrical system to supply the millions of users upgrading to this. The extra energy consumption will be an unwelcome shock to a world already faced with high energy prices and low energy supply.
Some quick figures:
So, a single decision by one company to spec one product this highly could require 70 Gwh of new generating capacity, take an extra $5 billion out of the world economy and cost roughly $50 per user in extra energy costs. More likely, however, is that the price of energy will be sent up even higher by this change.
IMHO, we need this like we need another natural disaster.
>>Wow, when did KDE get a 3D XML based programming and presentation layer, that uses hardware acceleration without letting the OS have OpenGL take over?
Mmmm, am i wrong or vista has all that using D3D? how the hell can the os have 3d acceleration without an 3d api as d3d or ogl?
But back on-topic ...
After all, the topic is Vista. It gives nothing to the Joe 6Pack you mention - if all he wants to do is surf the web and do email, all he needs is a web appliance. He needs to organize it? Give him a gmail account and he doesn't even have to worry about administering his own email.
Next - the problem with presenting an "is it okay to do this" dialog to Joe6pack, as opposed to the "sudo" of the *nixes, is that there are so many apps out in windows-land that require admin rights, as opposed to *nixland that require root rights. So joe6pack is going to be clicking "ok" a lot more than the *nix guy/gal. Its not like people are going to simultaneously spend thousands on upgrading their apps *again* when they buy a Vista box. So not much is going to change in that respect over the rest of the decade.
Well, since you don't want me to be an anti-gui bigot (fgrepI have a 10-dvd backup sitting to the right of my keyboard. Last night I needed to find a user manual I had written, and it was on one of those dvds, along with about 40 gigs of other stuff. Sure, it took me 5 minutes to find it, but a lot of that was "pop the dvd in, look at it - nope, it wouldn't be on this one". Why so long? Because the dvds are labeled "backup", not with their contents, which would NOT fit on the label. It was easier for me to grab the backups from the office Friday and search them from home last night, knowing I'd also have the other 2 gigs of relevent data and apps close at hand.
So, to each their own. But I'll bet that most of the people who like the Windows Way also don't bother backing up their files - its not like they even know where they are ... and that's my point. A good search doesn't replace a decent understanding of the file system, and the knowledge allows you to leverage your computer in other ways (such as knowing what to back up).
Speaking of which, its a lot easier to back up /etc/* and then beat on the config files to your hearts' content than it is to work with the registry. Also, as the registry grows, parsing it out takes longer and longer.
Eventually, there's going to have to be a "binary xml", where either fixed-length records are used, with an index into them, or the current variable-length records, but again, an index, with all the associated stuff (buckets, overflow records, etc.) I'll stick with multiple plain text config files - they'll always be faster to read/write, and they keep me from having a single point of failure.
Win98 didn't support multiple sound streams simultaneously. If you had that functionality, it's because you had a sound card such as the SoundBlaster Live that had hardware support for it.
Here it is almost 10 years later, and you still don't realize it did this... Wow...
As a developer we had to abandon our 'audio-mix' code when the 98 Betas hit, as it was natively supported on ANY sound card available.
Find the oldest, crapiest sound card you can, I use the one built in to my 1997 laptop as an example.
Have The ocmputer running the very old Windows98.
Open Media Player or whatever you like and play a song, then run any program that makes sound.
You will notice the SONG IN THE BACKGROUND doesn't stop playing when program you are using makes a sound. It is downsampled in realtime right to the hardware via Win98.
Subsquently, Win2k, and XP have also also had this ability. That is why I can listen to Green Day in the background on Media Player when I am playing Matrix or Wow or SWG. (And still have the full sounds of the game as well.)
Please don't be so stupid to make me find the 8yr old documents that show where Windows98's new driver model added the ability to multi-plex audio streams to a single sound device.
Because it could, NO MATTER WHAT FREAKING SOUND CARD IT WAS.
XPS is not a traditional 'windowing protocal' like XWindows, but it is built to be network aware, that is why Microsoft is expecting the new RD and TS Clients that take avantage of the WPF will have excellent remote perofamance, as they aren't having to push as many raster images over the network anymore.
afaik, the X Windows System is not frozen in time as you seem to think. Far from it, cool and exciting modular technologies either building up on it or adding value are coming. Check it out
True, it is not locked in time. But to do what Microsoft is pulling off would require some extensive rewrite, and to some extent break many of the pillars of the XWindow design model.
BTW Should I mention I might be one the geeks you guys probably pay homage to when sacrificing a goat in your *nix rituals on Fridays?
I use to work on both concept and design with the XWindows project in the late 80s and early 90s... I might know a bit about it, just a bit though. *wink*
I'm sure Zack probably a really nice guy, and a genius when it comes to what he is doing.
However, I would tend to put my attention at Microsoft, as they have a room of Zacks with enough support and test equipment to make all of us drool cranking out this stuff from their R&D offices.
Just a thought here... At least, lets hope Zack is smart enough to be following what Microsoft is doing, so maybe he will be on top of things and can get you guys into the next generation of computing, since most everyone hear does the cover ears, eyes and sing la la la when they hear Microsoft is actually doing something good that is going to change the computing world.
So lets have some hope in Zack not closing his eyes and ears and screaming la la la after the Microsoft PDC last week.
When I got Win98, my Mac had already been playing multiple audio streams for 6 years!
And as another poster pointed out, it wasn't even a feature of Win98, it was a feature of the soundblaster cards at the time.
Actually no, and also no...
Just cause another poster says it was the audio cards doesn't make it true. We had a full development team that had to turn ship with Win98, as we could let the OS handle and mix the audio.
We wouldn't of had a project and abandoned a whole section devoted to sound if we kind of didn't understand what Win98 was doing.
As for your Mac doing this for 6 years... Hmm.. I Just fired up an old Mac running 8.1 - it is the last of the non-PPC models and came out in 1995 I think. (3 years before Win98) And sorry, it is too dusty to crawl back and look at label.
And even with System 8.1 the sound could not play more than one audio stream at a time. When one application or sound was playing, and another application or sound tried to play, it would stop the first audio stream instead of letting it continue to play and just sample it in.
So if your Mac had been doing it for 6 years before Windows 98, you had a 'magical' one, that they gave you to use in the padded room, um I mean your house.
So like I said... Um.. No, and No...
If you people don't have the knowledge or even the tools to test this to know, why do you waste your time posting?
Mmmm, am i wrong or vista has all that using D3D? how the hell can the os have 3d acceleration without an 3d api as d3d or ogl?
There is a different between providing the DirectX foundation classes for Games, which Windows hansles quite well, and providing this functionality to the OS's GUI as well.
Just like OSX you can play many great OpenGL 3D games, but when moving Icons around and doing cute animations, these are not 3D, onr 3D accelerated effects, as OSX has no concept of 3D in the Presentation Layer.
Go read the articles on this, Microsoft explains the difference Between DirectX and the GUI WPF, and why you woulndn't want to write a high end game in WPF, but could use it to make one one kick ass visually rich application. With literally only a few lines of code to do things people developing 3D used to take months to setup.
You've read it on Slashdot first, folks : hardware accelerated XML presentation layer will change the computing world ! Forget quantum computing, you really more eye candies in the end.
I'm so excited, I just pissed on the carpet.
:wq
You've read it on Slashdot first, folks : hardware accelerated XML presentation layer will change the computing world ! Forget quantum computing, you really more eye candies in the end.
I'm so excited, I just pissed on the carpet.
And once again ignorance raced to prove my point for me.
If you were only paying attention to the limited information about the upcoming technologies announced by Microsoft prior to the Beta 1 Vista release and prior to the PDC, you might be considered to be informed of what is happening.
However, since Beta 1 of Vista - intentionally left out a large portion of the technology Microsoft has ready to keep people guessing, you will be lost int he crowd assuming what everyone knew several months ago about the WPF and XML.
I suggest you do some catch up reading and see what is 'really' coming from Redmond. Even as someone that gets PAID to follow their stuff, I was significantly surprised at what they have to bring to the table and how it will impact and advance some of the things we take for granted.
So make your jokes, close your eyes, ears and scream la la la, while the rest of the computing industry passes you by if you choose.
If there isn't something out of what new to what people know about the upcoming technology and development platforms that were released at the PDC that don't make almost everyone on these boards go, "Ok, even if it is Microsoft, that is cool." I will eat my hat.
I've been playing around with Longhorn for a few days and my immediate thought was it was trying very desparately catch-up with the MacOS X look and feel. I don't think they've quite got it yet. I know it's only beta code, but it does feel rather sluggish on my HP dx2000 (P4 2.8Ghz 512MB ram) system. I bought a Mac mini recently (G4 1.25Ghz 256MB ram) and that "feels" snappier. If a relatively current PC can't really handle the extra of Longhorn/Vista, then how is older hardware going to cope? I haven't bothered trying it on my (now ancient)Compaq EVO n800v (P4m 1.7Ghz 256MB ram)
return 0; }
Ok. But this does not tell me how hardware accelerated XML presentation layer "will change the computing world". Lot's of hype, very little substance.
:wq
Let's think about this; KDE can be downloaded anytime, for free. Vista is $300+, but its only a subscription, with limitations. Am I On Candid Camera?
I can tell you flat out that Win98 Second Edition could not do it on my Compaq Armada 7400 laptop with it's ESS sound card. That computer could do it when I installed Win2000, but Win98 simply would not play multiple sounds at once.
For years, I had that computer and a desktop that had a SoundBlaster Live, both running Win98 Second Edition. The desktop could multiplex audio streams, but the laptop absolutely would not do it.
You make some interesting points, but please don't drop the term XML like it were some massively cool feature. XML is just a standardized way to store data. Using it to handle GUI configuration makes sense, but it doesn't add any real functionality to anything. Its main benefit is just to save work, since you don't have to write a parser every time you have a new kind of data to save.
my (admitedly somewhat limited) experience with the apple iCandy (couldn't resist) is that it actually works. They can publicize their eye candy all they want, because that's what makes exposé possible. And every single person I know with a mac has incorporated it into their normal usage patterns to reach a much smoother multi-tasking experience than I have right now, either with windows or with linux, even though I'm much more of a techie than most of them. Though I haven't really read all that much into avalon/aero glass/whatever, the only thing that seems to be said about the UI changes is that it looks good. Yay. If it were to offer new features, I'd appreciate it. But just looking good? My gnome desktop looks good enough in its simplicity. All I want is something that does for me what exposé does for my friends, and I haven't seen MS move that way.