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."

Comments

Re:Look and feel

[FoboldFKY]

Yeah, because we all know how well Apple stuck to Windows look and feel when they ported Quicktime ov... oh yeah. Well, um, at least iTunes is... notwait, scratch that...

But at least they're consistent on their OWN platform! It's not like they would ever make an app that doesn't fit with all the others!

Granted, Microsoft wouldn't know good UI design if it came along and beat them over the head with a stick, but Apple are just as guilty of "screw you, we'll make our apps look however we want--to hell with native widgets!" syndrome as MS.

Re:No market there

[TheNetAvenger]

KDE users already have translucent menus, translucent xterms, multiple-desktop pagers, completely configurable widgets, etc.
Porting the Vista gui to linux would be a step backwards for us.

Also, from the article:

eventually ported to ... older versions of Windows
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.