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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.
It's hard to take an advanced GUI like Vista and implement it on a text console the most true Linux users are still stuck with. It might be possible on KDE/Gnome, but those people aren't really Linux users and don't count.
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.
..It looks like you are using a Mac, would you like to see the benefits of Vista?
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/microsoft .html
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
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.
cd \do*\user*\my* alsways works on windows (2k+) ;)
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.
(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.
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?
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.
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.
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)
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