Windows Vista 5342 Screenshots

Lhopar writes "Microsoft released a new build of Windows Vista to beta testers. Flexbeta has got some screenshots. Included in this build is an extensive collection of drivers and the exclusive sidebar. Glass is also a feature that we all have come to respect and love, along with the 3D flip. The official version number is 6.0 Version 5342.winmain_idx04.060321-1730. Internet Explorer 7.0 is build Version 7.0.5342.2. Nice features include a new 'Paint' and needed redesigned network center."

Comments

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

5342 is a lot of screenshots.

Re:Wow

[nukey.nl]

Oh, that's why it's taking so long to load.

Re:Wow

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Well, there has to be at least one for each bug...

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, they're all blue with white text.

Re:Wow

[SmashMacFly]

that would be a huge improvement for MS to have so few bugs in a release !

Re:Wow

[Urusai]

Do they have screenies of Solitaire and Minesweeper? Those are the only two applications most people care about. Oh yeah, and some management types want Office running in the background, I suppose.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, they're all blue with white text.
No, some are red with white text.

Re:Wow

[Mr. Bad Example]

> 5342 is a lot of screenshots.

They needed to take that many--5,340 of them are blue.

Re:Wow

[jcorno]

No screenshots, but they both got fancy new 3D icons.

Re:Wow

[SeeMyNuts!]

Actually, it was supposed to be images of the new "5 4 3 2 1...CRASH" feature, but the software couldn't count, stopped, and couldn't remember where it was!

Re:Wow

[7of7]

How is this funny?

Re:Wow

[The Spoonman]

It's only funny to unix dorks who, even in the NT 4.0 days, got lots of bluescreens because they couldn't figure out how to admin a Windows box. The fact that you don't find it funny indicates you're not a unix dork and therefore have some level of technical expertise.

Re:Wow

[Xabraxas]

You haven't had much experience with NT 4.0 if you never got it to bluescreen. Six service packs later it doesn't suck as much but who would want to use it anymore?

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Dave, welcome to your computer.

Open the danm window, please

Re:Wow

[The Spoonman]

I didn't say it never bluescreened, just that unless you were technically inept, you didn't see it as often. You should never see it more than once per hardware platform. Unlike unix guys, I understood that a bluescreen was just an error message and I had to troubleshoot the problem to make it go away forever. How many times have you heard something along the lines of "oops, bluescreened, guess that means I need to reboot!"? Once I eliminated them on my network (of about 500 users at the time), they didn't come back. Well, no, I lie. There was one towards the end of my time there. An electrician had crossed a 120V line with the person's token ring cable. Considering most of the chips around the PCI slots had popped their tops, I wasn't going to hold NT to that bluescreen. I've only seen one or two since W2K came out.

Re:Wow

[om3ga]

Only takes one image to be slashdotted.. 5342? poor server!

Re:Wow

[Harry_Ballsak]

As much as all the geeks in here hate to admit, you all going to best buy on release day and getting your very own copy of Vista Pro! Quit hatin'...

Re:Wow

[shibashaba]

I love how you can tilt windows and make everything unreadable! And a timer, that's what I always wanted to do with my computer! Parental controls to keep my children away from solitare!

The Future is Upon Us

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill? Is that you?

Re:Wow

[trixy_1086]

I think by go to best buy you mean log onto IRC or usenet, by release day you mean a week before RTM.

Real geeks don't pay for MS software.

Re:Wow

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Real geeks don't pay for MS software.

Correct. Real geeks don't use Windows.

Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Xeth]

Sweet! New version of Paint!

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[user24]

especially given that Paint.NET already exists (and was sponsored by MS).

so, I ask again, what's *new*?

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[user24]

oh hey, cancel that, they've introduced a great new feature to MSIE: tabbed browsing, now what this mean is that.. hey wait a sec..

more screenshots at http://www.x64bit.net/site/board/index.php?showtop ic=2201

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, oh why, is it completely impossible for /.-ers to have the control and the decency - JUST FOR ONCE - to NOT trash MS with regard to an MS-related article within the first 5 posts? Yes, you hate M$, we know it by now, get over it already. Djeez...

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[LordSnooty]

IE: I notice that they nicked the mini search-box in top right from Opera/Firefox too - really, why do they bother? Where's the innovation?

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[KenDodd]

My friend, your lacklustre rants are not going to change a thing. As you say, "get over it already" :)

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Tim C]

What an appropriate sig, given your comment.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

when they stop being such easy targets? I mean, when they actually release something that doesn't suck. It's not like it's unfair criticism..

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

if they really make such sucky products and make so much money, isn't that genius? Is that why you hate them? Cause you're a luser and no one will buy your luserness? lol. homo.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[jesterpilot]

Finally, windows is ready for the desktop.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Tabbed browsing? How about, in no particular order:

SVG
CSS2
Non-bullshit DOM
XHTML
No more ActiveX
A decent JVM

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[daviddennis]

The genius is all in taking the original opportunity with IBM and running with it, combined with shrewd marketing. I am not saying that this isn't genius, because plenty of people have had similar opportunities and have not capitalized on them as spectacularly as Microsoft.

But sadly it has little to do with the merits of the product, and I think that's where the anger comes from. Slashdot people live with the results of some brilliant marketing decisions that turned out to be just plain awful from a product quality standpoint.

I don't think homosexual should be an insult. The more gay men exist, the more women will be available for the rest of us, and Slashdot users know how hard it is for us to find women even in the best of times(*).

So please don't insult our wonderful homosexual users. Straight male Slashdotters, who are at least 85% of the audience here, will thank you for it.

D

(*) True, there are gay women, but there are far more gay men so homosexuality is still, on balance, favorable to men who prefer the female sex.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[jZnat]

SVG: IE still uses (and will continue to use) an SVG plug-in such as Adobe SVG Viewer (not as standards compliant as it should be, but it has existed longer than the W3C standard).

CSS2, DOM, XHTML: obviously much better in Gecko, KHTML, Opera, etc.

No ActiveX: great security enhancement for non-Trident browsers, eh?

JVM: Sun's J2SE JVM doesn't work with IE? I didn't know that; I thought your OS used the same JVM throughout. Then again, Windows doesn't have the update-alternatives scripts and whatnot either, so that doesn't surprise me.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[user24]

(and i might add, is a damn fine entry level image editor)

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[SillySnake]

Since I can't look at the screenshots.. Did they do a major redesign to add features in an effort to make it closer to Photoshop/Gimp or does it have the same functionality? Paint was one of only two windows programs I could really count on. The other was notepad.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Cyno01]

Agreed, paint is actually pretty powerful. Just a few features, like smart select, and layers and a few more that dont immediatly come to mind, and i wouldnt need to use photoshop much.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[ManOfMidnight]

Sweet! New version of Paint!

Yup! I'm totally sold on Vista

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a complete fucking idiot.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Immercenary_2000]

Have you tried Notepad++ ? It's Free (both speech and beer for windows) and has a lot of features that windows notepad doesn't have such as syntax highlighting.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good CSS2 in IE? Buahahah. :D

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I just realized how ambiguous my comment was. Those items are a wishlist, not things IE has.

Haha. Sorry.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's insightful...

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

MS Paint IS NOT NEW! All they did was redesign the icons on the toolbar. They may have added new features, but from the screenshot it is obviously exactly the same code base.

dom

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[pomo monster]

...Opera and Firefox, of course, having "nicked" it from iTunes via Safari. There's no such thing as innovation, great artists steal, blah blah blah.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[dubbreak]

I wonder if that means this guy will have to get recertified to get a MVP in Vista.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Poltras]

And.. uh... iTunes having picked it from an old obscure browser (which I cannot unfortunately remember the name) which used an activeX IE5 inside for tab browsing and auto searching with yahoo/altavista. Think about closing the loop :)

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[skiddie]

Use this link to the screenshots (they're the same pics)-- they're thumbnails here, so it doesn't take 6.3 hours to load them all.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[ultranova]

There's no such thing as innovation, great artists steal, blah blah blah.

No. Great artists do not steal. Poor starving artists steal. Great artists infringe on copyrights and join the best features of several works into one great work. There is a difference.

Not that the RIAA/MPAA/GNAA cares...

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[pomo monster]

Oh, you're one of those, are you? I was only quoting Picasso--"Good artists borrow, great artists steal"--but may I ask you to clarify whether you believe such concepts exist as "identity theft" and "theft of services"? Thanks.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Nikker]

Why is it evrey time MS comes up with something potientally cool it just doesn't seem as cool once I see it? I mean I downloaded XGL and thought it was awesome, rough but awesome. Now when I see screen shots of diagonal windows stacked and rough pixelated edges I just get dissapointed and move on....

*sigh*, oh well....

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[distributed]

I hope they fixed the nasty default very-low quality setting of MS Paint when saving images as JPEG's... or atleast made it configurable.
In the hands of the uninformed thats enough to destroy a beautiful picture.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

overhype.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Britney Spears sold a lot of records but that doesn't make her music good.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[SillySnake]

I don't use windows a lot anymore.. especially for writing any sort of code.. I think the last thing I used was Kate since it had syntax highlighting.. But, I'm sure I'll check it out at some point.. Thanks :)

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[springbox]

Now when I see screen shots of diagonal windows stacked and rough pixelated edges I just get dissapointed and move on....

Turning anti-aliasing would have probably helped too.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[operagost]

IE has NO JVM. It uses the one installed (which all modern browsers on the Windows platform do). So if you have an issue with the IE JVM, take it up with Sun because they almost certainly build the one on the Windows PC in question.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[shutdown -p now]

Opera had tab browsing in version 4, in 2000. Furthermore, NetCaptor had it in 1997. The first version of iTunes (I'm not sure what that has to do with browsing, BTW) was released in 2001. The first version of Safari was released in 2003.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[DarkYoshi]

I suggest that you move your head back a few inches. If you're trying to read 8 point fonts, then of course the edges will be rough.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Trejkaz]

Not until 2007 it won't be...

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Celsius 233]

It's not unfair criticism to bash Microsoft for making a new version of Paint?

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[a.d.trick]

Don't you realise — the colour toolbar is on the top now! How could not notice that revolutionary piece of innovation. You 'Free Software' loving hippies will be left in the dust for sure now.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, Suns JVM works. Unless some retard writes an applet that only works with the Microsoft JVM and you have to dick about changing over so that the applet runs.

Although I guess the real solution is to slaughter every retard Java developer who thought developing against a specific JRE was a good idea.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oral sex isn't sex. They call it that because it's somewhat similar, but they have to leave that qualifier attached because without it we're sure to assume they meant the real thing.

The phrase "theft of service" is similar. If you were literate you'd be calling it "trespass to chattels" instead of calling for new laws around the same problem.

The phrase "identity theft" is also similar, but mostly just stupid. The actual crime is fraud, and the victims are the businesses who unwittingly extended credit to the perpetrator, not whoever's being impersonated.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's sad is that Microsoft and Apple were each in a position to actually solve the problem that motivated tabs, namely system window managers that make it painful to deal with large numbers of windows. But they didn't, because it's safer to use the same half-assed workaround (I know, how about another window manager built into each app!) everyone else puts up with.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[shutdown -p now]

Well, I have found that Opera, for example, works just fine with integrated tab browsing disabled in WMs such as Ion and WMI, so not all is lost.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[richlv]

well, they did say they are going to compete with photoshow, didn't they ?
adobe, just fall to the floor and play dead. just do it.

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[ultranova]

may I ask you to clarify whether you believe such concepts exist as "identity theft" and "theft of services"? Thanks.

"Identity theft" doesn't exist. No one can actually steal my identity, barring some kind of memory-blanking device like the one in MIB. For whatever reason, the act of someone else claiming to be me is sometimes called "identity theft", while in reality it is simply fraud.

"Theft of services" doesn't exist either, since obviously it is impossible to literally steal services. Gaining unauthorized use of service is sometimes called "theft of service", presumably in a misguided attempt to make it seem worse than it is.

Please note that it is possible to steal electricity, water and gas, since all of these refer to physical objects (elecricity is strictly speaking not an object, but the same conservation laws govern it).

Now please explain what any of this has to do with my comment ?

Re:Remote Exploits? Poor user security model?

[dubious9]

I like to use Notepad2 when I'm doing lightweight editing tasks. Line numbering (the original reason I switched away from Notepad so many years ago), synatx highlighting, regex, and more.

No, it's not tabbed, but when I want tabs I open up my heavy-hitter editor JEdit. It's fast, it's OSS, it's simple, it's got a clean interface and did I say it was fast?

I have no idea why MS doesn't update their #1 (non-solitare) used utility. Anti-Monopoly measure for 3rd party editors? Maybe. That didn't stop them from putting out MS Defender. Anyway, are there any articles outlining the new/improved utilities for Vista?

Microsoft the inovator

[falcon5768]

1. Wait for Apple to do it first 2. Take 4 years to copy what Apple did in the prosses promicing everything + a new shiney toaster then take it away so your left with the old OS + some nice pictures 3. Say everything Apple did (now 6 years ago) will be in the next version and have people still eat it up 4. ????????? 5. Profit

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Anonymous Coward]

...sucking swollen Jobs cock.

Priceless.

luser.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[LordSnooty]

Why is the parent modded 'troll'? The first thing that strikes me when seeing these Vista screenshots is, "it looks like OS X". Even the default font is the same or very similar.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell I don't even own a Mac and that's the first thing I thought. Even the 3D stacking and sending a screen to the foreground is almost a direct ripoff of what I've seen people do in OS X.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Foofoobar]

Shouldn't pay off politicians, cheat customers and retailers and spread FUD be somewhere in that formula?

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Tekninja_Hawk]

6. Believe apple is the end all be all of design and function.

7. Hate windows cuz you havent used it since 1998

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Skuld-Chan]

Apple borrowed some things from Windows too (as did gnome and KDE) - like the taskbar, alt+tab (yes this works in OSX) and the concept of having all your window controls in one group - introduced in Windows 95. Sure Apple puts them on the left - but I'm sure they did that just to be different.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[great om]

i believe Nextstep/Openstep had a dock which is equivelent to a task bar first. Actually much of windows 95 seems like a borrowing and recasting of many of nextstep's UI decisions (close button, globally accessible application launcher that can be hidden)

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Anonymous Coward]

your gay, arent you.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you go around boosting how many ideas are copied from Apple, check out OS X. It's an operating system Apple claims to have made. It's almost completely ripped from open source projects, mostly FreeBSD but also samba, apache and many more. The rest that isn't ripped straight off was bought in from a company called Next. Apple did almost nothing on the OS themselves. They even had to bring over the Next CEO because Apple had ZERO idea of what they where doing at all.

I don't know where you have your sources, but I'm sorry to say they are wrong. There isn't much inventing going on at Apple. Just look at how they jumped on the x86 bandwagon 15 year later then everybody else.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[matt214914]

how is this NOT flamebait? if i said these kind of things about apple, it would be consedered flamebait. this is outragous, and should not be allowed on Slashdot if the website wants to remain "impartial"

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Silas is back]

Alt + Tab did already work in OS 7, maybe even earlier. Window controls in one group... oh well... count that if you want.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[mabinogi]

nice, but too obvious, I don't think you'll get any bites.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't trying to troll. There are at least 10 "MS/Gnome/KDE/Whatever steals from Apple" posts every day on slashdot. In reality Apple doesn't invent much themselves. In this case 3D accelerated GUIs was bound to happen, I don't know who was the first to do it but I can imagine it was a game company who first realised it in software. OS X looks very much like other other operating systems, mostly the *nixes since Apple use alot of OSS. I wouldn't normally call it stealing, but thats the term those 10 posts I was reffering to use.

Apple copies just as much as everybody else (Probably a hell of alot more than Micosoft) but when you got the Apple colored glasses you just don't see it. The thing is that when Apple does something, even if it's just a small improvement it gets raised to the skys. When somebody else make improvements it's nothing.

Shit, I don't even know why I try to argue this.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[runningduck]

You at least have to appreciate their honesty. The new folder icons are now oriented such that they clearly indicate the risk for loss of data.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[wolrahnaes]

Woodgrain? Flying icons? What the fuck kind of Mac are you using?

I'll agree the brushed metal look kinda sucks, but it's not horrible when used right (i.e. Finder, not Safari). The closest thing I can figure to flying icons is how an app's icon bounces in the dock when it's starting up or needs attention. Better than Windows where you can double-click an app and get absolutely no feedback for a minute or two, and then *poof* there it is.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit, I don't even know why I try to argue this.

It's because you don't know what you're talking about. You clearly don't know anything about the history of NeXT/Apple, OSS, or operating systems. I bet you're about 14 right?

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Criterion]

Most of the new stuff in '95 was in OS/2 first.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone please mod this down? The parent poster doesn't even seem to know the Windows taskbar came long after the dock in NeXTStep/Mac OS X. There are so many idiots, and I have so few bullets.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[aybiss]

If you're saying Apple felt that this sort of thing would impress anyone who actually has to USE a computer RIGOROUSLY on a DAY TO DAY basis, then I'm disappointed in Apple. I seriously hope that the sort of lack of improvement in general useability those screenshots show is not indicative of what people find great about OSX. (Never used it so I won't say anything.) What I'd like to see from any of the GUI designers out there now is a screenshot of ANY OS allowing me to open a browser or program without it taking focus. Allowing me to browse to Google without having my cursor relocated halfway through typing, using a drop-down list that doesn't malfunction if it happens to drop down over where my mouse is. I'd like to see an interface where when I click on a part of my screen it's interpreted in the context of what is there right now, rather than what is going to be there when my drive stops thrashing (probably from loading a fracken Flash or ActiveX control). Do I need my friggen windows to spin in 3D, or half my desktop real estate taken up by a search that should just have stayed in the damn start menu but gotten some actual functionality about it? Do I need yet bigger icons and spaces between them? More annoying special effects to disable before I get down to work? F*ck no! Why won't anyone listen and do some REAL thinking about GUIs?

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[jseale]

I'm sure that in this day and age the big OS makers have to share their tech secrets to some extent (even if they aren't secrets at all). Windows' ALT-TAB process switching has been in KDE for quite a while, but it took a while for the KDE programmers to get it right IMHO (how well it worked depended on your Linux distro's default settings).

I'm surprised to see widgets in Vista, there appear to be a lot more useful ones than what Yahoo and Apple offer. Sorta' makes you wonder why Google isnt' doing that kinda' thing now (as for Yahoo's widgets, I only use the e-mail checker).

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Anonymous Coward]

Just do the world a favour and use that first bullet on yourself.

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Anonymous Coward]

Woodgrain: Delicious Library, maybe?

Re:Microsoft the inovator

[Skuld-Chan]

It has a dock, but its simply a launch pad - it doesn't keep track of tasks that are running. It does have a list of icons in the uppper right/left etc - similar to Windows 3.1 (or mwm for that matter) - but thats hardly a task bar.

Worth the wait.

[Anonymous Coward]

5 years for a new version of paint! Well worth the wait. Screw linux, I want the new MS Paint! Linux will continue to fall behind microsoft, it doesn't even have MS Paint. Hahahaha Silly Linux users, you don't know what your missing.

Re:Worth the wait.

[s74ng3r]

thanks for the advice man. now i wont feel so left out with my pals when they talks about paint. you're a life saver. this will definitely get me more girls.

Re:Worth the wait.

[DrXym]

Not 5 years, 11 years. It's about time that MS did something about the fucking awful "accessories" they bundle with Windows. Notepad and calculator could do with a complete rewrite too. Notepad still can't cope with Unix or Mac line endings.

Re:Worth the wait.

[Lispy]

Notepad still can't cope with Unix or Mac line endings.

You think this is unintentionally? :)

Re:Worth the wait.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should ask your Mom to buy you a new keyboard - the shift keys on your current one are broken.

Pity that won't help with your grammar, though.

Re:Worth the wait.

[bladesjester]

Notepad can't, but for some reason Wordpad deals with them just fine.

It's kind of weird.

Re:Worth the wait.

[615]

Yeah, tell me all about Notepad... I want to be able to use it for simple tasks, because it's light weight and it's built right in to Windows, but Notepad has major issues. Anyone else have that problem where, if you resize the window, the text doesn't wrap correctly? It'll have extra line breaks, sometimes it'll actually double over itself (?!), or your cursor will skip past the end of the document ('cause it turns out there's a bunch of duplicate, invisible text). I've experienced all of these problems and more on different computers with completely different installations of Windows, so it's definitely bad software and not some kind of cosmic radiation er sumthin'. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it just boggles my mind how a software company worth billions can't even handle Notepad. Given their track record, Microsoft will have to work doubly hard to impress me this time around.

Re:Worth the wait.

[aj50]

And you know what?

People will still moan about it.

People will say that it's too complicated, that the old paint was better, that they liked working for ages with lines and filling in pixels individually to get their picture just right.

Re:Worth the wait.

[wiredlogic]

Part of the reason Notepad doesn't get updated like it should is because it is written entirely in assembly. It's a wonder that the NT version has Unicode support added in.

My favorite lightweight Windows text editor is win32pad. It's based around the richtext control and can handle large files with all line endings and many different encodings. As a bonus, it recognises URLs and makes them clickable.

Re:Worth the wait.

[Trejkaz]

It's true. The current Paint is so good because you can hand edit things like icons and sprites in it. Anyone who actually needs a "better" graphics program is already using something more advanced.

Re:Worth the wait.

[Hes Nikke]

Part of the reason Notepad doesn't get updated like it should is because it is written entirely in assembly. It's a wonder that the NT version has Unicode support added in.

The fact that the NT version has Unicode support has nothing to do with the fact that Notepad was written in assembly... Notepad is just a Windows Edit control. Windows NT added Unicode support for the Edit control. Notepad got Unicode support for free because NT added Unicode support to the Edit control. Am I being clear enough? ;)

Re:Worth the wait.

[MBGMorden]

As another post mentioned, Google win32pad. Even lighter weight than Notepad and does a lot more.

Re:Worth the wait.

[makomk]

You don't want them to rush things - after all, they only just got around to making Ctrl-S save the file (for definitions of "only just" met by the release of XP).

(Seriously, I still use the ancient PFE32 on the rare occasions I'm in Windows - it's fast, lightweight, and does (almost) everything I want from a text editor, not including word wrapping. It also hasn't been updated for longer than Notepad...)

Here we go again....

[Anonymous Coward]

Woohoo... Another one bites the dust again.. Thanks everyone. Now I can't even look at those new screenshots of paint! I was really excited about it and everything...

Re:Here we go again....

[kubevubin]

Whether or not everyone else is joking, I'm actually eager to see what the new Paint is like. Too bad the damn page won't load. :(

Apparent lack of progress...

[Anonymous Coward]

Moff Sinofsky: Emperor Gates is coming here?
Darth Ballmer: That is correct, Commander. And, he is most displeased with your apparent lack of progress.
Moff Allchin: We shall double our efforts.
Darth Ballmer: I hope so, Commander, for your sake. The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.

Re:Apparent lack of progress...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Good, but you got the name wrong. It's Emperor Bilgatine.

Also starring Richard Stallman as the wookie, no costume necessary. And Linus Torvalker (use the source, Linus!).

Re:Apparent lack of progress...

[Silas is back]

Linus Torvalker (use the source, Linus!)

ROFL.

Performance rating

[LiquidCoooled]

In the performance rating screenshot, they give seperate ratings for CPU graphics etc then give a total overall figure.
Something doesn't make sense:

Processor: P4 3.0GHZ 4.3
Memory: 1023mb 5.2
Hard Drive: 179GB free 4.8
Graphics Radeon 9600 4.3
Graphics Mem: 126mb 3.7

Overall Rating: 3

Wouldn't it be reasonable to expect this machine to have a 4?

Or is graphics memory the only meaningful metric?

Re:Performance rating

[Xeth]

Or is graphics memory the only meaningful metric?

Isn't that the only metric by which Vista is an upgrade, anyway?

Re:Performance rating

[lordcat]

The system is only as good as it's weakest link... ...oh wait... it's running vista...

Re:Performance rating

[Anonymous Coward]

"In the performance rating screenshot, they give seperate ratings for CPU graphics etc then give a total overall figure. Something doesn't make sense:

Processor: P4 3.0GHZ 4.3 Memory: 1023mb 5.2 Hard Drive: 179GB free 4.8 Graphics Radeon 9600 4.3 Graphics Mem: 126mb 3.7

Overall Rating: 3

Wouldn't it be reasonable to expect this machine to have a 4?

Or is graphics memory the only meaningful metric?"

No.. this is not your grade point average.

This is a rating to figure out how well the computer runs. If an old graphics card is holding it back, getting top marks everywhere else won't stop your computer running slowly.

Re:Performance rating

[gavriel407]

Does anyone remember their chemistry classes? There's something called a limiting reagent. If you don't have enough of a certain compound, the whole process is limited by that one agent.

Vista appears to be no different -- if your "limiting reagent" is the rating amount of video RAM, you cannot produce a total 5.2 score. Nor can you take the average, so you're stuck with 3.7. You also don't have enough to meet the 4 threshold, so you're stuck with less than 4... which turns out to be a 3 on the Vista step-scale.

Not quite what they taught you in chemistry class, but since when has school taught you anything applicable to the real world?

Re:Performance rating

[hammock]

If there are chemical reactions taking place inside your computer case, you should shut it off. Usually smoke, pops, or crackling electrical sounds indicate this condition.

In this example, the limiting reagent is the number of flaky capacitors, or the amount of blue smoke that escapes from the cpu.

Re:Performance rating

[Professor_UNIX]

Vista appears to be no different -- if your "limiting reagent" is the rating amount of video RAM, you cannot produce a total 5.2 score. Nor can you take the average, so you're stuck with 3.7. You also don't have enough to meet the 4 threshold, so you're stuck with less than 4... which turns out to be a 3 on the Vista step-scale.

So why not just skip all the other numbers and just list the performance of the system based on the lowest whole number? Woo, you have a 5 GHZ AMD Ahtlon64 system with 4 gigs of ram and a 1GB NVidia 7800 video card, but you have a 40 gig hard drive. Your overall system score is a 1.

Re:Performance rating

[Surt]

Maybe it's min(round_down(component_scores))

In fact, I would hope that it was that, as that would give the best guarantee of a high score delivering high performance.

Re:Performance rating

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, so the average of all those numbers is 4.46.

The only possible explanation is the "hidden" rating:

"You're running a bloated, POS Microsoft OS: -4.3"

Re:Performance rating

[elvum]

So that you know what you need to upgrade.

Re:Performance rating

[gavriel407]

Why not skip all the other numbers? So Dell can suck another $300 out of you when the big red tool-tip tells you that your hard disk will limit you from using all the cool features of Vista, and you need a 72gig 15krpm drive which has a 7.0 rating. Now your rating is 4, and all thats limiting you is your CPU, which will cost only $300 to upgrade...

Why don't you save yourself the hassle of upgrading part by part, suck it up, and buy a Dell XPS 600 Renegate for $10k? One click, and you're Vista ready... problem solved!

Re:Performance rating

[freidog]

The system break down gives people a better idea of what it is they should be looking to upgrade if they want to improve their 'score.'

Re:Performance rating

[SnprBoB86]

Or better yet:
round_down(min(component_scores))

Save yourself n-1 round_down calls and this will be faster assuming the cost of floating point comparisons is roughly equivilant to integer comparisons.

Re:Performance rating

[Surt]

Yeah, I considered that that option would be more efficient, but since my point was really to emphasize the min() operation, I thought it was clearer to put it first. I figured this was not performance critical code, so in this case clarity for subsequent maintainers was more valuable than optimization.

Re:Performance rating

[gfody]

if your "limiting reagent"

aka your "bottleneck"

Re:Performance rating

[Mudcathi]

Sounds like they were running the new version of MSMath

Re:Performance rating

[dosun88888]

Obviously, they didn't show the "you're running Vista" score which was apparently -4.3.

~D

coral cahced

[^Z]

http://www.flexbeta.net.nyud.net:8090/main/comment s.php?catid=1&shownews=18760

I wonder when slashcode is going to support inserting .nyud.net:8090 to all post links automatically?

Re:coral cahced

[user24]

the firefox slashdot extension does this, with google cache and internet archive.

Re:coral cahced

[evilviper]

I wonder when slashcode is going to support inserting to all post links automatically?

Never. The Coral Cache (or mirrordot, or whatever else) go down faster than the website itself. The coral-cache has been /.ed now, since you posted a link to it (only in comments, not even the main story).

Now the mirrordot cache, which will be down moments after I click submit:

http://mirrordot.org/stories/451603e72396736d31653 14be64e9a25/index.html

Re:coral cahced

[Tim C]

My guess would be never. People have been asking for this sort of thing for years, and while I admit I've never looked at slashcode, conceptually it really isn't a very hard thing to do.

Re:coral cahced

[AhuraMazda]

the posted site seems to be out but this works http://www.x64bit.net/site/board/index.php?showtop ic=2201 PS Thanks parent!

Re:coral cahced

[christopherfinke]

I wonder when slashcode is going to support inserting .nyud.net:8090 to all post links automatically?

The Slashdot Firefox extension, as mentioned above, does this, with the option to have any of Coral Cache, Google Cache, and MirrorDot links added after each link in a Slashdot story.

It has a few other features, with lots more planned for v 1.2.

Re:coral cahced

[Kijori]

Ha! Mirrordot wins! ...we need more people to click the link. :D

Re:coral cahced

[baadger]

Coral cache is a global distributed network of over 250 cache servers, I do not think 'it' is likely to go down quicker than the article server itself. Maybe your ISP has issues with the Coral network.

Re:coral cahced

[Anonymous Coward]

You and the other coral cache support need to move to an island and make sweet love to each other. Coral cache sucks ass for anything other than plain text sites. Add images, files, etc and it won't cache. It ain't the ISP, it's the faulty design.

As you can see coral cache is only caching the page, not the images. So pull your head out of your arse so you can stop talking out of your arse.

Re:coral cahced

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother? It's now slashdotted too.

Re:coral cahced

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else notice that the Computer Name is 'pooh'?

Re:coral cahced

[supersocialist]

Firefox needs a p2p anti-/.ing plugin that will share the site while you're reading it.

Re:coral cahced

[1u3hr]

Now the mirrordot cache, which will be down moments after I click submit:

I don't think I've ever seen Mirrordot down; but often it doesn't have the pages cached, presumably the orignal site went down before it could scrape them. But it is annoying that it only gets the first page of multi-page stories.

Re:coral cahced

[Anonymous Coward]

Direct link to the story http://www.x64bit.net/site/board/index.php?showtop ic=2201&hl=

Re:coral cahced

[standbypowerguy]

And kill the "slashdot effect"? Where's the fun in that?

Re:coral cahced

[jayeates]

Never. The Coral Cache (or mirrordot, or whatever else) go down faster than the website itself. The coral-cache has been /.ed now, since you posted a link to it (only in comments, not even the main story).

That's all right, we'll just coral-cache the coral-cache. Everyone should now use http://www.flexbeta.net.nyud.net8090.nyud.net:8090 /main/comments.php?catid=1&shownews=18760/ to make sure they can see the content.

M$ had me with "new paint"

[woolio]

What's that? They released a new Paint?

Now I have no choice but to upgrade...

Re:M$ had me with "new paint"

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.x64bit.net/site/board/index.php?showtop ic=2201&hl=

Re:M$ had me with "new paint"

[Reziac]

M$Paint originated as ZSoft's Paint for DOS, released by ZSoft in *1985*. M$Paint had merely been made into a WinApp, but was otherwise identical to the DOS version (which I still have installed on some old machines). Incidentally some ZSoft code was the original core for CorelDraw, way back when.

The WinXP incarnation of M$Paint was the first one that didn't use glorified screen-capture per the old DOS method of saving images (that's why Save in M$Paint had always truncated any part of the image that wasn't visible in the window), and that knew more than one file format (tho the conversion to 8bit must use some really horrible dither method).

Paint was a dandy little app in its day, and is still useful for quick-and-dirty. But as a selling point for an OS...??!

Re:M$ had me with "new paint"

[Corbu Mulak]

"that's why Save in M$Paint had always truncated any part of the image that wasn't visible in the window"

Uh...what? I've been using Paint since Windows 95, and this had never happened to me. Ever.

Re:M$ had me with "new paint"

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn you, Microsoft, and your vendor lock-in...

Re:M$ had me with "new paint"

[woolio]

Yeah, I too remember the days of running Paintbrush on a CGA monitor, in dos...

The WinXP incarnation of M$Paint was the first one that didn't use glorified screen-capture per the old DOS method of saving images (that's why Save in M$Paint had always truncated any part of the image that wasn't visible in the window), and that knew more than one file format (tho the conversion to 8bit must use some really horrible dither method).

I don't have this problem in M$Paint in Win2k... Perhaps the one for Win 3.1 had this problem... I don't think userland apps would be able to directly access video memory in NT,2k,XP...

What to know something really disturbing? Microsoft has all of its "Knowledge Base" stuff online.
including THIS vintage article

Even more disturbing, the above states "Last Review : August 16, 2005"

Well, now I understand why cooperations have lay-offs...

Re:M$ had me with "new paint"

[Reziac]

LOL!! Oh, man... someone has a strange sense of humour.... I remember what a pain FRIEZE was, because some incarnations of the nasty thing didn't want to unload from RAM when told to.

I skipped over Win2K, but maybe they did fix the screencap thing by then.

BTW, this article is an artifact of the KB's at-best-random organization... a couple years ago, M$ killed all the Win95 and earlier KB articles, but there are pockets of old stuff still undiscovered. -- At the time I leached the entire KB off their FTP, and IIRC it only came to about 4GB (256,000 files).

Re:M$ had me with "new paint"

[DarkProphet]

About the only thing I can think of is that they added support for the PNG format. I'm not totally sure when that was added though.

Its kind of funny, because IE6 STILL can't display transparent PNGs right ;-)

Paint Web Server

[Anonymous Coward]

The poor webserver already has "painted" the room with his inner guts...

Expect

[Anonymous Coward]

Glass is also a feature that we all have come to respect and love, along with the 3D flip.

I certainly hope you mean "expect"

5342 is a lot of screenshots.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure which idea is worse, taking the time to make 5342 screenshots of Vista or posting a link to them on slashdot.

3D flip?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a point to the 3d flip or is it just eye candy? Windows newbs do need some version of OS X's minimize effect because they really don't understand that they can maximize by selecting their program from the bottom of their display but I don't think 3d flip will do it.

Re:3D flip?

[dioscaido]

Flip 3d is just eye candy. I personally think it's a bit silly... just there for the 'wow' factor.

But the classic alt-tab also has live previews of the applications, as does hovering the mouse over the window's taskbar area. The thing that is missed in the captures is that as you tab through the apps all windows are showing their current content (i.e. - movies still play in the alt-tab/flip-3d versions of the windows). Definitely eye candy, but the live preview can be useful when you have lots of windows open.

Re:3D flip?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or catastrophic if you have porn playing and you don't want someone to see. ...and it looks to me like someone just skinned XP with SyleXP for these screenshots. I can make my XP desktop look like that right now if I want. So what does Vista DO? I need FEATURES. Not pretty shiny things.

Re:3D flip?

[dioscaido]

I agree MS isn't doing a great job at synthesizing what's new in Vista. There are so many updates/redesigns/new features across the board in all aspects of the OS, that it's honestly a little hard to put it all in one place. But here's my try at some of the basics:

At a high level, here are some of the new features (not an exhaustive list):
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/eval uate/overvw.mspx

Deeper into the new security features:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/eval uate/feat/secfeat.mspx

Deeper into the new networking features (in a nutshell, there's a lot more since this was written):
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/netwo rk/evaluate/new_network.mspx

There are obviously tons of kernel improvements, a new driver infrastructure, the new presentation framework, and system-wide search built-in.

On the client side, new versions of Media Center (great new UI, handles cable cards), new Media Player, a DVD maker, a calendaring app, a sidebar for creating gadets (yes, a la OSX), improved photo handling. Setup has also been improved, both in time (staged builds take >45 minutes to complete), and simplicity (only a few targeted questions at the start and end, no need to stick around during the actual install).

There's more, but that's a gist of some of the new features.

Re:3D flip?

[anagama]

I played around with "3ddesk" for an evening or two. http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php (It's very smooth in real life, unlike the animation)

Anyway, it was neat and all, but I never use it. It's quicker to just use the menubar switcher. It's a good way to impress your friends though. I imagine MS's deal is similar -- looks neato but doesn't really help you out.

Re:3D flip?

[shywolf9982]

Enhanced alt+tab with window preview is available for free (and win XP) on the Microsoft powertoys homepage. Definitely a great feature, and another reason that will prevent me from upgrading to Vista :D.

Two Minutes Hate

[MrNonchalant]

I swear these articles are like the Slashdot version of Two Minutes Hate.

Re:Two Minutes Hate

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this topic is more like another opportunity for astroturfng, both post and mod. Neither the Slashdot summary nor the article said a single thing interpretable as critical to the normal human eye, and your completely false post already sits at '4' because it 'defends' Microsoft and slams Slashdot.

Re:Two Minutes Hate

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to your sig.

Re:Two Minutes Hate

[VividU]

Fantastic comment. It's the great shame of Slashdot really - that they would squander such a great potential resource.

Re:Two Minutes Hate

[cdrdude]

If you think this is bad, you should have seen Hate Week ;-)

Re:Two Minutes Hate

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, go off and build your own successful discussion site then.

Re:Two Minutes Hate

[Anonymous Coward]

> Neither the Slashdot summary nor the article said a single thing interpretable as critical to the normal human eye

And all IngSoc did was show Emmanuel Goldstein's face on the vid.

Just accept that slashdot is the laughing stock of the geek world. There are places that are worse (sadly enough), but few with as much pretention.

Re:Two Minutes Hate

[TempeTerra]

I swear these articles are like the Slashdot version of Two Minutes Hate.

Two minutes? You must be new here.

Re:Two Minutes Hate

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, but my daddy can beat up your daddy.

Screen Shots slashdotted

[icepick72]

Ah, I think I'll wait and see the screen shots on my own monitor when I'm running Vista ...

Re:Screen Shots slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wait for MS to catch up when you can have almost everything in those screenshots now?

Please mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

only 9 comments listed in this thread, and already the page has been /.ted... can someone who can actually view the page mirror?

New Version of Windows

[jesseck]

I remember when Windows 95 came out... I hated the new user interface. I used 3.1 for a few more years, until 2000 came out. As for Vista, it looks different. I'll use something else for a while.

Re:New Version of Windows

[toddestan]

Windows Vista is supposed to have a "Classic" mode, which basically means that you can make it looks like Windows 2000. On lower end PCs that can't do all the fancy eye candy, they'll have no choice either. Though if I ever upgrade to Vista, the chances are pretty good that's what I'll run regardless of the power of my PC.

Re:Performance rating - level info

[Marbleless]

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/winsat/winsat/winsatinfolevel1_stru ct.asp for a summary on what the various levels need.

Vista Screenshots Slashdotted in less than 5

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised so many people are even checking this out with all the Windows hate you people feature.

Re:Vista Screenshots Slashdotted in less than 5

[Dirtside]

"Know your enemy." - Various

First thoughts

[DarthChris]

• Still uses crappy activation
• In the third [screen]shot down, the windows stacked at a 3-D angle looks horrible. It might amuse little kids for a while though (clippy all over again)
• The updated paint doesn't look that different, and anyone with any serious graphics needs isn't going to use it anyway
• More of those lovely flashy blue setup screens that dumb down the interface (I personally don't like them)
• The performance rating is an interesting idea; it might be useful for people buying games (especially parents)

Disclaimer: I rushed this post a bit, I'm in a hurry

Re:First thoughts

[amliebsch]

In the third [screen]shot down, the windows stacked at a 3-D angle looks horrible. It might amuse little kids for a while though (clippy all over again)

What in the world does clippy have to do with this? Suspend judgement on this one until you see it in action. (There are demos at Channel9 if you are really interested.) It's a mode that's activated by a certain hotkey. While you hold the key down, you can use your mouse wheel or keys to flip through the stack of windows. Then when you let go of the hotkey, the one on top of the stack comes to the front. It actually looks pretty handy, like a 3D Alt+Tab.

Re:First thoughts

[PinkX]

Something like that already exists since at least 3 years ago. It's called 'Expose' and came first with MacOS X 10.3 'Panther'.

Regards,

Re:First thoughts

[jZnat]

Don't forget:

• Still looks like a sooped-up KDE+XGL

Re:First thoughts

[theurge14]

Well, it obscures a good 70% of each screenshot. How is that anymore useful than Alt-Tab now? Are they worried about completely ripping off Expose?

Re:First thoughts

[Coolnat2004]

It looks alright, but I still prefer Mac OS X's Exposé.. mainly because you can see the entire window, just scaled down.

Does this feature in Vista show animations / videos when switching through the windows? I find it handy with Exposé since I can monitor several windows at once (for example, progress bars.. or watch a video while monitoring progress in other applications, etc.) With the 3D angle, though, I don't think it will be as handy..

Re:First thoughts

[Shelled]

Some of us have been using mutliple virtual desktops for a decade and are perfectly qualified to make a personal assesment based on the screenshots. Better than the taskbar model? Perhaps. Than multiple desktops + pager? No, you go ahead and keep it, along with its horsepower requirements.

Re:First thoughts

[hackstraw]

In the third [screen]shot down, the windows stacked at a 3-D angle looks horrible. It might amuse little kids for a while though (clippy all over again)

What about the slightly oversized, semi-transparent window titlebars and borders?

What are these guys thinking? What about the Tiger widgets ripoff, now called gadgets? (BTW, I think both are useless).

I don't understand Microsoft.

Why don't they focus on what is important besides inventing more confusing and unintuitive UI features?

Microsoft will be able to sell there OS software for years, even if they don't update their OS. Most of their consumer/business OS sales come from OEM agreements, and server licensing is a totally different ball of wax. But why in the world are they focusing on this gimmiky and ugly interface when they could be working on security, reliability, availability, and basic usability? These are the areas where Windows has lacked for over a decade now, and these are the things that their customers want and need. Clippy or Microsoft Bob are cute for children, but the rest of us want to interact with our applications and hardware without being inconvenienced. Hopefully, this will be one of their last releases for an OS.

Re:First thoughts

[amliebsch]

Alt-tab now only shows an application icon. Even if you use the "enhanced" alt-tab, which shows screen shots of the windows, it is slow, the image is too tiny, it doesn't show any motion ocurring in the windows, and it is unwieldly if you have a large number of windows open.

Re:First thoughts

[Gobelet]

More of those lovely flashy blue setup screens that dumb down the interface (I personally don't like them)

That's the Media Center module. It doesn't have anything to do with the rest of Windows. If you don't use it you won't see it.

Re:First thoughts

[Animaether]

The updated paint doesn't look that different, and anyone with any serious graphics needs isn't going to use it anyway

Of course if they included something that a serious graphics needy person /would/ use, they would get sued shortly for antitrust/monopoly/whatever reasons.

And when they offer a graphics application separately, the comments are just along the line of...
- bah, they just bought another company
- pff, it's not Photoshop
- boo, I'll stick with The Gimp

*yawn*

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

For anyone who wants to see how it works, just use OS X. At least as early as 10.2, and probably before, it was doing this as a default hotkey function for something called Exposé. Options include scaling down all windows to choose which one you want to view, hiding all windows, and unhiding all windows.

The hiding thing is handy when you set a 'hot-corner' - you put the mouse in a set corner of the screen and it carries out one of the commands. So you can put your cursor in the corner, click and hold on an item on the desktop, and go back to the corner to unhide the windows, letting you drop the item in an open application.

Making open windows 3D skewed angle windows as if they were in a filing cabinet is graphics for graphics' sake. Another Apple rip-off once again, not done as well.

Re:First thoughts

[RiffRafff]

It actually looks pretty handy, like a 3D Alt+Tab.

You mean like XGL does?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl

http://www.freedesktop.org/~davidr/xgl-demo1.xvid. avi

Re:First thoughts

[anaesthetica]

Yeah, it's pretty clear that this is going to be Vista's response to Expose.

Re:First thoughts

[Tim C]

Yes, but so what? No-one is claiming that the feature is unique to Vista, he was merely pointing out that it's actually likely to be pretty cool.

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't have "virtual desktops", so this is the best they can come up with? You need to do better that that MS.

Re:First thoughts

[Tim C]

Virtual desktops have been available in Windows via a Powertoy since at least Win 2k, and teh NVidia drivers have had the capability built in to them for years.

Re:First thoughts

[tsa]

What scares me big time is that we have been waiting nearly forever for Vista, and now it's postponed because they want to improve its security! That means MS has again focused on making the interface more shiny, instead of making the whole thing more secure. I wonder how many hours it will take before the first 'official' Vista box is hacked after the release in january.

Re:First thoughts

[Monoliath]

I'm really not impressed either. - Insane system requirements (to power a...) - Overly dumbed-down interface that makes even a five year old feel like an idiot - Useless functions (3d flippage of windows? What an incredible waste of system resources) - They're obviously trying (once again) to copy the style of the Macintosh desktop (and doing a poor job of it) - Once again another windows xp replicant: a product that seems to be more about appearance and style that form and functionality - I've learned not to hate Microsuck as much as I use to, but their game seems to no longer be about innovation and progress, instead it is now fashion and trend-tracking, moreso than ever before. :( My two cents.

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

What I really need is simply a visualisation of the z order, ie. to see how many times to tap tab while Alt-Tabing to another window, instead of tapping tab until I hit the right one. Reordering them on a standard task bar would do it, instead of having them fixed in the order of apperance. I tried to implement this in the IceWm window manager, but didn't get very far...

Re:First thoughts

[hoyty]

It does show motion in screen shots, even will show a playing movie from media player.

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

and like Vista has done way before XGL and you mean how Vista does it better?
Yeah.

Re:First thoughts

[Rutulian]

In the third [screen]shot down, the windows stacked at a 3-D angle looks horrible.

Yeah, I couldn't tell if it was just a poor screenshot, but it almost looks like the window was bitmapped and rotated giving you that extremely granular look. SVG desktop anyone? This is one reason why I really like the idea of Cairo support being added to Gtk, even if there is a performance hit.

Re:First thoughts

[Bert64]

But they don't seem to work very well... When you switch desktops, you see all the windows minimising and all the ones for the next desktop un-minimising, it's quite an ugly effect and a far cry from X11 window managers, which have virtually all had multiple desktops by default for YEARS.

And to add my $0.02, scrolling one by one through a list of your apps is horrendous when you have tons of things open... Personally i use WindowMaker and i run a large number of apps including a lot of X11 apps exported from other systems. I press alt+numbers to switch between workspaces, i have a browser on workspace 1, email on workspace 2, several instant messaging programs on workspace 10 (alt-0) and miscellaneous other stuff spread around the others. I don't need to scroll through a list of apps to get the one i want, (but i can if i really feel the need) i can simply go direct to the appropriate workspace.

Whenever i'm forced to use windows, i find the whole system so unwieldy, especially when "taskbar grouping" is turned on, the interface is completely unsuitable for someone who has a large number of apps running.

Re:First thoughts

[Bert64]

Multiple workspaces are the best solution sofar...
So long as you know which programs you put in each workspace, or even if you don't so long as you have a pager like the old enlightenment one, you can go straight to what you need without having to keep tapping alt-tab repeatedly.

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

Virtual desktops (or workspaces, as my gnome installation likes to call them) are certainly better than nothing, but over time I always end up opening enough windows in at least one or two of the workspaces that I still have trouble getting to the window I want to use quickly. Maybe virtual desktops work fine for the way you use your computer, but for the way I use may computer I'd be happier with a combination of virtual desktops and sometime like the OS X expose feature.

Re:First thoughts

[admactanium]

What are these guys thinking? What about the Tiger widgets ripoff, now called gadgets? (BTW, I think both are useless).

dashboard+widgets [b]can[/b] be very useful. of course, there are only specific tasks where it makes sense. when i first installed tiger i figured the dashboard thing would be cute for a few days and then just be a resource hog. but after a while i've found many situations where dashboard is extremely useful. much better than any other solution really. here are a few examples.

- rpn calc widget: if i'm doing a layout and i suddenly need to do some calculation like converting a fraction into a decimal, i can dashboard into rpn calc and do the calculation right there. the significant bits are that i don't have to open another application and i can see the wordspace exactly as i left it to reference the numbers in my calculations. adobe apps hide all their pallettes when you switch away from them to keep from clutttering up the whole desktop. so if i were to switch to a different app, i would lose all those pallettes.

- the transmit ftp client widget: awesome awesome awesome. i can assign a transmit widget to a particular directory on an ftp volume. this is handy since i manage one particular site that changes its homepage information every few days. i can make my changes in dreamweaver, click and hold on the index.htm file, activate expose and then just drag the index file onto the expose widget. i don't have to open transmit, open my ftp bookmark, and then drag into my transmit window. it does it all for me (except quit the app when done).

- flight tracking widget: if you're waiting for someone to fly in, this is invaluable. work away and occassionally hit expose to see how their flight is progressing. very handy. better and more accurate than using the airline's own flight progress pages.

- package tracking widget: very nice feature. better than constantly going back to my email, searching for my package shipping confirmation email, and then clicking on a tracking link to get to the fedex or ups tracking page. updates automatically. so over the course of 3 days or a week you can check on the status your shipment.

those are the ones i use the most. the rest of them i turn off so they don't take up memory, but overall i've been very pleased with dashboard widgets. they're much more useful than i originally thought. now that i think about it, it would drive me nuts to do without them now.

Re:First thoughts

[JamesTRexx]

I've looked for it, but I never found a powertoy for virtual desktops from MS for Windows 2000. The one for XP didn't even do what I was used to have with KDE.
One thing that comes as close as possible to real virtual desktops is Virtual Dimension, which I've been using now with Windows 2000 and XP. (another is the shareware goScreen)

Re:First thoughts

[T-Ranger]

They would be the best solution if child windows opened up in their respective desktops, not your current one. Without that feature, multiple desktops are just the least bad of the solutions.

Re:First thoughts

[Dlugar]

Do you have hotkeys set up to move around workspaces? I have ctrl-alt-arrowkeys set to maneuver around my multiple desktops, making it pretty trivial to get wherever I need to be. Or are you more of a mouse-centric user? I think expose makes more sense for mouse-centric users. Although in Enlightenment (and in other window managers?) you can use the scroll wheel to change desktops too...

Dlugar

Re:First thoughts

[Milton Waddams]

Having multiple desktops is so 80s

Seriously though, you have to organise your windows around your different virtual desktops. Plus, you have to remember which desktop has which window. With one desktop and something like exposé (or whatever they're calling it in Vista), you don't need to manage your windows. You don't need to remember. If you want a window, hit a key, see all your windows and click on the one you want.

Have you tried this new feature yet? Maybe virtual deskops work great for you but check this new stuff out. You might like it!

Re:First thoughts

[Shelled]

I thought the Eighties were back. Did I miss them again? Most modern pagers display an app icon or screen shot now, it's no longer the grey squares of FVWM1. Organizing means grabbing one with a middle-mouse click and dragging where you want it. After a while you naturally tend to organize your work in the most comfortable manner so 'Net apps are always on desktop, say, 2, office apps on 3, utils on 4, etc.. Hop through them instantly with metakey-1,2,3,4, it's difficult to see how it could possibly be simpler or easier. I work in a Microsoft shop so I'm sure eventually I'll try the new feature though.

Re:First thoughts

[Zathrus]

When you switch desktops, you see all the windows minimising and all the ones for the next desktop un-minimising

Then you're using some really crappy virtual desktop software (the PowerToy is known to be... well... toy; I've never tried the ones in the drivers, simply because they are feature poor).

I highly recommend either VirtuaWin or DeskWin. I've used both and prefer the former, although I haven't used the latest version of the latter.

Are they perfect? Nope. I've had apps get "lost" and become unrecoverable -- usually when they go off and become unresponsive to Windows messaging while on another desktop (the biggest offender on my work desktop is Outlook). But that's pretty rare with VirtuaWin (the main reason I prefer it).

especially when "taskbar grouping" is turned on, the interface is completely unsuitable for someone who has a large number of apps running.

So disable it. It's easily done. And, frankly, you're simply wrong. I prefer a virtual desktop method myself, but I have coworkers who regularly have 20+ programs open and have no issues with switching between apps efficiently. It's all a matter of what you're used to. I suspect they would find virtual desktops to be a pain; frankly the one thing that perpetually annoys me about any virtual desktop software is the redraw time on them compared to simply switching between apps on the same desktop. And yes, I've used virtual desktops dating all the way back to tvtwm.

Re:First thoughts

[hackstraw]

But these things are just applications.

Unless I'm missing something, I would prefer all of these things to be available as standalone apps so I could interact with the rest of my applications. I don't see where the Widget MDI adds anything.

Is it easier to program a widget vs a standalone app? Would any of the widgets be less desirable as a standalone app?

Re:First thoughts

[admactanium]

because in some situations it's better to have an application that can appear and disappear instantly. i don't need a application to track my packages open all the time when i'm doing other stuff, but i also don't want to have to backtrack and get my tracking number or link from the shipping email. with widgets i can put the tracking number in, and it keeps track of it itself without me having to click on another link. the ftp widget is great. i have the ftp client as a standalone app, but having the widget means i can drop files onto the widget and have the the app open itself, go to that directory and replace the files all in one motion. that's pretty great. if i need to do more ftp stuff than that, i can open the application separately.

the old mode of having applications open and visible constantly (or even hidden) while running isn't the best solution for every problem. sometimes it's better to have them "active" but not cluttering up my workspace or even my dock. it's an elegant solution to a problem most people don't realize they have.

Re:First thoughts

[Bert64]

Well that depends on your window manager. Windowmaker has an option to make child windows open in the same workspace as their parent and it works nicely.

A quick word on the widgets

[Tibor the Hun]

I like the screenshot with widgets:
Link.

With the timer, I can time almost anything! (Makes you wonder what is it that I can't time, and why do they need such an obvious explanation?)

The icon for both a number puzzle and picture puzzle is the same! (Requiring me to read the text, completely making the icon irrelevant. --yes, yes, beta version, whatever)

But the best thing of all, and the widget that I think SpaceX is most excited about, is the Launcher!
Name your price Microsoft, name your price!

Re:A quick word on the widgets

[heinousjay]

Makes you wonder what is it that I can't time

The boot sequence?

Re:A quick word on the widgets

[entrylevel]

Shh! They're called "Gadgets", you wanna get sued?!?!

Re:A quick word on the widgets

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft 1985 - 2006", Hard to imagine they are still using stuff from 1985, wait a minute... 21 years of windows?

Re:A quick word on the widgets

[Reziac]

Is that a picture of a snail being used as wallpaper? Hmmm......

Pics are still up

[Anonymous Coward]

here

New Desktop for Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Try some of the windows shells and file explorer replacements. Microsoft has made it easy.

More Screenshots

[ewithrow]

Here's another page with screenshots, as the story link seems to be /.ed:

http://www.msblog.org/album/thumbnails.php?album=1 6

Windows Vista sidebar for Windows XP

[ranathari]

The Windows Vista sidebar has already been ported to Windows XP. You can find a download link here along with installation instructions. More widgets and gadgets for the sidebar can be found here.

I tried it and it just doesn't do anything for me that can't already be done in Windows XP without taking up more screen-space.

Re:Windows Vista sidebar for Windows XP

[Trejkaz]

That must be a different sidebar though, because this one is apparently "exclusive."

Chess!

[winphreak]

It has chess. That's reason enough to risk the prison time for the bittorrent download!

sucketh it!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gay porn is also a lot of screen shots. Nice FP.

This post is intended to waste karma.

GOOD DAY, SIR!

Windows XP look on Vista?

[baadger]

Does anyone know if it's possible to theme Vista to look like XP? (not Windows 2k classic). I haven't seen any (recent) screenshots of Vista looking this way, so I'm wondering if they're including it.

Re:Windows XP look on Vista?

[Mancat]

Visual styles work the same way in Vista. Get an XP-like Visual Style file (.msstyles extension) and there you go.

Re:Windows XP look on Vista?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the install instructions:

1) Copy the "Windows Sidebar" folder to X:\Program Files\ (Where X is the letter of the partition that Vista is installed to)

Obviously this is for older versions of vista lacking the side bar, this won't work on XP (yes, I tried it for the heck of)

Re:Windows XP look on Vista?

[Reziac]

I've read that if your machine doesn't have enough horsepower for the Aero interface, it'll default to an XP-alike interface. Hopefully that means one can turn the blasted thing off entirely... I can't stand XP's Fischer-Price look, and my first move with XP is always to set it back to the Win2K look. And from what I've seen so far of Aero ... well, IMO the new eye candy is mostly just annoying and distracting, and it bloody well BETTER let us *set* it to look like W2K, or it ain't going on any machine of mine. Your eyeballs may vary.

mirror

[blwrd]

The site seems to be slashdotted, so here's the google cache from the site ;)

Re:mirror

[MadTinfoilHatter]

No, no, no. You got it all wrong. Microsoft has shown true innovation for Vista. The correct link is here: http://images.google.fi/images?q=rsod&hl=fi&btnG=E tsi+kuvia

/.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, no wonder the site is no longer responding...

Don't worry...

[Hamster Lover]

It's just the still unfixed floating point bug in the Pentium rearing it's ugly head.

They get that in post.

Gaming Fans Unite!

[maniac/dev/null]

Solitare Vista is going to be the best-looking card simulation game available on any platform! I can't wait to get my hands on Vista now!

some mirrors here ;)

[sl4shd0rk]

http://www.scorpioncity.com/images/crash/m/bsod.pn g http://www.windowsitpro.com/Files/301/Screen_01.gi f http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/200409/BSOD_2 .gif

Ok...

[360fusion]

For the number of you people bashing Microsoft, a hell of a lot of you are looking at those screenshots, so if you don't like Vista, please get off the damn site.

Re:Ok...

[hackstraw]

For the number of you people bashing Microsoft, a hell of a lot of you are looking at those screenshots, so if you don't like Vista, please get off the damn site.

Well, like it or not, Microsoft is a fairly dominant player in the computing world, and for computer professionals like myself that do not use Microsoft products, its still worthwhile to know what the rest of the world sees and does with computers.

I can't tell if I'm just biased, but to me it seems like there are more criticisms and chronic delays and fewer real usable features that are coming with Microsoft's latest and greatest. Personally, I believe Microsoft should be ashamed for not even attempting the WinFS thing. As computers can do more things like multimedia and the amount of data that people have on their machines today is astounding, yet MS has not properly addressed content management. SourceSafe or whatever it was called is a perfect example. On the other hand, Project is one of their organizing apps that is reportedly decent and has no competition.

Re:Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

When Microsoft talk up their innovation, we want to see what they really mean. All I saw was the ugliest DE I've ever seen, it's even uglier than XP. What's with all the mis-matched colors and icons?

Looks like Macs are about to make huge gains in marketshare when Microsoft's unholy frankenstein (cobbled together from the best ideas already in the market) is finally released next year.

Re:Ok...

[GoofyBoy]

>I can't tell if I'm just biased, but to me it seems like there are more criticisms

It means that you've been reading slashdot too much.

>and chronic delays and fewer real usable features that are coming with Microsoft's latest and greatest.

Considering its slashdot, either you will get it (the latest tech toy!) or you will never get it (Its M$!). Either way, delays or features shouldn't matter.

(Extra points for you for addressing the GP point about the M$ bashing by including a M$ bash!)

Re:Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... The latest news on the street is that WinFS WILL be included with Vista.

Re:Ok...

[kbielefe]

I haven't really used windows since win98, so you make a valid point, but I don't often bash Microsoft either. After thinking about why I read these articles, this is what I came up with:

• I just like learning about computer stuff.
• Family and friends are eventually going to ask me for help on it.
• Maybe I'll see something that will convince me to switch back.
• Although I'd never admit it to anyone, I am addicted to that sadistic feeling I get when I see a feature that has been available on my desktop for months or years, and think about all the people eagerly anticipating it in Vista.

Re:Ok...

[seabreezemm]

Someone is a card carrying M$ fanboy!

Re:Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Not until at least late 2007, with one of the Longhorn Server service packs.

Re:Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether I like it or not, I know I'll be using it in the future. Aren't illegally maintained monopolies wonderful?

Re:Ok...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

I can't tell if I'm just biased, but to me it seems like there are more criticisms and chronic delays and fewer real usable features that are coming with Microsoft's latest and greatest.

No, you're not. Vista is late, very late. Microsoft didn't have clear goals on what to do after Windows XP - at first, there was very little to put into Longhorn and it was going to be essentially a Windows ME type upgrade. Sometime in 2003, however, Microsoft dramatically changed course as they realized that security was a real problem in Windows XP. In 2004, development started over (using the Windows Server 2003 codebase), and Microsoft esentially threw away what they had been working on for the last three years.

As the project grew in scope, Microsoft promised more than they could deliver. What we're seeing now is a natural part of any project - when you realize that you can't meet all of your goals and you have to decide what's really important.

If you want to know what's really going on with Vista, download one of the CTPs (from Microsoft Connect or MSDN - downloading it from BitTorrent is illegal). You'll find an OS that is full of bugs but also full of promise. You begin to look at what you know about Windows, and you discover that Vista is - in many ways - an entirely different OS. Then you fire up Steam and play Half-Life 2, and you realize that it's still Windows.

Every CTP has had better hardware support, better performance, better stability, more features, and more polish than the previous CTP. Assuming that this continues until October, Vista might just be a success after all.

Personally, I believe Microsoft should be ashamed for not even attempting the WinFS thing.

Why do people keep saying this? WinFS is alive and well, it's still in active development, and a beta has been shipped. WinFS will be shipped as an add-on for Vista, just like the .NET CLR was for Windows XP.

Re:Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

"For the number of you people bashing Microsoft, a hell of a lot of you are looking at those screenshots"

We also enjoy looking at photos from america, and war films...

Re:Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical for /. users, no research went into this. Just an MS bash.

Anyway, source safe was updated in the new Visual Studio Team System.

They're at it again.

[AirRaven]

Notice the "MSN Search" in the top right box?

Interesting tactic. By making it the default search engine on the most popular web browser on the internet, they finally have a chance to pose a reasonable challenge to Google, rather than remaining a laughing stock.

Re:They're at it again.

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's different than apple linking their music store to itunes how?

kettle black my friend.

Re:They're at it again.

[svip]

It's been the default for quite a lot of years... have you ever used IE? But unlike the older versions it's also easy to change now.

Re:They're at it again.

[coffeechica]

But how many people will use MSN search? I'm gradually converting anyone whose PC I can get at to Firefox, and as far as I can tell hardly anyone has figured out what the box in the upper right corner is for. It's painful to watch how they'll open a tab and type in the Google URL instead of simply using the search box, even after it's been pointed out to them.

Re:They're at it again.

[EvanED]

as far as I can tell hardly anyone has figured out what the box in the upper right corner is for. It's painful to watch how they'll open a tab and type in the Google URL instead of simply using the search box, even after it's been pointed out to them.

Old habits die hard.

I hardly ever use the search box in Firefox, and just search from the location bar. (In my defense, I set it up so I can type "g " to return the results of a Google search, so that's what I use. It's possible without that I'd use the search box.)

Re:They're at it again.

[NoName Studios]

The Firefox search bar doesn't use my search history from Google.com. That makes it less useful to me. As far as I know, there is no key press to set the cursor focus to the search bar. That is another part that makes it less useful to me.

Re:They're at it again.

[compm375]

The search bar keeps its own history, so if it was all you used you would be ok. The keyboard shortcut to focus it is ctl-k, conveniently right next to ctl-l.

Why are we still getting Vista stories?

[dookus]

My machine loads Half-Life 2 faster than Vista. Enough said.

Re:Why are we still getting Vista stories?

[7of7]

Your machine is a POS. My laptop loads Vista faster than it loads the newest flight of Ubuntu Dapper.

Re:Why are we still getting Vista stories?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Ubuntu loads almost goddamn everything at boot by default to be user friendly. That takes a little while. Whereas Windows loads a lot of things after you log in.
2) I tried out Vista 5308 (so I would know what I'm mocking from experience) and it was a slow piece of shit on an AMD64 3000+ (Venice) with 2 gigs of dual channel RAM and a GeForce 6800GS 256MB. HalfLife 2 does indeed load faster (on a clean XP machine with no internet connection, and no AV or anything to slow it down, at least).
3) Nothing beats Gentoo.
4) XGL already beats the shit out of Aero. And I can run it on a PIII 565MHz machine with 512MB RAM and a GeForce2 MX 400 64MB smooth as silk in XFCE4, even if its still in heavy alpha.

Is it really so hard?

[Fhqwhgadss]

So when a poster makes predictions like The Coral Cache (or mirrordot, or whatever else) go down faster than the website itself and Now the mirrordot cache, which will be down moments after I click submit how hard is it really to click on three little links before you go around modding hom insightful? For posterity's sake let's just say that the direct link is down hard, coral cache loads text but barfs on images and mirrordot is chugging away merrily.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[evilviper]

This story isn't high-up on the front-page anymore, so I guess there just are enough people clicking now... My mistake.

Still, if you spend any time on slashdot at all, you've seen PLENTY of other times that links to mirrordot and the coral have gone down as quickly as the main website, even though they're surely getting much less traffic.

NEW GENTOO SCREENSHOTS

[Mancat]

Check it out, it's Linux! The OS that never crashes!

http://jegog.phys.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~tkonishi/cn/T4/i mages/kernel-panic.jpg
http://www.unix-scripts.com/shaun/host-screenshot- 1.png
http://www.openlabs.it/images/kernel_panic_2004031 4.jpg
http://www.pfsense.com/screens/kernel_panic.GIF

Re:NEW GENTOO SCREENSHOTS

[7of7]

I'd say you're definitely right on this one. Linux is nothing but a pain in the ass while XP has never BSOD on me. Linux seems to be about the least stable and functional kernel availible.

Wow!

[speed_of_light]

Thank god solitaire is still installed.

You don't speak of "all" of us.

[CMiYC]

Glass is also a feature that we all have come to respect and love,

You sure about that? I do not respect or love Glass.

Re:You don't speak of "all" of us.

[Anonymous Coward]

he's talking about the fucking beta testsers, asshole. not the stupid slashfags who try to pretend that linux cures cancer.... so, STFU!

Re:You don't speak of "all" of us.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called sarcasm. ;)

I never realized

[presidentbeef]

Everyone's been saying Vista is just stealing from Mac OS X. I never realized before seeing these screenshots just how true that is (appears to be, anyway). I'm not really a Mac user, but that interface looks a lot like a Mac...

All this time, all that money, and this is the best interface they could come up with?
Well, whatever. Like a lot of people on these threads keep reminding us, we don't have to use it and of course there's no convincing me to switch from Linux to Windows ;)

Re:I never realized

[anagama]

I use macs and linux, and while the interface is "macish", I wouldn't say it's that close -- it's very busy looking and OSX is quite a bit cleaner (as is Gnome). What struck me is how much the icons for many things look like KDE's (users for example). But what I noticed the most is how much text there is on the screen -- like the bastard child of a gui and an ncurses interface.

Re:I never realized

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple might have came up first with those features bundled with the installed OS, but those features were available on windows long time ago via 3rd party software applications. Get your facts straight.

Re:I never realized

[kindbud]

I have a Mac and it doesn't look like OS X. For one thing, the window controls are on the wrong side of the title bar. OS X has them all on the left, where they are easy to reach. Windows has always put them on the right, where they are hard to reach.

Second thing, Mac OS X apps put the application menus along the top of the screen, where Windows might have the task bar. Windows puts them inside the app window. Big difference. With Macs, you always know where things start - upper right corner. With Windows, you are all over the screen with your mouse trying to hit each app's menus and buttons, which are arranged uniquely for that app.

Vista isn't like OS X in any way that matters.

60% of Vista to be rewritten?

[Stalyn]

From x64bit.net "We also have information that almost 60% of the code for Vista will be rewritten." Is this true?

Also what language(s) is Vista actually programmed in?

Re:60% of Vista to be rewritten?

[7of7]

"The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education" Obviously you've been following his advice. You've gotta be functionally disabled to believe that myth. It's just a dirty unproven lie that the morons keep repeating.

Re:60% of Vista to be rewritten?

[Stalyn]

I never said I believed it. Also I think you misunderstand my sig. But thanks for your input.

Re:60% of Vista to be rewritten?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese!

Re:60% of Vista to be rewritten?

[dmitrygr]

Judging by the speed, I'd guess Visual Basic

Re:60% of Vista to be rewritten?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indian!

Re:60% of Vista to be rewritten?

[rjshields]

VBScript, surely ;)

Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[caseih]

Funny how the window decorations in these screenshots look a lot like the new default Fedora Core 5 metacity theme, at least in terms of shape and the window operation buttons. Shame on Redhat for copying Windows like that. Oh wait.

Seems to me Windows is looking more and more like the *nix desktops all the time. I guess this means that Linux really is influencing even Microsoft.

Having played with Xgl a bit, I find it cool, but generally speaking translucent windows are not that useful and often make the contents of the windows harder to read. Looks like MS's take on this is to add blurring to the translucency which actually makes the window contents very readable while still maintaining some transparency. Whether this is going to be a good thing when you have a bunch of windows stacked on top of each other I don't know. But definitely the blurring effect plus the translucency is much better than just the translucency that I can get with Xgl. Of course nothing stops one from doing the bluring in Xgl too. Xgl has all of these capabilities right here now. It will be interesting to see how translucency is finally used. For all its eye-candy, OS X does almost no translucency, except on the dock.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[jacksonj04]

I personally think the translucent blurry bit has helped define window edges a lot more clearly, since stuff in the background is visibly out of focus.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[hackstraw]

For all its eye-candy, OS X does almost no translucency, except on the dock.

Translucency is built into OS X and hardware accelerated. Expose, the dock, SVG icons, terminal window, etc. use them. There are themes that you can get 3rd part to add more translucency if you want.

The day that Apple decides to by default make window titles and borders semi-translucent with a nice blurring feature and hides the title of background windows and all that jazz, I'll go back to a Linux desktop.

The screenshots (mostly slashdotted) here, http://www.msblog.org/album/displayimage.php?album =16&pos=0, are not very flattering, and there are only a couple of windows open at a time.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[caseih]

Umm, yeah, but my point was that OS X does not do very much translucency in the UI itself (not talking about it's capabilities). Icons are alphablended, true, But the windows are generally opaque and I think this is by design. Translucency across windows doesn't always make things more usable. So for all the technology that Quartz is capable of, Apple decided that it's not always useful to employ. I hope that Linux desktop designers take note of such things and not do special effects just for the sake of special effects. More useful, subtle effects include shadows, clean, alpha-blended edges of decorations, windows fading in and out of existance (rapidly of course), etc.

OS X used to make the window titles translucent when they were not in focus. This effect was, thank goodness, dropped in Panther as it just didn't work out all that well.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[TomorrowPlusX]

Interestingly, OS X *used* to use transparent titlebars for inactive windows and had very transparent menus as well as buttons. It looked nice, but got distracting sometimes. As of 10.3, inactive windows simply got their titlebars drawn with an opaque-but-disabled look, and menus got more opaque and buttons became very opaque and contained in their little lozenge. A big improvement, in my mind.

The issue here is not so much the tech -- since OS X, XGL and Vista can all do it -- but how it's used. Apple seems to be cleaning up, using less and less transparency in day-to-day situations ( which is to say, not the Dashboard ).

That said, MS is on the money with the blurring. It's a neat effect, and does lend to usability in this context. I have seen, however, some shots with a lot of windows open and it looks pretty muddy and ugly. I guess you can't have it both ways.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[wordsofwisedumb]

All drop-down menus in OS X Tiger are translucent, as well as many of the dialogs that drop from the title bar of the window.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[RahoulB]

all that translucency in the title bars and that was in 10.0 and 10.1. they turned it off cos it got in the way

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[evilneko]

You're exactly right. If it weren't for the windows logo, I might think I were looking at someone's crazy linux desktop theme.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

It has no usability whatsoever! Its pure eye candy, and annoying eye candy at that. You cant *use* what the transparecny lets you see, because its blurred, so why bother letting the user see it? Its an annoying distraction. Vista with more than a few windows open looks fucking tragic.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[birge]

Just a quibble, but OS X can't do translucency, it can only do transparency. Vista apparenty can do both, with tranlucency being transparency with some blurring. Now, I don't know why you'd WANT to do those stupid translucency effects, but it does make the stuff behind less distracting. So does turning down the transparency, which is what they should've done. As usual, Microsoft shows that they have absolutely no sense of elegance. Vista is going to be nice technically (perhaps) but they will completely miss on the look and feel, as usual.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[saleenS281]

last I checked apple doesn't do real transparency, they do the same thing linux (without xgl) does, and that's draw the desktop as the background image of the terminal or whatever else you have that's "transparent". If you actually drag it over the top of another window, you still just see the desktop image, not whatever is in the next window down.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[be-fan]

Translucency has nothing to do with blurring. Something translucent is just semi-transparent. Technically, all these transparent windows are translucent windows, because they are semi-transparent, not completely transparent.

And OS X can do blurring + translucency just fine --- its a general composited environment. It's just that since OS X translucent elements (mainly menus) already have something to prevent text showing through (pinstripes), it doesn't need to.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[be-fan]

Have you ever used an OS X machine? OS X has been fully composited since 10.0. If you make a terminal transparent in OS X, you can play a video under it and see the video moving through the terminal window.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[be-fan]

OS X does translucency everywhere. Everything from icons to menus to windows is alpha-blended. The drop shadow attached to every single window is an alpha-blending effect. The true curved corners are an alpha-blending effect. All the window animations are alpha-blended. The effects are all very subtle, but at the same time, they're pervasive.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[birge]

What, are you arguing symantics? I defined what I meant by translucent in my post, so there's really no point in your arguing my own definition (which, for the record, is reasonable based on the normal usage of the word translucent). Or are you saying that Vista doesn't actually do blurring on top of transparency, whatever the hell you want to call it? As far as I know, there is no way for the compositor in the mac environment to do blurring. In vista, when you move a window the stuff beneath the translucent part will be blurred in real time. I don't think that's possible in OS X, but I could be mistaken.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[kyrre]

It must be a long time since you checked then. When I bought my first Mac some 4 years ago os x Terminal.app did real transparency.

See for yourself here: http://www.math.toronto.edu/~joel/iMac/transparenc y.jpg

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[be-fan]

Your original post implied that you thought the definition of translucency had something to do with blurring, while the conventional usage of the term in reference to computer UIs refers to very specific capability --- alpha-blending of window buffers. This term is fairly precise, indeed, even mathematically so, in that it implies a particular blending equation on top of everything else.

Anyway, my point was that if Vista can do it, OS X can do it. Quarz Compositor has access to all the window buffers on the display as a texture. From there, it can leverage CoreImage to use the pixel shaders to perform a blur effect, the composite the result onto the framebuffer. Now, Apple doesn't use blurring in the UI, but that's independent of whether OS X can perform the effect.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[birge]

Well, I can't help it if the people who do computer UIs don't know what translucency is. :-) The definition of translucent is diffuse transparency (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translucent) so when people were referring to the vista effect as translucency (which it is) I assumed we were all on the same page. Anyway, I agree with you that Quartz should be able to do it, too.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[caseih]

Alpha-blending is *not* the same as translucency (same rendering technologies perform it, though). Once again my point is being missed. I'm comparing Vista's apparently completely translucent window decorations with what OS X has done. In practice it turns out that too much special effects harm the user experience as OS X has learned. That's why making windows translucent is now something that is not often done on OS X nor done to the same extent. It turns out that opaque windows really are the most usable, with the subtle effects like alpha-blended edges, casting a shadow, and fading in windows (or the genie effect). Xgl and Vista contain impressive technologies (from what I hear they easily rival what quartz is capable of). I just hope that the powers that be choose to employ these technologies in ways that actually increase usability.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[pembo13]

Looks a lot like a KDE OpenGL theme I've seen around somewhere actually. Oh well.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Translucent means "passes light". It can be diffuse or transparent.

The conventional meaning implies a diffuse transparency, but it doesn't have to.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[birge]

I'm not sure what dictionary you're using, but every definition I find says something that is translucent diffuses or obscures.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[be-fan]

Translucency and alpha blending are the same thing. All the effects I mentioned are just uses of translucency to varying degrees. The curved window borders are translucent (with zero opacity --- just an extreme case of translucency), while the menus, etc, are more opaque, but still translucent.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

He's using the "I can't be wrong in public, no matter how much I don't know what I'm talking about" dictionary. You know, the one where the field of optics is ignored entirely.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

And everything opaque is just an extreme case of translucent (having a maximal alpha value). You're funny. In fact alpha blending and translucency are not the same thing, but rather alpha blending is one means of compositing surfaces with alpha channels so as to provide a form of translucency.

Re:Looks more like a Linux desktop all the time

[dragonman97]

The day that Apple decides to by default make window titles and borders semi-translucent with a nice blurring feature and hides the title of background windows and all that jazz, I'll go back to a Linux desktop.

You must not have used Jaguar. By default, the window titles of inactive windows were translucent. It was horrible - they quickly figured it out, and that is no more. Vista is taking the flawed approach and making it much worse. Those screenshots look thorougly confusing!

Agreed!

[jscotta44]

I have to agree with the parent's question regarding the modding of the grandparent. I don't particularly care what operating system I use-I just want the best tool for my productivity. So when the grandparent cited what appears to be the truth about Microsoft's "innovation" technique, I read it and thought, "sounds about right." But if they do a better job than Apple has done with the same features, then I'll use Windows instead. Same goes for Linux or any other operating system that comes down the pike.

Transparent borders

[nickallen]

What were MS thinking? It looks like they tried to create something with a wow factor and didn't really pull it off. Most of the effects look pointless and actually look like they would be anti-productive. For example, the window borders are semi transparent. What a rediculous idea - I mean the user wants to quickly and easily distinguish window borders and making them transparent makes this much harder to do. In one of those screenshots the inside of the window has such strong contrast and the border is transparen that my eye naturally goes for the inside of the window for where I would expect the title bar to be because of this. I don't mind eye-candy but it should be used to boost productivity and clarity and not to reduce it. Oh well...

Re:Transparent borders

[Anonymous Coward]

Riiight! But don't you get it? Microsoft doesn't get it!

I don't mind eye-candy but it should be used to boost productivity and clarity and not to reduce it.

Such a simple statement. Why can't Microsoft grasp it?

It really reminds me of the addition of passwords to win98. It came up with a password logon but you hit cancel and you have full access to the machine anyway. What use was that? None; but everyone said lack of passwords was a lack in Windows so they added it. Nevermind that passwords don't really protect anything; we got that!

Right now, they are busy rewriting 60% of Windows Vista code after fsckin' 6 years of writing it! But they had plenty of time to redesign the UI into a steaming pile of feces (for which I find the primarily brown, dark-colored, depressing theme illustrated in the screenshots kind of appropriate).

Paint, or the new "Network Centre"

[demongp]

Nice features include a new 'Paint' and needed redesigned network center."

They could at least have included screenshots of the new features spefically mentioned in the blurb. I was actually looking forward to checking out the new paint... :(

I guess I will HAVE to install the new release now!

Re:Paint, or the new "Network Centre"

[pimpimpim]

I saw a screenshot of Paint right here: http://www.msblog.org/album/displayimage.php?album =16&pos=4

It looks pretty much like... Paint.

Because we all want to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

...what additional things they've stolen from OS X since the last batch of screenshots.

I notice this go-round that they've taken OS X's wire-mesh-looking Trash can (complete with crumpled-up paper visible inside)-- this is one of the "Gadgets"

Oh, and the default button in dialogs is now a pleasing shade of blue. Hmm, where have I seen that before? Let me think...

Re:Windows Vista, Tiger Edition...

[Tekninja_Hawk]

"Widgets" have been around for YEARS. Apple didnt invent the concept of them. Vistas mail looks alot like a slightly less complicated version of outlook 2003. not apple mail.

Does it bother anyone else...

[Anonymous Coward]

that none of the windows have anything in their "title bar"?
Was MS too afraid of obscuring their beautiful see-thru bar to allow text on it?
I might be overreacting here, but I kind of like being able to see the name of the window I have open without having to look down to the taskbar.

Re:Does it bother anyone else...

[Rampion]

3rd shot down, in the 3D flippy thing, Paint's got a title.

Why is this on Slashdot?

[7of7]

It's pretty much a given that slashdotters are probably the least knowledgable people on the internet when it come to software. Just look at the comments above to verify that. While Microsoft is releasing an excellent OS, slashdotters are too ignorant to do anything but post shots of Windows 95 BSOD. When was the last time you got a BSOD that wasn't a driver's fault? You're Linux people, you should know that drivers are evil. Hell, Linux is pretty much useless if you want to take advantage of your hardware, but don't blame Linux, don't blame the distros, blame the big evil driver manufacturers. Not only that, but it's apparent that most people here have no idea what is in Vista and don't really care. There are morons posting the 60% rewrite myth that anyone with half a brain could tell is a dirty lie. Slashdot should just stick to sycophantic raving about the latest 2.16.19 or the kool new effects in Xgl/Compiz.

Re:Why is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're funny. You're the equivalent of a Lakers fan coming to Boston and telling the people they are the least knowledgable people in basketball because they don't appreciate the Lakers. What makes it so damn funny is that your 'team' has almost 6 years to score a championship and has so much damn problems as it is today.

Sure drivers are evil, but if you put in the fact that most hardware on linux doesn't have the manufacturers backing it up and it's still more stable than the dark side, I'd say linux has a superior team behind it...

Vista is a good step forward, but it is still playing catchup to every damn serious alternative OS features-wise. The only reason it is interesting is because of its installed base and the software support from the big players.

Now, go tag along to your chanel9, I heard they are handing away candy for an audiance...

Re:Why is this on Slashdot?

[covertbadger]

Hey, so, what's the going rate these days for shills? MS obviously don't have high standards for their paid stooges, and I could do with a little extra spare cash.

Re:Why is this on Slashdot?

[shywolf9982]

Erm... is your comment related to the topic at all? Oh wait, this is Slashdot, so it doesn't has to be.

Anyway, most of the criticism around Vista boils down to one point: it is indeed (and looks) like a cool os, and his interface is as good as OS X one (except for the ring on the active textbox, which I hope they will add soon, since it really really helps the user). But, is it worth 300$? Why I should upgrade from my Windows XP to Windows Vista? That's the real point.

Hope you have a good answer

Re:Why is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wasn't this modded +5 Funny?

This comment alone merits it:
While Microsoft is releasing an excellent OS...
because they aren't releasing it! Most of this buzz is because they just admitted that they won't be releasing it until next year!

I tell ya... ya couldn't make this stuff up and have anyone believe it!

Re:Why is this on Slashdot?

[miro f]

Why I should upgrade from my Windows XP to Windows Vista?

according to Microsoft, Halo 2

Something constructive for a change...

[Agram]

Apart from the prevalent "constructive" criticism inherent to the Slashdot community, I happen to have one positive comment for a change. I personally appreciated the layout of the IE7 and its minimalistic top toolbar design. Just by looking at it, it felt like the browser was in fullscreen mode, and the fact that they used space on the right from the tabs is also commendable in terms of space utilization/layout optimization. Granted, until I actually get to mess with it, it is impossible to suggest that the layout is more intutive, but at least in terms of the visual layout, I think that they are on the right track.

Re:Something constructive for a change...

[1053r]

Not sure if I understood you right, but the IE 7 Beta is available for free download at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/ie7/default.ms px

I personally thought that the lack of a menu bar was fairly annoying, just having a "Tools" buttons wasn't really enough. And when the menu bar was enabled, it was in a fairly awkward position (*below* the address bar? What were they thinking?). Maybe I can convince them to include a menu which is accessed by right-clicking on the address bar. Or, I can just put it in myself. Oh, wait, I can't have the sources to IE. Firefox uses up less screen space and has a menu/tab/nav bar. Plus a bookmarks bar, which I don't see in IE7. Plus, it is fully themeable, open-source, etc. The IE team and the Windows team in general just seems to be 4-5 years behind, taking more time to copy features than the original products that they copied from took to come up with them. Tabbed browsing, web standards, RSS feeds, all were in mozilla/netscape/firefox/opera years before IE. Oh well, I guess I will be forced to use Vista in a few more years as it will be the only OS to run Half Life 3, Halo 4. Or, it might be the perfect opportunity to completely migrate to linux or OS X.

Re:Something constructive for a change...

[gizzmo]

The classic menu bar can be toggled on and off by pressing ALT while the window is in focus.

Hardware ratings and the 3D flip

[hchaudh1]

I also noticed the same thing as posted here before in some screenshots that I have previously seen. That looked like a good machine to me and it notched up only a measly 3.0. As far as the 3D flipper thing goes, its nothing new or innovative by MS. As far as I know, Sun has that functionality in their looking glass project and has had that for about 2 years now. It does not look great or serve any purpose, maybe that's why its experimental. And Looking glass has all that other stuff too. Movies playing in the task bar and more. Here are some links: Homepage: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/ Real player demo: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/demo.xml Screenshots: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/details. xml As far as I can see, MS once again stole something and passed it off as their own.

Re:Hardware ratings and the 3D flip

[KylePflug]

So stop moaning and go run Looking Glass. Oh right, you can't. It's a proof-of-concept, not a desktop OS.

Did you blast Apple when they passed off widgets as their own, despite having been beat to the arena by third party developers years ago? And anyway, where in this story is MS claiming that Flip is an innovation? They are saying that flip and the new tasbar and alt-tab options are new to windows and handy features to have. Both are true. Is Microsoft not ALLOWED to improve their OS just because others have done it before?

If Microsoft succeeds in becoming more secure, you'll probably blast them for copying Apple, or Linux, or Fort Knox or something.

Re:Hardware ratings and the 3D flip

[Down8]

Or, they saw something that was a neat idea, but no one was actually using, and decided to give it to the masses.

I have yet to see anyone from MS claim this was all their doing. Do you have a serious proposal as to how they could give credit to Sun?

-bZj

Re:Hardware ratings and the 3D flip

[hchaudh1]

I can actually run looking glass as its available for free from the links I gave. I am actually running it. It serves no purpose, but its a start. Look, I am not a Windows fan. MS has done more to stunt the growth of good, freely available software than any other company at any time. In the process, they have killed off innovation. Now people just have to live with the fact that Windows is what their "computer" is. I won't make any pretensions of even looking at the issue fairly. I am biased against MS and that's that. MS made the claim when they demo these things as screenshots or whatever. Even you said, "They are saying that flip and the new tasbar and alt-tab options are new to windows". That's my whole point, its not NEW. MS is allowed to make improvements, its MS'es right to do so. But selling the same thing that's available for free as part of a bloated OS, for which users will have to pony up, not only for the SW, but also for the hardware, come on now. There's a reason Sun is not releasing project looking glass as part of anything. Its because, it serves no real purpose except for looking cool. 3D interfaces have a long way to go before they actually become useful. I see these features just like the "clown-paint" MS put on XP. When it came out, it looked good for a few days, now it just hurts the eyes. Actually, none of the features are handy to me as when I am running a video on my system, I don't know about you, but I watch the video. If I need to do something else, I pause it and come back. Its eye candy for eye candy's sake. No real value to the consumer at all. I could not accuse MS of improving their security model by copying anyone. They have their own proprietry, NT 4 model, which is basically a pile of junk. I can't believe that they took 6 years to deliver an OS, and it still stands on the old NT kernel.

Re:Hardware ratings and the 3D flip

[KylePflug]

The quality of your prose goes farther toward refuting your points than I ever could, but a few things it's worth pointing out:

Even you said, "They are saying that flip and the new tasbar and alt-tab options are new to windows". That's my whole point, its not NEW.

What did I say? New to windows, that's what I said. Yes, Looking glass has done them as a proof of concept. That is not a consumer operating environment, nor is it on Windows. Vista is the first to implement these specific features in a Windows desktop environment.

You said it yourself, there isn't any logic to your anti-MS vendetta here. Microsoft could change everything about their company exponentially toward the positive, and you'd still be out for blood, becuase by golly they aren't innovating!

I'm no MS fan. I use some of their software by necessity and because, for my day to day tasks, it's endlessly more convenient and capable than linux or macintosh solutions. But to launch into anti-MS tirades every time they set about trying to make incremental improvements to the desktop environment? That's just stupid.

Re:Hardware ratings and the 3D flip

[hchaudh1]

I think you mean "the only operating environment" that's available to the public at large when you say "consumer operating environment". How can I really put this is a way that would make you understand? Let me try again. Looking glass is not only a proof of concept, its a working, downloadable program which runs on Windows. It did this before Vista did, and that's just what I pointed out. Nothing more. And you just turned to personal attacks instead of making a legible point.
I am not crazy that I would be spouting against MS if it played fair. Why should I? I don't have any stocks in Apple or anything.
MS can make all the incremental changes they want as long as they don't tie users into an endless upgrade cycle. Did you check the screenshots that Vista would require 800 MB RAM just for the OS. To me that's crazy. And for what, shiny buttons?
You don't need to point put that you are not an MS fan to help make your point. I don't care. It does not concern me or what I pointed out in any way.

Ooh, that's very Zen...

[Anonymous Coward]

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

If a titlebar has no text in it, is it really a titlebar?

What new features other than eye candy?

[Matt Perry]

Transparency and window animations. Whoop-dee-do. As a non-Windows-programming end user what I want to know is what new features are in Vista that are going to help me accomplish real work? What's in Vista that should be worth my time and money to upgrade? How will those be better than what I already have in WinXP and Win2000? If you are a beta tester, please let me know. And I don't use IE or MS Paint.

great, will get more people to linux, mac, side

[TeraHybrid]

WOW! m$ paint, that will be a GIMP,photoshop killer

I hope this will attract more people into linux and/or mac.
Since now M$ new deal is charge for every-silly little thing, like you want to use double-click pay $50 for the service.

I hope they push the release further to DEC 2007 or Q2 2008, because most people wont upgrade until win/vista second edition, I mean service pack

PS: whats new? the color palette is on top?

Re:great, will get more people to linux, mac, side

[Anonymous Coward]

Paint isn't intended to be a Photoshop or GIMP "killer".

I don't like MS much myself but please stop the retarded hyperbole.

Re:great, will get more people to linux, mac, side

[TeraHybrid]

It was a joke, I admit it was retarded but C'mon it's a joke

Fish...How appropriate!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a sinking ship!

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[tehshen]

Who Cares? I've seen this a lot lately, but I can't see the point. Whenever Product $Bar comes along, people moan about how Product $Foo had this feature first, as if it's going to make any difference to how it operates. I'm not going to use the product that's out first, I'm going to use the product that's best at doing it.

Whenever I use a Mac, I can't get over the way you have to resize windows from the corner only. Windows lets me drag, Mac makes me move then jiggle about a bit then drag. Until the Dock came along, I often got lost in the mountains of windows I had open - Windows organised them all into the taskbar. Back in the day, the Mac zealots boasted how Apple had the whole window managing idea first. This didn't change the fact that I didn't like Apple's window management at all, though. (Luckily it got better with OS X).

Another example: Popup blocking. Opera was the first browser to stop new windows from being opened while browsing. Then Mozilla came along, took Opera's feature, and improved it by only blocking windows while the page loads. To this day, Opera weenies still proudly proclaim "Don't forget, Opera had popup blocking first!". Screw you guys, Opera's implementation sucked. I went with Mozilla's implementation because it didn't block new windows opened by me.

That being said, Microsoft have a long track record for making bad products - IE still uses Opera's old braindead popup blocking method. Heck, DRM had me sold before I heard any other features.

Microsoft isn't an innovator? Oh. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Vista, but I don't care about originality being one of them.

Why so many signatures

[ejd3]

I know this is off topic but why is everybody inserting signatures into slashdot now? I've noticed it more and more. In this post alone a bunch of modded up comments have signatures in them. Can we please try to keep this stuff out of the discussion and into the profiles where it belongs? -- you can just put the stuff here in your profile so I don't have to read it.

Re:Why so many signatures

[dankelley]

Signatures are often the best part about reading /. so I wonder why I don't have one?

Re:Why so many signatures

[Cro Magnon]

My sig explains why I don't have one.

Re:Performance rating - level info

[Reziac]

[goes off, reads specs]

[blink]

Are they designing an OS, or a video game??!

It's called Vista and yet looks like shit?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Does anyone find the Vista UI at all attractive? Its pretty horrible from a color theory point of view. It just looks like a ugly graphics mixed together. It looks rather slopply for a ui.

I know people will add all kinds of things to this statement, but the "vista" part of Vista, looks like a sloppy hack job.

I'm a computer artist... I had to say it. It's ugly.

Re:It's called Vista and yet looks like shit?

[glwtta]

Well, it's a damn sight better than XP's default theme.

Not saying much, I know, but at least this whole "You got Aqua/Brushed Metal in my Bluecurve" thing doesn't physcially hurt your eyes. Baby steps.

Re:It's called Vista and yet looks like shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wtf is a "Computer Artist" is what I want to know.

Icons

[melted]

Icons are very telling of Microsoft's attention to detail. Notice how folders stand on their sides (hint, MS designers, papers will fall out if you do that) and every single display in pictures has horrible glare on the screen. Apple would never do something like that, Steve Jobs would not approve.

Re:Icons

[springbox]

Notice how folders stand on their sides (hint, MS designers, papers will fall out if you do that)

I was wondering why most of them appeared to be empty

oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dave, welcome to your computer" ...

"Activation Status: 13 days left to activate"

i can see it now...

"pay up status: 3 days until we shut down your computer and erase your hard drive unless you pay us our annual bounty."

can't you see it coming?

msft is slowly (thank goodness they can't do anything on time!) getting its fingers in everyone's business.

watch your back!

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[1u3hr]

Opera's feature, and improved it by only blocking windows while the page loads...., Opera's implementation sucked. I went with Mozilla's implementation because it didn't block new windows opened by me.

To clarify, "sucked" is in the past tense; Opera doesn't do that now.

Multiple Workspaces?

[thestobor]

The 3D flip eye-candy might be helpful for switching through 5 apps, but what windows user only has 5 apps running at one time?
Why has there been no motivation from the windows world to implement some sort of workspace switching that is present in nearly every linux desktop?

Yes, MS released a PowerToy add-on for XP that attempted to do proved multiple desktops, but it was slow and quirky - it was an afterthought, not designed into the OS (or window manager...)

Now that alternative shells for XP are fairly stable, I use bbLean at work, and I am about 90% satisfied with its implementation of workspaces. How long will it take for alternative shells to come out for Vista to fix all of the dumb eye-candy and make it useable?

I must be an idiot

[ejd3]

Well after searching for all of two minutes because it bothered me so much I found the Disable Sigs Strip sig quotes from comments option. Finally! I can read in happiness again. I wish slashdot turned this on by default but it was easy enough to find.

Pathetic

[Anonymous Coward]

Can Microsoft come up with anything on their own? It looks to me like they're just trying to copy OS X more than ever. Translucent windows, and a new dock-like feature...It's really sad, actually.

It blows the mind

[theolein]

In order to see the Aero Glass, users need a 3.4GHz PC, 1GB RAM and a 256MB DX10 Card??????? It's either going to push hardware sales enormously or be a huge flop.

Re:It blows the mind

[LoverOfJoy]

Expect it to be delayed for about 5 more years. At that point those stats won't seem so ridiculous.

Re:It blows the mind

[CastrTroy]

I'm thinking of buying a new computer, and the only one of those specs it's likely to fullfill is the 1GB of Ram. The OS won't even run as it's intended on the Sub $1000 (CDN) dells since they all have crappy intel integrated graphics. And how do they ever hope to run this OS on laptops. You could turn off all the eyecandy, but then what's the point of the new OS? More DRM?

Re:It blows the mind

[Ankur Dave]

No, they don't. I can use Aero Glass and I have 3.06GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro. The computer running the system in the screenshots in TFA had a Radeon 9600 Pro.

Luminesweeper ;-)

[tepples]

Do they have screenies of Solitaire and Minesweeper?

Solitaire has been ditched in favor of Lumines, and both games have been rewritten using VBA.

Re:Luminesweeper ;-)

[Iron E]

That reminds me of the Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie skit about Windows Whistler (XP): MS Drone: "We've focused on the one single feature people use the most." Reporter: "And that is...?" MS Drone: "Solitaire! We've rewritten it from scratch!"

Re:Luminesweeper ;-)

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

No, this isn't the case. Recent Vista builds have had both Solitaire and Minesweeper, both new versions that take advantage of Direct3D and were written by a 3rd-party developer.

If I wanted a Mac, I'd BUY a Mac.

[Reziac]

Ya know, you'd think they'd realise that if we WANTED the Mac user-interface and behaviour model, we'd BUY a bloody Mac in the first place. Making Windows more Mac-like may gratify the Mac fanboys, but a great many people use Windows specifically because it does NOT look or behave like a Mac.

Re:If I wanted a Mac, I'd BUY a Mac.

[xiong.chiamiov]

Ahh, but some also use Windows because they can run everything on it ... without an emulator.

Re:If I wanted a Mac, I'd BUY a Mac.

[Reziac]

That too. Personally, I *like* having a PC that I can just throw anything at, and expect it to run in more or less the expected manner :)

Windows XB?

[tepples]

Are they designing an OS, or a video game??!

Rejected name for Codename Longhorn: "Windows XB".

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[hachete]

For an organisation (and convicted monopolist) that spends - or is supposed to spend - 7 Billion Dollars per year on "innovation" I think we're pretty much entitled to ask them to do better than the rest, to actually lead, put their money where their mouths are for a change. Microsoft, according to their own spin, are supposed to be Market Leaders in more than just market share. Clearly, they're punching below their weight in this respect: innovation, pah! They're just the dinosaurs they really are, taking no risks, even with that secure monopoly and user-base. In this light, contempt is all they deserve.

Re:Performance rating - level info

[nostrad]

Umf... those specs seem rather weird

I get a 1 on my desktop. Why? Since it lacks SSE2 support... And with the GeForce 4 card lacking Pixel shader v2 stopping it from getting a 3.
Apparently, 1GB RAM and an Athlon 2800+ is getting you a 1. I know, this system is 3 years old but damn if I cannot play at least some of the latest 3D games (which MS states I cannot). And last time I checked I had no problems with H.264 playback.

Yet, they've placed a K7 2800+ in 3, which obviously lacks SSE2 and that gives it a mere 1.

Gah, I don't understand Microsoft.

Usefulness?

[j741]

Pretty pictures, transparency, 3D effects. Oooooooh. But how useful, and more importanly, how easy will it be for someone, or someones grandparents, to actually use. The first thing I noticed was the lack of a 'START' button. It seems to have been replaced by a picture. Now I've been in tech support for over 10 years, and it's already dificult enough to get someone to follow simple directions over the telephone. I can just immagine the phone calls now:

    Tech: "O.k., please open the start menu and go to the control pannel"
    User: "Menu, uhm o.k. What menu? I don't see that."
    Tech: "The sart menu. Just click on the button that says 'start' in the bottom-left corner of your screen".
    User: "uhm, I don't see that. Hmmm. Start. Start. Nope, I don't see that anywhere"
    Tech: "O.K. Please tell me what you do see on your screen."
    User: "There are some pretty pictures. I really like the fish, but I want a shark in there."
    Tech: "O.K. Is this Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 or something else?"
    User: "My grandson gave it to me. I don't know what it is. I think he said it was Microsoft."
    Tech: "O.K. So there is no 'start' word on the left side of the task bar at the bottom of your screen. What is at the bottom-left cornet of your screen?"
    User: "There's a nice little circle with some colors in it"
    Tech: "O.K. You are using Windows Vista. That circle is your 'start' menu. Please click on it to open it."
-- BEEP --
Your 5 minutes of free product support are now finished. Please enter your credit card number to continue speaking to a technical support representative. This call will be charged at $2.95 per minute. Please enter your credit card number now.

Just the thing to increase productivity. Re-education needed yet again.

Re:Usefulness?

[ichigo 2.0]

How about just "Press the button in the bottom left corner"? IMO it's a good thing that they don't call it start anymore, now it takes less room and people will finally stop with the "Why do you have to press start to shutdown?" whining.

Re:Usefulness?

[j741]

    Tech: "Please press the button in the lower-left corner"
    User: "Nothing happened. Wait, I'll do it again. Nope still nothing"
    Tech: "Nothing on the screen changed at all? Nothing new happened?"
    User: "Nope. It's still the same. Why is that button labeled CTRL anyway?"

Re:Usefulness?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how long it'll take to work out the user has moved their taskbar to the side or top of the screen.

Re:Usefulness?

[ichigo 2.0]

Well then say "Press the windows button on the bar that has the clock on it.". And don't tell me about users that know how to disable the clock, they're not average tech support calling users. :)

But my point was that it's silly for the GGP to tell the users to press the start button when it isn't the start button anymore.

Re:Usefulness?

[makomk]

Hmmm... Linux desktops have had the button to launch their equivalent of the Start menu just a picture since - well, since they *had* an equivalent to the Start menu, I think. In fact, the new taskbar is much closer to the one I have under KDE than the Windows XP default (though it's a bit shinier and a lot more rounded - in the literal sense - than the KDE one).

Re:Usefulness?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

What do you think is the percentage of people that know how to move the task bar but don't know what the "start" button is, even without the "Start" label? Get real.

Re:Usefulness?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a case of knowingly moving the task bar. I've seen people move, resize and hide the taskbar without realising how they'd done it.

Re:Usefulness?

[great om]

i recieve almost one help desk call a week asking how to move the task bar back to the bottom (in win2k) and often see employees who have simply adapted to having their taskbars on whatever side it has inadvertantly been moved to. (although, really you should keep in on the right or left side, it is a more efficent use of space, especially on a wide screen monitor)

Re:Usefulness?

[Cro Magnon]

But, in 2007, most of his users WILL still have the Start button. Especially since all the Christmas computers they got in 2006 will still have a Start button. Vista will take awhile to become widespread.

Re:Usefulness?

[Cro Magnon]

There may be a small percentage of people who get 2nd hand machines with taskbars that have been moved.

If they didn't update paint...

[Anonymous Coward]

people would bitch. "Oh look, they didn't even update paint."

If they update paint, people like you bitch.

If they update paint to meet higher graphics needs, they get sued.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 "Opera weenie"

Re:Performance rating - level info

[wyldeone]

According to Microsoft, these are the requirements for a 5 (and thus the ability to run aero glass):

1GB of memory CPU score equivalent to a 4.4Ghz P4 or a 4400+ AMD K8 CPU 60FPS 1080i WM high definition glitch free capable DVD optical drive Memory bandwidth score of 4.0GB/sec Glitch free high definition audio hardware 64-bit capable 1600 x 1200 capable graphics sub-system and monitor Hard drive score of 70MB/sec aggregate 256MB of graphics memory D3D Score of 130Efps DX10 hardware VDDM driver CPU with SSE2 support

I wonder if anyone's ever told them that a 4.4 ghz P4 doesn't exist? That the highest is a measly 3.73GHZ?

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Tezkah]

"That being said, Microsoft have a long track record for making bad products - IE still uses Opera's old braindead popup blocking method. Heck, DRM had me sold before I heard any other features."

This is false, both Internet Explorer (6.0SP2+ of course) and Opera only block popups that are spawned when the page is loading. Opera does have an option, block *ALL* popups, but it is turned to block *UNREQUESTED* popups by default. I've found that Opera's popup blocking is better out of the box, but with a combination of adblock plus and Firefox's popup blocking (or more recently, Opera 9 with content blocker blocking flash ads) that you'll never see any popups.

Movies please anyone?

[bunbuntheminilop]

Anyone want to post a link of a movie of it running? I want to compare it to the Novell xgl demo. I can't get a feel for the desktop without a demo movie.

Re:Movies please anyone?

[amliebsch]

Here's a demo of the WPF, which is the display engine used by the shell and programs: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1706 70

Here's an older video looking at a build of the shell UI:http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1 14694

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Fweeky]

Opera used to only support blocking all popups (or forcing them to the background). The far more powerful event aware blocking didn't appear until version 6 iirc.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Anonymous Coward]

Still sucks. Next version with an actual GUI to filters is still in beta.

Respect and Love... what!?

[Jugalator]

Glass is also a feature that we all have come to respect and love

Uhhhh... *backs away slowly*

It is very hard to design a good user interface

[hattig]

So I don't feel bad about saying: Oh my god, what's up with this interface?

Immediately Noticable Bad things:

1) Close icon 2x the size of minimise and maximise, yet should be used far less. Accidentally hitting close is far more likely than accidentally hitting maximise or minimise. I hope that all applications have warning dialogs. Also these buttons seem to be perched in the top part of the titlebar. So they're thin, vertically, and I imagine most mouse movement to reach them will incorporate vertical movement, so they'll be hard to hit quickly. This may reduce the effect of the larger close button.

2) Large window borders around application content. Again, this looks ugly, serves no purpose.

3) Translucent titlebar with blurring effect. This looks nice until you have to use it. The titles have a white halo around them to make them more readable - but how about just having non-translucent titlebars?

4) The colour scheme and overall effect is very 'gamey'. It's less 'duplo' than XP though, apart from the frosted glass duplo window borders. Will people really want to use a glassy black desktop?

I worry that all the glitz will actually disturb the user when they're using the computer, rather than working as a visual aid to enhance their usage. Microsoft have a long history of putting worthless graphical effects into their desktop - expanding pop-up menus for example - and I don't see them stopping this trend. It will be configurable I'm sure - I hope that Glass has enough configurability to set the translucency of the window borders to 'none' and to shrink the window border (in particular the left and right borders).

There are nice things however. The 'Start' button looks very nice. The desktop widgets look nicely integrated.

Re:It is very hard to design a good user interface

[ClamIAm]

Sure, it's hard to design a good, UI, but you'd think MS would be able to, what with their billions and everything.

Re:It is very hard to design a good user interface

[panaceaa]

Close icon 2x the size of minimise and maximise, yet should be used far less.

I would say I maximize a window maybe twice a week, and I minimize them at about the same rate. But I open and close applications hundreds of times a day. So while the risk of closing a window accidentally is high -- it's already an out of the ordinary experience to minimize and maximize windows, so I'm used to being careful when I do it. Besides, applications that let you input valuable data (like word processors, Photoshop, even Notepad) all prompt you if you try to close a window without saving first.

Re:It is very hard to design a good user interface

[radish]

Well I use close far more than maximize (I hardly ever max windows) and probably more than minimize. As for accidental closing of an app, so what? If there's anything unsaved you'll get prompted, if not then the couple of seconds it takes to reopen isn't the end of the world. I'm not saying the vista stuff is perfect, but it's not bad, and I'd still take it over OSX's "pick a color, any color" unlabelled buttons.

Re:It is very hard to design a good user interface

[ben there...]

Almost everything you said equally applies to OS X. It also seems to be nitpicking, but I guess I've never been into micromanagement of GUI features.

The color scheme is *definitely* an improvement over the default preschool blue ox XP (The Royale TabletPC theme is the only thing that makes XP look sane). The large borders on the side are unnecessary, I agree. But they help people that don't even understand what a window is to grasp what they're doing. See iTunes, Quicktime, WMP, Finder, etc.

OS X definitely has way more effects like the ones you mention, except with OS X there's no way to turn them off.

Re:It is very hard to design a good user interface

[signore pablo]

i completely disagree on many of these points.
First of all, to answer point two, after watching the channel9 (or whatever that online video interview with people developing for vista thing is) and listening to what one of the guys who worked on aero say, he said that the large window borders were specifically to make it easier to resize windows. So they DO serve a purpose. And they are transparent "to make them less heavy". Also, as you mentioned, Windows has always had a lot of configurable options. Sometimes you might have to dig deep or download some software, but you can usually change what you don't like about it. That goes right into point 3. I'm sure there will be plenty of user-made themes after vistas release that have no transparency with aero enabled. Typically there has always been a large community addressing these discrepancies in taste. That also answers point 4. As for point 1, i think i agree with you. Not having used Vista yet (and i take it you haven't either) I can't say for sure, but what you say seems to be quite logical. I hope they rethink that, or maybe it will be changeable with different themes (dont see why it couldnt, you can change xp's close/minimize button sizes with themes although they are all the same)
To go on with what i was going to originally reply to this whole topic about..... I currently use a PC with the option of running windows, linux, or OSX. I run windows. why? the support is unparralelled in terms of hardware support and applications. On windows, I have games, Nero 7 ultra (better than anything i can find on mac, but i havent tried idvd for authoring dvds yet, toast is decent..) and i know that if i want something extra on the OS, its PROBABLY downloadable online. There are so many MS bashers around, especially on this site, its kind of ridiculous. OK, MS has a monopoly and they use it unfairly sometimes. But, if there was a vacuum to fill, somebody would have done it by now right? The fact is, every other OS choice on the market doesn't really replace windows and improve on it at the same time. Linux as a desktop OS doesn't have ubiquitous software support for various reasons and there are no standards for what gui a user will be using. And in my opinion thats how it should be. Windows fills the market for commodity PC hardware and it has the most market share. Sure, its hard to compete with that, but name one OS that is poised to take over in this area RIGHT now. Unfortunately, i loved BeOS and it could have done some serious competing against windows at the time of the release (hell it beat windows hands down at the time save a few unimplemented features it probably beats xp right now in my mind) but anyway, theres nothing out there competing in the same market as Windows. Linux ain't a desktop OS and it might never be. OSX? Unless Apple plans on releasing it as a standalone OS with no hardware tie ins, it's not in the same market either. As for vista, it actually looks decent. WinFS might not be available at the time of shipping, but its in development and will probably be shipped by service pack 1 or 2. That's not a bad deal.. you buy windows and get the upgrade for free later on..... it seems as though vista is improving with every ctp, hopefully the final product will be polished. I for one, am looking forward to it.

Re:Worth the wait. Adobe?

[mike518]

i think adobe should be concerned too...

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Jugalator]

To this day, Opera weenies still proudly proclaim "Don't forget, Opera had popup blocking first!". Screw you guys, Opera's implementation sucked. I went with Mozilla's implementation because it didn't block new windows opened by me.

Screw you! My Opera doesn't block new windows I open.

Who Cares?

And here my point comes: I wish people could apply this to bickering about things like these as well. If Opera users say it was first with this browser and they'd happen to be right, what's the problem? If you like Firefox's implementation better, by all means go for it! Do you really need to say "screw you" to other users just because you prefer another implementation better? It also just leads to unecessary discussions like this one because Opera's implementation doesn't seem to be at all like that today.

Dave? My computer is calling me Dave?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one creeped out by that, "Dave, welcome to your computer" first screen shot?

I'm not sure I want my computer taking on the role of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In all honesty i want vista.

[mike518]

I want vista because the GUI is better and honestly the sourcecode probably wouldnt be any more buggy or exploitable than XP. I like it because the GUI is more and smooth and consistant -- The only think XP's GUI is, is Fisher Price.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Anonymous Coward]

And that I think is what people are missing about the modern Microsoft, and need to REALLY look at what the company is doing. Gone is the company that gave us (bug ridden but) revolutionary for it's time windows 95. The agile company that could focus it's energy and turn out a product that really could kill competition.

Microsoft has grown too big for itself. It's agility like that of an 80 year old man in a wheelchair. Microsoft can barley adapt itself to the modern market. Hell it can't even push it's own established products out the door on time. MS has mired itself in it's own size and will eventually topple itself! Give Google 7 billion dallars and we see amazing things we've never seen before. Give Microsoft 7 billion and we see some applications done up with makeup released years too late.

Honestly, WHY would I (or many others) want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean an OS that can't even BOOT, much less run apps on an Athlon 2800+/P4 3ghz class machine?

I mean think about it, if you need a 4400+ X2 JUST to boot into it properly, what will be left over for applications and games with THAT kind of OS footprint??

I want an OS with a VERY light footprint, so that the bulk of my computer's horsepower goes to running apps, not just holding up the OS.

Honestly, Vista is looking lamer by the minute!

Who picks these colors?

[prodos]

Just look at that about box. A blue -> green gradient right on top of a blue -> orange gradient?! Ow my poor eyes.

the eye candy is pretty

[Anonymous Coward]

more and more, the partisan arguments about win/mac are becoming irelevant. the eye candy boasted of by certain Mac users and formerly disparaged by Windows users is now in Windows... clearly Microsoft thought enough of appearance and polish to adopt a Mac OS X look and feel to a great extent...

(hm, didn't Windows NT look a lot like NeXTSTEP...? )

and in the ease of use stuff, the wizards and "test your internet connection" etc... if anything, Microsoft is more of a nanny to the user now than the Mac...

complexity in anything is the enemy. one wonders what will happen after 60 percent of the Windows code is rewritten 'under the gun' and what unintended things may crop up there. i would not want to be a sysadmin rolling this out any sooner than necessary.

here is a case where getting the latest eye candy and surface polish ... which is very very nice... could cost you at the level of what's substantial. i bet Vista will be great for gaming though, right out of the box.

It's all over the place, if you look carefully.

[RJabelman]

The curved corners on the tops of windows need transparency. All the menus (on my system running 10.4) are slightly transparent (look close) and fade out. All windows have a drop shadow, with a more prominent shadow on the focused one.

I agree with you - the subtle effects are the best.

Screen shots.

[nurb432]

of an operating system. Sure, thats useful. Thanks?

Why 5342?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Who the hell wants to see 5342 screenshots? Why so many? Why not just give us 50 good ones? Do they really think that I have the time to look through more than 100 considering all the millions of other sites that compete for my attention each day?

Re:Why 5342?

[guet]

It's all about choice, we like to give the users the choice.

Re:Why 5342?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a moron.

Re:Why 5342?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Care to explain why I'm a moron? Or are you just an idiot who like to insult people?

Re:Why 5342?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

You give them too much choice. Sometimes people don't want to choose. I mean, if these screenshots are a critical tool for developers who need to see very specific screenshots, then I can understand that. But if they're just meant as a curiosity...

Re:Why 5342?

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to explain why I'm a moron? Or are you just an idiot who like to insult people?

I'm not the one who called you a moron, but I think you come close. The article summary makes it clear that 5342 is the build number, not the number of screen shots.

"The official version number is 6.0 Version 5342.winmain_idx04.060321-1730."

That you'd rant about something without checking the facts first reflects poorly on your intelligence. Particularly when the thing you're ranting against (i.e., somebody putting up 5342 screen shots) is so outlandish as to warrant verification.

Re:Why 5342?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Ah well... Touche.

Re:Why 5342?

[guet]

heh heh, I was just kidding, it's a favourite slogan at MS. An array of over 2000 screenshots is a perfect example of the problem of having too much choice and too little discrimination.

Re:Performance rating - level info

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they designing an OS, or a video game??!

yes!

Whats so new about that ms paint

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm I like MS Paint a lot (Paint, Notepad and Hyperterminal are my XP favourites :-) ), but why does the article talk about a "new" Paint? There aren't new features. Only just new candy-icons. I hoped MS paint would finally support transperancy and such :-)

But DOJ was told punishment would hurt innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing to be a successful 'fast follower', as Microsoft definitely is. It's another to tout yourself as an innovator. And yet another thing to scream bloody murder that punishing your antitrust violations would hurt the world by denying them the fruits of your 'innovation'.

So, yeah, it's relevant to point out that Vista's innovations are ripoffs of Apple's innovations from yesteryear. After all, if the DOJ wasn't (willingly) snowed into 'believing' that punishment would hurt innovation, we might have really seen some serious innovations by now. Not least of which is an Operating System complete with dev and office tools that you could really get for free with a mainstream PC.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Anonymous Coward]

OmniWeb's is even better, sucker.

Transparent titlebars are a bad idea

[Milton Waddams]

In the screenshots even the titlebar of the focused window is transparent. The only difference seems to be that the minimize, maximize, close buttons in the top right hand corner are coloured while the unfocused windows' minimize, maximize, close buttons are greyed out. This looks confusing to me because it looks like the focused window is unfocused.

What's this 'we all' stuff?

[Mondoz]

"Glass is also a feature that we all have come to respect and love"

Says who?
Shame on me for not wanting an OS that requires a bleeding edge computer to run.
I remember the good old days when an OS was supposed to run the killer aps, and not be one.

Re:What's this 'we all' stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://lg3d-core.dev.java.net/ This glass is pretty cool

Visual geegaws and translucency

[ansible]

Yah, I do the same thing. XP luckily has an option under 'Performance' where you can just click 'tune for max performance' and bamf! all that stuff goes away.

I've played around with things like translucent xterms and whatall. Sure, it looks really frickin' cool. But at the end of the day, I need to focus on the foreground. So it is back to white text on a black background. And maybe a few bright colors for syntax highlighting. Its the only way I can get my work done.

Contrast, contrast, contrast.

Re:Visual geegaws and translucency

[Reziac]

Yep... the one-click cure for Windows for Preschoolers [g]

One disturbing thing I noticed about the translucent windows, is that the visual "bleed" from the frame of the next window tended to lead my eye away from the focus window. Made it hard to keep my eye on the work area.

Yeah, the transparency is pretty, and interesting in a vaguely artistic way, but a PC is a tool first and foremost, it is not meant to be an artistic expression. And most of the time you want your work area efficiently defined, not serving as a distraction in itself.

It's not that kind of a race!

[babbling]

Unfortunately, things don't work how you think they do.

No one cares who implemented feature X first, or who thought it up. That makes no difference to the end product. The important part is that the end product does have feature X.

If Microsoft have now caught up to something Apple did years ago, then you can no longer hold that against them. You need to find features that Microsoft hasn't implemented yet, and pick on those. No one really cares about "well, Apple had mice before Windows did" points because they are now irrelevant.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Nethead]

Lynx never allowed a popup!

Titlebars

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm particularly stunned about one detail. Window titlebars... without a title?!! WTF?

DR17 Ripoff..

[DysonSphere]

Amazing how much it looks like Enlightenment. Has anyone checked for Rasterman's comments in the code ;-)

Re:DR17 Ripoff..

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, just yesterday I've finally discovered Enlightenment-17, as Elive CD, and the very first thing I thought was: "That's the aero-glass-killer!".

Vista==shit, in a Indian language

[copdk4]

'Vista' means 'Shit' in a language called 'Gujarati' spoken by 41 million people in state of Gujarat, India.

I can imagine dialogue with my Mom..
Me: Mom this is new Windows Vista
Mom: ehh ? Windows Shit ??

Re:Vista==shit, in a Indian language

[Whiteox]

HAHAHAHAHAHA!
I think I may do a vista now!

Re:Performance rating - level info

[wolrahnaes]

They said equivalent, which basically means a 2.4GHz Athlon 64 or Pentium M/"Core"/Conroe/Whatever.

Remember, P4 gigahertz mean nothing in the world of real processors.

Better to wait.

[twitter]

Ah, I think I'll wait and see the screen shots on my own monitor when I'm running Vista ...

That's a very good idea. Sometime in 2007 the DoS will be over and the screenshots might be there. The only thing that's sure is it will still be a bad idea to attach a M$ run computer to the internet.

In the mean time, why don't you try out one of the nicer, free Window managers. Enlightenment, Gnome and KDE have all the eye candy you want without the M$ performance hit. You can run them on your current computer or the one you give yourself for Christmas.

Re:Better to wait.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that's sure is it will still be a bad idea to attach a M$ run computer to the internet

Yes... we've never seen a /.'ed box running Linux, ever. Because everybody knows that running Linux automagically upgrades your bandwidth.

Retard.

Respect and Love... what!? Candy.

[twitter]

The kind of candy you smoke with a pipe. Sounds like glass to me. Good idea to back away. No sudden moves.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[aCapitalist]

For an organisation (and convicted monopolist) that spends - or is supposed to spend - 7 Billion Dollars per year on "innovation" I think we're pretty much entitled to ask them to do better than the rest, to actually lead, put their money where their mouths are for a change.

The only thing you're entitled to is the software that is on the CD that you purchased. And you don't speak for "we" - no matter how much of a slashborg you think you are.

Vista desktop: Very confusing.

[master_p]

Just by looking at the screenshots, I felt really disoriented. I couldn't tell where each window ended and another one started. Inside the windows, it is not easy to find which options are clickable and which are not. Maybe it is not like that in reality, who knows?

I hope the new Paint is useful for some serious work. The old one was only usable for screen grabs.

Re:Performance rating - level info

[BlowChunx]

For level 3 computers:

"These computers should readily support a composted desktop..."

So the desktop should be put out with the potato peelings?

F the haters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Retard.

A fitting signature for a bartender.

• Ackbar, aka John Marriot, is
• a loser.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Criterion]

Microsoft has NEVER turned out a product that could kill competition. Your so called "revolutionary" '95 came after OS/2, and OS/2 did everything '95 could do, plus some, and did it all better. It's not the product, and it's not competition on merit, it's all market manipulation by sometimes quite questionable means.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Criterion]

Hey, look guys, it's a sheeple. ^^^^^

Glad you're happy with what they wanna stick up your backside, but I know there are lots of people not so happy with their definition of innovation.

re: "Web Viewer"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is their icon for "Web Viewer" ripped off from my FireFox's "Live Bookmarks" icon?

Think MS need to reevaluate their priorities....

[Arimus]

Don't quite get the fuss over Windows Vista. I'm strangely under the misaprehension that the killer package on my PC should be the app's I use day in day out and not the OS. The OS's role in life is to provide resource manangement and hardware abstraction for applications running on the box. A GUI, while a nice to have, should not be an essential requirement of an OS and should ideally be a minimal setup which enables the user to easily carry out tasks in a graphical environment without getting in the way. Hence my lack of love for XP, KDE, GNOME when used with all the trimmings.

Everytime the OS forces a hardware upgrade on people we're moving away from app's driving user computational requirements to being driven by the thing which is just supposed to manage all the bits of a PC - not mint money for the hardware manufactures.

It's not Slashdot's to be impartial

[I'm Don Giovanni]

and should not be allowed on Slashdot if the website wants to remain "impartial"

Do you really expect a site that uses derogatory icons for Microsoft and Windows topics (the only topics with derogatory icons on this site) to have aspirations of impartiality? You must be new here.

Re:It's not Slashdot's to be impartial

[matt214914]

well, i know its not impartial, but first, i wasnt aware of the icons, second, they could try a lil bit harder...apple's OS is not that much better then Vista...i have a beta of it and it looks good and runs smooth...along with haveing pretty durn good virus and spyware protection built in...

PCLinuxOS a template for VISTA?

[Jerry]

Looks to me like it is. Especially the maintenance screens.

Frankly, I like it -- but a question

[smchris]

I like transparency. I have my linux panel set for transparent and set a small degree of transparency in my menu and terminal background. I think the glass effect looks nice and doesn't deter usability.

But it seems like people associate this with the hardware demands of Vista. Are these effects really so hard to create? Capturing an underlying window instead of just a piece of background is cool and I imagine takes some resources. But it isn't like a _real_ game engine, is it? Even if you want some lighting effects, I assume the point source is fixed. And all the 3D panels in the screenshot are at the same angle. The effects are nice. Are they really annoyingly resource intensive?

WinFS is still being done

[I'm Don Giovanni]

WinFS is still being developed. Beta code was released in Aug 2005 and Dec 2005.
http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2005/08/29/457 624.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2005/12/01/499 042.aspx

The final version will be added in a service pack in the future.

Re:Performance rating - level info

[Marbleless]

> Are they designing an OS, or a video game??!

Have you looked at the screen shots?

Clearly the answer is both ;)

Sadly....

[RagingFuryBlack]

...They only managed to poorly rip the looks of OSX. Maybe they should take a hint, try to rip the security features next time instead.

Re:Performance rating - level info

[RagingFuryBlack]

Are they designing an OS, or a video game??!

I thought windows already was a game O_o

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the not-so-fine distinction between "entitled to ask for" and "entitled to get." We (and yes, I'm speaking for everyone, including you) are "entitled" to ask for whatever we want.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Gee whiz

[blueZ3]

Look, special small programs that run in the background (widgets) and a way to view all the contents of open windows (expose) and a search bar (spotlight). Windows Vista is really one rockin', all-new OS.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[radish]

Don't like it? Don't buy it.

Windows Byzantine Edition

[ozbird]

Oh great, more useless, irritating "features" to have disable to after the installation to make it usable. Microsoft have officially lost the plot with this one.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[Sanchi]

MS wrote 95. And I wonder how Lotus123 is doing...

Holy HAL 9000!

[Hellboy0101]

Isn't anyone else creeped out by the "Welcome to your computer Dave" message? What's next, "I'm sorry Dave. That DVD is copyright protected, Dave. Regardless if you are the owner, you may not circumvent the copy protection mechanism, Dave. I'm sorry Dave, I must now suck you of the airlock Dave." *shudder*

Re:Performance rating - level info

[Reziac]

Oh, I see... it's either a multitasking OS, or a localhost-MMORPG :)

"Flashy" FX- the curse of version 1.0

[powermacx]

The Vista interface reminds me of early Mac OS X. Circa 2001.

Back then, Apple made windows' title bars semi-transparent when they where in the background (that is, every window but the active one). Drop down menus where also semi-transparent.

Flash-forward to 2006, Mac OS X 10.4 - "Tiger". No semi-transparent window title bars, menus are almost completely opaque.
What happened? Did hardware mysteriously became slower during the course of the last five years? No, of course not. Flashy transparency effects were there in the first versions because they where new - they were there to show what the window compositor was capable off. Once the novelty wears off, usability is once again the prime factor in every user's mind.

I've played with Xgl on Linux, and just as OS X did in its beginnings and Vista will do on its first iteration (uhm... next year?!), it has many little "show off" FX, like the window "wobbling & inertia" when dragging and the "vibrating" fx for window & menu openings, among others. Luckily they can be customized/toned down.

I expect Vista's "transparency & background blur" on the border of each window to be the first thing most users will disable. I also assume there will be other more real-world-use themes included, least of it one without thick useless, borders.

All that being said, a composited desktop which makes good use of transparency, shadows et al does improve day to day usage. Not to mention that it frees up the CPU and makes everything more responsive. I use OS X daily and find it a pleasure to use. I know people who (for the time being) switched to Genome from their beloved KDE because of Xgl.

It All Makes Sense Now!

[nonXero]

Ignorance, stupidity, lazieness and artificiality. They've appeased the masses needs haven't they? Typical Windows Users: It's so easy to use, I don't need to learn a thing AND it looks good! I'm dumb enough to buy it! I can't wait for my system to be hacked by the latest security exploits! This is awesome!!!

Is that a Gnome Metacity windows border?

[Anonymous Coward]

That windows border looks just like Gnome's Metacity theme. Nice.

http://art.gnome.org/themes/metacity/1171

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[rojer_31]

Agree with most except the opera weenie bit. I've been using Opera on and off of around 5 years, and it has never blocked a window that I opened myself. Even now when I use Firefox, if you visit some sites, like cqcounter, pop-ups that shouldn't appear do. Don't get me wrong, Mozilla is a very good browser, but wrt opera your problem has never affected me, ever.

A vista odissey

[sandoval88419]

Vista : Dave, welcome to your computer
Dave clicks somewhere ... *click*
Vista : I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

but...

[hyperstation]

will it run on an intel mac mini???

Cool

[EdHockery]

From the looks of it, might as well buy a Mac.

thanks!

[jesterpilot]

And i thought this would become the /.-article with only 'funny'-mods, but you blew it!

People should read some documenation!

[Otis_INF]

A computer isn't a thing which has 1 function like a vacuumcleaner, it has many many features and functions. This means that you don't have 1 button in front of you which does what you want to do with the product, hence the requirement for reading some documentation.

However, most people who don't understand computers (as they say) simply don't WANT TO read any documenation or are too stubborn to actually understand what's going on. Well, I then say: suffer! If it's too much for you, user, to read some simple instructions, then it's too much for me to help your lazy a$$ out.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[drix]

Microsoft isn't an innovator? Oh.

I don't really care either, but stop and think for a moment about how amazing it is that one of the most profitable businesses in history has no, and I'm talking no, track record of innovation. First lets get the moneymakers out of the way:

• DOS. Helloooo Q-DOS.
• Windows. Continually evolving ripoff of MacOS and, formerly, OS/2.
• Office. WordStar did Word first, Lotus did Outlook and Excel first, all the rest is fluff and was mostly acquired anyways.
• XBox. Duh.

Almost to a one, all of its perennial "initiatives" or supposed killer apps have beene flops. Microsof Bob? The talking paper clip? The Smart Personal Objects Technology Initiative, remember that one? (No.) And if you want to get into the things that were merely blatant ripoffs that didn't succeed (the difference between MS and Google), we could talk all night. MS Live? Microsoft Reader, with its cutting edge ClearType technology pioneered by the Woz himself 30 years ago? I guess .Net is showing some signs of life--mainly because C# finally gives Windows developers a Java-like platform to write native apps on.

There are entire web sites that do nothing but try to sniff out one single innovation Microsoft has made to the world of software design in its 30 years of existence. They are instructive.

Re:Microsoft the in[n]ovator

[jsebrech]

Almost all true innovation in software was done by the time 1980 rolled around:

• The graphical interface as we know it, with cascading windows, menus, icons, a mouse and scalable type flowed out of Doug Engelbart's NLS system in the 60's, and was there pretty much exactly as it exists today at Xerox by the late 70's.
• The spreadsheet was invented in the 70's by dan bricklin (the first one was visicalc, not lotus 123; even MS had a spreadsheet called multiplan a year before before lotus released 123).
• The word processor was pretty much fully formed by '76 (wordstar was merely a copy-cat too btw, of the dedicated word processing systems that came before it).

Nothing truly innovative ever happened on the IBM PC platform. No PC app was ever released to my knowledge that didn't have a functional predecessor on another platform.

Nobody is innovating, at least not by the metric you're using, of new paradigms. However, the metric I prefer is that of delivering more capability to the end user by combining that which existed before in more clever ways. By this metric there is still a lot of innovation happening, and by this metric Vista may still be innovative.

Why do we care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista is being delayed because of up to 60% of the code needing a rewrite? Whatever the truth, it's going to change in 10 months. It may slip again and still be more than a year out.

Does anyone really think they are going to really know what is going to be on the screen a year from now? I find their design choices interesting -- they dropped the advanced file system, they dropped or severely scaled back the new system shell, and what are they keeping? The eye candy. And how are they selling it? Lots of preview shots to desparate theming-boys looking for a fix.

Give me a break.

MS is just the first company who's sh*t has come home to roost. Other companies are just as bad -- they just are large enough and having been at it as long to dig themselves in as deep.

At some point the software (and computer industry) moved from quality being something that engineers were measured against to something that the poor helpless "engineers" (read non-cs-degreed wanna-be's that saw the $$$ in the dot-com boom and pretended to be programmers).

Tons of crap out there and it lowered the standard for everyone. People who wrote quality code went out of business because they couldn't put out eye candy fast enough. Now all we have are companies that believe "bugs just 'happen'" -- sorta like 'murder just happens' -- as though no human interaction occurs. No responsibility.

If you tell anyone the "truth", that bugs are the fault of people with too little experience and knowlege pushing for too much in too little time, you are labeled "dangerous". Even fat professors at MIT sell this crap. You try to tell them the truth and they just cover their ears "blah blah blah blah...I don't hear you".

Of course people look up to those idiots, as they offer "salvation": it's not your fault, bugs just happen. MS just became the first company to suffer a major collapse under the collective weight of crap they generated -- in large part because their software is most heavily in the limelight -- and surprise: people are realizing that quality isn't "optional" -- it's necessary and required.

Fortunately capitalism comes to the rescue. MS can now charge extra money to update your software (annually is their dream) and charge you annual money to protect you from all the flaws they created. What a racket.

That's right MS-fanboys -- eat up your next scoop of 3D-glass interface -- hope no one throws any stones.

new feats

[sm0ke]

is vista introducing the new super duper (tm) concept of virtual desktops and desktop widgets? i for one, will be welcoming our new dark overlord.

2001: A Space Odyssey movie reference

[juergen]

First screenshot, "Dave, welcome to the computer". Dr. Dave Bowman is greeted quite similiarly in this movie by the mission's HAL 9000 computer. Which subsequently goes to kill off the crew members. Oh joy, happy future ahead.

It'll be used as a game compatibility score...

[spoco2]

Won't this be used as a game compatibility score? Rather than the game specs having to say 'At least a xx core graphics card with xxxMb Ram, a YYMhz processor' etc. etc. The box will just be able to say "You're machine must have a Windows Super Dooper score of 5 or above to play".

That's what I thought it would be used for... and I think that's a great idea... as long as it's handled correctly, which would be very hard... like maybe you actually can play game Y perfectly well, but because the score unfairly rates some component of your machine against your score too much it might suggest you can't.

If it works, it'll be a big boon for simplicity for PC games.

Re:It'll be used as a game compatibility score...

[Reziac]

That's a good thought, and certainly would be easier for non-technical consumers to understand.

It could also have a sub-scoring system useful for different types of programs. Frex, for a game it might be something like "Your PC requires a video-RAM-CPU score of 5-3-4 to run this game", whereas for an office-type app the required score might be 3-4-3.

Sadly, I think my PCs would all rate 0-0-0 :/

Re:Performance rating - level info

[Anonymous Coward]

From the spec:

These computers should readily support a composted desktop and at a minimum the Aero Express theme.

Good news for the Seattle job market: Microsoft is still hiring people who have faith in the Office spell-checker.

Areo Glass Considered Sub-Optimal

[Anonymous Coward]

For all its eye-candy, OS X does almost no translucency, except on the dock.

That's not *quite* correct. The first versions of Mac OS X had translucent bits everywhere, but the use of translucency has declined with every major version of the OS. The main reason for this design choice seems to be driven by the fact that mixing overlapping translucent elements with text is one very good way of inducing rapid eye fatigue in the user. Believe me - I spent hours convincing a Microsoft PM that a translucent-by-default tool palette was a usability nightmare in the making. I had to call in the departmental usability engineer to help me tag-team, but I won the battle.

Adding a blur effect to the translucent areas is a good-enough solution for the text readability problem, but looking at the screenshots, I still have to wonder if users aren't going to need to spend just a little extra time 'locking on' to individual UI elements against the visual clutter of Aero Glass, and that extra eye motion will result in eye fatigue.

It's not that the effect isn't visually striking -- it's damned sexy. Unfortunately, it's also about as visually distracting as any sexy thing.

Check out the screen shots that show a Glass-bordered dialog with an address bar embedded in the glass area. Run your eyes over the screen for a while and then try to read the address text. If your attention has been somewhere other than the dialog in question, the text simply doesn't stand out, and you'll find that you have to run your eyes in a little search pattern to find it. With more clearly defined dialog boundaries, that just doesn't happen.

Opaque UI elements promote the visual equivalent of that 'muscle memory' that allows you to find the IM icon in the system tray with your mouse pointer without really looking. Translucent UI elements force you to pay attention to what you're doing because the surrounding field is never the same from day to day or even hour to hour.

I don't know about you guys and gals, but I typically spend upwards of 70 hours a week staring at a computer screen. Any UI design choice that make me spend more time hunting for the UI element I need to interact with is NOT my friend.

Compost Heap

[Reziac]

An AC reminds us that M$ says, "These computers should readily support a composted desktop and at a minimum the Aero Express theme."

Whoa, I'm not sure I want my computer going into the compost heap!!

Window controls still fubar

[kindbud]

Still got the wrong side of the window, Bill! Put the controls on the left side, same side where the File menu for the app is placed. No one likes dragging the mouse all over the screen. No one likes fat borders. No one likes cute tricks for the cuteness of it.