Vista Shell Team now Blogging

davevr writes "Have you ever wanted to ask the people behind the Vista UI exactly what they were thinking when they did things like Flip 3D or the windows that turn black when maximized? Want a last chance to complain directly to the source about your favorite Vista UI glitch before it is foisted on you and the rest of the world? Just wondering what sort of people work on Windows all day? Well, look no further. The Windows Shell team now has a blog site for your reading pleasure. Head over to Shell Revealed and check it out. "

Comments

Just forget it

[otacon]

My complaint to scrap the eye candy would be ignored of course, just like myspace ignoring my reccomendation to stop letting people make profiles that look like AOL hometown pages from 1997.

Re:Just forget it

[Anonymous Coward]

They should just include BASH in Vista and call it a day.

Re:Just forget it

[plague3106]

That's not the point. Someone, somewhere coded this crap up and thought people would like it. Which means they are suffering from a staggering disconnect with reality.

Huh? What? Are you actually claiming to speak for everyone on the planet? Pretty arrogant if you ask me. I remember the same thing said about the WinXP theme. It was different, but I actually like it over the old Win9x win2k style buttons.

Re:Just forget it

[laxcat]

Its impossible to speak about something like this in any sort of definitive, because in essence, it all comes down to opinion. But there are alot of definatives that surround the issue of the XP theme.

One thing that more of us might agree on is that it's definately an interface designed to appeal to a wider audience. Microsoft likes its bright colors because those appeal to the older generation who are still of the mindset: "more colors = better." There are two problems with this. First, here in a slashdot context, we are not the general population. Most of us found this new "candy" style pretty condesending. Second, the "more colors style" goes starkly agains conventional wisdom of almost a full cenury of futurism and the expected styles that are contianed therein. People generally don't see bright colors as a sign of "futuristic high tech," a trait that our society would see as a positive when they're dropping money in a computer store.

Another big problem with the XP theme is that it added very little, if anything at all, to the actual unsability of the the user interface. It was just an ugly coat of paint, like that one fucia house two blocks over. (You know the one.) All functionality was still in the same place, at best just rearanged within the same window.

Definatives aside, if we do come back to nothing more than opinion, we can only turn to experts in that particular field to find some sort of authority. This again turns out of favor of the older interface over the XP one. In my 6 years working in various design houses, I've yet to see a designer, web or otherwise, that prefered the "candy" interface over the clean greys of the old Win2K style. Outside of my personal experience, we can turn to the design comunity as a whole. While I can't ask for their opinion personally, their works reinforce my point. Clean lines and muted colors abound, curved edges are easily found but large swatches of garish primary colors are not.

Now none of this is about Vista, (which from the couple of screenshots I've seen apears to at least be a step in the right direction), but I just had to point out that while an argument like this might seem based in only opinion, anyone with a little art training will realize that that there are definative "rights" and "wrongs" in the art community, and even more so in the design world. The XP style is mostly "wrong." It's the result of an ill-advised corporated campaign to make computers seem less indimedating to Grandma, and we ended up with very little aestetic value.

My Internal Struggle

[TrippTDF]

I'm a firm believer that most people act in the best intrests of others. I think this is something that geeks hold especially true, so when I see some sort of error with a computer system, I try to figure out what the developers were thinking when they put the thing together.

But when it comes to some windows issues... I'm at a loss. I actually have to ask myself how, in good faith, a developer implemented something that either works poorly or not at all. Why keep that "feature" in there (espeically when talking about a GUI) when it doesn't work as adertised?

I think my answer lies somewhere in management.

Re:My Internal Struggle

[kalirion]

I'm a firm believer that most people act in the best intrests of others.

Most people action in what they, perhaps subconciously, perceive to be the best interests of themselves. It just happens that being a dick to people is usually not in a person's best interests. BOCTAOE

Re:My Internal Struggle

[pubjames]

I'm a firm believer that most people act in the best intrests of others.

I think you're probably right. However, it is a sad fact that this isn't true of most people that get into positions of power - you generally don't get into a position of power by thinking of others.

I think my answer lies somewhere in management.

Bingo.

Re:Shell...

[daeg]

More importantly, we probably shouldn't trust Windows for defense systems any more than the Chinese should have trusted the Great Wall.

Re:Bad name

[Ajehals]

Shell Reviled

If...

[UltimApe]

If I can get aero's under the hood benifits (graphic card rendering of windows, graphic card ram virtualization)) with the "classic" gui, I might think about buying vista. Time and time again I run into problems where it's not my program, but the display that causes me problems.

UI as important as stability and security???

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't believe when I read that...

"Some folks I talk to say that the UI is just as important as performance and system stability. Others say performance, stability and security come first.

For me - the UI is just as important as performance, stability, security and everything else."

http://shellrevealed.com/blogs/externalnews/archiv e/2006/09/19/So-just-how-important-is-the-UI_3F00_ .aspx

http://www.mstechtoday.com/2006/09/18/so-just-how- important-is-the-ui/

That explains *many* things.

Re:100% correct

[namekuseijin]

"the effects are far beyond anything that Vista does"

hey, i'm an Xgl fan myself, but let's not blow smoke, ok? There's the useless jello windows that i'd gladly switch for Aero's ability to draw stuff underneath transparent layers with a distinct Gaussian Blur. It's good because that way things are not so confusing: you can read first plane stuff without writings underneath getting in the way. OTOH, it's bad because of the same thing, for control freaks...

granted, putting Gaussian blur in Xgl doesn't seem that difficult...

FLAME & SHAME

[MickDownUnder]

This whole discussion on this article is absolutely appalling, I've not read one modded up comment in which the author seemed like he had a clue about the subject matter in the article.

It's always been the case on here that technical articles about Microsoft ccontain quite a bit of offtopic general slagging of Microsoft, however there's usually one or two comments modded up that genuinely shed some intelligent light on the topic, this is probably the worst discussion I've seen on here. Why are moderators modding up offtopic crap !?

I'm actually genuinely interested in this topic and came to read the comments hoping someone might have some further insight or information on the subject. This seems to be getting worse, it seems slashdot is just not the place to find such information.

Perhaps it would be better for slashdot to stop posting articles such as these relating to MS technology with no apparent Open Source or Linux spin. I mean this just makes Slashdot look bad.

Don't blog, CODE

[Gothmolly]

Stop blogging, listening to your iPods, and buzzing over 'Web 2.0'. CODE THE FARKING SHELL TO BE USEFUL. What do we pay you for?