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Vista Shell Team now Blogging

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the wonder-what-they-had-for-breakfast dept.

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. "

36 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Just forget it by otacon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
    1. Re:Just forget it by scumbaguk · · Score: 3, Informative

      You know you can turn it off right? Just like you could use classic interface in XP.

    2. Re:Just forget it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

    3. Re:Just forget it by xiao_haozi · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "A desktop OS should be valued for how good the compiler is, and for how many configurations you can make. Not for the look, the experience and the applications." Even though I pretty much agree that 'I personally' prefer a desktop OS that is about configurations and adaptibility, I have always come to the assumption that quite a number or users look for "experience and the applications" in determining their opinion of the OS they are using on their desktop. Maybe I am incorrect in assuming that, but my experience has tended to be that most users are concerned with the applications side of things for an OS. Isn't that one of the top complaints when people try to convert their peers to OSS alternatives (especially the infamous OS alternatives)..."But I can't use my 'XYZ' applications, or open 'ABC' file formats". This is personally why I like an OS like Ubuntu for my main desktop machine as it has given me personally the best of usability, configuration, power, and looks right of the install DVD. But that is just my personal opinion of my 'desktop' desires.

      --
      my site of misleading and incorrect information!
    4. Re:Just forget it by plague3106 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Just forget it by jo42 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Lesson to be learned here:

      Never underestimate people's attraction to shiny bling.

      Shallow as it may be (the bling)...

    6. Re:Just forget it by xiao_haozi · · Score: 2

      Yes...OS X is pleasantly simple like this most times. And I do love my PB with tiger. However, with half a dozen desktops and a few servers, and still growing, I can't afford to run this on all of them and like to be able to run my OS of choice on any hardware, including that which I have thrown together (which makes up all my machines excluding my PB). This is why I tend not to really clump OS X in with the others. With some shell scripting and maybe a little tweaking I have things close enough to OS X ease from an OS that is free and I can mimic the image on pretty much any of my other machines. Yet, money and hardware dependency aside, I do personally feel that OS X is pretty hard to beat for those who love eye candy with there power usage.

      --
      my site of misleading and incorrect information!
    7. Re:Just forget it by laxcat · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    8. Re:Just forget it by yo_tuco · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Nobody can name a single benifit of Vista for Internet usage, playing music or watching movies."

      I bet the RIAA and MPAA could name a few.

    9. Re:Just forget it by drsmithy · · Score: 2, Interesting
      The main problem with Vista is that "there is nothing new invented here". All of the applications in use today cannot be improved by going to 64 bit (accept a small set of engineering & scientific apps). Nobody can name a single benifit of Vista for Internet usage, playing music or watching movies.

      Well, that's largely because there simply isn't anything new that needs to be done for such basic, single-purpose tasks. If all you want is a dumb terminal to run a handful of applications now and then, there haven't been any improvements for ~15 years.

      When M$ can invent something new and productive, then it will be good.

      There's not really anything "new and productive" that *can* be invented, by the standards you appear to be using.

  2. My Internal Struggle by TrippTDF · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:My Internal Struggle by kalirion · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

    2. Re:My Internal Struggle by pubjames · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:My Internal Struggle by pubjames · · Score: 2, Funny

      Most people action in what they, perhaps subconciously, perceive to be the best interests of themselves.

      If that were true mankind would die out very quickly. Nobody would have kids.

    4. Re:My Internal Struggle by Otter · · Score: 3, Funny
      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.

      Man, if you have this much existential angst over unreleased software (have you even used a beta of Vista?), I sure hope you never get near Lotus Notes!

      --
      What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
    5. Re:My Internal Struggle by littlem · · Score: 3, Funny

      You know you're reading Slashdot when... someone says it would be in their own best interest never to have sex!

  3. Bad name by radicalskeptic · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Shell Revealed"? I think "Shell Shocked" would have been a much more apt name :-/

    --
    WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
    1. Re:Bad name by Ajehals · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Shell Reviled

  4. Eye Candy Good, Need for super computer bad by corroncho · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't mind all the eye candy. Some if it's new, some not. But the thing that baffles me is that Microsoft needs the equivalent of a super computer's worth in graphics processing to make the stuff work. I haven;t seen anyting that I feel warrant that kind of power. Have you seen OpenGL? All the eye candy, and it runs on my old laptop.

    ___________________________

    Free iPods? Its legit. 5 of my friends got theirs. Get yours here!

  5. Re:Shell... by daeg · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

  6. 100% correct by brunes69 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Have you seen OpenGL? All the eye candy, and it runs on my old laptop.

    I think you mean Xgl, but your point is still valid. For anyone who has not seen Xgl in action, head over to YouTube and search up some videos.

    I have Xgl running on my Xp1800 computer with a Geforce2MX video card from 2000 in it, and it is *smoking fast*, and the effects are far beyond anything that Vista does. The parent is really 100% correct - why does Microsoft need this much CPU power to do it's (relatively simple) GFX in Vista? Seems like they are a bit behind the times in terms of software here.

    1. Re:100% correct by Phisbut · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I think you mean Xgl, but your point is still valid. For anyone who has not seen Xgl in action, head over to YouTube and search up some videos.

      Yes, I have seen Xgl in action, I have even used Xgl for a while on my box. While the spinning cube and the wobbling windows are nice and all, it is simply hell when you try to simply resize a window. I don't know the inner-workings of Xgl, but how can they make such 3D stuff and wobbling windows so efficient, while totally killing the actual usefulness of managing windows by resizing them? They don't show *that* in the videos.

      I'll use Xgl again when I see a video of a window being resized as fast as it is with a regular 2D desktop.

      --
      After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
      - The Tao of Programming
    2. Re:100% correct by namekuseijin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "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...

      --
      I don't feel like it...
  7. If... by UltimApe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "Infecting minds with my own memetic virus, one post at a time." Ultimape
  8. Out Of Order by brunes69 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I can just see the kitchen computer sending a message to the bathroom computer telling the person in there that their microwave burrito is ready...

    You've got things reversed there. The microwave burrito comes first, then the bathroom.

  9. bash in windows? by Phantom+of+the+Opera · · Score: 2, Funny

    lets not get carried away here

  10. random response by smcdow · · Score: 4, Funny
    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?

    No.

    --
    In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
  11. A 1990s answer... by dpbsmith · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...I have no idea what goes on at Microsoft in 2006 but let me tell you what went on circa 1990 at a (now-defunct) Fortune 500 minicomputer company, in the days of so-called "CHUI" interfaces (GUI-like interfaces implemented via line-drawing and X-Y character addressing on 80x24 green-screen terminals). I think I've told this story before on Slashdot, so apologies if you've heard it.

    A developer was proudly showing off his spiffy new application. I started playing with it, and discovered that there were _three consecutive screens_ each containing the same field, into which the user was required to type the same entry, manually, three consecutive times. And there were no "copy" or "paste" functions. You actually needed to type your phone number or your SSN whatever it was three times in a row.

    When I asked about this, he pulled a 150-page functional spec out of a drawer and showed me that he had implemented that the spec called for. It had slipped by. It's not that easy to previsualize how a UI will work based on a paper description.

    When I suggested he change it, he said "No way. It took nine months to get that spec approved. Any change would require a review cycle and several meetings to get it approved. And if I change it without getting the spec changed, it won't pass SQA. This project is already behind schedule. I'm implementing it exactly the way this piece of paper says."

    Another source of UI weirdness at another company I worked at was a CEO who fancied himself a UI expert. Or at least felt entitled to have the UI tailored to his personal tastes. He was always dictating changes in details of UIs. Unfortunately, he sometimes didn't previsualize how that change would interact with other details, and if you wanted to ask him "Say, now that we've done this thing here hadn't we better change this other thing there so that thus-and-such-bad thing won't happen," his secretary would schedule the appointment for a date a couple weeks from today.

    I don't say this is how incomprehensibly strange UI happens at Microsoft. I say these are two ways in which it can happen.

    --

    "How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!

  12. Re:Not a bad idea, but... by plague3106 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why do you believe that? Blog comments have influenced VS2005, MSbuild, etc. Why would Vista be different?

  13. Dear Win32 developers, why is the API so ugly? by master_p · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Dear Win32 developers, why is your API so ugly?

    Here is a short temp list of problems:

    1) why did you force an object-oriented system on your window system? why each window has to be an object? why didn't you separate the windowing system from the widgets library? the OO system you have adds an additional overhead for languages that want to have their own OO system.

    2) why only one message queue? why not multiple message queues? why each windows message can not have an arbitrary amount of data?

    3) why do I have to register a windows class? the API could have been much simpler if I simply passed a set of attributes in the creation routine.

    4) why the return value of WindowProc is so strange? sometimes the valid return value is 0, sometimes it is 1.

    5) why the function GetMessage returns a BOOL which actually has 3 values (TRUE, FALSE and -1)?

    6) why your widgets are not autosizing? I have to manually resize each widget when its content changes (for example text or font). Why there isn't geometry negotiation as in MOTIF?

    7) why every window has to have a frame? why didn't you separated window frames from windows? all the messages like WM_PAINT, etc are duplicated as WM_NCPAINT etc.

    8) why didn't you use a property system for windows and you had to use the problematic 'set values' interface?

    9) why the text resources of a GUI app can not be changed on the fly? why text is not a separate file?

    There is no doubt that the Windows Shell is and has always been eye-catching...but to program it, one needs to use an API on top of it that abstracts its ugly details. And don't tell me it is because system-level programming of GUIs is difficult, because there are many window systems around that prove you wrong.

  14. UI as important as stability and security??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  15. Re:Out of topic but hey by Phantom+of+the+Opera · · Score: 2, Funny

    I got sick of the "FIRST POST" meme from a while back. Then my user name got truncated from 'Phantom of the Operating System' to 'Phanom of the Opera' so I had thought my account was deleted. On a whim a year ago, I tried 'Phantom of the Opera' and viola; I am back.

  16. Headline is wrong... again... by qzulla · · Score: 2, Informative
    From TFA:

    shell:revealed isn't about Windows Vista, it's about Windows. Many of the people on the Windows Client team have been here a very long time and have plenty of knowledge to share with the world. This is the place to find out what we're doing, how we're doing it, and why. This site is dedicated to all Windows users.

    I realize that is probably where their efforts are but it is not dedicated to Vista as the headline states.

    qz

  17. Re:What are you smoking? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Windows was first 32-bit with Windows NT 3.1, released in July 1993. Not quite the '80s, but not far off. This was just after the release of the initial Pentium, with the majority of machines still being 486s. To encourage people to port applications to NT, Microsoft made the Win32 API as similar to the Win16 API as they could (in many cases it is a direct superset). Since the Win16 API dates back to very early versions of Windows, the Win32 API can be regarded as coming from the '80s.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  18. Monad blog is here by I'm+Don+Giovanni · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here is the location of the Monad (Windows Power Shell) blog:
    http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/default.aspx

    To the parent, MS spends a lot on usability testing; geeks and programmers are the LAST ones I'd ask to comment on UI. I'll take real world testing over what programmers/geeks have to say about UI, thanks.

    --
    -- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
  19. Don't blog, CODE by Gothmolly · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.