What's Different About Vista's GUI?

jcatcw writes "Paul McFedries, author of Windows Vista Unveiled, thinks that an operating system should be thought of as more than just its user interface, but then again that interface should work well for the user. He thinks the Vista interface rates 'pretty darned good.' The Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) results in positive changes for both developers and users. Developers can do 2-D, 3-D, animation, imaging, video, audio, special effects and text rendering using a single API. The use of vector graphics and offloading work to the GPU result in better animations, improved scaling, transparency, and smooth motion."

Comments

Improved animations

[nizo]

Better and more useful animations. Microsoft realized a few years ago that some sort of animation effects were necessary, particularly for novice users. For example, new Windows users are often surprised at the abrupt disappearance of a window when they click the Minimize button.

I hope they have a nice animation for when the machine is infected with a virus, like clippy catching fire and then running around in circles screaming. At least then the users will be prepared for what will happen to him/her when they bring their laptop in to have me work on it and I find out they have been surfing porn sites with their virus scanner disabled.

Re:Improved animations

[atani]

like clippy catching fire and then running around in circles screaming

I would expect a different animation if clippy gets infected from a porn site.

Re:Improved animations

[dapsychous]

I tell you what, nothing is scarier than when a paperclip asks, "Hey, man, does this look infected to you?" Oh, the rumors that will fly around the avatar water cooler.

Re:Improved animations

[Gracenotes]

I hope they have a nice animation for when the machine is infected with a virus, like clippy catching fire and then running around in circles screaming.

Dare you attempt sacrilege against Clippy? I'm sure that malicious, libelous fan fiction abounds about him. All those copyright infringements and bad jokes about his simple eagerness to help have hurt the potential millions, in profit, of whoever invented him. Don't you dare insinuate that the software engineer who created Clippy is penniless.

Clippy's long career will end when Vista comes out in favor of a "better" help system. We shall mourn his loss. Undoubtedly not much change in the GUI, eh?

Re:Improved animations

[Ana10g]

I would expect a different animation if clippy gets infected from a porn site.

Yup, that's a whole other kind of burning!

Re:Improved animations

[Kamots]

"I hope they have a nice animation for when the machine is infected with a virus, like clippy catching fire and then running around in circles screaming."

I'd be infecting my computer on purpose if that was the result!

Re:Improved animations

[Overly Critical Guy]

Don't believe these articles--Vista's interface sucks. Weirdly, it gives you a headache after a while and you begin to long for the simplicity of XP, and switching to the Windows Classic theme doesn't completely alleviate it.

By default, windows actually "fly in" to view. EVERY SINGLE WINDOW. You will be annoyed after 30 seconds.

Every window border has a gigantic window border with an ugly blurring effect, giving everything a weird camouflage look. Microsoft didn't know how else to deal with overlaying text on top of this, so they just put a white haze behind letters which look utterly bizarre and actually makes it difficult to read.

Vista still takes a ton of mouse clicks to accomplish tasks that take only one in competitors like Mac OS X. In the properties dialog of my wireless network connection, there are actually TWO properties buttons--one labeled "Wireless Properties" and one below that named "Properties." Nice!

Vista also stole several Apple-isms, like the monochrome motif of the system tray icons that has been a staple of Mac OS for quite a long time. The speaker is actually the very same sideways speaker with three sound waves coming out the right, increasing and decreasing with volume. What a strange thing to clone directly from OS X.

You'll also laugh at the ridiculous replacement for the busy cursor. Microsoft has attempted to copy Apple's radial progress bar in the past (using eight segments instead of the doubled amount Apple uses...bizarre), but they couldn't pull it off. So they came up with something else that attempts to rip off both the radial progress bar and the spinning beach ball, which is a goofy blue ring. Seriously, a blue ring with a little sparkle spinning around and around.

And you'd better get used to the color blue. If you thought Luna was hilariously bad (I still don't get how Windows fans defend that theme), wait until you come across the puke-worthy blue and seagreen EVERYWHERE in the Vista interface, complete with a 1980s-style animated ribbon swoosh in the corners of the windows. Does Microsoft even hire graphic designers anymore? This company has enough money to buy the best designers in the world, so why do their interfaces consistently suck so much?

The sidebar is just stupid, and you'll turn it off immediately because it actually slows startup time. Dashboard, on the other hand, doesn't load itself until you actually initiate Dashboard for the first time.

And UAC...ah, UAC. I'll just let you get to know UAC for yourself. You'll see.

On the contrary, Apple is several iterations ahead of where Microsoft finally is (by six years, to be precise), and they've been moving steadily away from the translucencies and highlights toward a very clean, minimalist appearance. When OS X Leopard comes out, it will look very professional when placed side-by-side with Vista, which looks like a toy. I'm looking forward to the comparison reviews in the major mainstream publications.

Re:Improved animations

[flight_master]

it will look very professional when placed side-by-side with Vista, which looks like a toy

Exactly, that's the point.
I recently purchased a Mac (A MacBook Pro to be exact). It's interface is surprisingly simple, yet easy to use, and very responsive. On my primary workstations, I run Debian linux with KDE - again, minimalistic in nature, it's fast, smooth, and doesn't distract me.
Then, I've got Windows Vista RC2 running on a 'play' computer - it's goofy, quirky, and distracting - to me, really annoying.
However, you do have to realize that the majority of Windows users are goofs, who are quirky, and love being distracted. Windows Vista isn't made for users like you and me who work with their computers. It's made for the millions who merely read mail, surf the net and chat with the "uber coo"l MSN Messenger.


It's all in the eye of the beholder. I just wish Vista would be a *little* lighter on system resources (especially my poor old ATI 9600 card).

Re:Improved animations

[Tibor the Hun]

Welcome to the world of OS X.
Do yourself a huge favor and download Quicksilver.
Improve your efficiency and impress your friends at the same time.
Bind it to something like Cmd-Cmd and install the built in flashlight interface.

Trust me, and read some reviews and 10-minute tutorials.

Re:Improved animations

[ElephanTS]

On the contrary, Apple is several iterations ahead of where Microsoft finally is (by six years, to be precise), and they've been moving steadily away from the translucencies and highlights toward a very clean, minimalist appearance.

This is a very good point and one that I often think of. I remember when the OSX beta came out (yup, I bought a copy) and I thought that the translucency was over done in the drop down menus but I didn't worry because it was a beta and they had a new model to play with. Of course over time they realised the translucency wasn't helping and successively toned it down so that now it's pretty near exactly right. Everything I've seen of Vista reminds me of the OSX beta which puts them 6 years behind. And with no graphic design skillz. I just don't think the punters are that stupid anymore - they are not going to be impressed by Vista.

Re:Improved animations

[loraksus]

By default, windows actually "fly in" to view. EVERY SINGLE WINDOW. You will be annoyed after 30 seconds.

Although I eventually tossed my vista install, I didn't really mind that.
I think it worked really well to hide the time it took for a window to open - something that was really obvious if you dropped it into that "classic mode that looked retarded because it was half windows 95 gui, half vista (mostly buttons)". It also gave the user feedback that something was happening and even made the open folder, etc, process feel a lot faster than it actually was.
You have the same thing on OSX with the genie animation , which doesn't imho work as well.
When I dropped back to 2k3 server, I had a "damn, this is much faster" moment. I was running on a 7800gt too, so..

I'm looking forward to the comparison reviews in the major mainstream publications.
Bah, doubt that you'll get what you expect. Microsoft's PR department will toss dollar bills at the reviewers and you'll get the usual tripe / reprinted press release that passes for journalism in the computer industry these days. Look how quick they got a number of people to play the part of the apologist with the Vista EULA thing. There was some damn spectacular spin done there, especially by some of the guys who write for the bigger windows oriented mags. Take a look at Paul Thurrot's article for a great example how you can confuse people into thinking how a significant eula change was just a "clarification".

The sidebar was stupid and slow but voice recognition in RC1 was worse by an order of magnitude. Vista would sort of finish booting, allowing you to open a firefox window or something and then, out of nowhere, VR would start, leaving firefox stuck on the start page, apps refused to load, etc. 20 seconds later, you'd be started up, but man was that annoying.

Sounds like Mac OS X 3 years ago.

[thedbp]

Not to troll, and its nice that Windows users are getting these features, but how come no one ever calls MS out on the fact that Vista is basically still playing catch up to OS X, doesn't do it as well, and is probably going to be left in the dust when Leopard comes out?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2674791799 339834706

Here's hoping MS uses the competition to better Windows. The more secure it gets and the easier it gets to use, the better for everyone, even those of us who don't use Windows.

Re:Sounds like Mac OS X 3 years ago.

[Greyfox]

how come no one ever calls MS out on the fact that Vista is basically still playing catch up to OS X

I'm pretty sure someone does that every time a Windows Vista story comes up. Case in point...

Re:Sounds like Mac OS X 3 years ago.

[Ash Vince]

Because your average technical journo who writes the articles in question is too hooked on the freebies MS provide him with in the way of free booze to risk fucking that up.

Everyone knows there have been better OSes out there than windows since OS2 warp but the competion has never bribed these people with enough free stuff for them to write about it. To get a glowing review of an OS you have to install it on a brand new laptop and then give said laptop away for free to enough journos so that some actually use it.

Next version to be called Windows Dressing

[From A Far Away Land]

"an operating system should be thought of as more than just its user interface, but then again that interface should work well for the user."

Vista can apparently be represented in a significant way by either Mac OS X, or XP with modifications. It's mostly a vehicle for DRM, including PVP, which will require you to buy a PVP compliant digital monitor. Vista's enhancements won't even work on many powerful systems you are buying these days - if they have "Vista Capable" stickers. In an age where we should be looking for energy savings, what's the benefit of making a system more complicated than XP, and requires more horsepower than a rather darn good OS Microsoft released in 2000?

Offloaded to the GPU?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why are the CPU requirements for Aero so high?

WPF!!1!111

[neuro.slug]

I know it doesn't make sense, but the Object Management Group should extend the API just so we'd have the OMGWPFAPI.

Re:Vista GUI - my take

[Tackhead]

> I don't think the GUI will be immediately useful, in fact, it might hurt productivity initially, since our users will need to learn how to navigate Vista to accomplish everyday tasks like file copying, etc

Silly user. File copying is evil! You're not supposed to look at files.

Win95/98: We won't show you directory paths or file extensions.
WinME: We won't even boot to DOS without a fight.
WinNT: Pay no attention to the 8.1 filenames. We're going to make sure everyone puts spaces in every path name, by calling it "Program Files"
Win2K: ...and since some of you still didn't get the message last time, we're going to make everyone's home directory contain at least two spaces by calling it "Documents and Settings"
WinXP: ...and don't even think of trying to remove Outlook or other files we want on your hard drive, even if you never use the application. By the way, it phones home, but we won't nuke your box if you don't let it phone home.
Vista: ...by the way, when we said we wouldn't nuke your box if you didn't let it phone home, we meant we would nuke your box if you don't let it phone home. Don't worry, we won't install any user tracking software not authorized by the government, though.

> Research dollars are hard to come by, and unless Vista totally breaks standard Office suite PC/applications, it's just a matter of time before it will replace XP.

You've forgotten the lesson of Office 97.

Research dollars are hard to come by, and when it's confirmed that Vista totally breaks standard Office suite PC/applications, only then will it be only a matter of time until it will replace XP.

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.

Feature my ass. No, the other meaning.

[Fonce]

You know what bothers me about this? They've taken nearly every proposed feature out of Vista that we wanted or that was going to useful...or even new...leaving us forced to debate whether or not there's actually anything new in the only really new thing about it, Avalon.

And when we do have people talking about it they don't have any idea what they're talking about, discussing cutesy shit you can do with their uber-advanced API and not improvements that Microsoft has made to the ACTUAL GUI that will help me complete complex tasks easier, find that which I need faster, and just make my user experience more pleasant and efficient overall.

Features, you say? They're not features, they're bugs. Much in the way that spam is email, these bullshit "improvements" are actually just annoying eye-candy and a stop-gap measure to one-up the actually useful features that exist in other operating systems such as OSX and Linux. And no, I'm actually not a *nix fanboy despite my heavy use of it; I've been a Windows admin for a few years now. And I've been a user long enough to know that dancing icons and spinning buttons do nothing more than impress grandma for a few seconds and piss advanced users off.

Where's the real innovation? Where's the Microsoft that made Windows 3.11 and Windows 2000 (which, despite it's faults, was one hell of an OS)?

Dead, I say, choked by the left hand of greed and the right hand of stupidity.

Re:QUICK! LETS IMITATE IT!!

[digitalhermit]

I think you hit it on the nose. I'm not particularly fond of KDE/Gnome, but they seem years ahead of the Explorer desktop. For various reasons I've had to use an XP desktop and laptop recently. Some of the more annoying things:

1) Right clicking the desktop brings up a menu with some useless entries such as "Arrange Icons By" and "Refresh". Sure, those can be useful, but not for me. Problem is that I can't modify it to be more useful. E.g., have it launch a command prompt, an editor, browser, etc.. This is particularly onerous on an extended desktop with large displays. You can't use the mouse effectively to get to the Start menu since you may need to cross (at worst) two whole desktops. Someone suggested moving the menu to the rightmost display to halve the distance, but this is a kludge. Sure, you can also use the Windows key... But wait, this keyboard doesn't have one...

2) One desktop... You can't easily segregate tasks with a single desktop. The Powertools can add this, but it's broken for lots of apps, including Microsoft's own Excel which has problems when you move from window to window when Excel is maximized or minimized.

3) File explorer doesn't have tabs. I've gotten so used to tabs in Konqueror and Firefox that this is painful on Windows. They caught on with IE7 and did a decent job of it, but when oh when will this be available elsewhere?

4) CMD.EXE is very limited in resize capability. You can put in arbitrary row/columns, but this requires menu entries rather than a drag resize.

5) Every once in a while (say once a month), the window gets shifted *above* the active desktop. You can't alt-drag the window though and have to resort to some control key madness to bring it back. If it happened more often I would remember the key sequence... but it doesn't.

6) What rhyme or reason is there in where new windows pop up? For example, double click on My Computer and it may or may not appear on your primart display. Sometimes it's on the second head, sometimes on the first. If I move the window to the primary and then launch another one it appears -- heh, sometimes on the second, sometimes on the first.

And I could go on... But the XP desktop seems to 1996'ish.

It really baffles me.

[Anonymous Coward]

It really baffles me why they haven't added virtual desktop support yet. This is something that X has had since swm, which Mr. LaStrange released in 1990!

Even the Sun workstation I used in the mid-1990s, running Solaris 2.5 and CDE, offered virtual desktops. For the love of fuck, Microsoft needs to add virtual desktop support.

Re:very colorful review.

[tnk1]

Enough said. What the heck? I'd love to understand look and feel better, but it would seem to be a more effective review if the pictures were in color.

They are in color.

Those are the colors.

What? Did you want lime or blueberry or something?

Re:QUICK! LETS IMITATE IT!!

[drinkypoo]

Alt-Space, n minimizes. Alt-Space, x maximizes. Alt-Space, m moves (arrow keys, or once you hit an arrow key you can do it with the mouse.) If you can figure out how to activate the taskbar with the keyboard, you can restore windows by hitting enter when they are selected :) Alt-Space, s changes size: You use the arrows to select a drag handle, then use them some more to resize. I realize other people already told you that you could do this, but I just explained how. Actually, the easiest way to restore them is to use Alt-Tab until you get to the one you want. And they already provide virtual desktops (to which you can switch with keystroke combinations) through the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager (MSVDM) Power Toy. So are there any other features which Microsoft already has (the key combinations predate Motif - Microsoft was an original member of the Motif Working Group and helped steer it, in fact) that you would like to ask for?

I'm no Microsoft apologist but damn, you just don't know what you're talking about.

Re:So what?

[Lux]

No, that's not all they added. I'm running RC1 at home now, and I have to say that the wireless-targetted TCP improvements alone are worth an upgrade to me.

I really like the fact that a lot of my hardware drivers are running with reduced privileges over (under?) XP. I think this is why my machine is crashing less now --my sound card is a POS and the drivers used to routinely crash XP. Now it's more stable with beta Vista drivers than it ever was with the "stable" ones.

I'm also stoked that the OS benchmarks the hardware so users can target their upgrades at their weakest links more easily. I'm pretty technical, and I usually find myself making what are pretty much educated guesses, so I plan to make use of this feature.

Finally, I'm going to like it when my family is on it and they call me up and ask me to fix their computers, because Vista tracks some performance and stability heuristics, and has a tool that graphs these metrics alongside software installation/update events. Because, you know: my parents never do *anything* to make their machine slow down or destabilize. Never.

So, yeah. There are plenty of crunchy bits in addition to the UI improvements. Here's a pretty good list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista

There are some things I don't like, but I like it enough that I plan on building a new box for it when it ships.

Beryl

[anno1a]

Ok, I agree, the Linux people are major ripoff artists. That being said, when most things _are_ ripped off (which, being great artists, happens rather fast), new features do appear. The window manager Beryl (which is a fork of Compiz) has gone above and beyond in imitating the new graphical bling of Vista. And a lot of the bling from OSX too. I dare say that a lot of this bling comes at a smaller price (hardware wise) than what you get from Vista.

When I first saw screenshots of Vista I was impressed. Impressed with what could be done. Sadly, I haven't really seen them move any further with the bling since the first screenshot was released, and now that I have Beryl up and running I really couldn't care less.

If you look at the forum for Beryl you'll see a LOT of input from users, requesting (granted, a lot of stuff seen elsewhere, but also) new and innovative features and bling, that might actually prove useful when working (and naturally a lot that's pure bling).

What I'm basically looking for is what makes Vista stand out from something like Beryl, except for the fact that you can actually run (some) windows programs on it. Why are people getting so excited over this, when you can have Beryl running on your computer today? Or Compiz? Or Metacity?

I want FEWER controls not PRETTIER ones

[gelfling]

When dear Lord will MS finally understand that we don't want to operate our computers. We want them to operate themselves. I want fewer controls, fewer buttons. I want the software to figure out what's the right way to do something, the right app to start, the right place to put an object. I don't want to be an AUDITOR for my system anymore. I'm sick of it. I don't really care about this years trendy glassy stylistic trend which will be as old as dirt in about 3 years anyway. I don't want rearranged controls that map out everything I could possibly do. I want all of that transparent to my use. I want for instance to be able to simply start typing on the desktop and have it popup the last 4 choices of applications, have me quickly pick one, and load what I just typed into the appropriate area. And if the input is unique enough, I want the software to know what the application is supposed to be and take appropriate action. I want a blank canvas. I don't want to start Adobe to read a PDF. I want a window to open up with the PDF and keep the application absolutely in the background. I don't care what it is. And I don't want to hear about codecs, plugins or patches. Just make it work or let me know how long it will be before you, the system is ready to do that. I want you remember all the little tweaky settings. Print still means print even if the last time I printed it went to email instead, just do that unless and until I tell you otherwise.

Then I want it run faster and quieter with fewer interruptions to update, fix and patch. The system can do that but it has to be completely quiet and unobtrusive about it. I want virtual reboots that allow me to keep working even when the system has to be restarted. I don't want to do storage management, that's your job.

I don't want to hear from firewalls, spyware blockers, AV or malware tools. Please do have them but if they are worth anything at all they will do 99% of their job with ZERO human intervention or notification of any kind.

And then what I want you to do is precreate a large array of batch scheduled housekeeping procs to run off hours, again, w/o me knowing about them to do the little things they need to do: update, defrag, clean off garbage, memory cleanup, patches etc etc etc etc. Take a few hours if you like, take more, do it at night or whichever schedule I give you and bring the system back to WHATEVER state or condition it was in before including all open applications and objects.

Re:QUICK! LETS IMITATE IT!!

[Jerf]

And they already provide virtual desktops (to which you can switch with keystroke combinations) through the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager (MSVDM) Power Toy.

They do, but it's not decent. Every IM program borks the desktop. Every popup borks the desktop. Some programs just plain don't work with it. Some wander all over the desktop, probably because they're confused about being at some coordinates but not actually visible or some other logical thing they can't deal with. Others totally freak out to the point of crashing.

I'm also annoyed that at least last time I tried it I couldn't get it to "go to the workspace to the right", but I'll grant that's a bit more obscure. More important is that Windows wasn't designed for multi-workspace use, and even Microsoft programs work very, very poorly with it.

Same for "focus follows mouse". It works great, except for all the programs that grab the focus, the programs that won't accept the focus following the mouse, the programs that seem to get confused about being the focused program but not being the top window, etc. Windows wasn't designed for it and it shows.

I've tried everything I've ever seen mentioned on Slashdot for multiple workspaces, and they all suck in the same way. My conclusion is that Windows is the common factor, and it's not a stretch to notice the Windows messaging system was fundamentally designed for a 16-bit cooperative multitasking, all-processes-in-one-memory-partition model, and it's still hack-upon-hack on top of that. (Raymond Chen's "The Old New Thing" blog has story after story about "here's why Windows has this wart. It all started in Windows [123].0...") Terminal services seems to work OK, and I had hopes that updating Windows to work with TS would also improve applications w.r.t. multiple workspaces, but it hasn't happened.

I've tried everything, and quite a few window managers on Linux too. I'm not sure how I could know more about what I'm talking about. Windows's multiple-workspace support is a bullet-point feature, an unsupported Powertoy, something even major application builders don't test for, and unless it's slipped by all the Vista coverage, for practical purposes, Windows does not decent multi-workspace support.