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UI Features That Didn't Make It Into Windows 7
TRNick writes "TechRadar talks to Windows 7's Senior User Experience Designer and discovers the interface ideas the Windows 7 team almost, but didn't put into Windows 7, and the stages various UI features went through to their final form. Quoting: '... The next prototype, in February 2007, was called the Bat Signal; when you moved your mouse over an icon in the taskbar, the full window would pop up on screen, highlighted by beams of light (a little like the Batman signal projected over Gotham City). Bat Signal made it easy to find the right window but it caused other problems: 'sometimes people toss the mouse down to the bottom of the screen when they're typing because they don't care where the mouse is and the Bat Signal pops up and that's really intrusive in their flow.' Bat Signal evolved into Aero Peek in Windows 7; you can hover over an icon to get thumbnails and hover over a thumbnail to get a preview of the window."
"... sometimes people toss the mouse down to the bottom of the screen when they're typing because they don't care where the mouse is ..."
Many years ago -- about 25 years, maybe a bit more -- others realized the exact same thing: Users don't want to see the mouse while they're typing. The solution at the time was to simply hide the mouse pointer at the first touch of a printable key. Amazing!
One of the little reasons I like my Mac.
Well, some guys from ZDNet presented it as a Windows 7 beta and nobody noticed the difference.
4.2 works fine for me BTW and I switched to it from 3.5.10 for everyday use, but the former releases indeed were quite unfinished.
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
The lack of "File" menus that need to be toggled visible... even when they are needed to get to your bookmarks in IE.
Huh? Right-click the IE icon on the taskbar. You get a list of your bookmarked favorites and your recent history as choices to open. Just wish Chrome supported it.
The only place I've ever had an issue is WMP. It can sometimes be very difficult to navigate through it without the menus.
i saw that video, apparently much of the ppl they talked to barely knew what a computer was.
Then I realized that it's not really cluttering anything, just that I am not used to the looks.
IMHO, it was never so much a problem of "clutter" with the Windows XP "Luna" aka Fischer Price interface so much as it was inefficient use of space. The buttons, borders, title bars, etc...were all just a tad bigger than they really needed to be. While there may be some users who enjoy the "big buttons" look I and many other users were never really fans. Microsoft would do well to learn a bit more about their different classes of user (and there were more than just "classic" OR "luna" users with XP) and offer some more logical choices for different user interface designs. Personally, I use the Stardock WindowBlinds software (which plugs into the theme APIs provided in Windows XP and above) with the "soft crystal" theme (a modified copy of a KDE style interface) as my UI of choice because it is space efficient, unobtrusive, and substantially less 90s than "windows classic".
The fantastic Windows Classic theme has been removed completely and now you're forced to use wasteful themese where all windows have thick borders and fat title bars.
Start -> Run
"Services.msc"
Themes Service: Automatic/Manual/Disabled
Disabled.
And:
Windows Key + Pause/Break
Advanced System Settings
Performance -> Settings
Visual Effects
Adjust for best performance
Done.
"--wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy." --Benjamin Franklin
You should be fine with any non-ancient graphics hardware. KDE 4 does hardware checks during startup and disables desktop acceleration on hardware that fails the checks. You can alternatively switch to an XRender backend in that case which will disable most of the fancier effects, though, as it only accelerates 2D.
Full OpenGL desktop acceleration works on my eee 701 netbook (Intel 910GM) but not on my crappy old laptop (Mobility Radeon M6).
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
pressing alt in any app normally brings up the toolbar. Many apps have an option to make it sticky
There was a reason KDE 4.0.x and 4.1.x were explicitely not recommended for production use... the stuff you listed, some of which I never encountered at any time, has been sorted out in 4.2 which is the first version I consider as rock solid as 3.5.10 and use as my main desktop now.
The aussie video was just an example I googled BTW. Put some screenshots side by side and you will see that the Windows 7 taskbar in its current state looks very KDE like, rather than Vista like. On the other hand, the KDE 4 panel might resemble the Vista color scheme, nevertheless it functions in a very original, customizable way that doesn't borrow from somewhere else.
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat