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Windows 8 Early Build Hints At Apple, WebOS Competitor - EWeek
Microsoft's next Windows could be a cross-platform OS in the style of Apple's iOS or Hewlett-Packard's webOS, if supposed early builds are to be believed... "Bloggers Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott, in a series of April postings on Rivera’s Within Windows blog, have described the various features of what they claim is an early build of Windows 8: an Office-style ribbon integrated into Windows Explorer, complete with tools for viewing libraries, manipulating images and managing drive assets; an unlock screen that harkens to the 'Metro' design style already present in Windows Phone 7; an 'immersive' user interface and a built-in PDF reader they call 'Modern Reader.'"
They should rather concentrate on improving the core OS in my opinion. Why would I want to manipulate images or read PDFs with crap software from MS...
TFA is full of empty speculation and even if Microsoft were trying to do this their extensive history of withholding key, drastic hardware control level features at the last minute argues against the idea they could carry it off. There will be no pan-fundatio Windows 8.0
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
By the time Windows 8 comes out, the rest of the market will ahve moved on. Again.
I be flaming.
:D)
Microsoft should just keep pushing good stability features for their crappy OS. Every single OS release is an "oh we got this new x and that new y (both available in other decent OS for ages, except for the occasional innovation)" moment, instead of a "We have increased security and enabled you to fully control your computer. If you are not a computer expert, this OS is great, as it always has been, but if you are a computer expert, then now we have given you the ability to fully manipulate your computer" kind of thing. That's what Windows should do -- add powerusers to their marketshare (I mean real powerusers). Also, it isn't FLOSS (I just had to troll
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
if supposed early builds are to be believed... "Bloggers Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott, in a series of April postings on Rivera’s Within Windows blog, have described the various features of what they claim is an early build of Windows 8: an Office-style ribbon integrated into Windows Explorer, complete with tools for viewing libraries, manipulating images and managing drive assets; an unlock screen that harkens to the 'Metro' design style already present in Windows Phone 7; an 'immersive' user interface and a built-in PDF reader they call 'Modern Reader.'"
Northing here is about why it should be a cross-platform OS.
I may be kind of drunk right now, but I sure know when I read a bad summary!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
More changes for changes sake. I use Linux but I had to buy Win7 for testing. It is even more annoying than WinXP in so far as something small as the file manager in Win7. You can select the files, it tells you how many you selected, but it no longer says how many MB / GB of files you selected. It's stupid little things that Microsoft have take away that have made Win7 even more maddening for ex-WinXP users.
Why can't Microsoft just fix Windows first then worry about everything else?
I am glad I have a choice and stick with Linux and KDE4.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Is this outdated, insecure format still in use? I hope that much modern and better open XPS format will supersede PDF.
... basically, according to Thurrott and Rivera, Microsoft's "vision of the future of Windows" is - OS X?
#DeleteChrome
Office-style ribbon integrated into Windows Explorer
If it has this, it can get the hell out.
RIBBON IS AWFUL.
They say they created this crapfest of a UI for touchscreens, yet most of the stuff in it tends to be a clusterfuck anyway!
Not only that, it is usually inconsistent as well. Huge buttons for single features, like Bold, but then they add complex features in to tiny little buttons for god knows what reason.
No, an IDIOT designed Ribbon, then used that as an excuse for the huge stupid looking buttons.
Hopefully they will still allow for classic Windows theme as well, the one they added in Vista was terrible. The one they added in XP was terrible.
I don't want silly shiny buttons for the sake of being shiny. I don't want to use my god damn GPU to minimize a window.
Interfaces aren't more useful when they are constantly animating like in EVERY FILM EVER, it gets annoying real fast, more so when the interface has deliberate slowdowns for "aesthetics". No, just NO!
If nobody knows what I am talking of, I mean menus having delays because ~instant changes are daunting to people~. (not even joking, it is a paraphrase, but that was one reason)
Hopefully they got rid of whatever idiot designed the UI for Vis7a, they never had a damn clue.
They couldn't decide between touchscreen and desktop.
Maybe they should have TWO separate UI settings for both and stop crippling either of them. Touchscreen UIs are anti-desktop friendly, and vice versa. (unless your eyes are made of melons and you need a window in front of your eyes in order to see anything, in which case I would suggest laser surgery since it is really cheap now, safe, and works)
It is the most terrible difficult and unintuitive development in ui I have ever seen. Give me my damn menu's back, he'll I would prefer vi over ribbons.
It is even more annoying than WinXP in so far as something small as the file manager in Win7. You can select the files, it tells you how many you selected, but it no longer says how many MB / GB of files you selected.
Odd - mine shows the size of the selected files at the bottom. I'm running Win 7-64bit Ultimate.
Place nail here >+
Read what this popular blogger has repeatedly pointed out about Paul Thurott's talents and track record.
What a tool.
Just tested this on 32-bit Windows 7 -- it does indeed tell you the total size of files that you selected.
I think the ribbon is O-K. It's not fantastic (not the amazing revolution MS seems to think it is) but it's usable. I think it works OK in Office 07 at least. But... why in explorer? Explorer isn't complex enough to justify it. Office warranted it because it has oodles of menus and features. Explorer is comparatively simple though, which makes me think this is just overkill.
Please, give me oversized text that stretches off the screen so I can't read it - such a great feature of WM7!
the list of functionality sounds like a perfect recipe for absolutely every major software company under the sun to begin anti-trust lawsuits, to me. oh, and patent infringement cases, too...
This will be the last version that resembles a desktop OS, expect future offerings to be some sort of virtualized cloud offering.
But this is the company that has made Wordpad an unusably over-complex piece of garbage - and I say that even though Windows 7 is a vast improvement over XP; installed on my laptop because XP was giving up with too many programs open, and now all those programs run nicely together.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Does anybody apart from Microsoft, actually think the ribbon is a good thing? I would consider removing it to be a feature.
Apple is able to do this because they have a very lean core, and can scale back to just the items necessary to customize each version of OS X to the device it is running on (phone, pad, computer). I get the feeling this is simply a tablet interface tacked on top of the full windows install? I'm sure MS will market this as having a "real" OS or similar, but seems like it would lead to either bad battery life or bad performance. They are actually doing some nice work on the WP7 OS based on Zune, why not extend that upstream to tablets instead?
Replace your hard drive and\or memory. It is obviously defective.
Apple and Microsoft make us believe that the GUI defines the OS, oh well... I think the OS will become irrelevant. Why do so many computers still run an old system like XP? Because there's simply not enough need for "yet another great OS". It's the new hardware and slowly the newer software that drives the move to windows 7, while the recession slowed down investment in new hardware. But the time that you had all your information stored on a PC and maybe some backup drive, is becoming history. We don't want have our data and it's associated applications tight to one location. We want have it on the road, at home, everywhere. Which is why I think the "cloud computing" trend is real, and that means that the OS for many applications will become totally irrelevant.
They should get on with the program and scrap the pile of shit they call Windows and build something around the UNIX kernel and run legacy apps in VM like they virtualize XP now.
UNIX has won for pretty much anything from phone to big iron servers and only people who don't know better still use Windows in this day and age and willingly pay licenses (for Windows, SQL server and development tools) to their direct competitor (Microsoft) to stay in business (yeah I know, it sounds really dumb). Meanwhile everyone else that matters in post Microsoft world uses open OSes, leveraging their investment is stable APIs, great free tools and go on about innovating with the only cost being hardware and (usually smarter) people.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Out of the gate, they're already behind. That is, if this isn't just some pathetic attempt by Microsoft to drum up some stock interest with a paid blogger doing a PR puff piece.
.NET. It's something that Microsoft did very well. Unfortunately, in their effort to "be more like the other guys", I feel like they're abandoning a lot of the consistency of development between Windows apps, Windows web applications, and Windows mobile applications. They're still using ".NET technologies" to do things, but the basic design philosophies and approaches are getting really scattered and confusing, while .NET itself keeps jumping all over the place in basic application design philosophy with each new incarnation. They really need to find a few basic approaches to developing applications for their platforms and stick with them. Unless I'm using Silverlight as my standard, out of the box presentation layer for desktop applications as well as web applications...and that's all I'm doing from now on, then fine. But pick one approach and stick with it, you know?
Both iOS and webOS have made a lot of strides over the past few years. A big part of how they do things is user experience...Microsoft gets too geekily technical about some details, and the fact is, those details aren't as popular with the wider population than they'd like to admit. It's been the same story since Microsoft first ventured into the mobile space years ago.
Personally, I really, really like how fast and accurate the built in search is on webOS. I know a lot of other guys who left the platform and came back because once you get the bug, it's hard to give up. Especially if you figure out how to really use the platform well. Instead of swiping and scrolling through silly little screenspace consuming icons, you pull out the keyboard, type a couple letters, and it'll give you contacts, apps, you can mod it to do a wikipedia lookup, imdb, whatever. It's pretty sweet. It's like taking all the best things about a CLI and all the best things of the standard GUI and putting them all together. That's something, to me, I can deal with using 2 year old hardware on a day to day basis when I know there's better hardware out there...and I could even get it for free. And unless my provider would let me install webOS on that other phone and all my apps work, I'm not going to switch hardware. I'll duct tape my first gen Pre together if it comes down to it, and if that doesn't work, I'd be spending plenty of time trying to make it work on other hardware.
The reason I say all that is that if you're releasing a new mobile OS, you aren't going to "get me" to give up my apps, my preferred workflow, my cash, just to switch if you're playing catch-up. Just because you're Microsoft or Apple or Google doesn't impress me. Its whether or not your stuff does what I want, and if your software can't do it like I want, then either you pay me to use your stuff, or give me some features I can't live without. And no, I'm not going to switch just to "get" with a paid third party app something I already have well-integrated and free on my current platform of choice. Plus, it's all got to work well with what I currently have, or it's not happening. Not only that, but I stopped writing software for Windows Mobile about 3 years ago. You know what I really liked about it? It was a fairly powerful (if not a little quirky) platform to code for. I like
They should just make that work and release it :)
Microsoft has for so long depended on it's Windows monopoly for business and now that platforms that aren't Windows-required for regular people to want it are showing up (read not x86 PCs) they realized they have a lot of trouble competing regularly. The solution? "More Windows everywhere of course! It's how we know to play the game."
... before it is released. Once the software is released, it rarely lives up to the pre-release hype.
The Office Ribbon GUI is one of the worst GUI changes ever forced on a significant number of people.
--
make install -not war
We must enjoy our last few years before MS adds new "extensions" to PDF, which are of course in compatible with the rest of the PDF readers in the world, and integrate them into MS Office, making other PDF readers look bad, eventually breaking universal compatibility of PDF documents.
Who cares about windows or Microsoft anymore? Their time has come, and gone...
A true cross platform windows 8 would be brilliant. If you could run: MS Office, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint from your phone it would it would blow the Iphone out of the water, as well as any android phones. It would be incredibly doable with the next level of components coming out for smartphones.
If the phone had a slide out keyboard, a touchscreen, 64 GB of space, decent phone quality, and a decent camera, it would blow everyone else out of the water. It could work like windows, on almost ANY compatible phone. Software would fly out of the woodwork for it, the number of applications would dwarf anything you could get from another platform. What you purchased would work on your desktop and your phone, and could transition between them. Doing work on your phone, pausing it, and then continuing on your desktop or laptop could, in theory, happen seamlessly. They would make boatloads of money, and destroy android and the iphone. It would own the smartphone industry..
While many people find the inclusion of the Ribbon in Windows Explorer debatable, I don't think the Ribbon is a failed concept. It's excellent for its purpose, and that is to provide a) an accessible user experience for new users b) versatility for experienced users and c) swiftness for really experienced users.
Point a), given the intuitive interface, is more or less a given. Point b) is the most common source of disagreement among users, others say it hinders their ability to work and the others say it makes it easier, because they find features they have never seen before. The latter makes sense, as that was one of Ribbon's purposes. The former is a matter of getting used to, and in fact, I will elaborate on point c) in this regard. Point c) is about key bindings. Yes, key bindings.
I mostly do text editing and programming with vim. So I live and breathe keybindings. The Ribbon UI is designed to provide dynamic keybindings for everything. You simply press Alt and the keybindings will highlight above the buttons and tabs, highlighting subgroups dynamically as you go, sequencing tab groups. For example, in a hypothetical Ribbon program, if the 'Insert' (I) tab group had the subgroup 'Image' (M) and 'From File' (F), one would press Alt+I+M+F to access this option. This is extended to every control in the application, and it allows everything to be keybound, requiring no mouse input, which I find slows me down. So if anything, this will make using Windows Explorer faster for the experienced user, provided he is willing to learn keybindings (or just watch the labels).
Another strong point about the Ribbon is that it can be hidden. Towed away, able to be called back with a keybinding. Thus if one finds the Ribbon obtrusive in anything, one can effectively minimize it -- making any Ribbon UI more minimalist than its previous non-Ribbon incarnation!
So speaking as a "power user" of applications I, for one, find the addition of the Ribbon to Windows Explorer a pleasant surprise. While I do not feel its inclusion to be completely warranted--what does one need from a simple file manager anyway--it will make using the program a lot faster for someone used to having keybindings for everything. I'm sure most of you can relate to this sentiment.
If M$ plans to ditch the current interface and Windows Phone-ize the interface, it will be the most disruptive change in the business world since the adoption of the GUI.
Attractive as a cross platform OS might be, this isn't an OS that scales well. M$ has made a few mistakes in the past - Vista, ME, etc - let's hope M$ doesn't go the wrong way again. What will happen to the PC gaming industry?
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
Look this stuff is so obvious as hardly worth commenting on. As portable devices increase in power they can support a full scale OS like Windows. It makes no sense for MS to to keep Windows CE or its derivatives like the phone OS when normal Windows is ported to ARM hardware. If I were on the Windows CE team I would jump ship as fast as possible. As far as the UI goes Microsoft can knock one out every six months or so as easily. as Google.
I suspect OEMS will heavily customize the UI anyway. We are approaching the age where phones and tablets, like desktops today are commodity devices. Everyone will sell the same product at least as far as functionality is concerned. So lets skip these silly impassioned debates like is there a ribbon bar? or should the power button be on top or on the front and other trivialities.
Please, oh please, let there be a "classic" mode. At least provide it as an option, unlike the lack of choice in Office.
Cute feature list. Too bad my Linux machine does everything I need it for, at the cost of only the hardware. Microsoft has given me no reason to consider spending money when the free options fill my needs, from normal end-user stuff to web design and system administration.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
They don't need to make it even more crappy!
They've tried that by buying PC emulators, only to mess em up, I don't think them trying to rewrite their code would go much better.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
iOS has that kind of search as well. The search screen is the very left-most one, or you can push the home button twice in a row. Staying on an ancient phone to get search and run Web apps (which also run on iOS) is a little strange.
I can see how people could argue for the other potential problems you listed but how can you say there is a documentation problem. Windows comes with extensive help, they maintain online libraries of all products and API's. They reLly have three different sites of documentation between microsoft.com, technet, and msdn. Plus they have paid staff that answers questions in their forums. If you think documentation is lacking you haven't beeem reading it.
Microsoft, bringing their success in the cellphone market to the desktop...
Are they going to stick with naming Windows as a single confusing number? Windows 7 was NT 6.1, not NT 7 (look at the version when you open a command prompt).
Is Windows 8 going to be NT 6.2 or NT 7?
Actually, I *do* prefer vi (actually vim) over any other way to enter text.
Microsoft's next Windows could be...
I stopped reading right there. It could be a lot of things. I was expecting a more informative "going to be"
Windows 8 is a platform. How can it be "cross platform"? And how is iOS supposed to be "cross-platform"?
Are they saying that it supports multiple CPU types? Or are they saying that it supports multiple device types? Operating systems have done both for a long time.
Liking the Ribbon is well correlated with the dim-bulb crowd. No doubt it is a step backward from efficient menus and short-cut keys. But MS must keep the tier 2 providers like trainers happy and the tier 1 happy with massive upgrades. It is interesting that since the Mac has made material inroads into homes and biz there has not been the predicted support problem and real viruses. Just maybe the design is better at the core?
Good thing I'll be migrating my gaming PC to Linux after Windows 7. Then all my computers will run Linux.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
why build a tablet OS? Whatever happened to "Windows Everywhere", other than complete repudiation in the marketplace beyond the PC? MS cracks me up. In the last 2 years, they have announced several times that tablets don't matter, that they already do tablets, that their new tablet is due "later this year", that tablets are a fad, and that their new OS will be just like a tablet OS. Things look a little scrambled back at the Home Office, Balmer. Why don't you get your story straight then present your customers with a clear path to the future?
Sounds like a bunch of fiddly bullshit. I think i'll just use bash, thanks. There isn't anything power shell does that bash doesn't except live only on Windows.
Sure about that?
As far the other argument you've used saying what if the input or output of some command changes for bash, well, whoopdey do. I've been using bash for many years and I can't remember when last time a core utility changed and if it did, it would take what, 2 minutes to see what changed and just keep going? I think I can handle that every few years.
Yeah, and when your scripts you rely on for configuring a server farm (because it is all text based in config files) fails in a silent but subtle way and takes the farm down? When your script is executed on another system with another version or (more likely) with another system locale or even just other bash defaults?. When the sort order suddenly changes or when dates are parsed wrong due to time zone or locale settings? When you never anticipated that users may use non-printable characters in names, when columns are offset because of encoding mismatch.
Text serialization and re-parsing is brittle and error-prone. Passing along actual objects is superior to passing an error-prone text serialized format which is vulnerable to all kinds of external conditions.
The whole idea of using objects in the shell is just plain stupid and introduces unneeded complexity for very dubious benefit. No thanks.
You sure sounds really competent on the subject. Are you sure you know what an "object" is?
How about gnu screen? What does PS have as an answer to that?
Uhm. How about PowerShell ISE? Multiple sessions in multiple windows, even remote sessions.
But PS can do even better: How about being able to script multiple simultaneous sessions, coordinating execution of commands on several remote computers at once. Think GNU screen, only scriptable. Then you will *start* to grasp what PS has to offer in the multi-session, remoting department. Now add on the ability to also control *remote jobs* while still interacting with them and forwarding *remote events*. Not that I believe you will grasp those concepts at all.
That's what I thought.
No, that was what you hoped for. In your ignorance you equate your own incompetence with product weakness. Guess what, just because *you* don't know about a feature doesn't mean that it cannot be there. I suggest you work on this, otherwise you will have a problem keeping up with the tech business as it moves forward.
You click and droolers have a long way to go to get to Unix status. See you at the top.
Mature.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
performance - in what way is Windows 7/Server 2k8R2 slow?
Server seems fine, but Windows 7 is a PIG if you are actually doing anything. As soon as your process allocates most of the available memory all of Window's fat UI stuff keep the system paging things in and out like crazy! There are ways fix it, but the system is not configured that way out of the box and all in all its harder to make the system behave well than it was are XPSp2+, most Linux distributions and OS X.
efficient usage of system resources = How does 7/R2 fail to use systems resources in a efficient way?
See above
stability - I can't seam to get my systems to have stability issues, how do I reproduce this?
Fair enough its solid
file system - What is wrong with NTFS as implemented by 7/R2?
Nothing is wrong with it
decouple GUI from core - Has already been done. Server Core
AHAHAH you are kidding right! You realize all that happens is the shell is set to cmd.exe, well ok a few other things happen but for the most part that is it, all the GDI and every all component of the GUI layer is still there. They big difference is they have command line utilities now that enable you to get all the settings you would needed the Explorer shell for previously.
decouple apps from core - Which apps?
???
simple remote access - RDP and other methods are already built in.
check
get rid of the sick registry - In what way is it sick?
Its opaque mainly; and the efficiency gains of a binary configuration storage system don't make sense on modern machines. Even MS knows this hence DotNets aggressive encouragement of storing things in app.conf XML files.
customization - In what ways?
no real problems here honestly
documentation - What needs to be improved?
I have to agree here to, Windows is probably the best document platform in existence.
adhere to common open standards - Which standards?
They have been improving at this to the point its not an issue anymore
lower hardware requirements - It can run on very expensive systems. Exactly how low are you talking about?
There is NO good reason why client windows can't run on an Netbook with a gig of ram, but it won't comfortably at all. Again Its mostly the shell.
better modularization - Explain this please.
who knows what the poster was thinking
remove unneeded services/bloatware - Which ones are you talking about?
I think more should be OFF by default
provide a powerful shell - Powershell
enhance security/permission features - Example?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html