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Microsoft Sees the Future of Windows 10 as Sets, Ditching Windows For a Tabbed App Interface (pcworld.com)

Posted by msmash on from the up-next dept.

Microsoft said Tuesday that it plans to overhaul Windows 10, with a browser-like, tabbed application view dubbed "Sets" that groups apps and files by project. From a report: Think of Sets as a mashup of existing and emerging Windows 10 technologies. Take Windows Explorer and the little-used Task View within Windows 10, mix in the newer "Pick up where you left off" and "Timeline" features, and wrap it all into a single-window experience. The idea is that every task requires a set of apps -- Mail, a browser, PowerPoint, even Win32 apps like Photoshop -- and those apps will be optionally organized as tabs along a single window. But that's not all. Microsoft knows that one of the most difficult things to remember isn't what you were working on a week or so ago -- browser histories help with that. It's remembering all of the associated apps and documents that went with it: a particular PowerPoint document, that budget spreadsheet, the context an Edge tab provided. The idea is that the delayed Timeline feature will eventually group and associate all of these into a Set, so that when you open one, Windows will suggest the others, too.

7 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Re:WTF? by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It sounds to me like they want to turn everything into a browser.

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    Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
  2. Reinventing the Taskbar by tepples · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From a caption in the featured article:

    This is the traditional (and effective) way of working with multiple documents within Windows 10: Snap View. Sets would slim this down to just one window.

    I'm not sure how cutting this down to one window would help. If I'm reading a document and taking notes on what I read, I want to have the document and my notes and side by side, each in a 960-pixel-wide window on my 1920-pixel-wide PC monitor. So unless Sets offers a similar option for a side-by-side view, I don't see how I could adjust myself to its workflow.

    Essentially, Microsoft is reworking the Desktop Windows Manager within Windows 10 to enable app switching via tabs, versus more traditional windows.

    I thought Windows already had that since Windows 95 and Windows NT 4, and it was called the Taskbar. Keeping a particular task's windows together is part of multiple virtual desktops, which GNU/Linux has had for well over a decade and Windows recently gained.

  3. From the people... by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...who brought you the Ribbon. And Windows 8's "Tablet interface for desktops".

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    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    1. Re:From the people... by CaptainDork · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This.

      The first thing people do is go for the old Windows 7 desktop look and feel.

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      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  4. iPadification by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's funny how iPadificaton of the desktop OS seems to be a threat constantly looming over the Mac, yet always lands on Windows...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  5. Dumbing down for the lowest-common denominator by sremick · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because people apparently are too stupid to handle "windows" and can't handle seeing more than one app at once?

    R.I.P. productivity. At least for businesses. There's a reason I kicked Windows off my workstations at home 15+ years ago and have been running FreeBSD (yes) and Linux ever since.

  6. Re:Reinventing the wheel? by Entropius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, because it's already been in use for 20 years, and thus can't be a Bold New Thing for some team at Microsoft that needs to justify its existence to management.