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Microsoft Sees the Future of Windows 10 as Sets, Ditching Windows For a Tabbed App Interface (pcworld.com)
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.
You mean like this? https://d2.alternativeto.net/d...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Is this going to be the MS version of Gnome 3?
Subject sums up my thoughts.
Microsoft wants to turn Windows 10 into Chrome OS.
I wonder what the pro-Microsoft, anti-Chrome fanboys will say about that?
No. Just no. Trying to do this "task-based" B$ is not what's needed for "real work". Kiosks, sure. Users who just do one thing, sure. Real users that do real work though? Hell no.
From a caption in the featured article:
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.
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.
They have designed since Windows 7 we can expect it to be an epic fail.
All our taste testing and focus groups agree, people like New Coke better! Pepsi won't keep eating our lunch once we release this tasty masterpiece! Everyone will love it, and surely no one will complain, we just can't go wrong with this new direction.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
...who brought you the Ribbon. And Windows 8's "Tablet interface for desktops".
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Isn't the task bar already functionally equivalent to a tabbed view of apps?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Maybe let me customize the tab bar with some quick access buttons. Make one of the icons the Windows logo. Then put a clock on the bar, and make it blue. And add some more quick access icons next to the clock. Oh, and make all the tabs icons so I can fit a lot of them on the screen. It'll really be the future.
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With Windows 10 relegated to business and engineering-only roles.
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
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.
I recognize that this is probably (long term) a good (or at least not bad) design decision.
I can already picture how it's going to make certain aspects of dealing with tons of projects easier...
But I can't say that I'm going to enjoy all the tech assist calls I'll have to deal with, from my coworkers who just want it to look / work like Windows 7 - some of which are the same people who just wanted Windows 7 to look/work like XP. (And also hated the Office ribbon.)
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
... when the fuck did that ever happen?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I really thought it was April Fools already, then I realized it was Microsoft we are talking about.
I mean... ... I have different directories for different things, and I know what programs (not "apps", fuck you) go with which files by the letters that come after the little dot in the filename that Windows, in all of its magnificent idiocy-provoking glory, doesn't even bother to show you. It doesn't take a massive amount of intellect to realize that filename.jpg is probably a picture, and that you can app it with whatever apps your appy ass apps appy pictures with. Apps!
(Where is app luddite guy? I admit I only opened the comments here to see what that guy had written.)
Why not stop trying to come up with radical new shapes for wheels ("I know! Maybe pentagons!") and focus on making their software not suck?
Great for managers and office drones creating yet another Powerpoint document explaining why sales are off by 10%. Welcome to the future of computing.
Or Gnome 3? What in the hell are they thinking?
OS/2 had a task folder option that let you create a folder on the desktop and drop shortcuts of any apps or files you wanted to open when that folder opened. This sounds like they are going to merge the ChromeOS desktop with OS/2 task folders.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I for one hate, Hate, HATE full screen applications! I currently have 7 programs running with 8 windows, on 2 screens and I can see at least part of all of them. This makes switching between application windows quick and easy, without having to run the mouse down to the task bar every time I need a different window.
More change for the sake of change I think.
Good thing I gave up on Windows years ago, so I don't have to deal with this stupidity.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
Except if they are replacing windows with tabs, shouldn't they start calling Microsoft Tabs?
Which would probably run afoul of Samsung's trademarks... but I'm just sayin'...
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Real users that do real work
Those users shouldn't use Windows in the first place.
Other than Windows, which operating system is included with laptop PCs from multiple manufacturers shown in major U.S. electronics showroom chains? Because System76 laptops aren't in showrooms, I can't try the keyboard and display before buying. And unlike with desktop PCs, negligibly few individuals build their own laptop from parts.
Or did you mean MacBook?
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.
Let's take a bunch of thing, including one no one uses, and put them all together, so you can work the way we think you should.
It's remembering all of the associated apps and documents that went with it:
Which is why we already have (sub) folders.
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.
There's nothing about that sentence that I like. Don't care about Timeline and have not *ever* wanted Windows to "suggest" things or liked it when it did. Didn't Microsoft learn anything from Clippy?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Oh! sorry copy pasted from the older report from Microsoft's paid shill Gartner. Please wait while I rummage through the ribbon interface on uncustomizable workspaces to find the latest report it asked Gartner to write.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Are people really getting so goddamned dumb that this is all they think they can handle? Dumbing it down to a preschool level?
Still beta then?
(to add some more to the discussion: I want my OS to be stable, functional, get the hell of the way so I can do my work with the applications, you know, the things that make a PC useful, and more importantly, not to change UI every release. The constant change to Win10 is just one of the *many* reasons I will not consider it as a proper OS, you never know when you're going to wake up to an entirely new UI from the night before.)
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
So, Microsoft again tries to sell their user base on full screen applications. "Oh, we didn't make it appealing enough in Windows 8. We'll make it natter at the users while they're trying to get work done. You know, remember Clippy? They'll love it."
Reading the description, it looks like Windows will become something like One Note All The Time.
It also kinda reminds me of CRT terminals with job control.
But we will see. I'm somewhat forced to use either Windows or Apple, because those are the platforms for Adobe CC. The Apple culture is really not a good fit for me; I don't like the idea of disposable computers. Maybe it's time to give Adobe the axe and go Linux full time.
Really, Windows 10 is... usable. Why can't they just leave it the hell alone? Maybe write applications instead?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Microsoft imposes their conception of what I use a computer for on me, once again.
I'd never want more than one window open, and why would I need more than one monitor?
Just like I'd never reference data in one window and use it to create something in another. Or view a schematic while ordering parts.
Rule #1 of user interface design: "If it works, don't fix it!"
This sounds a lot like KDE's Activities.
They want to repeat the Windows 8 fiasco so soon?
I have a 4 core processor with 8 threads, 32 GB of memory and two displays. I typically have 8 apps open at a time and upwards of a dozen tabs on my browser. My desktop is clean, my apps are in my task bar, and most are assigned to hot keys. It all works fine. Stop messing with me.
I am a user that has to see multiple apps at a time. I often have four apps visible on my two displays using side by side positioning. Quickly switching between them provides me nothing. They need to all be in front of my eyes. If I need to work with more, I'll get more monitors.
Why can't they find other ways to innovate?
My main computer interface right now is actually the Google Assistant. My Google Homes, phones, and chromecast devices control much of my home. After years upon years of wishing that Microsoft would support multiple sound (with separate volume controls), video, and other devices simultaneously from my PC without wires so that I could just have the computer directly control all of my environment, Google did an end-run on them. Now that the majority of my devices are handled by the assistant, all I need is a good service to be offered that either allows the Google Assistant to run on and control my PC or adds my PC to the network as a Google Assistant compatible device with a rich set of commands. Oh, and I need to be able to cast to my PC, not just from it.
It makes me wonder where they think they are going to go with AR. AR needs to replace the desktop. I should be able to call virtual devices into existence in my environment and control them with my voice. Google Assistant is ready to do that - just add services. Cortana is not.
You have to wonder who's running the UIX division of Windows. Windows 8 was an unmitigated disaster. They tried to force feed a mobile interface on to the world of desktops, to predictable results. Absolutely no one was surprised by the blowback they got ( well, except the shills of course, and they were paid to be surprised ).
Now this?
I'm kinda get the impression they're willingly trying to destroy their desktop dominance.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I did not buy a fucking 2560x1080 monitor to have one thing on the screen at all times. Go back to Mars, Microsoft.
like bookkeepers who work on spreadsheets all day or news reporters who use Word all day. What about real people juggling a variety of tasks including programming, photo manipulation, ecommerce and playing music? They'll have dozens of programs running where only a handful would do.
This is a solution in search of a problem ... which doesn't exist.
...omphaloskepsis often...
This time via Compaq
It does, hit win-tab and it is part of that interface.
Apparently
Didn't we try to teach them with metro that having everything running as full screen Windows is bad, that sometimes we want to be able to display multiple windows side by side at once? Even Android has the ability to show two apps at once now. MS please stop trying to go backwards.
Leaving iOS and Android with people who play games and watch videos on their devices? Is that a bad thing?
It's not a bad thing for point-and-click games. It's a bad thing for games that aren't point-and-click.
Games need to work on the device's stock input device in order to sell well. But the vast majority of iOS and Android devices have the touch screen and accelerometer as the only inputs usable by the application, and many genres aren't amenable to touch-only control. The devices themselves have buttons, but all are reserved for system features, such as application switching, sleep, and speaker volume control. So developers of games for iOS and Android have to adapt their games' control schemes to the touch screen in ways that often feel impractical. In my testing of two Android applications with on-screen gamepads (the Nesoid emulator and the free version of Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure), I kept making errors because without tactile edges to help me line up my thumb over the buttons, I ended up accidentally pressing the wrong one or pressing outside the active area of any button.
What ends up happening is that developers severely cut down the gameplay complexity in order to fit the limits of a touch screen. A platformer might get turned into a continuous runner, such as Rayman Jungle Run or Super Mario Run, losing exploration elements that had previously been keystones of other games in the series. I don't see how, say, an Igavania such as Super Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night could be ported without severe compromise to the essential character of the franchise.
I don't get why Microsoft keeps wanting to change Windows into something that's not windows. That's the whole appeal of the OS. They bombed hard the last time they tried this, I'm not sure why they're bothering with another disaster like that one.
I love to bash MS as much as the next guy, but this actually sounds like it could be useful. If you do any kind of real work on a computer, in terms of programming, or designing, or even writing and excel analysis tasks, you can probably appreciate how long it takes to get a setup configured to really get things done. At my job I have a couple possible coding setups, depending on which projects I'm working on. I also have a couple setups for data analysis work, again depending on the project. It takes time to pull up the right reference documents, arrange windows, configure things...
It would be a damn cool OS feature to remember all the documents and applications I have up, where they are arranged, and allow me to take a "snapshot" when it is all ready to go. Next time I need to work on the same project, refer back to the snapshot, and I can be working instantly.
To the extent that they are trying to provide that level of functionality, I'm interested. To the extent that they are trying to change the task bar to tabs just for the sake of change, this will be stupid.
"You know how to use it! We have to change that immediately!"
A lot of employees spend their whole day dealing with emails, and do so from within a web based interface. If they're not replying to emails, they're looking up information in browser-delivered applications.
Wouldn't they need the information that they are "looking up [...] in browser-delivered applications" in order to compose the emails that they write "within a web based interface"? If so, how does it help the employee's workflow to hide the "looking up" browser window when the email composition browser window is visible or vice versa, rather than letting the employee open the two browser windows side-by-side?
Windows has a tabbed interface -- the tabs are just on the bottom of the screen, in the taskbar. Windowing has a lot of advantages -- you can choose how much real estate each program uses and use more than one at a time on a large screen.
This looks like another attempt at pushing Windows 8's failed interface on the public.
TFA clearly states that this will be an optional feature.
the extra $50-$100 on a monitor with tilt?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TabWorks/
Did they learn nothing from the Windows 8 debacle?
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I guess its going to be easier for Microsoft to receive data and probably to do with legal issues as well. The amount of data that Microsoft receives from Windows 10 is just insane. With this type of change I like I said, it could be easier and probably even more legal and such. Not an expert but We'll see with the changes in their licence over time.
I might buy the notion that journalists are a figment of my imagination, especially after the last election. But bookkeepers? Consider my mind blown.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Just say no Kids.
If we don't buy it they can't force it on us....
We can't depend on Generation Z to fix everything as we slip into our coffins...
End of Line.
I'm sick to death of the creeping virus that is the term "app". This abbreviation should be reserved for toy software that costs at most $1.99.
Call your software an "Application", "Program", or "Software". It will be taken more seriously, and if relevant for your distribution model, you'll be able to charge more for it.
I've even seen options making up a 5-figure CAD system referred to as "apps" by marketing people. No. They're "Modules", or "Components". This is professional software and you should treat it as such.
By at least your keyboard isn't as cramped
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Essentially, Microsoft is reworking the Desktop Windows Manager within Windows 10 to enable app switching via tabs, versus more traditional windows.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Great. How about if you stop destroying all that state with sneaky reboots whenever the user goes afk?
Requiem for the American Dream
I already really hate in-browser applications due to the tabs.. so nope..
Or like the "hand of cards" metaphore that Palm/HP's WebOS 2.x on top of the existing "deck of cards".
(individual windows - "cards" in webos but basically tabs - could freely be grouped together in small groups.
Not necessarily by apps. You could put a e-mail writing tab and a webpage that you need to reference next to each other in the same hand.)
In my opinion, that used to be the best ever handling of two-level multi-tasking (i.e: different apps with each different tabs within), much better to what is currently done on smartphone (most of which have taken up the apps-as-cards approach (see apps switching and specially closing-by-flinging on Android ans iOS). But then each app has its own personal way to handle tabs (see tabs in Safari - its a completely different mechanism).
The closest would be how you could mix tabs in browser, if all you apps were webapps (e.g.: using Office 365 to edit online, and Gmail to compose a mail. And putting both in tabs next to each other in the same windows).
Windows seems aiming to recreate this.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I love Fluxbox on Linux, this will be a good feature on Windows! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Anyone remember the whole "browser as an interface" fiasco from the 90's?
This evokes that, or maybe just ChromeOS.
If I could have custom-created workspaces (or Sets, whatever) spread across multiple virtual desktops, that would be great.
It needs keyboard navigation though. Since Ctrl+Tab, SHIFT+Tab, Alt+Tab, and Win+Tab are already taken, it will need some other easily accessible hotkey combo or it will be disappointing.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Anyone remember active desktop on Windows98 ?? No one used it. We all disabled it. Happy that I have 23 years of first hand Linux experience. To Microsoft: You do... Whatever you do! (I am done with you)
It would be a damn cool OS feature to remember all the documents and applications I have up, where they are arranged, and allow me to take a "snapshot" when it is all ready to go.
In windows, it's called "Hibernate".
Go to where ever windows put the shutdown UI and click on it. There should be a few popup options, Switch user, Log off, Lock, Restart, Sleep and "Hibernate". If you don't see the option, go to power settings and advances power option. Turn off Allow hybrid sleep. In newer windows you might also need to turn on showing that option in the power options menu.
"Hibernate" hibernates your pc with everything you've opened. Upon booting up, it restore all the documents and applications you have up at the time. Unlike 'Sleep' once you've power down, you can disconnect your pc from power until you power it up again.
Hibernate is also the technology Windows 8+ uses to boot faster, since it never truly did real startup from fresh.
Back to topic, MS already have a solution to their problem, but I can guess that they are still planning to create something meaningless. Just like the Metro menu which if you look closer, is just the desktop with bigger icons. They could have just improved the desktop, but no they decided to create yet another desktop and called it the start menu. You can probably guess what they will do with the "single-window experience".
with a new hat.
Please?
Microsoft, people will love it! I promise.
It'll be innovative! You can even re-release all the old video games from that time period!
This could mean that the year of the Linux desktop is finally coming.
Yah that was my first thought to. Problem with KDE was the complete fuckup the devs made of explaining and implementing it. I suspect even most of the devs had no idea what they were meant to be. I really tried with activities, but as with most cool KDE features it was never fully implemented, what was implemented was half assed, buggy, undocumented and eventually abandoned.
I have more faith in MS actually making something out of this, from the demo they already seem to have it clearly defined and usable. I just hope it will include non-ms apps, I need to be able to use firefox and thunderbird with this.
When your apps become tabs, everything lives in the browser.
And quickly becomes a web 'app'.
And you don't even own the disk image.
You don't own any of it.
Conversion to web everything is an excellent business model for the personal computer industry. Web-based (cloud) everything lets you upgrade your PC with the trivial effort of logging on to the new one, and the old one lets the data go when it is dormant long enough or, more likely, when a new owner takes it over.
And subscriptions solve the revenue model question. MS Office 2003 is more than good enough for me, and I have licensed versions that I can still run, but eventually that fails. then I get to buy whatever version is current despite adding zero value for me, or I go Open Source. At work of course, we are on the treadmill.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Personally I love hierarchical tab sidebars - I routinely have a dozen or more sites open as I refer between them, and a nice wide sidebar lets me read enough of the title to (usually) tell them apart. All those tabs are also handy for loading my morning "newspaper", so I can get 30+ bookmarks loading simultaneously in the background while I'm reading one using "open all in tabs" - one click to get everything I want to read pre-loaded and waiting for me.
And frankly I've been using "vertical tabs" since I realized I could move the Windows 95 task bar to the edge of the screen - why waste precious vertical space when I've got so much more horizontal space than I need? The best sidebar I've ever found though has got to be the XFCE panel, which allows for rotated "book spine" window tabs on a sidebar, allowing for nice long fully readable titles while consuming a minimum of screen real estate - as though you had taken a multi-row Windows XP taskbar and just rotated it 90 degrees instead of keeping the text horizontal. I liked it well enough that when I went back to Ubuntu I happily replaced their sidebar with it (what can I say, I really like Ubuntu's overall level of polish and compatibility, and it's easy enough to hide their useless abomination of a sidebar and replace it with something far better.)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Microsoft is trying to be creative in their usual way, by creating nothing new and actually making things more complicated for the end user, especially ones used to Windows, which is quite a lot of them. I've learned years ago, when they released Windows 7, that they are just a corporation with corporative mind, which never works well and it's just going to get worse. I was right - there comes Windows 8. That was the time when I decided it's over for me and MS relationship. Since then I'm happily running Debian with Mint and I won't go back. If I need something that only WIndows can do, I can always run a virtual machine, or install Windows on the other hard disk. If you want the peace of mind, ditch Windows. Happiness achieved. No corporation should have such control over an OS that everybody use on the desktop and laptop anyway. It's the kind of control that only people themselves should have, open source all the way. I want to be in control of what happens on my computer. Total control. Only a dumbarse will let a corporation like MS control it.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Strong, powerful, well trained, but so timid it took them a whole hour after finding Paddock to breach his room. Come on MS, people are dying out there. What's wrong? Can't find your special SWAT panties? Make the OS with a VR-only 3d UI, pupil tracking, keyboardless, voice and gesture controlled. Grow some balls.