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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.

46 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Haha by ArchieBunker · · Score: 5, Funny

    You mean like this? https://d2.alternativeto.net/d...

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    1. Re:Haha by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Hmm..sounds like the new "ribbons".....bleh!!!

      --
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    2. Re:Haha by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      More like multiple desktops, which I thought Windows 10 was supposed to support anyway. Every free desktop certainly does.

      Multiple desktops sounds better than this in every way. Just needs some updates to better support multiple monitors and it would be perfect.

      --
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    3. Re:Haha by sproketboy · · Score: 2

      That looks better than what they show now.

    4. Re:Haha by Rob+Y. · · Score: 5, Informative

      Or like 'Activities' in KDE, which is like multiple desktops - but much more. So much more that nobody understands it or uses it. But hey, it's really powerful. Too bad I only use my KDE-based system to browse the Internet.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    5. Re:Haha by sconeu · · Score: 2

      Was I the only one who liked the 3.1 "Program Manager" feature? I used to group all my docs/applications/etc... into one program group per project.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  2. WTF? by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 2

    Is this going to be the MS version of Gnome 3?

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

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

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    2. Re:WTF? by Entropius · · Score: 4, Funny

      INTERN~1 was easily the worst browser of its era...

  3. Or in other words... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft wants to turn Windows 10 into Chrome OS.

    I wonder what the pro-Microsoft, anti-Chrome fanboys will say about that?

  4. 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.

    1. Re:Reinventing the Taskbar by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      Comparing Linux/Unix X windows work spaces with Win10 workspaces is patently unfair. Win10 workspace has absolutely no customization, no discernable different between work spaces. Does not have "sticky" windows. Can not relocate a window from one work space to another.

      Back in 1994 when I got my first HP-UX, I set it up with SIX work spaces, each with its own wall paper, its own name. The sticky dock at the bottom would let me switch to any desktop directly without cycling through all desktops.

      I am currently using some ancient window manager xfwm that has more ability and customization and fast response than win10.

      Win10 workspaces is the perfect example of too little too late.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    2. Re:Reinventing the Taskbar by omnichad · · Score: 2

      Like a phone? More like their own history. The whole reason they named it "Windows" is because of the ability to have better multi-tasking relative to DOS.

    3. Re:Reinventing the Taskbar by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Informative

      Can not relocate a window from one work space to another.

      That one is untrue. Hit Windows+Tab then you can drag whichever application to and from whatever workspace you wish.

      The sticky dock at the bottom would let me switch to any desktop directly without cycling through all desktops.

      Not sure why that's relevant, hitting the Windows+Tab button brings up a list of the desktops, you don't need to cycle anything, just click the one you want. You even have a live preview of it.

      Win10 workspaces is the perfect example of too little too late.

      Actually windows 10 workspaces is a perfect example of a little bit to appease a few. It's not heavily advertised, not heavily featured, and by-n-large not at all missed by the majority of non-windows 10 users, not to mentioned not actually used by the majority of windows 10 users either.

      To be honest I've never seen the appeal. Though at one stage I was doing some work that was benefiting from the idea of having two setup discrete work spaces, so I bought a second monitor and never looked back.

    4. Re:Reinventing the Taskbar by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Informative
      I understand you don't need it, most casual users wont need it.

      I have two full hd monitors. In win10, I maintain six work spaces. One running full screen remote desk top on a windows server. Two more running full screen sessions on two linux servers. Then one work space for development, code editing, running consoles. One more to run the regression suites and the validation scripts. Then the main one for browsing and internet and email and presentations

      The desktop is 128 GB, 32 core machine. Two of the servers are 256GB 32 core machines. The last linux server is 1TB memory 40 physical, not logical, processors. Every pull request I approve takes about 600 processor hours of certification testing.

      By the way, each of the full screen sessions on linux servers run the four work spaces, each work space is 3940 x 1080 pixel. I use the equivalent of 24 screens each 1920 x 1080.

      Very few people use as much screen as I use. Very few people are willing to pay as much as I am willing to pay. I will pay top dollar and defray your development costs. Then you can sell the technology to every one else for pure profit.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    5. Re:Reinventing the Taskbar by LazyBoot · · Score: 2

      Does not have "sticky" windows. Can not relocate a window from one work space to another

      What would you call this then?
      https://imgur.com/sT5mxZA

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

    ...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.
    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.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    2. Re:From the people... by SeaFox · · Score: 2

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

      And even better, since it will be part of Windows 10 you're already on track to receive it -- as part of those updates you can't decline like you could before.

    3. Re:From the people... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2

      It looks like you're trying to mock Microsoft. Would you like help with that?

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  6. Reinventing the wheel? by Locke2005 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
    1. 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.

  7. Can they let me move the tabs to the bottom? by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Funny

    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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    1. Re:Can they let me move the tabs to the bottom? by apoc.famine · · Score: 4, Funny

      A major issue is that current aspect ratios make vertical space really valuable. Get my tabs and toolbars off the top and bottom of the screen and put them on the side, so I have more vertical space to work with.

      Monitors are already far too wide to comfortably read edge-to-edge text. Use that wasted space and give me a few more lines vertically! That'd be innovative! (Cough, ubuntu, cough.)

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
  8. Future of Windows 10 is iOS and Android by JoeyRox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With Windows 10 relegated to business and engineering-only roles.

    1. Re:Future of Windows 10 is iOS and Android by tepples · · Score: 2

      I thought the home "desktop" was becoming a tablet running a smartphone operating system with a Bluetooth keyboard. Or at least that's how it appears in a couple Discord servers I'm in, where a few regular users rely on help from others and cannot experience PC games because they rarely if ever have access to a PC.

  9. 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
  10. 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.

  11. You know... by NecroPuppy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.)

    --
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    1. Re:You know... by PhantomHarlock · · Score: 2

      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.)

      Heh, that'd be me. I'm running Win 7 with the windows classic theme. I've found that almost nothing they've added since XP has added to my productivity, except optimizations under the hood. I have a double-height taskbar with quicklaunch icons across the top row, two monitors and all is good.

  12. Hasn't this already been invented already? by Entropius · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  13. Welcome to OS/2 WARP by ArhcAngel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Welcome to OS/2 WARP by RoccamOccam · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The article mentions that the feature is very similar to Groupy which is now part of Stardock's Object Desktop. You may recall that Object Desktop started as a pretty successful attempt to bring the OS/2 Warp object desktop to Windows.

  14. Re:... the context an Edge tab provided ... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... when the fuck did that ever happen?

    Once, when it showed me this: Download Firefox

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  15. KDE Activities by StormReaver · · Score: 3, Informative

    This sounds a lot like KDE's Activities.

  16. 2560x1080 by nctritech · · Score: 4, Funny

    I did not buy a fucking 2560x1080 monitor to have one thing on the screen at all times. Go back to Mars, Microsoft.

  17. nice for desk jockeys, by swell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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...
  18. A bunch of haters... by werepants · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:A bunch of haters... by werepants · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's called "Desktops" and the *nix world has had this for ages.

      No, it isn't. Yes, I could keep a whole set of programs running on one desktop, and a different set on a different desktop. But that's not as useful as what I'm talking about. And, for what it's worth, I mainly develop in RHEL.

      What I want is almost more like a VM snapshot. Configure a state exactly, including all the applications and their positions in windows, and be able to shut it down or recall it with a single click. It's different than a desktop because it isn't a bunch of applications that are just sitting idle out of sight, and it's something that you can bring up easily after shutting the computer down, or when you haven't worked on a project for 6 months. It's different than a VM because you only want to recall the state of the workspace, not the state of the actual files, and an entire new VM is way overpowered for what this is.

      It sounds like KDE Activities are kind of like this. Some IDEs offer similar functionality in the way they manage projects or workspaces. But it really ought to be an overall paradigm for the OS itself.

  19. Ah, the mating cry of the "UX expert" by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Funny

    "You know how to use it! We have to change that immediately!"

    1. Re:Ah, the mating cry of the "UX expert" by IMightB · · Score: 2

      Ha, Back in my day, we used to call the "W00t W00t" call, the mating call for sorority girls.

      Now that I'm over 40, I think that I like your's better.

  20. Windows has a tabbed interface... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 2

    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.

  21. Optional by denbesten · · Score: 2, Informative

    TFA clearly states that this will be an optional feature.

    1. Re:Optional by sconeu · · Score: 2

      TFA clearly states that this will be an optional feature

      Until it isn't.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    2. Re:Optional by markdavis · · Score: 2

      >"TFA clearly states that this will be an optional feature."

      Until it isn't...

      Kinda like the "optional" tabs-on-top in Firefox, which then became the default but you could easily switch it back with a simple/visible setting, which they then hid the control reversion in about:config, which they then later completely disabled, which we could work around with an add-on, which was then broken in 57, which we could then use a mess of external config files to get back..... whew. I know we are talking about Microsoft and not Mozilla, but the point is the same with the "UI Nazis" they get an idea in their head and despite HUGE opposition (like the stupid phone interface in MS-Windows 8) they keep on trying to force it down our throats, year after year, making it harder and harder. Most people finally give up.

      Or like the concepts of updates being optional...

  22. Smartphone / Tablet analogy by DrYak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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