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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.

21 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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      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    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 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.

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      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
  2. 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!
  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.

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      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    2. 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.

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      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  5. 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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    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.
  6. 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.)

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      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
  7. 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...

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    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. Re:WTF? by Entropius · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  11. 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
  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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!"