The first rule of good user interface design is to be consistant. Not always. First rule is having an interface that FITS the program. Forcing an interface to be consistent against what may be a better fitting design is silly.
If you're relying on the government to rescue you from a natural disaster, you're making a huge mistake. We don't live in a country where the government is expected to wipe the ass of all its citizens. When there's a category 5 hurricane barring down on you, you get the hell out of there. People leaving the city and not just sitting there would have prevented much of the loss of life. Sure a few people here and there didn't have the means to leave, but surely if everyone who could have left had evacuated beforehand, overwhelming all the emergency services would have been avoided. Oh and looting and sniping doctors doesn't help much either.
Using boats to rescue people? Where are you going to get the boats from? Boats are slow and they'd have to be brought in from far away. An area the size of a small country just got leveled after all.
We were expecting a hurricane but instead ended up with broken levees, massive anarachy, a total communications breakdown, etc. NO ONE knew the scope of this disaster until it was too late.
It's sad that people with mod points don't realize how right you are. Let's think here: UNIX (1969) NT (1989, based on latest OS research) Really, in terms of internal architecture there's no contest.
Microsoft left because they wanted to go in a completely different direction, see Direct3D 10.
First place, the OpenGL->D3D translation is only relavent when running in windowed mode, the desktop compositing shuts off when a program is running fullscreen and gets exclusive video access.
Secondly, hardware vendors can still put out OpenGL ICDs as usual in Vista. What's stopping them from replacing the Microsoft provided driver? I can't read the article because it was Slashdotted after first 5 seconds but if it says anything to the contrary its wrong. From the looks of the URL it's probably some random guy blasting Microsoft on a message board without knowing the facts.
And it is a technical decision to wrap OpenGL using Direct3D. Anybody who knows shit about them can figure out why a translator is necessary. The framebuffer formats are completely different between OGL and D3D. You can't have OpenGL rendering to a Direct3D target. It's just, not possible.
I'm running the Vista beta, and I've investigated the OpenGL translator myself. I've had no issues running OpenGL apps in a composited window including my own software. Performance is poor but it's just as slow as Direct3D with the alpha video drivers.
Aero Glass requires LDDM drivers to work. All the LDDM drivers available now are in very early alpha stages and lack OpenGL support or any optimizations for that matter.
Vista actually IMPROVES performance significantly over the generic OpenGL driver that ships with Windows. Before it was a software driver and got something like 2 frames per second. Now it's implemented on hardware using Direct3D. Microsoft has always been a supporter of OpenGL, it's been shipped with every version of Windows thus far. There's also a billion technical reasons why they needed to wrap OpenGL on Direct3D as well.
You make some good points but let me just point out a few things. They've now got an OS thats mostly feature-complete minus a few client features and over a year to work on the UI. Again, there are many UI changes planned for versions past this beta, I'm sorry but I can't talk about specific planned features but there's a lot to be done. And I'm sure you can turn off the effects that you don't like.
As for D3D and OpenGL, remember Microsoft left the OpenGL board a few years ago because "they were going in a different direction." And in the next D3D version on Longhorn you see it's pretty true with the whole unified shading model thing.
As for kernel improvements, remember NT has been around since the 80s. They made decisions back then because of hardware limitations that don't necessarily apply today.
I think you misunderstood me with the single binary deal. It's not actually a machine-independent binary, I mean they moved all the strings outside the binary so you have a single language neutral version. This greatly simplifies patching.
There's many other major new features in Longhorn that I didn't even mention like the new networking stack. People call it vaporware or say that Microsoft dropped all the features but it's pretty much the opposite.
It is 3-D, except not visually 3-D. Each window is a Direct3D surface that lives on the graphics card. Graphics drawing commands and user input get redirected to a centralized graphics server that composites the whole screen using texture maps and polygons. It takes the user input into account so it can provide feedback even when the host program isn't responding quickly. The window frame with the blurring and reflection maps are done using pixel shaders. The fonts are rendered with a pixel shader too including the subpixel cleartype.
You're exactly right. Most of the UI elements destined for beta 2 and beyond already have gone through the whole design and testing process. I mean the actual programming process won't take that long because there are few dependencies to deal with in a UI compared to internal OS changes.
Microsoft is doing Longhorn right by not focusing on the UI. Most of the changes made in Longhorn are internal. Logic to handle driver failures without the bluescreens, sandboxing in kernel file system filters to stop virus scanners from crashing the OS, componentizing everything to end the days of rebooting on patches, creating a single world-wide binary, hardware support for all the PCI express features, microphone arrays, ambient light sensors, hybrid hard drives, the list goes on and on. And then you have the whole 3-D desktop compositing thing which OSX may do as well. But they don't have to deal with the fact that Windows has to contend with both D3D and OpenGL apps on the same display surfaces. Plus an utterly massive library of software and hardware to run it on. It's a really big deal. It took years to solve the problems of putting OpenGL on a D3D surface while handling the tons of pixel formats, and supporting accessbility screen readers, and working over terminal server as usual.
You will get your UI innovation in beta 2, because it's not a big priority. And when you do, you will have a completely replaced library of icons, games, and dialogs. UI can be done overnight, internal changes can't. This beta was ment for IT departments, not for consumers to scrutinize the interface.
There's lots of other visual effects that you don't notice from the screenshots. Like a subtle reflection map on the window frame that you notice when you move the windows around. And a glint of light that travels across the progress bars every few seconds. It's some really nice stuff, and they do it for free thanks to the 3-D desktop compositing.
But besides the effects the UI seems a lot more responsive than before. There's a centralized graphics server (it's not like X-Windows) that does all the compositing which can provide UI feedback even when the host program isn't responding. So you get a mostly responsive UI even when the programs aren't responding quickly.
Well, if you want to have your own special definition of beta there you go. I'm just going with what the software engineering industry uses, since I work in it after all.
In no way does beta imply that the product is feature-complete. And in software engineering, feature-complete rarely means there won't be additional features.
Longhorn is about 75% feature complete but I'm pretty sure the DWM (that's the 3D accelerated desktop compositing) wil be enabled in there. You need new video drivers to support it though. I think if you have an Nvidia or ATI card that's fairly recent (supports DX9, pixel shader 2.0) you should get the drivers in box.
Longhorn does a great job stopping the most common causes of BSODs in XP, which are video drivers and virus scanners. It has kernel logic that lets it reinitalize a video driver if it faults without compromising the system. And as for virus scanners, they sandboxed in the kernel file system filters to protect against flaky software. And that's just the tip of the iceburg. When they're talking about reliability in Longhorn, they're serious.
On a more serious note, this beta is not really a consumer beta. It's intended for IT departments. Beta 1 is roughly 75% feature-complete. All the big core features are in there but it won't be until Beta 2 that the OS is feature-complete. What's left over is a lot of spiffy UI that consumers like so much.
Office 12 is very different from past upgrades. It's ment to stir excitement for Office again through some huge sweeping changes. There's a few completely new products in it as well. I can't talk about details but suffice to say you won't recognize the applications when you first load it.
The Open Office team will have their work cut out for them.
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The first rule of good user interface design is to be consistant.
Not always. First rule is having an interface that FITS the program. Forcing an interface to be consistent against what may be a better fitting design is silly.
If you're relying on the government to rescue you from a natural disaster, you're making a huge mistake. We don't live in a country where the government is expected to wipe the ass of all its citizens. When there's a category 5 hurricane barring down on you, you get the hell out of there. People leaving the city and not just sitting there would have prevented much of the loss of life. Sure a few people here and there didn't have the means to leave, but surely if everyone who could have left had evacuated beforehand, overwhelming all the emergency services would have been avoided. Oh and looting and sniping doctors doesn't help much either.
Using boats to rescue people? Where are you going to get the boats from? Boats are slow and they'd have to be brought in from far away. An area the size of a small country just got leveled after all.
We were expecting a hurricane but instead ended up with broken levees, massive anarachy, a total communications breakdown, etc. NO ONE knew the scope of this disaster until it was too late.
It's sad that people with mod points don't realize how right you are. Let's think here:
UNIX (1969)
NT (1989, based on latest OS research)
Really, in terms of internal architecture there's no contest.
It's supposed to ship with the Server release which is of course, where it's truly useful.
On Windows you can right click the drive icon and choose Eject in Explorer.
Write caching is disabled on USB devices by default so it's generally not a huge problem if you rip the thing out, just don't do it when its saving.
Microsoft left because they wanted to go in a completely different direction, see Direct3D 10.
First place, the OpenGL->D3D translation is only relavent when running in windowed mode, the desktop compositing shuts off when a program is running fullscreen and gets exclusive video access.
Secondly, hardware vendors can still put out OpenGL ICDs as usual in Vista. What's stopping them from replacing the Microsoft provided driver? I can't read the article because it was Slashdotted after first 5 seconds but if it says anything to the contrary its wrong. From the looks of the URL it's probably some random guy blasting Microsoft on a message board without knowing the facts.
And it is a technical decision to wrap OpenGL using Direct3D. Anybody who knows shit about them can figure out why a translator is necessary. The framebuffer formats are completely different between OGL and D3D. You can't have OpenGL rendering to a Direct3D target. It's just, not possible.
I'm running the Vista beta, and I've investigated the OpenGL translator myself. I've had no issues running OpenGL apps in a composited window including my own software. Performance is poor but it's just as slow as Direct3D with the alpha video drivers.
Aero Glass requires LDDM drivers to work. All the LDDM drivers available now are in very early alpha stages and lack OpenGL support or any optimizations for that matter.
Vista actually IMPROVES performance significantly over the generic OpenGL driver that ships with Windows. Before it was a software driver and got something like 2 frames per second. Now it's implemented on hardware using Direct3D. Microsoft has always been a supporter of OpenGL, it's been shipped with every version of Windows thus far. There's also a billion technical reasons why they needed to wrap OpenGL on Direct3D as well.
You make some good points but let me just point out a few things. They've now got an OS thats mostly feature-complete minus a few client features and over a year to work on the UI. Again, there are many UI changes planned for versions past this beta, I'm sorry but I can't talk about specific planned features but there's a lot to be done. And I'm sure you can turn off the effects that you don't like.
As for D3D and OpenGL, remember Microsoft left the OpenGL board a few years ago because "they were going in a different direction." And in the next D3D version on Longhorn you see it's pretty true with the whole unified shading model thing.
As for kernel improvements, remember NT has been around since the 80s. They made decisions back then because of hardware limitations that don't necessarily apply today.
I think you misunderstood me with the single binary deal. It's not actually a machine-independent binary, I mean they moved all the strings outside the binary so you have a single language neutral version. This greatly simplifies patching.
There's many other major new features in Longhorn that I didn't even mention like the new networking stack. People call it vaporware or say that Microsoft dropped all the features but it's pretty much the opposite.
It is 3-D, except not visually 3-D. Each window is a Direct3D surface that lives on the graphics card. Graphics drawing commands and user input get redirected to a centralized graphics server that composites the whole screen using texture maps and polygons. It takes the user input into account so it can provide feedback even when the host program isn't responding quickly. The window frame with the blurring and reflection maps are done using pixel shaders. The fonts are rendered with a pixel shader too including the subpixel cleartype.
You're exactly right. Most of the UI elements destined for beta 2 and beyond already have gone through the whole design and testing process. I mean the actual programming process won't take that long because there are few dependencies to deal with in a UI compared to internal OS changes.
Microsoft is doing Longhorn right by not focusing on the UI. Most of the changes made in Longhorn are internal. Logic to handle driver failures without the bluescreens, sandboxing in kernel file system filters to stop virus scanners from crashing the OS, componentizing everything to end the days of rebooting on patches, creating a single world-wide binary, hardware support for all the PCI express features, microphone arrays, ambient light sensors, hybrid hard drives, the list goes on and on. And then you have the whole 3-D desktop compositing thing which OSX may do as well. But they don't have to deal with the fact that Windows has to contend with both D3D and OpenGL apps on the same display surfaces. Plus an utterly massive library of software and hardware to run it on. It's a really big deal. It took years to solve the problems of putting OpenGL on a D3D surface while handling the tons of pixel formats, and supporting accessbility screen readers, and working over terminal server as usual.
You will get your UI innovation in beta 2, because it's not a big priority. And when you do, you will have a completely replaced library of icons, games, and dialogs. UI can be done overnight, internal changes can't. This beta was ment for IT departments, not for consumers to scrutinize the interface.
There's lots of other visual effects that you don't notice from the screenshots. Like a subtle reflection map on the window frame that you notice when you move the windows around. And a glint of light that travels across the progress bars every few seconds. It's some really nice stuff, and they do it for free thanks to the 3-D desktop compositing.
But besides the effects the UI seems a lot more responsive than before. There's a centralized graphics server (it's not like X-Windows) that does all the compositing which can provide UI feedback even when the host program isn't responding. So you get a mostly responsive UI even when the programs aren't responding quickly.
If it was the Doom 3 of desktop engines it would be pitch black and the mouse cursor would be a flashlight.
I can say with complete certainty that the beta is still under development and has not been released internally or to the public.
Well, if you want to have your own special definition of beta there you go. I'm just going with what the software engineering industry uses, since I work in it after all.
In no way does beta imply that the product is feature-complete. And in software engineering, feature-complete rarely means there won't be additional features.
Longhorn is about 75% feature complete but I'm pretty sure the DWM (that's the 3D accelerated desktop compositing) wil be enabled in there. You need new video drivers to support it though. I think if you have an Nvidia or ATI card that's fairly recent (supports DX9, pixel shader 2.0) you should get the drivers in box.
Longhorn does a great job stopping the most common causes of BSODs in XP, which are video drivers and virus scanners. It has kernel logic that lets it reinitalize a video driver if it faults without compromising the system. And as for virus scanners, they sandboxed in the kernel file system filters to protect against flaky software. And that's just the tip of the iceburg. When they're talking about reliability in Longhorn, they're serious.
You don't have the Longhorn beta because it hasn't been released yet. They're fixing bugs up to the release date.
On a more serious note, this beta is not really a consumer beta. It's intended for IT departments. Beta 1 is roughly 75% feature-complete. All the big core features are in there but it won't be until Beta 2 that the OS is feature-complete. What's left over is a lot of spiffy UI that consumers like so much.
Office 12 is supposed to make documents look much more modern by default. I don't think they've changed the default font since 1988.
Didn't I just say the exact opposite? I'm pretty sure that's what I said.
Office 12 is very different from past upgrades. It's ment to stir excitement for Office again through some huge sweeping changes. There's a few completely new products in it as well. I can't talk about details but suffice to say you won't recognize the applications when you first load it.
The Open Office team will have their work cut out for them.
A few months after Office 12.