What's Different About Vista's GUI?

jcatcw writes "Paul McFedries, author of Windows Vista Unveiled, thinks that an operating system should be thought of as more than just its user interface, but then again that interface should work well for the user. He thinks the Vista interface rates 'pretty darned good.' The Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) results in positive changes for both developers and users. Developers can do 2-D, 3-D, animation, imaging, video, audio, special effects and text rendering using a single API. The use of vector graphics and offloading work to the GPU result in better animations, improved scaling, transparency, and smooth motion."

Improved animations

[nizo]

Better and more useful animations. Microsoft realized a few years ago that some sort of animation effects were necessary, particularly for novice users. For example, new Windows users are often surprised at the abrupt disappearance of a window when they click the Minimize button.

I hope they have a nice animation for when the machine is infected with a virus, like clippy catching fire and then running around in circles screaming. At least then the users will be prepared for what will happen to him/her when they bring their laptop in to have me work on it and I find out they have been surfing porn sites with their virus scanner disabled.

Re:Improved animations

[atani]

like clippy catching fire and then running around in circles screaming

I would expect a different animation if clippy gets infected from a porn site.

Re:Improved animations

[dapsychous]

I tell you what, nothing is scarier than when a paperclip asks, "Hey, man, does this look infected to you?" Oh, the rumors that will fly around the avatar water cooler.

Re:Improved animations

[Ana10g]

I would expect a different animation if clippy gets infected from a porn site.

Yup, that's a whole other kind of burning!

Re:Improved animations

[Gracenotes]

I hope they have a nice animation for when the machine is infected with a virus, like clippy catching fire and then running around in circles screaming.

Dare you attempt sacrilege against Clippy? I'm sure that malicious, libelous fan fiction abounds about him. All those copyright infringements and bad jokes about his simple eagerness to help have hurt the potential millions, in profit, of whoever invented him. Don't you dare insinuate that the software engineer who created Clippy is penniless.

Clippy's long career will end when Vista comes out in favor of a "better" help system. We shall mourn his loss. Undoubtedly not much change in the GUI, eh?

Re:Improved animations

[Kamots]

"I hope they have a nice animation for when the machine is infected with a virus, like clippy catching fire and then running around in circles screaming."

I'd be infecting my computer on purpose if that was the result!

Re:Improved animations

[x_MeRLiN_x]

For example, new Windows users are often surprised at the abrupt disappearance of a window when they click the Minimize button.

Who has to explain to these new users that a 3D accelerator is required for these new animations to work? How do these users feel when they find out the person trying to sell them said hardware merely needed to point out how to use the taskbar? Call me a pessimist, but people who don't understand how windows are minimised even after having it explained to them shouldn't be using computers. Don't get me wrong, I like the new GUI additions and everyone who I have shown 'Flip 3D' has been impressed, but I don't agree that they can be justified in that way.

Re:

[creepynut]

Any new computer system released after Vista should support all the eye candy. That will certainly be where most of the Vista installations come from, new computers.

Even the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) series of shared-RAM chips supports the Vista eye candy.

Re:

[snilloc]

I can't be the only person who turns off almost all animations, right? I don't want Windows sucking even minimal performance out of my system. Animations are a pain when frequently switching programs, or when trying to use the UI when another program is taxing the system.

Re:Improved animations

[bob65]

That's for improperly implemented animations. Properly implemented, animations can not only improve usability of a system, but also increase the aesthetic attractiveness of the GUI. And it's well known - even in usability groups who are typically focussed on quantitatively measurable aspects of UIs - that "attractive things work better". A pleasing interface can make the user overlook minor usability flaws, and who's to say that attractiveness has no value?

Re:Improved animations

[x2A]

I do too... I'm a fast user, and things like that just slow me down. I don't want menus to fade/slide in, same with dropdown boxes, tooltips etc.

However; MS have done rather well with Vista. The fades/etc are done with transparencies, using the graphics card -not- the main system, and so makes it look/feel nicer, without slowing me down at all. I'm not a big fan of MS's stuff in the slightest; I develop server software and refuse to touch windows for that (i develop on linux), but credit where credit's due, preconceptions aside, I was quite impressed, it is a really nice gui.

Re:Improved animations

[Artifakt]

No fire, but Clippy will change its name to "Drippy", with appropriate animation. (Ewwww!)

Re:

[creepynut]

And I'm sure surfing porn sites with the virus scanner turned off is in their job description too.

Re:Improved animations

[Overly Critical Guy]

Don't believe these articles--Vista's interface sucks. Weirdly, it gives you a headache after a while and you begin to long for the simplicity of XP, and switching to the Windows Classic theme doesn't completely alleviate it.

By default, windows actually "fly in" to view. EVERY SINGLE WINDOW. You will be annoyed after 30 seconds.

Every window border has a gigantic window border with an ugly blurring effect, giving everything a weird camouflage look. Microsoft didn't know how else to deal with overlaying text on top of this, so they just put a white haze behind letters which look utterly bizarre and actually makes it difficult to read.

Vista still takes a ton of mouse clicks to accomplish tasks that take only one in competitors like Mac OS X. In the properties dialog of my wireless network connection, there are actually TWO properties buttons--one labeled "Wireless Properties" and one below that named "Properties." Nice!

Vista also stole several Apple-isms, like the monochrome motif of the system tray icons that has been a staple of Mac OS for quite a long time. The speaker is actually the very same sideways speaker with three sound waves coming out the right, increasing and decreasing with volume. What a strange thing to clone directly from OS X.

You'll also laugh at the ridiculous replacement for the busy cursor. Microsoft has attempted to copy Apple's radial progress bar in the past (using eight segments instead of the doubled amount Apple uses...bizarre), but they couldn't pull it off. So they came up with something else that attempts to rip off both the radial progress bar and the spinning beach ball, which is a goofy blue ring. Seriously, a blue ring with a little sparkle spinning around and around.

And you'd better get used to the color blue. If you thought Luna was hilariously bad (I still don't get how Windows fans defend that theme), wait until you come across the puke-worthy blue and seagreen EVERYWHERE in the Vista interface, complete with a 1980s-style animated ribbon swoosh in the corners of the windows. Does Microsoft even hire graphic designers anymore? This company has enough money to buy the best designers in the world, so why do their interfaces consistently suck so much?

The sidebar is just stupid, and you'll turn it off immediately because it actually slows startup time. Dashboard, on the other hand, doesn't load itself until you actually initiate Dashboard for the first time.

And UAC...ah, UAC. I'll just let you get to know UAC for yourself. You'll see.

On the contrary, Apple is several iterations ahead of where Microsoft finally is (by six years, to be precise), and they've been moving steadily away from the translucencies and highlights toward a very clean, minimalist appearance. When OS X Leopard comes out, it will look very professional when placed side-by-side with Vista, which looks like a toy. I'm looking forward to the comparison reviews in the major mainstream publications.

Re:Improved animations

[flight_master]

it will look very professional when placed side-by-side with Vista, which looks like a toy

Exactly, that's the point.
I recently purchased a Mac (A MacBook Pro to be exact). It's interface is surprisingly simple, yet easy to use, and very responsive. On my primary workstations, I run Debian linux with KDE - again, minimalistic in nature, it's fast, smooth, and doesn't distract me.
Then, I've got Windows Vista RC2 running on a 'play' computer - it's goofy, quirky, and distracting - to me, really annoying.
However, you do have to realize that the majority of Windows users are goofs, who are quirky, and love being distracted. Windows Vista isn't made for users like you and me who work with their computers. It's made for the millions who merely read mail, surf the net and chat with the "uber coo"l MSN Messenger.


It's all in the eye of the beholder. I just wish Vista would be a *little* lighter on system resources (especially my poor old ATI 9600 card).

Re:Improved animations

[Tibor the Hun]

Welcome to the world of OS X.
Do yourself a huge favor and download Quicksilver [blacktree.com].
Improve your efficiency and impress your friends at the same time.
Bind it to something like Cmd-Cmd and install the built in flashlight interface.

Trust me, and read some reviews and 10-minute tutorials.

Re:

[Firehed]

I was going to mod you up for this post, because Quicksilver really is a godsend if I've ever known one. But I thought I should really chime in with plugging TWiT's MacBreak [twit.tv], which has some wonderful guides on getting a lot out of Quicksilver, specifically on eps. 12 and 17. But, do explain this flashlight interface - it's the first I've heard of it.

Not Goofs

[abandonment]

>>we use Windows as a platform to run software for r

which is exactly why Vista will be a major annoyance for anyone trying to do serious work on it. I'm completely in agreeance with the parent - the flying in windows and transparency this, blar blar that are all fine and dandy for the first 5 seconds you are using Vista - it DOES look 'new-ish' and psuedo-fancy...but then try to actually get anything serious done on the OS - the way that windows 'fade' into each other is really counter-productive. W

Re:Improved animations

[no1nose]

When compared to XP's UI, Vista is way too difficult. They have changed the behavior of common icons (e.g. the network system tray icon does not have a "right-click properties" method of accessing the connection settings). Also, there is no more Start -> Run option. They have replaced it with Start -> "Search". This appears to offer the same functionality as "Run", but does not seem intuitive.

Another item I was hoping for: multiple concurrent Remote Desktop sessions. I know Microsoft will never do it, but they really should allow Vista "Ultimate" Edition to support the same Remote Desktop model as their server software (one console and two remote sessions simultaneously).

Re:

[MojoStan]

When compared to XP's UI, Vista is way too difficult.

Are you sure Vista's UI is not just different and changing your XP habits is the difficult part? I'm kidding. I'll take your word for it (that Vista's UI is more difficult). I just had to say it because that's what many Mac and Linux fanatics say when Windows users have a hard time adjusting to OS X or GNOME/KDE.

They have changed the behavior of common icons (e.g. the network system tray icon does not have a "right-click properties" method of accessing

Re:

[badfish99]

Most professional Windows programmers that I've seen use the "Run" command all the time. Very often they use it to start up Explorer. I think it's because the other items in the start menu are often hidden in strange places, and it's quicker to type in a command then hunt through a muddled-up menu.

Customizing the menu is not really useful advice: people want to be able to walk up to a machine and start to use it straight away, without wasting time turning off idiotic GUI features first. Although, to be f

Re:Improved animations

[ElephanTS]

On the contrary, Apple is several iterations ahead of where Microsoft finally is (by six years, to be precise), and they've been moving steadily away from the translucencies and highlights toward a very clean, minimalist appearance.

This is a very good point and one that I often think of. I remember when the OSX beta came out (yup, I bought a copy) and I thought that the translucency was over done in the drop down menus but I didn't worry because it was a beta and they had a new model to play with. Of course over time they realised the translucency wasn't helping and successively toned it down so that now it's pretty near exactly right. Everything I've seen of Vista reminds me of the OSX beta which puts them 6 years behind. And with no graphic design skillz. I just don't think the punters are that stupid anymore - they are not going to be impressed by Vista.

Re:Improved animations

[loraksus]

By default, windows actually "fly in" to view. EVERY SINGLE WINDOW. You will be annoyed after 30 seconds.

Although I eventually tossed my vista install, I didn't really mind that.
I think it worked really well to hide the time it took for a window to open - something that was really obvious if you dropped it into that "classic mode that looked retarded because it was half windows 95 gui, half vista (mostly buttons)". It also gave the user feedback that something was happening and even made the open folder, etc, process feel a lot faster than it actually was.
You have the same thing on OSX with the genie animation , which doesn't imho work as well.
When I dropped back to 2k3 server, I had a "damn, this is much faster" moment. I was running on a 7800gt too, so..

I'm looking forward to the comparison reviews in the major mainstream publications.
Bah, doubt that you'll get what you expect. Microsoft's PR department will toss dollar bills at the reviewers and you'll get the usual tripe / reprinted press release that passes for journalism in the computer industry these days. Look how quick they got a number of people to play the part of the apologist with the Vista EULA thing. There was some damn spectacular spin done there, especially by some of the guys who write for the bigger windows oriented mags. Take a look at Paul Thurrot's article for a great example how you can confuse people into thinking how a significant eula change was just a "clarification".

The sidebar was stupid and slow but voice recognition in RC1 was worse by an order of magnitude. Vista would sort of finish booting, allowing you to open a firefox window or something and then, out of nowhere, VR would start, leaving firefox stuck on the start page, apps refused to load, etc. 20 seconds later, you'd be started up, but man was that annoying.

Re:Improved animations

[davidsyes]

"ll the interface changes that come in the Vista package are a direct or indirect result of Vista's new graphical subsystem. Code-named Avalon but now officially called Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Vista's graphical underpinnings should prove to be a boon to both developers and end users."

Franky, my dear, I don't GIVE a damn. Oh, wait, is that GUI gone with the wind, or is it on a beach blanket bingo trip?

Possibly left out descriptives?:

"...and it's got plenty of eye-popping and jaw-dropping..."

hair-raising, scalp-scrunching, ear-wriggling, brow-furrowing, lash-fluttering, nose-twitching, nostril-draining, teeth-gnashing, throat-bulging, shoulder-arching, chest-tightening, nipple-wrinkling, sternum-cracking, spine-snapping, navel-stabbing, sphincter-compromising, finger-clenching, nails-bending, pelvis-grating, knees-snapping, ankle-wiggling, toes-straigtnening, mind-bending, epilepsy-inducing, soul-sucking, galaxy-imploding copy-cat-GRAPHICS....

(Many of these adjectives can apply to the act of defecating after a night of wild drinking, while having the flu, or when narrowly getting back on the road when just seconds from flying off a curved road of a cliff-edge....)

Re:Improved animations

[CheshireCatCO]

When OS X Leopard comes out, it will look very professional when placed side-by-side with Vista, which looks like a toy.

Not that I want to dispute anything you said, but I would like to note that I know at least one person who avoids OS X partially because she feels that IT looks like a toy compared to XP. So I kind of suspect that that view is in the eye of the beholder. And, when you get right down to it, that isn't a very damning criticism. I don't really care if my OS looks like a toy or an industrial warning sign as much as I care about how well it works provided it doesn't really offend good taste. If the toy-looking OS has the better performance and interface, I'll take it.

Re:Clippy.. the jar jar binks of the windows world

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Meesa tinkin youssum invitin da veeeery bad jokes...

Sounds like Mac OS X 3 years ago.

[thedbp]

Not to troll, and its nice that Windows users are getting these features, but how come no one ever calls MS out on the fact that Vista is basically still playing catch up to OS X, doesn't do it as well, and is probably going to be left in the dust when Leopard comes out?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2674791799 339834706 [google.com]

Here's hoping MS uses the competition to better Windows. The more secure it gets and the easier it gets to use, the better for everyone, even those of us who don't use Windows.

Re:Sounds like Mac OS X 3 years ago.

[Greyfox]

how come no one ever calls MS out on the fact that Vista is basically still playing catch up to OS X

I'm pretty sure someone does that every time a Windows Vista story comes up. Case in point...

Re:Sounds like Mac OS X 3 years ago.

[thedbp]

I meant in the articles themselves. Surely these tech-literate pundits have heard of and used the competition's operating system, right? I mean, you know, so they can have a frame of reference?

Re:Sounds like Mac OS X 3 years ago.

[Ash Vince]

Because your average technical journo who writes the articles in question is too hooked on the freebies MS provide him with in the way of free booze to risk fucking that up.

Everyone knows there have been better OSes out there than windows since OS2 warp but the competion has never bribed these people with enough free stuff for them to write about it. To get a glowing review of an OS you have to install it on a brand new laptop and then give said laptop away for free to enough journos so that some actually use it.

Re:Sounds like Mac OS X 3 years ago.

[peragrin]

You forgot that OS X does it on a third of the hardware.(except ram then only half)

Re:

[DragonWriter]

, but how come no one ever calls MS out on the fact that Vista is basically still playing catch up to OS X

Because, as has been demonstrated in every Microsoft windows release since the first, no one cares that Microsoft Windows $foo is playing catch up to Mac OS $bar.

Plus, its old news. Its like every article that mentions the Earth having to point out that the Earth is roughly spherical. Yeah, there was a time when that was news to people and interesting, but now its just a given.

Re:

[drsmithy]

Not to troll, and its nice that Windows users are getting these features, but how come no one ever calls MS out on the fact that Vista is basically still playing catch up to OS X, doesn't do it as well, and is probably going to be left in the dust when Leopard comes out?

Because anyone who has been in the industry for more than a few years and isn't a blathering fanboy (and they do enough "calling out" to make up for everyone else ten times over) knows that everyone "copies" everyone else, everyone reguarl

Re:

[Beer_Smurf]

Are you suggesting that Vista will run on a $25.00 thrift store PC?
I can tell you that the latest version of OSX and MS Office, will run on a $100.00 used Mac.
I do it every day on my B&W G3 400.
You can verify said prices here. http://www.baucomcomputers.com/ [baucomcomputers.com]

Re:

[WhiteWolf666]

Huh?

That's why OS X runs on vastly inferior hardware, while XGL/AIGLX outperform Vista (by a large margin), with more "bling" and on vastly slower GPUs to boot.

Vista is a dog; both in terms of resources, and the UI "bling". OS X is far more polished, and Compiz/Beryl do five times as much with 1/5 the hardware.

Mod Parent Up

[OmnipotentEntity]

Guh~, I only saw this post after I replied in this thread. Stupid stupid stupid, mod parent up!! Beryl owns OSX and Vista so hard it's not even funny. And it's still is very beta.

Re:

[wanerious]

...so you went to Dock Preferences and unchecked the "Magnification" box, and they still jumped out at you?

Next version to be called Windows Dressing

[From A Far Away Land]

"an operating system should be thought of as more than just its user interface, but then again that interface should work well for the user."

Vista can apparently be represented in a significant way by either Mac OS X, or XP with modifications. It's mostly a vehicle for DRM, including PVP, which will require you to buy a PVP compliant digital monitor. Vista's enhancements won't even work on many powerful systems you are buying these days - if they have "Vista Capable" stickers. In an age where we should be looking for energy savings, what's the benefit of making a system more complicated than XP, and requires more horsepower than a rather darn good OS Microsoft released in 2000?

Re:

[Ruie]

a rather darn good OS Microsoft released in 2000?

I believe you are mistaken, MS never sold any OS but Windows..

Re:Next version to be called Windows Dressing

[ultranova]

I believe you are mistaken, MS never sold any OS but Windows..

Not true. Or have you forgotten DOS ?

Re:Next version to be called Windows Dressing

[cyber-vandal]

Xenix?

Re:Next version to be called Windows Dressing

[phatvw]

In an age where we should be looking for energy savings, what's the benefit of making a system more complicated than XP, and requires more horsepower than a rather darn good OS Microsoft released in 2000

The answer is simple: Games. Just wait till the new DirectX10 titles start coming out - that is going to be the driving sales force for Vista!

Also, Vista is quite aggressive in its power management so even though the CPU and GPU peak energy consumption might be a lot higher than a typical Windows XP machine, the OS is quite intelligent about turning off bits that aren't being used - especially on laptops. I reckon the energy requirements will be about the same overall.

How do these posts keep getting modded Insightful?

[cbhacking]

It must just be anti-MS groupthink, because anybody who has done even a bit of research on Vista knows far better.

• UAC: Vista can raise (and presumably lower) program permissions while running. This is seriously a good thing; aside from running sans-admin priveleges for the most part (and the abiliy to gain admin privs in things like Defender without needing to re-start the program from the menu via RunAs) the IE7 Protected Mode sandbox is, quite literally, the way all browsers should run. Super-low permissions, until it need to do something like load an outside pogram or save a file to disc. Then it asks for permission. Explorer works fairly similarly, elevating permsissions only when doing things that require admin privs (modifying Windows files or other users' directories, for example). Neither OS X nor XP (nor Linux) are this good at permissions control.
• Address Space Layout Randomization [wikipedia.org]: together with the no-execute (NX) protection provided by essentially all modern OSes, this provides excellent protection against buffer overflow exploits. (NX is completely ineffective against overwriting the return address to some linked library, for example, the classic return-to-libc exploit.)Neither XP nor OS X support ASLR natively. I think it's part of SELinux, which is included with a few distros.
• DirectX 10. I don't think this is going to be backported, and if MS is even 25% correct in their claims of increased performance (up to 70% improvement), it will make a big splash in the gaming world. OpenGL is awesome, but it doesn't have this level of performance. Oh, and anybody who says OpenGL is unsupported in Vista is ignorant/full of it; I've run OpenGL apps without any problem at all.
• Volume Shadow Copies: SO useful! I've used it for everything from reverting files I'd thought overwritten and gone to restoring damaged system files (via System Restore, which in Vista makes XP's version look like a joke). It's in Server 2003, but not (really) in XP (only for system folders, and not well impemented). Leopard's "Time Machine" may be the same capability (with excessive eye candy) but I'm dubious of their implementation too... daily screenshots? Not based on major modifications? I hope they at least don't store the VSCs in some easily located portion of the filesystem; I realize there's very little malware for Macs, but most XP malware goes after the system restore copies as soon as it can. In any case, Leopard isn't out yet and won't be for a while yet.
• BitLocker Drive Encryption: NTFS encrypting filesystem is nice, and there are of course 3rd-party software solutions, but using a dedicated hardware chip to do the encryption on your entire drive just makes all kinds of sense. I wish my system had one... I'd move GRUB out of the MBR and chainload it instead; then even dual-booting with BitLocker would work (yes, it does).
• Resizing hard disk partitions, including the system volume, while they are mounted. I didn't even know this was possible! As somebody who does a lot of messing with partitions, doesn't want to shell out for Partition Magic (I get MS software for free via my school) and doesn't entirely trust QtParted and NTFSresize (I have about a 75% success rate, which isn't high enough for those kinds of operations. No major data loss... yet... but still not good enough).

There's so much more... but I'm tired of repeating this post for the quadrillionth time. Oh, and as for power savings, I get much better battery life in Vista (due to various things including dynamic processor scaling that allow me to set my clock rate as low as 5% of its normal speed while the CPU is idle) than I do in XP. Linux is similarly good, but ACPI support in Linux is still lagging. I don't have OS X installed on my laptop.

Re:

[Tibor the Hun]

You state all of those things as if they've already been proven with rock-solid stability.

Remember that to this day, MS does not have a consumer-level OS that can defrag itself in the background, or index its filesystem for quick searches. Priviledge escalation, proper stand-by management, and security are but a distant dream on billions of user desktops.

If there's one thing I've learned about MS is that they overpromise and underdeliver. So I'd hold the judgement on drive encryption, and HD repartitioning

Re:How do these posts keep getting modded Insightf

[aaronl]

UAC: This doesn't work that well. I found it to be the second most annoying thing in Vista, beaten only by the terrible Aero theme. It's a very nice idea, it's been available on any UNIX based system for many years, and MS still didn't make it work right. The video mode switching alone is just silly to no end.

Address space rand: Increasing security is always good.

DX10: If it isn't getting backported then it isn't very useful. Besides, of course it's going to seem fast, you have to upgrade your CPU and video card to use Vista properly. I personally so absolutely no speed improvement in graphics out of Vista/DX10. I did see my system run slower, though.

Shadow copies: This is LVM. I've had this for a decade. If you want a better version than VSC in Vista, go buy a Net.App.

Bitlocker: I do not want any partition/file system/disc encrypted at home, and I certainly don't want it at work. People forget passwords, systems need repairing, etc, etc. It has a niche use, though.

Resizing: I don't resize my system partitions, and very few other people do. Most people don't even know what a partition is. It's nifty, and ties right in with LVM.

Power management: Just as everyone else said, you can't get the gains that you claim. You can't slow the CPU down under its base clock. That means 600-800MHz on most Intel chips. Throw battery gains out the window if you're using the GPU hungry Aero theme... I only get slightly better battery from my Pentium-M system under Ubuntu than I do under WinXP, and that's mostly because there are fewer things trying to run in the background.

You might repeat your post over and over, but that doesn't make anything you mention earth shattering. Nearly all of these "huge improvements" in Vista are either incremental over XP or have been available on other platforms for years, and then there is the pile of mis-features that nobody actually wants.

Anyone that does some research on Vista would know that this is the first NT based OS that Microsoft shipped that offered no real user improvements. It doesn't even put into place that last piece of Cairo, which would have been WinFS. All of the features that people were excited about, MS has ripped out. However, as the GP pointed out, MS sure had enough devs and time to throw in all of the total bullshit DRM that none of their customers actually wants to pay for.

Hell, the MS DRM, especially mandatory driver signing, means that I *can't* even use Vista. I have too many pieces of software and too many devices that I would have to purchase a new product, retest, redeploy, and retrain to get away from what already works with XP. For all these wonderful "features" that Vista offers, it gives us three that range from simply useless to outright malicious to the end user.

Re:How do these posts keep getting modded Insightf

[jsebrech]

UAC: Vista can raise (and presumably lower) program permissions while running.

This isn't such a good thing. From what I've read UAC asks for permission quite often. If we take a look at history, people will end up automatically clicking on allow, just to not have to think about it. A well-designed system takes into account the human factor so that it does not ask to change permissions (roadblock-style security, which leads to automatic response by the human user), but instead allows to user to change permis

Offloaded to the GPU?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why are the CPU requirements for Aero so high?

Re:

[Kilz]

"What's the deal with you guys going nuts over system requirements of Aero? I haven't seen any new systems which are not capable of running Aero. All you need is a 128MB graphics card, which is something even basic gaming requires. And it is not just that. I installed Vista on a 4 year old laptop with 8MB video memory and the basic interface of Vista (without Aero) is still way more reponsive than XP. Microsoft has made huge performance improvements in the UI. It just keeps getting better."

Is that like

Re:

[nickos]

Maybe I'm showing my age here, but why on earth should anyone be boasting about an OS being "pretty responsive" on a 350MHz AMD box with 64MB of ram? What the hell is it doing?

WPF!!1!111

[neuro.slug]

I know it doesn't make sense, but the Object Management Group should extend the API just so we'd have the OMGWPFAPI.

Vista GUI - my take

[PoconoPCDoctor]

In January of this year, maybe a little later, our contracted supplier of PC's will probably start the push towards shipping new PC's with Vista, instead of XP Profesional. In my environment, a major medical center/school, I don't think the GUI will be immediately useful, in fact, it might hurt productivity initially, since our users will need to learn how to navigate Vista to accomplish everyday tasks like file copying, etc. Games are not big in a medical center, or most large enviroments, for that matter.

Unless Vista's underlying GUI can better render high-resolution images of cells, and most imaging in the research labs is done on Macs, it probably will not have a tremendous impact on corporate buying decisions.

The OS choice will be determined when our PC supplier starts to charge more for a PC with XP Professional than the same system with Vista. Research dollars are hard to come by, and unless Vista totally breaks standard Office suite PC/applications, it's just a matter of time before it will replace XP.

Re:Vista GUI - my take

[Tackhead]

> I don't think the GUI will be immediately useful, in fact, it might hurt productivity initially, since our users will need to learn how to navigate Vista to accomplish everyday tasks like file copying, etc

Silly user. File copying is evil! You're not supposed to look at files.

Win95/98: We won't show you directory paths or file extensions.
WinME: We won't even boot to DOS without a fight.
WinNT: Pay no attention to the 8.1 filenames. We're going to make sure everyone puts spaces in every path name, by calling it "Program Files"
Win2K: ...and since some of you still didn't get the message last time, we're going to make everyone's home directory contain at least two spaces by calling it "Documents and Settings"
WinXP: ...and don't even think of trying to remove Outlook or other files we want on your hard drive, even if you never use the application. By the way, it phones home, but we won't nuke your box if you don't let it phone home.
Vista: ...by the way, when we said we wouldn't nuke your box if you didn't let it phone home, we meant we would nuke your box if you don't let it phone home. Don't worry, we won't install any user tracking software not authorized by the government, though.

> Research dollars are hard to come by, and unless Vista totally breaks standard Office suite PC/applications, it's just a matter of time before it will replace XP.

You've forgotten the lesson of Office 97.

Research dollars are hard to come by, and when it's confirmed that Vista totally breaks standard Office suite PC/applications, only then will it be only a matter of time until it will replace XP.

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.

The Holy Grail...

[CopaceticOpus]

...is vector-based uber-scaling. I want a desktop that looks basically the same when I switch resolutions, with icons and fonts scaled appropriately. Vista has the necessary scaling and vector capabilities in place, but I'm guessing it doesn't support this. Or does it?

Re:The Holy Grail... Holy Hell

[davidsyes]

I've some questions, not direcly AT you, nor ripping you. These just came to mind, inspired by your and other's comments... So please understand I am trying to find my way to reasonable/insightful (and maybe even inciteful) questions (I don't have vista, and surely will not plunk down my OWN money for exhorbitant vista "features" KDE and Gnome give me right now):

Can vista users stretch the desktop icons and folder icons? Do they scale well?

Can vista users with bad dexterity or shaking hands left-alt-right-m

very colorful review.

[yagu]

Enough said.

What the heck? I'd love to understand look and feel better, but it would seem to be a more effective review if the pictures were in color.

Re:very colorful review.

[tnk1]

Enough said. What the heck? I'd love to understand look and feel better, but it would seem to be a more effective review if the pictures were in color.

They are in color.

Those are the colors.

What? Did you want lime or blueberry or something?

A while back...

[bunions]

just after they'd changed the name from the awful "Avalon" to the much more memorable "Windows Presentation Foundation," I saw a demo of this stuff from a MS evangelist. The demo application was awful. Gratuitous use of 3D, buttons that were unrecognizable as such and which would flip up into the 'air' playing a movie when you pressed them.

I understand that it was just a demo and these things weren't really 'gratuitous' because they existed simply to show off the capabilities. But the bottom line is that it's so super-easy to make these awful UI abortions that we're gonna see metric asstons of it coming down the pipe from programmers and their bosses who are unable to resist cramming every last widget behavior into their software. Feh.

Re:A while back...

[ElephanTS]

In other words every Win app is going to look like an over-tweaked Flash site.

Re:

[bunions]

That is exactly what I told people afterward, almost verbatim. Because that's exactly what it looked like.

Re:

[Procyon101]

Actually, since I don't do alot of windows GUI specific programming, I'm more excited about the idea that all the ideas behind XAML will undoubtedly be stolen by other frameworks. I'd love to see a XAML-like SWL binding for instance. The databinding properties of XAML are particularly interesting... you can write entire db frontent apps in XAML with no code at all.. and they run natively.

But what about the actual GUI?

[pammon]

The author seems rather confused about what "GUI" means. The GUI is the graphical user interface - what the user sees and interacts with. The article mentioned almost nothing about the actual user interface of Vista - only the developer-targeted APIs. Nearly all of the apps that ship with Vista do not use WPF and therefore the actual GUI will not be like what the author describes.

And the author is simply wrong when he says that "With WPF, everything is drawn with vectors, so you can scale windows and icons as big (or as small) as you want, and the objects will display with no loss in quality." In fact, icons in Vista are generally 256x256 bitmap images. Artists normally prefer bitmaps because it gives them more control over the artwork.

No, it IS vectors

[cbhacking]

Yep, icons are raster. So are bitmap files. So are rendered jpegs, in most programs. So are sprites in most programs. The point you're missing is that Vista ships these bitmaps off to the GPU to be rendered using vectors (not sure if the raster->vector conversion happens in software or hardware or both, but what comes out is vectors) so you get the advantages of vectors on the display end (they are fast to render using hardware acceleration, too) and the advantages of bitmaps when manipulating your image

Re:

[pammon]

I'm not quite sure how a raster image can be "rendered using vectors" (and any more information you had on this would be nifty), but whatever hoops Vista jumps through internally, it still can't allow an image that starts out as 256x256 raster to be scaled up "as big as you want" with no loss in quality.

interfaces

[StarvingSE]

Paul McFedries, author of Windows Vista Unveiled, thinks that an operating system should be thought of as more than just its user interface

Correct. Why can't Microsoft understand this? They spend so much time with the user interface, that the actually OS stuff (stable runtime environment, security, "revolutionary file system" gets put on the backburner. I think it would be in MS's best interest to focus 100% on the core internals of the OS and leave the shell to either open source or some third party. Heck, even a totally seperate division of microsoft. This whole "API for everything" and having so much interface stuff integrated with the internal running of the system is just a recipe for disaster, as can be seen on every other windows release before vista.

More animations and cute graphics?

[goofyheadedpunk]

Maybe I'm just cantankerous today, but the idea of having a GUI do more happy bouncy shit to pander to the least educated user really bugs me. Perhaps it's just me, but I hate little "helpful" pop-up tips and goofy animations asking if they can assist me in writing a letter. No user interface, other than the nipple if you're a mammal, is intuative and no amount of pop-uppery will fix that. Simplification and consistancy is probably the best way to make sure that all the rules of the interface can fit inside people's head, which is maybe what they're groping toward by copying OSX. (Which is by no means the Best Interface Ever, as some people content. Me? I like the command line.)

Blegh. Why has this pissed me off so much? I've not used a Microsoft product in years, and I'm far more likely to do this [bmezine.com][*] before touching Vista. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but does this piss anyone else off?

[*] DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK (unless you're familiar with modblog, aren't squemish and aren't at work).

slow transparency

[bored]

This guy is smoking some serious crack in a couple of places, he talks about how difficult it is to do transparency? Hello I wrote a little piece of code to make transparent windows back with turbo pascal on a 386.. If my 386 could do it i'm sure you don't need a GPU... Just because transparency wasn't in the basic GDI (which is even older) doesn't mean it was hard or even that slow.

Re:

[Sebastopol]

Yeah, I'm sure you were performing on average 2000 bitblts per action on your 386 Pascal program. Just because you wrote an algorithm that probably did a 50% dither on b&w bitmap 10 years ago, then saying it is trivial, is akin to me saying, "Hey, I once ran a 4-minute mile, therefore a marathon is trivial!"

Vector? Which Aero doesn't do?

[__aatgod8309]

I'm kind of lost about exactly what this 'vector based' part of the Vista UI is, as referred to in the article:

Improved scaling. With vector-based graphics, you can scale any image bigger or smaller without any loss in the image quality. This is simply not possibly with raster-based graphics. For example, if you have ever tried using larger icons in Windows or a program toolbar, you know that the resulting icons look blurry and jagged.

Yet MS themselves have said that Aero isn't vector-based (http://www.msblog.org/?p=731 ), and just used good ol' bitmaps. Is the author referring to some feature of the UI that MS has available in Vista but just forgot to use for Aero?

Feature my ass. No, the other meaning.

[Fonce]

You know what bothers me about this? They've taken nearly every proposed feature out of Vista that we wanted or that was going to useful...or even new...leaving us forced to debate whether or not there's actually anything new in the only really new thing about it, Avalon.

And when we do have people talking about it they don't have any idea what they're talking about, discussing cutesy shit you can do with their uber-advanced API and not improvements that Microsoft has made to the ACTUAL GUI that will help me complete complex tasks easier, find that which I need faster, and just make my user experience more pleasant and efficient overall.

Features, you say? They're not features, they're bugs. Much in the way that spam is email, these bullshit "improvements" are actually just annoying eye-candy and a stop-gap measure to one-up the actually useful features that exist in other operating systems such as OSX and Linux. And no, I'm actually not a *nix fanboy despite my heavy use of it; I've been a Windows admin for a few years now. And I've been a user long enough to know that dancing icons and spinning buttons do nothing more than impress grandma for a few seconds and piss advanced users off.

Where's the real innovation? Where's the Microsoft that made Windows 3.11 and Windows 2000 (which, despite it's faults, was one hell of an OS)?

Dead, I say, choked by the left hand of greed and the right hand of stupidity.

But is it as good as ....

[microcars]

WindowsRG ? [deanliou.com] (ReallyGood Edition)

When they will learn?

[kosmosik]

> Developers can do 2-D, 3-D, animation, imaging,
> video, audio, special effects and text rendering
> using a single API.

And when exactly they will learn that UI design it is not about what YOU CAN DO? It is what YOU CAN'T DO. You can take any program and DO WITH IT WHATEVER, give it nice animations, nice 3D effects, symphonic sounds, add to it few agents, fifteen toolbars, make it do your coffee etc.

It is not what you CAN do. It so about how to make it the most simple as you can. KISS - for Keep It Simple.

Reffered in the article OSX is a quite complicated operating system but still it manages to deliver a platform on which (at least in my opinion, and I am not biased since my main workstation is running Linux) you can make SIMPLE and USEFULL applications.

My point is that the platform should allow users to get consistant and simple interface. Not that what Windows is offering - now you get it even more complex - you get all Windows Legacy stuff working (dating back to 95) and also a BRAND NEW SHINY 2D 3D WHATEVER interface. So it is in fact worse not better. Since it includes more ways to screw the applications to become UNNEEDLY COMPLEX.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Supposed to be More than a GUI

[HermMunster]

The current GUI in XP is more than valid and works well doing everything you would expect it to do. The GUI in Vista is all that is has to offer. Well, some exceptione, are the DRM infection, the restrictive EULA, and the built-in spyware.

What troubles me is that somehow so many industry pundits are pushing this thing as something special and worthy of the billions spent to develop it. Most of these must be looking at a picture of increased sales of hardware, more magazine articles (thus advertisers), etc. I personally think alot of these guys have been paid off by Microsoft.

Just looking at the OS for a few days can clearly demonstrate that alot of what is being said just isn't true. One guy I read that got alot of press professed massive hardware support while my experience with it has been very common and found little hardware support overall. One would not expect neglect of IDE drivers, modems, etc., but would would expect that great effort to make wireless as trouble free as possible is much a minimum.

Microsoft touts their sleep mode features, but in reality their implementations of these features have been severely lacking and extremely problemmatic over the years with little to instill any sense of confidence in me toward that feature and thus Microsoft. I think if the average person was going to save $50-$75 a year we should all jump up in the air and wave our hands in joy. Frankly we'd save more money if we'd just turn the buggers off at night.

Guess what? We all thrashed Microsoft in the area of Genuine Advantage Notification and yet they have implemented this feature in spades under Vista. Anyone buying it will have to accept that up front. That means they are going to be spying on you and your use of Windows. Not only that they seem to think they are entitled to this. They seem to think they can interfere with the use of our computers.

I have 15+ legit copies of XP and I have good solid hardware that runs it. My small business does just fine. What exactly is Vista going to give me? Anyone using XP currently has to ask that one question and be serious about it. I know many will find reasons to upgrade but from a productivity stand point, from a usage stand point, from a feature stand point, there's really nothing that complells anyone to upgrade. You like the latest greatest then fine do it for that but not because Vista is giving you anything special because it isn't. One must also ask themselves if it is worth giving up your privacy to the spying the Microsoft will be implementing. Not only that are you willing to give that up to a monopoly that has been convicted of crimes? Are you going to give that up to the company that stole the technology to do on-line activation of Windows and Office? Are you willing to give that up to a company that then used gorilla tactics in court to bury the court and the plaintiff in paper work in an effort to hide the evidence proving the plantinff's case?

Microsoft has alot of power to influence and they get more free marketing than any other company on the planet, now and throughout history. But to be honest with you it only takes a concerted effort by people such as you and I to tell others how what has been happening and what they are doing with Vista to bring things back to reality.

Why does Microsoft think they are the only ones that can produce a spying program that can disable even legitimate licenses? Who is Microsoft to tell us that after we pay upwards of $400.00 that we are not entitled to install this on any given machine we so choose? Do they not think that the average person who purchased Windows Vista is going to put up with "sorry, you have to buy a new Vista because your motherboard went out and you need it replaced"? What do you think will happen to system upgrades?

That sort of license restriction caters to the likes of the big companies selling computers such as HP, Dell, etc. It doesn't help the average guy who is trying to make computers cheaper and better than HP or Dell.

Cute, but no cigar. I want Looking Glass.

[meburke]

Project Looking Glass was 'way ahead of the Vista 3D presentation, and still offers some cool effects that aren't available on Vista yet. I predict that soon after Vista comes out the OS community revives Looking Glass, couples it with Croquet and humiliates Micrososft by doing it on half the power at a fraction of the development cost.

http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/ [sun.com]

http://www.opencroquet.org/ [opencroquet.org]

Beryl

[anno1a]

Ok, I agree, the Linux people are major ripoff artists. That being said, when most things _are_ ripped off (which, being great artists, happens rather fast), new features do appear. The window manager Beryl [beryl-project.org] (which is a fork of Compiz) has gone above and beyond in imitating the new graphical bling of Vista. And a lot of the bling from OSX too. I dare say that a lot of this bling comes at a smaller price (hardware wise) than what you get from Vista.

When I first saw screenshots of Vista I was impressed. Impressed with what could be done. Sadly, I haven't really seen them move any further with the bling since the first screenshot was released, and now that I have Beryl up and running I really couldn't care less.

If you look at the forum [beryl-project.org] for Beryl you'll see a LOT of input from users, requesting (granted, a lot of stuff seen elsewhere, but also) new and innovative features and bling, that might actually prove useful when working (and naturally a lot that's pure bling).

What I'm basically looking for is what makes Vista stand out from something like Beryl, except for the fact that you can actually run (some) windows programs on it. Why are people getting so excited over this, when you can have Beryl running on your computer today? Or Compiz? Or Metacity?

I want FEWER controls not PRETTIER ones

[gelfling]

When dear Lord will MS finally understand that we don't want to operate our computers. We want them to operate themselves. I want fewer controls, fewer buttons. I want the software to figure out what's the right way to do something, the right app to start, the right place to put an object. I don't want to be an AUDITOR for my system anymore. I'm sick of it. I don't really care about this years trendy glassy stylistic trend which will be as old as dirt in about 3 years anyway. I don't want rearranged controls that map out everything I could possibly do. I want all of that transparent to my use. I want for instance to be able to simply start typing on the desktop and have it popup the last 4 choices of applications, have me quickly pick one, and load what I just typed into the appropriate area. And if the input is unique enough, I want the software to know what the application is supposed to be and take appropriate action. I want a blank canvas. I don't want to start Adobe to read a PDF. I want a window to open up with the PDF and keep the application absolutely in the background. I don't care what it is. And I don't want to hear about codecs, plugins or patches. Just make it work or let me know how long it will be before you, the system is ready to do that. I want you remember all the little tweaky settings. Print still means print even if the last time I printed it went to email instead, just do that unless and until I tell you otherwise.

Then I want it run faster and quieter with fewer interruptions to update, fix and patch. The system can do that but it has to be completely quiet and unobtrusive about it. I want virtual reboots that allow me to keep working even when the system has to be restarted. I don't want to do storage management, that's your job.

I don't want to hear from firewalls, spyware blockers, AV or malware tools. Please do have them but if they are worth anything at all they will do 99% of their job with ZERO human intervention or notification of any kind.

And then what I want you to do is precreate a large array of batch scheduled housekeeping procs to run off hours, again, w/o me knowing about them to do the little things they need to do: update, defrag, clean off garbage, memory cleanup, patches etc etc etc etc. Take a few hours if you like, take more, do it at night or whichever schedule I give you and bring the system back to WHATEVER state or condition it was in before including all open applications and objects.

Re:QUICK! LETS IMITATE IT!!

[Jerf]

Somebody wake me up when these [KDE and Gnome] stop playing perpetual 2nd place, and start trying out new GUI ideas.

Funny, I was just pondering how completely Microsoft is missing the point of the features in KDE and Gnome. Until Windows has a decent workspace switching mechanism, I'm not going to find the interface tolerable no matter how many whizbang animations Microsoft adds.

I've also found pervasive KNotify support to be surprisingly useful in little ways, not least of which is helping support that multi-workspace work area. It's the little things, like telling Konsole to KNotify me when the console is active or quiet, or Kopete's ability to use KNotify to put up the first bit of the message, which is often the entire message, preventing me from needing to switch windows to read it (or switch desktops)...

In my opinion, the KDE interface at least has long surpassed Windows and I am yet to read about Vista actually picking up on the reasons why. It doesn't surprise me that a multi-billion dollar company can create a nicer-looking interface, but I'm "surprised"* at how resistant they are to the actual features that make the experience different.

(*: Actually, no I'm not; I'm pretty sure Windows still doesn't really support multi-workspace use, at least from what I've seen of the hacks that offer it, and I'd guess that "fundamental Windows limitations and the inability to offer reverse compatibility" is behind some of the other missing features, too. XWindows may suck but it seems to me it sucks less...)

Re:QUICK! LETS IMITATE IT!!

[digitalhermit]

I think you hit it on the nose. I'm not particularly fond of KDE/Gnome, but they seem years ahead of the Explorer desktop. For various reasons I've had to use an XP desktop and laptop recently. Some of the more annoying things:

1) Right clicking the desktop brings up a menu with some useless entries such as "Arrange Icons By" and "Refresh". Sure, those can be useful, but not for me. Problem is that I can't modify it to be more useful. E.g., have it launch a command prompt, an editor, browser, etc.. This is particularly onerous on an extended desktop with large displays. You can't use the mouse effectively to get to the Start menu since you may need to cross (at worst) two whole desktops. Someone suggested moving the menu to the rightmost display to halve the distance, but this is a kludge. Sure, you can also use the Windows key... But wait, this keyboard doesn't have one...

2) One desktop... You can't easily segregate tasks with a single desktop. The Powertools can add this, but it's broken for lots of apps, including Microsoft's own Excel which has problems when you move from window to window when Excel is maximized or minimized.

3) File explorer doesn't have tabs. I've gotten so used to tabs in Konqueror and Firefox that this is painful on Windows. They caught on with IE7 and did a decent job of it, but when oh when will this be available elsewhere?

4) CMD.EXE is very limited in resize capability. You can put in arbitrary row/columns, but this requires menu entries rather than a drag resize.

5) Every once in a while (say once a month), the window gets shifted *above* the active desktop. You can't alt-drag the window though and have to resort to some control key madness to bring it back. If it happened more often I would remember the key sequence... but it doesn't.

6) What rhyme or reason is there in where new windows pop up? For example, double click on My Computer and it may or may not appear on your primart display. Sometimes it's on the second head, sometimes on the first. If I move the window to the primary and then launch another one it appears -- heh, sometimes on the second, sometimes on the first.

And I could go on... But the XP desktop seems to 1996'ish.

Re:QUICK! LETS IMITATE IT!!

[drinkypoo]

Right clicking the desktop brings up a menu with some useless entries such as "Arrange Icons By" and "Refresh". Sure, those can be useful, but not for me. Problem is that I can't modify it to be more useful.

Actually, it's extensible. The problem is that you have to register a handler in the registry, and then register a change to the menu in there someplace, and who knows how to do that? But AFAIK you don't need to write any special programs, you can even use scripts and such.

One desktop... You can't easily segregate tasks with a single desktop. The Powertools can add this, but it's broken for lots of apps, including Microsoft's own Excel which has problems when you move from window to window when Excel is maximized or minimized.

What problems are those? The only problem I've ever had with any office app when doing anything weird was when I had dual monitors and ran Office 97. The pull-down menus in office 97 apps open on the first display, at the same offset as they would if they were on the second display, regardless of whether the app is on the first or second display.

File explorer doesn't have tabs. I've gotten so used to tabs in Konqueror and Firefox that this is painful on Windows. They caught on with IE7 and did a decent job of it, but when oh when will this be available elsewhere?

Actually I thought they did a crap job with tabs in IE7 :)

CMD.EXE is very limited in resize capability. You can put in arbitrary row/columns, but this requires menu entries rather than a drag resize.

You can resize as tall as you want, but you need to use a command to change the width. (mode con: cols=n) this is stupid but is done for reverse compatibility reasons - they don't make it any less stupid but they do explain it. There's a program that gives you better console windows, but I forget the name. If I want better ones I usually get them by running cmd.exe in an xterm with a font that supports IBM graphics characters. X server and xterm come from Cygwin.

Every once in a while (say once a month), the window gets shifted *above* the active desktop. You can't alt-drag the window though and have to resort to some control key madness to bring it back. If it happened more often I would remember the key sequence... but it doesn't.

Alt-space, m for move, hit an arrow key, then move the mouse around and the window will "pop" onto the screen.

I've mostly had this problem because I changed resolution. Which is still sad. Then again, applications should be smart enough to come back from being offscreen, too.

What rhyme or reason is there in where new windows pop up? For example, double click on My Computer and it may or may not appear on your primart display. Sometimes it's on the second head, sometimes on the first. If I move the window to the primary and then launch another one it appears -- heh, sometimes on the second, sometimes on the first.

What really cheeses me off is that windows constantly steal focus even if you tell them not to. However, this happens to me on Ubuntu as well, just less often - and what happens more often is that I start typing before a gnome-terminal comes up, which makes the window manager think I'm talking to it, or to the last foreground application, so it doesn't steal focus when I want it to! There's no pleasing some people :)

And I could go on... But the XP desktop seems to 1996'ish.

What seems 1996ish to ME is the OSX desktop. At least, that's about when I got addicted to and then got over my addiction to eye candy in Linux.

Re:QUICK! LETS IMITATE IT!!

[digitalhermit]

What seems 1996ish to ME is the OSX desktop. At least, that's about when I got addicted to and then got over my addiction to eye candy in Linux. :D

Exactly -- which was why my first comment that I was not particularly fond of KDE or Gnome. My primary desktop is actually Fluxbox which loads, no exaggeration, in about a second after pressing Enter from the login screen. I.e., a second after login, I can start doing work. Sure, I don't log out too often but when you do...

Re:QUICK! LETS IMITATE IT!!

[Guy Harris]

Linux has had this for how long now? Something like 21 years at least.

Either:

1. you're trolling;
2. you're exaggerating;
3. you're saying "Linux" when you mean "some X11 window managers" (which can run, amazingly enough, on UN*X+X11 systems that aren't based on Linux).

Re:QUICK! LETS IMITATE IT!!

[drinkypoo]

Alt-Space, n minimizes. Alt-Space, x maximizes. Alt-Space, m moves (arrow keys, or once you hit an arrow key you can do it with the mouse.) If you can figure out how to activate the taskbar with the keyboard, you can restore windows by hitting enter when they are selected :) Alt-Space, s changes size: You use the arrows to select a drag handle, then use them some more to resize. I realize other people already told you that you could do this, but I just explained how. Actually, the easiest way to restore them is to use Alt-Tab until you get to the one you want. And they already provide virtual desktops (to which you can switch with keystroke combinations) through the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager (MSVDM) Power Toy. So are there any other features which Microsoft already has (the key combinations predate Motif - Microsoft was an original member of the Motif Working Group and helped steer it, in fact) that you would like to ask for?

I'm no Microsoft apologist but damn, you just don't know what you're talking about.

Re:QUICK! LETS IMITATE IT!!

[Jerf]

And they already provide virtual desktops (to which you can switch with keystroke combinations) through the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager (MSVDM) Power Toy.

They do, but it's not decent. Every IM program borks the desktop. Every popup borks the desktop. Some programs just plain don't work with it. Some wander all over the desktop, probably because they're confused about being at some coordinates but not actually visible or some other logical thing they can't deal with. Others totally freak out to the point of crashing.

I'm also annoyed that at least last time I tried it I couldn't get it to "go to the workspace to the right", but I'll grant that's a bit more obscure. More important is that Windows wasn't designed for multi-workspace use, and even Microsoft programs work very, very poorly with it.

Same for "focus follows mouse". It works great, except for all the programs that grab the focus, the programs that won't accept the focus following the mouse, the programs that seem to get confused about being the focused program but not being the top window, etc. Windows wasn't designed for it and it shows.

I've tried everything I've ever seen mentioned on Slashdot for multiple workspaces, and they all suck in the same way. My conclusion is that Windows is the common factor, and it's not a stretch to notice the Windows messaging system was fundamentally designed for a 16-bit cooperative multitasking, all-processes-in-one-memory-partition model, and it's still hack-upon-hack on top of that. (Raymond Chen's "The Old New Thing" blog has story after story about "here's why Windows has this wart. It all started in Windows [123].0...") Terminal services seems to work OK, and I had hopes that updating Windows to work with TS would also improve applications w.r.t. multiple workspaces, but it hasn't happened.

I've tried everything, and quite a few window managers on Linux too. I'm not sure how I could know more about what I'm talking about. Windows's multiple-workspace support is a bullet-point feature, an unsupported Powertoy, something even major application builders don't test for, and unless it's slipped by all the Vista coverage, for practical purposes, Windows does not decent multi-workspace support.

Re:QUICK! LETS IMITATE IT!!

[x2A]

Because you do things in a way that benefits from virtual desktops. It's like saying you have to work in another language, not your native one; it's gonna slow you down. However, someone who's native language is that language isn't going to feel crippled in the slightest, because they don't need what you need. I, for example, have no use for virtual desktops, and so remove the pager from my desktop, because that's not the way I interface with the computer.

I hope so. With vectors!

[Grendel Drago]

Hey, it it means I'll finally get my vector desktop, so I can just turn the DPI up or down for big happy controls or tiny intricate controls, I'll be happy. Nearly everything's still bitmap-based; it's so 1990s. And whatever happened to dynamic themes for GTK [gnome.org]?

Re:

[CastrTroy]

And their virtual desktop powertoy is just that, a toy. It sucks compared 10 year old versions of Unix with the virtual desktop. Windows was never designed to have virtual desktops, so any attempt to make them is a hack, and it turns out really bad.

It really baffles me.

[Anonymous Coward]

It really baffles me why they haven't added virtual desktop support yet. This is something that X has had since swm [wikipedia.org], which Mr. LaStrange released in 1990!

Even the Sun workstation I used in the mid-1990s, running Solaris 2.5 and CDE, offered virtual desktops. For the love of fuck, Microsoft needs to add virtual desktop support.

Re:It really baffles me.

[dan828]

It really baffles me why they haven't added virtual desktop support yet.

It's been around since NT-- a powertoy called Virtual Desktop Manager

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/power toys/xppowertoys.mspx [microsoft.com]

Re:It really baffles me.

[Tony Hoyle]

That's a major cheat - it just sends hide commands to all the windows on one 'desktop' and show commands to all the windows on the other. It also fails rather badly if one of the apps refuses to be hidden.

In XP it got a bit silly because all the window animation started up and you'd see all the windows shrinking and growing...

Re:It really baffles me.

[Ucklak]

yeah, and it sucks.

It doesn't work effectively, you can run Excel on one desktop and Word on the other as you'll have toolbar issues.
You'll need more than a Gig of ram to be effective to even be comparable to any Unix running just notepad.

Re:

[AndrewNeo]

That's why Virtual Dimension [sourceforge.net] is your friend. It works a hell of a lot better than Microsoft's PowerToy, though there are a few minor bugs at least you get unlimited virtual desktops. I recommend version 0.93 as I've had problems with 0.94.

Re:It really baffles me.

[x2A]

cuz most people don't work that way, and at worse, can be confused (on a level) by virtual desktops. The amount of people I see trying to move windows around the screen because they don't even alt+tab, or minimise windows, even when they know how, makes you realise that a lot of people out there cannot comprehend the extra dimensions.

Re:

[oddfox]

And many users with sensitive mouse wheels, such as myself, say fuck that. A key combination is much more effective for switching to a different workspace.

Re:

[x2A]

or me, who likes to alt+tab to winamp or MPC etc, then just use the scroll wheel (well, scroll bit of the pad) for changing the volume, then alt+tab back... all quickly without even having to wait for any visual feedback (like you would do if it involved moving the mouse).

Plus when it comes to virtual desktop/console type things, I don't like free spin... prefer something like alt+f1-f4 to switch, so you can jump straight to where you know your stuff is without waiting for visual feedback.

Re:So what?

[Lux]

No, that's not all they added. I'm running RC1 at home now, and I have to say that the wireless-targetted TCP improvements alone are worth an upgrade to me.

I really like the fact that a lot of my hardware drivers are running with reduced privileges over (under?) XP. I think this is why my machine is crashing less now --my sound card is a POS and the drivers used to routinely crash XP. Now it's more stable with beta Vista drivers than it ever was with the "stable" ones.

I'm also stoked that the OS benchmarks the hardware so users can target their upgrades at their weakest links more easily. I'm pretty technical, and I usually find myself making what are pretty much educated guesses, so I plan to make use of this feature.

Finally, I'm going to like it when my family is on it and they call me up and ask me to fix their computers, because Vista tracks some performance and stability heuristics, and has a tool that graphs these metrics alongside software installation/update events. Because, you know: my parents never do *anything* to make their machine slow down or destabilize. Never.

So, yeah. There are plenty of crunchy bits in addition to the UI improvements. Here's a pretty good list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista [wikipedia.org]

There are some things I don't like, but I like it enough that I plan on building a new box for it when it ships.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

To paraphrase what someone once said in a commercial: "The Internet is the Computer"

The person who said that was Scott McNealy. IIRC he said it at some Sun conference before the commercial came out. The commercial was for Sun Microsystems. Sun is now in bed with Microsoft.

I think that pretty much says it all.

Re:

[Overly Critical Guy]

Isn't it interesting that the #1 software developer in the world gets away with being six years behind and playing catch-up by trying to adopt the competition's look-and-feel?

My lasting impression of Vista is that it looks like what XP's Luna looked like when I first saw it. Hideous, garish, and an obvious response to what Apple was doing. Vista essentially is Microsoft's plastic version of Aqua. Except that there are five different menu styles (no, seriously), multiple styles of dialog boxes (Install Fo

Re:Looks More Like OSX

[Overly Critical Guy]

• Translucent window borders, first seen in the Mac OS X Public Beta six years ago.
• Hardware-accelerated desktop composition, which was out in 2002 in OS X Jaguar.
• Vector-based, resolution-independent graphics interface, which was out in Quartz in 2000. XP had GDI+, but it was less powerful and nobody used it, particularly XP itself.
• Flip3D is a lame, useless copy of Expose.
• The security prompt for system changes, though UAC appears much more frequently and doesn't even ask for a password (how secure!).
• Volume icon is direct rip-off of OS X volume icon, even down to the sound wave animation.
• Busy cursor is rip-off of beach ball and radial progress bar.
• Search field in upper-right is a standard Apple-ism.
• The sidebar now hosts HTML "gadgets" ala Dashboard's widgets, even though Longhorn was originally supposed to include a much different sidebar based on .NET "tiles" utilizing XML services.
• The gadgets that ship with Vista, with the exception of the CPU monitor and picture viewer, are direct rip-offs of the default widgets that ship with Mac OS X.
• Windows Calendar's interface is strikingly similar to iCal's interface, including the colors and visual styles of events.
• Windows Picture Gallery is a third-rate copy of iPhoto.
• Windows Movie Maker is a third-rate copy of iMovie.
• Windows DVD Maker is a third-rate copy of iDVD.
• Windows Media Player now utilizes iTune's signature left-side source list.
• The Vista filesystem layout is a DIRECT COPY of OS X's filesystem layout.
• Internet Explorer's save dialog is a direct rip-off of the OS X save dialog. It starts out in a reduced state in which only recent save places are listed in a drop-down list, and a disclosure button on the side expands it to reveal the usual filebrowser, just like in OS X.

I could write more, but you get the picture. Just use OS X, which has been around for almost six years now. Then use Vista. The similarities are immediately obvious, and they will be written about in the side-by-side comparison reviews next year.

Re:

[Overly Critical Guy]

Actually, many of the Xerox employees went to work at Apple and helped create the Macintosh, and it's been written by one of the former employees that Apple's interface was in development before the visit to Xerox, and that Apple created the idea of pulldown menus, the overlapping windows, icons, the trash can, and so forth.

It's a look-and-feel that originated at Apple. When you use Windows, that essential paradigm is coming directly from the 1984 MacOS.

Re:

[mrchaotica]

The problem people have spent time learning where things are, but when you change them it causes aggrivation of having to relearn it all over again.

And yet they still scream bloody murder when you suggest that they just learn a different interface (e.g. OpenOffice, [GNOME|KDE|OS X], etc.) instead, even though it would be the same (or indeed, less) effort.