| Desktop
Experience
The most significant change
in the graphical interface is the smooth screen effects,
similar to those introduced with Mac OS X. The Longhorn
Display Driver Model (LDDM) is a new Microsoft specification
that offloads much of these effects to the GPU (graphics
processor unit). To take advantage of the new technology,
launching, minimizing, maximizing or closing a window
would be done a very smooth shrinking/fading effect/transition.
Both Active and Inactive Windows now have translucent
borders (similar to early incarnations of Mac OS X),
and the default “Aero” visual style takes advantage
of these new capabilities. Of course, Microsoft has
included the Windows Classic style to save some resources
for slower computers. Changing between the themes
only takes a second in Longhorn, compared to the five-ten
seconds Windows XP needed.
Windows now minimize, maximize or close with a
genie effect similar to Mac OS X with added transparency.
The 'Windows Classic' style is still provided to
mitigate the amount of system resources used.
As with XP, the
classic ‘My Computer’, ‘Internet Explorer’ etc,. desktop
icons have been hidden. You can show these the same
way you do on Windows XP, with a few slight changes.
With Vista, you now have the option of hiding the
Recycle Bin for a completely clean desktop. And oddly
enough, the Control Panel can now be made an icon
on the desktop. But when I tried getting the Documents
icon to show on the desktop, Windows did nothing regardless
of what the checkbox said.
Customizing the icons shown on the desktop.
Windows Explorer
now no longer has the space-wasting pane on the left
with obscure links. Instead, the pane has been reduced
and combined with the status bar at the bottom, which
changes color depending on the files you have inside
(for example, pictures turn it orange). The pane on
the left is now used to promote the new “Virtual Folders”
capabilities allowing quick access to your documents
by Author, Keyword etc,. The My Computer screen has
been redesigned to take advantage of this space. The
window no longer has that space wasting section which
linked to everybody’s documents. What’s also welcome
is that just below each of the drive names and letters,
there is a colored bar which shows how much space
is used per drive. However, bringing up the “Properties”
dialog of a drive still shows the classical blue/magenta
pie chart, presumably because this is still the first
Vista beta. A quick look shows Windows Vista takes
up just over 5GB of space when first installed. Explorer
has also hidden the “File, Edit, View…” menu by default
– to get this back, you have to click on the third
icon on the left (adjacent to Share), and click ‘Show
Classic menus’.
The Explorer window turns orange if the folder
open is full of pictures.
The properties dialog has yet to be refreshed for
the new Windows.
The address bar
has also been touched up; not only is it translucent,
but instead of showing paths like C:\Users\Administrator,
it shows your location (again like Mac OS X) in the
form “> Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Users > Administrator”
– a nice touch to make Windows more user friendly.
What’s better is that you can click on each of these
folders to take you to that level. Like before, you
can click on the address bar, and Windows will give
you the path in a changeable form (C:\Users\Administrator)
so you can type in a path if you so desire. One cool
feature with Windows Explorer is the slider bar that
lets you switch between different icon sizes and folder
views. You can toggle between the same Tiled, Large
Thumbnails (and when they say large, they mean large!)
and Detailed views, but what’s really cool is that
clicking on the drop down menu brings up a slider
which lets you see the changes live as you go from
Detailed to Tiled to Large Thumbnails to the Classic
Icon layout since Windows 95 to the List view.
Changes made by moving take effect without releasing
the mouse button.
The large thumbnail view. When they say large,
they really do mean large!
Microsoft has
also adopted a new file structure for home folders,
similar to what’s used in the *NIX and Mac worlds.
Instead of having Documents and Settings, user profiles
and documents are now stored in the \Users folder
(although the supplemental drivers package quickly
recreated a Documents and Settings folder). Microsoft
has done away with the traditional “My” prefix for
Documents, Videos, Pictures etc,. The Users folder
also contains a “Public” directory, presumably used
in the same way as the one found on Mac OS X – to
replace Shared Documents in Windows XP. Also, Microsoft
has moved NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and other boot system
files to the \Boot folder; I’m not sure why though,
because BOOT.INI and some others still remain in the
root folder. Thankfully, unlike Mac OS X which adds
the “.DS_Store” file to every folder you navigate
through the network, Longhorn leaves behind no hidden
or system files on the server.
The start menu
concept has also been redone. Instead of a flyout
All programs menu, clicking on “All Programs” would
replace the pane which normally shows Internet Explorer
and the list of recently launched programs with the
classic Start Menu items. Not only were the icons
of many of the programs redesigned, but Microsoft
has also taken a hierarchal design approach with the
start menu. Of course, for die-hard classic fans,
Microsoft still allows one to revert to the Classic
Start menu the same way you could on XP. The Taskbar
and Start Menu properties has been redesigned, though
options are divided throughout more tabs.
Clicking the All Programs button (left) brings
up the pane as shown on the right.
Taskbar options are now split across even more
tabs.
What is interesting
is that apart from the default Accessories, Administrative
Tools and Startup folders, there was a ‘Network Presentation’
folder with shortcuts to broadcast a presentation,
connect to a projector and view a presentation. The
feature would probably be used in classrooms where
students would connect to the teacher’s computer to
watch some kind of demonstration. Microsoft has also
included a ‘beta’ version of Microsoft Backup. Launching
the program brings up a Window that calls itself ‘Safedocs’
and allows the scheduling of automatic backups as
well as recovering specific or all folders. The interface
looks very preliminary and does not seem finished.
The Microsoft Backup (beta) application still needs
a lot more work.
It took us a bit
of clicking around in the “Computer” window to find
the Control Panel. Microsoft now calls this “Change
a setting”. I find it annoying how Microsoft keeps
changing its terminology; you spend a few product
generations teaching those who aren’t too comfortable
with computers to go to the Control Panel to change
a setting, and now they change the term? (I’m not
sure why Change or Remove a Program deserves its own
button next to View System Information or the Control
Panel, but oh well). As with Windows XP, the Control
Panel defaults to a categorical view. Thankfully you
can revert to the classic layout and show all the
panes on one page. The panes were pretty much identical
to XP, except there’s also ‘Auxiliary Display’, ‘Indexing
and Search options’, ‘iSCSI Initiator’, ‘Solutions
to problems’, ‘Sync manager’ and ‘Windows Parental
controls’. The Add/Remove programs pane has now been
redesigned to resemble an Explorer Window. I haven’t
had the chance to install any programs to test out
how well this works in comparison to the old Add/Remove
programs dialog.
The redesigned Control Panel.
The redesigned Add/Remove Programs pane resembles
Windows Explorer.
Windows Vista
Beta 1 still ships with Windows Media Player 10. It’s
unclear at the moment how the upcoming Windows Media
Player 11 will ship (with Windows Vista or separately).
Other small improvements include a Recycle Bin no
longer limited to 4GB. The progress bars used throughout
the OS (i.e. when downloading a file in Internet Explorer)
have been revamped; we particularly liked the smooth
movement of the green progress bar. By default, System
Restore now limits itself to 50% of the available
hard drive space, unlike the 100% default setting
with XP.
A personal favorite
is the long overdue overhaul of the file moving/copying
dialog. Instead of providing a progress bar and an
estimated time remaining, the dialog finally shows
the number of items (and the size) remaining, as well
as the transfer speed.
Finally a more intuitive move/copy dialog!
There are inevitably
problems with Longhorn as it is (of course, it’s still
beta 1; Whistler Beta 1 was a completely different
story from the final Windows XP release). Alt+Print-Screen
on Windows would distort the Aero theme and replace
the translucent style with plain shades of gray and
blue. Meanwhile, the ALT+TAB dialog to switch between
windows is still pending a redesign. Also, changing
Windows’ settings, for example, showing hidden folders,
would occasionally require a manual refresh; Tiger
did a good job keeping windows up-to-date (big improvements
especially with network folders compared to Panther),
let’s hope Microsoft fixes this for the final release.
 Strangely
enough Windows did not ask for the name of the person/company
installing Windows. The System Properties entry now
shows “Windows User” and no company name. The Time
Zone also defaults to GMT-8, and we could only change
this after setting up Windows. Microsoft presumably
wants to keep the amount of information entered during
setup to a minimum, but we feel that it would be better
to ask these questions during setup instead of having
to have less proficient users dig through the Control
Panel to change the time zone.
Hitting the CTRL+ALT+DELETE
keys would now invoke the newly redesigned Windows
Security dialog, which is now full screen (previously
you would be taken to the Task Manager unless you
disabled Fast user switching or joined a domain).
Hitting Windows+L brings you back to the logon screen
for fast user switching, just like Windows XP. Microsoft
now calls the process of going back to the logon screen
for fast user switching ‘Lock’ (well that’s what the
Start Menu says), presumably an effort to combine
the Lock Workstation feature used when a machine joins
a domain, and the fast user switching screen XP introduced.
Windows Security redesigned.
Microsoft
has also redesigned the Shutdown dialog, and has hidden
other options (Standby, Hibernate and Restart) in
a dropdown menu – I have no idea why they think this
has simplified the design; a user will have to look
even deeper just to restart the computer. Clicking
shutdown brings up a timer similar to Mac OS X, although
instead of waiting 2 minutes, Windows waits for 30
seconds before shutting down automatically. Of course,
you can always click ‘Shut Down Now’. Oddly enough,
clicking on the Restart option does not bring up the
same timer; one could easily restart by mistake here.
Strangely enough, Windows claimed that it did not
shut down properly after restarting, and started to
look for a solution. Subsequent restarts did not bring
up the same dialog.
A feature 'lifted' from Mac OS X... |
This
has probably been the longest wait for any Microsoft
product. What has the software giant been up to?
