WinSuperSite has obtained information and screenshots of the upcoming “Aero” UI for Windows Longhorn.
Longhorn Aero User Interface Revealed
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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It’s amazing that MS can’t hire GUI designers as talented as Apple can. IMHO this new UI looks uglier than XP’s current one.
This looks like one of thoses os’ you see in movies. Wouldn’t want to use it, does anyone know if this one will have a ‘classic’ mode too ?
I may be in the minority but I like it somewhat. I would like it much better though if Microsoft would use the menu/widget set used in Office XP and VS.net, I think they look much better.
This UI looks much better than the command line Linux users have to put up with no?
For an OS which is coming out in 2 years time (ish) they seem to be releasing the UI a little early.
Anyone remember Watercolor (from Whistler Build 2257)? And whatever happened to Plex?
Even though it looks a bit crappy, if this is the final version then we’re all stuck with it.
How long are OSnews mods going to allow Martin’s obvious trolling before they ban his IP? His comments have no value but to inflame and he posts many times to each thread. I left zdnet forums because of all the wintrolls and obnoxious over-posting by them, and now it’s starting here too.
I really don’t fancy a Playskool toy. “How to install a new device”. Yes, for MS, the user is so dumb he needs bold characters… KDE or Gnome look professional, not like this joke for retarded.
Judging from the screenshots at least. And to think ugly looking fonts used to be an argument against Linux on the desktop not so long ago.
🙂 Whatever you say, man.
Windows just keeps getting worse and worse. It looks like Win2K was it’s highwater mark. While I actually find the visuals somewhat appealing, the “task based” interface just sucks. Hopefully, they won’t get rid of “classic” mode.
check out that “stack of cubes” icon next to the word “Status” in this picture
http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/lh-winhec-04.png
isn’t that from beos?
That all blue theme is a complete eyesore. I use KDE, but Windows classic theme is better than this “Aero.”
This Microsoft inovation when they don’t have anything to copy.
Can’t say I’m very impressed with what they are offering. Windows 2k and XP with ObjectDesktop look better than this. Also, their heavy use of iconography is a real turnoff. I like to “read”.
Sure, for the total Novice who uses a computer, it may be great, but in the long run, if they use a computer a lot and learn more about what they can actually do, they will appreciate command lines more and Point’N’Click less. If I wanted heavy duty symbology I would switch to Japanese and Chinese, not undiscriptive icons.
MS is turning the OS into an appliance. By doing so your options will be:
“Press here to play a Windows Media(tm) file with Windows DRM(tm)”
“Press here to send an email with Windows Outlook(tm)”
“Press here to edit a Windows Document(tm)”
and that will be it. You folks better wise up because you are the frog and the milk is heating up.
d@
try to fix your software before making money. they focus too much on the gui. anyway, i happy with open source products like freebsd.
I don’t think many people are giving this a chance. Yes I agree that Windows is pretty computer-retard oriented, but I think that their goal is to make it easier to use. But what they are failing to do is appeal to the power-user. Linux is better in that aspect because there is more to explore. But at least windows will now have virtual desktops…
Microsoft is becoming a real expert at UIs that waste 1/3 of the screen . . .
I strongly disagree. I think Windows has the best looking font rendering I’ve seen in an OS. (And font rendering on Linux is sadly still not very good)
Likely what you see will be changed or completely different when the final product ships.
Its still what ? 2 years off ?
These shots don’t mean anything.
…and steal ideas from other developers.
Look here:
http://xbetas.com/content/lh4029/screen10.JPG
The “Preview Funktion” an highlighted pics is stolen from KDE.
OK, im KDE are many things which are stolen from Windows….. (I think to the new Kontact…
)
I’ll take this one http://www.divisiontwo.com/pictures/mdk91kde31.png over that playskool longhorn UI any day of the week.
You’ve got to be kidding. For about 2 years now the font rendering on Linux has been much better than windows.
I sure hope it isn’t the final version of the GUI. I prefer simple & clean UIs over an eyecandy fest. Some might argue, but I find that this beta UI is too user-friendly. It might be a pain to support as many people will probably try to improvise itself as a technician… and that UI might scare technicians.
You’ve got to be kidding. For about 2 years now the font rendering on Linux has been much better than windows.
Absolutely not. It wasn’t until probably a year ago when fonts in linux were comparable to the fonts in windows. Linux font rendering is getting better though.
There’s still things in linux that make it not right for the normal user. Like yesterday I tried to install UT2003 in linux. I had to search the internet on how to do that, and found out that the installer is on the 3rd cd. I used the installer, but when it asked me to put in the 2nd cd, it couldnt eject the disc nor unmount it because it was in use. It’s inconsistency like this that keeps linux from being perfect. There isn’t the amount of consistency throughout the OS that is needed to make it really nice to use for people other than programers and super computer geeks (like myself).
I do admit though that sometimes i just get sick of using windows, because it’s the same thing, day in day out. Everytime there’s a new release of windows, I’m impressed with it for about a few months, then it just becomes another boring windows OS.
Hmmm, as a dedicated Linux user, I have to admit that some of those shots look incredibly gorgeous. I’m a pretty objective person, and I’m worried that Longhorn may smoke the Linux desktop in the slickness department; it’s aiming to rival Mac OS X presumably.
Anyway, we have 2-3 years to beat this. I relish seeing Fresco come to the fore, so that Linux/BSD etc can benefit from new graphics technology that rivals Mac and Longhorn.
I prefer simple & clean UIs over an eyecandy fest
I candy is fine. There’s nothing wrong with a pretty interface as long as the functionality is there. That’s the problem, I think, with the whole XP/Longhorn UI.
As usual, when MS steals ideas, they can’t seem to get it right. Often, you want to place a window in a specific position. How much harder will this be when the window is flapping around in the breeze?
What those screenshots are showing is “plex” — the interim theme used to test out ideas. Aero looks completely different — and waayyyyy better.
Well, I have nothing against eyecandy itself. I do use eyecandy features like font antialiasing, alpha transparencies for menus, etc. I don’t mind non-rectangular windows either. However, I prefer a clean interface over one that integrates everything. I don’t want a cute computer with pictures of my peripherals besides it like in one of those screenshots on WinSuperSite ( http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/lh-winhec-03.png ) and I don’t need eyecandy that add absolutely nothing to the experience ( http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/longhorn_winhec_10_sm.p… ). That one ( http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/lh-winhec-05.png ) isn’t bad, but there’s too much MS integration for me (especially because I tend to use 3rd programs rather than built-in ones). In the end, I guess it’s a question of preference.
I’m sorry to hear that. But I troll here all the time and have not been banned (yet- I probably will someday). I would venture to say it was bad luck or a misinterpretation (or maybe the wrong article, offtopic?). But regardless, feel free to continue posting, I’m sure you won’t be banned unless you do something terribly offensive.
There seems to be a bit of BeOS influence in there, particularly in the design of the scrollbars.
Overall, I think this is a step up from the garish Luna UI, but has a ways to go before it measures up to some of the nicer UIs that have existed. Like a lot of people, I think Microsoft hit a high-water mark with the (short-lived, unfortunately) .NET theme and has yet to replicate that again.
One thing is troubling, though. The little places for “branding” cited in the screenshots. I don’t want my desktop to become a place for advertisements and product logos. If you’re paying for some software or hardware, it shouldn’t try to advertise to you further.
There seems to be a bit of BeOS influence in there, particularly in the design of the scrollbars.
Overall, I think this is a step up from the garish Luna UI, but has a ways to go before it measures up to some of the nicer UIs that have existed. Like a lot of people, I think Microsoft hit a high-water mark with the (short-lived, unfortunately) .NET theme and has yet to replicate that again.
One thing is troubling, though. The little places for “branding” cited in the screenshots. I don’t want my desktop to become a place for advertisements and product logos. If you’re paying for some software or hardware, it shouldn’t try to advertise to you further.
wow. That’s pretty pathetic. Really, KDE and Gnome are superior when it comes to GUI’s.
It doesn’t look like OSX so it must be fake.
One thing is troubling, though. The little places for “branding” cited in the screenshots. I don’t want my desktop to become a place for advertisements and product logos. If you’re paying for some software or hardware, it shouldn’t try to advertise to you further.
It is exactly what Microsoft wants to do with your computer : an advertising and spying appliance. With some encryption, their “partners” will have to pay MS to send adverts if they don’t want to breach DMCA. Where will you go tomorrow ?
One thing is troubling, though. The little places for “branding” cited in the screenshots. I don’t want my desktop to become a place for advertisements and product logos. If you’re paying for some software or hardware, it shouldn’t try to advertise to you further.
Well, some people do love to brag on which hardware they bought. For example, I’m sure Intel fans will love to see their Intel P4 and AMD zealots will be proud to see the AMD Athlon XP/Duron logo. I know some people that won’t buy something just because of its brand even if it’s the best either in performance or price/performance. I know many people hate this comparison, but the “performance hardware” industry is looking more and more like the performance car industry. Reputations might be created or destroyed just because of the use of a part of a specific brand…
Strange: The shot under the heading “hardware and devices” ( http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/lh-winhec-03.png ) : Marieke’s PC: Intel Xeon, 80 GHz RAM… I would like to get to know marieke … and her PC
Yikes! fisher price looking gui. More bloat to force people to get more cpu, ram, video card, and hd space. No thanks xp, this is really wasteful and ugly.
No I am not kidding. Try removing the fussiness (aa) on Linux and look at the rendering. Not that pretty eh? (Enabling linux aa makes the fonts blurry and hard to read. I don’t want that.) Even if one enables the patented hinting stuff in freetype fonts still don’t render correctly. Try comparing quality fonts like tahoma or trebuchet using windows and linux. Several tahoma glyphs are bad and trebuchet is worse.
Well, all Windows interfaces seems to be blue. I really like the Fire theme interface colors used in PPC 2002. It is red, but looks nice (and different). I hope one of these days MS will try other colors (but not something like the ugly Olive theme from XP)
Like someone said before – it’s too early to tell. From the looks of it now…Microsoft seems to be targeting little 7 years old.
…a browser to me. The blue surface has a resemblance to the brushed metal on Mac OS X.
To think about it, this GUI looks much harder to use than, say, Windows 3.1. Seriously! We know the problems it had with the program and file manager, but there was some degree of simplicity there which was totally lost when Windows 95 was released.
I think the first step in making an OS simple to use is to make the system simple and transparent, before you even think of making a GUI. Microsoft seem to be going in the opposite direction by making their OS so much more complex, and completely opaque.
That icon is *so* ripped from BeOS.
I see paint.exe hasn’t changed. calc.exe is probably still the same old Win32s app it always was
Ok, obviously you’ve probably never used Linux before…. Linux has many GUI’s. KDE and Gnome being most popular.
I think this new look is awsome
First of all the fault of that lays soley on Epic’s shoulders for writing such a shitty installer and for not documenting it in their manual. Of course they do have it documented in the README file on the first CD ! Second you can install UT if you disable auto-mount in MDK via the MDK-Control panel. After that you can re-enable it if you want to. From my own experince UT 2k3 is the only game in Linux which I needed to disable auto-mount because the buggy installer that EPIC shipped. I can install Tribes 2, Quake 3, Quake 3 Arena, NWN and other games for Linux just fine with no hassles. EPIC is to blame for their buggy installer not Linux.
Blue tends to be much easier on the eyes than most colors.
Blue tends to be much easier on the eyes than most colors.
It’s also calming, which is of vital importance in keeping newb users from smashing the computer or hiding in a corner. Ever noticed how Windows setup is always blue? People are scared of Linux when they see white text on black.
nothing to add, these screenshot are of no value the official
release of Shorthorn will be looking completly different.
Better use Ximian gnome or KDE+Karamba and slicker if you want
to have a nice desktop.
So that is why we always get a BLUE screen on fatal errors instead of a red one, that way I can stay when probably all my work have been lost
Anyway, as I said, Fire is a theme in PPC 2002 (not the default one, but is there). At least I hope they include other theme colors (or the ability to arbitrary choose the gradient color on any control).
I must say that I like this new interfaces, look a little more stylish in some details (not all all of them). I soemhow like the new hardware interface, but find very ugly the new Audio Properties window.
Anyway, probably it is better to judge the new GUI for its usability and performance, instead of just how it looks on a screenshot
Starting from XP windoze looks like a playgroup OS
After using Mac OSX for 2 year and then using XP everyday on my newer dell. I really can’t stand XP, hmm it bluescreened, then got a worm last weekend. XP isn’t a gem at all,,,,,,,very cartoonish looking,,,sluggish at times too! G5 looks like my next machine! Anyone want a good deal on a 6 month old dell?
But will it come bundled on this? http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000065CSG.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
> The bare minimum Longhorn system will have to be able to
> display at least 1024 x 768 with 32-bit color, and it must
> include a hardware accelerated 3D video card with at least
> 64 MB of RAM. But this is the base requirement: To take
> advantage of the fun eye candy Microsoft has planned, you’ll
> need advanced video hardware with at least 128 MB of RAM.
So I have NO CHANCE to run Longhorn on my 950Mhz Laptop with the 8MB graphic card?
EXCELLENT!
“There are some cool UI uses for window scaling,” Hammil noted. “We could have live but iconified versions of windows that appear when you’re searching for windows. Windows can be grouped, and minimized together, where windows are represented as shrunken versions of the original window.”
“We are going to copy exposé from Apple”
Ok, fine, maybe you could just remove the whole article, say “we are going to copy apple”, and just show the screenshots 🙂
I find it somewhat hilarious that when comparing OS X Panther’s interface with Longhorn Aero, it looks like Apple=business while Microsoft=kid toys. Windows XP already helped introduce the “Fisher-Price” look to Windows, now Longhorn has taken the plastic toy look to new levels. The fact is, and I never thought I’d say this, but even Linux to me looks far superior to Windows now. In particular, Red Hat’s Bluecurve with the latest font rendering. It’s actually beautiful, compared to this POS Aero.
Microsoft is going down the tubes every which way. There is no reason for me to be interested in Longhorn. I use OS X every day, and Panther looks like it will be a spectacular upgrade. And then there’s Linux, arguably THE BEST server platform today, period. Why use Windows? I have no idea.
Regards,
Jared
White Text on Black… very scary to those who never used a computer before: “Where do I start”? “How do I do what I want it to do”? Windows imitated Apple by, well, n00b apeal. Windows hopes to keep living off of n00b apeal.
But n00b apeal was important 10-15 years ago. It is becoming less and less important now that people are growing up with PCs in their home and are no longer “threatened” by them en masse they way they were.
Think about it, Nintendo used to be on top of the games console world, as more and more compitition came along they specified on the kids market, to the point that nobody can now take them seriously as anything but a kids toy while seriose consoles like the Playstation takes over most of the market.
MS is in the same situation, they are dumbing down the interface to a new level on each release, pretty soon nobody will be able to take them seriously as a seriouse operating platform, and the spoils will go to apple and Linux.
Will sit on Top of NTFS???
Another Cairo?
this new Aero look very cool, and in the next 2 years it’ll just be better. Don’t worry about 128 M video card requirement, just buy a new card, no need to buy a whole new macintosh ..
and i get tired reading KDE/GNOME is better…both are just copy/clone of windows gui with less functionality, yeah you can change the skin…but underneath still same incompatibility, inconsistency, incapability ….bleh…
Oh that’s ugly… it’s worse than Xp’s defualt look… is there a way to turn Aero off? Like in XP, you can make it look more like “classic” windows. I hope so.
First of all the fault of that lays soley on Epic’s shoulders for writing such a shitty installer and for not documenting it in their manual. Of course they do have it documented in the README file on the first CD ! Second you can install UT if you disable auto-mount in MDK via the MDK-Control panel. After that you can re-enable it if you want to. From my own experince UT 2k3 is the only game in Linux which I needed to disable auto-mount because the buggy installer that EPIC shipped. I can install Tribes 2, Quake 3, Quake 3 Arena, NWN and other games for Linux just fine with no hassles. EPIC is to blame for their buggy installer not Linux.
This goes back to the whole linux has crap for apps thing. Is the installer buggy in windows? No, because Epic probably didn’t give a damn because 97% of the people are going to be playing it in windows. So naturally, the linux installed was one of the last things on their minds when creating this game. “Oh damn we gotta release this game in a month…oh well the linux installer is not done yet…screw it.” That’s probably what Epic thought.
All you have to do is copy the installer onto your harddrive and run it from there. That doesnt sound too complicated to me.
Still not as beautiful as aqua
Will sit on Top of NTFS???
Another Cairo?
Looks like. I was also surprised. Personally, I don’t see any advantage with a FS like that. It would probably beat any non-DB offering for reading and searching, but I wonder how fast it’ll be for file creation and modification. It might have been fast if it was built like BeFS, but I now doubt it’s speed if it’s only a layer to NTFS…
Will sit on Top of NTFS???
Yes.
Format C:
y
Should give a nice clean slate to your Windows UI then try something better, hey in 2 to 3 years you might have Zeta or Open BeOS available.
Ever bothered searching for how Aqua looked 1.5-2 years before 10.0 was release?
No?
Oh, it looked really ugly.
I’m sure the top priority for the Longhorn team is not to make it look nice so when leaked out, they don’t have to suffer stupid trolls trolling against them, rather getting things like WinFS (especially) fixed in.
Ever bothered searching for how Aqua looked 1.5-2 years before 10.0 was release?
No?
Oh, it looked really ugly.
Any links? I couldn’t find anything.
You will be able to use windows classic mode and that will work on any video card which is likely to still be functional at the time longhorn is released. And what is all the fus about aero and luna sucking? If you don’t like either nor classic, than download a free theme to replace it. And to the trolls accusing MS of ripping off this or that, I’d LOVE to see one of you design a new GUI with absolutely NO elements ever seen before, that is useful and nice looking. Good luck if you decide to try, fyi there are thousands of themes out there and no matter how hard you try to make something original you aren’t going to succeed, at least some part any useful and nice looking gui has already been done by now. Originality to please the stupid anti-ms trolls that wouldn’t be happy anyway should be the LAST thing on MS’ list of priorities, they should make the GUI good looking and useful, and I don’t care if it is an exact copy of some stupid obscure OS that 95% of people have never heard of. Shit, do you clowns sit around at the car dealership complaining that ford didn’t invent the car? Hell you probably do when you’re not busy arguing whether kirk could kick picard’s ass or not..
This is what Aqua looked like before 10.0 was released. http://www.deskpicture.com/DPs/Technology/Apple/MacOSX_1.html
The dock is odd-looking and hard-edged and the window shadows aren’t the greatest, but it’s a far cry from “really ugly”.
i don’t care if microsoft ripped off of aqua…they just make crappy products in general…the last software i bought from them was MS Bob…which I thought was pretty useful.
I agree this is worse. It seams that every time Microsoft decides to update their OS they fire half of the GUI designers and usability experts.
This sidebar that covers a lot of the screen. and control panels that act as advertising areas will not sell them many new licences.
As they seam to have added a lot of new APIs we can expect that it will break a lot of older apps. This will mean that this system will require a lot of user training, both for the OS itself and the new apps needed.
This way Microsoft fail to make use of the greatest advantage they have over the free desktops like KDE and Gnome, the user famillarity.
And what is all the fus about aero and luna sucking? If you don’t like either nor classic, than download a free theme to replace it.
I agree 100% . I never complain about luna becuase you can turn it off (I do) and if you can turn aero off I won’t complain about it either.
Format C:
Should give a nice clean slate to your Windows UI then try something better, hey in 2 to 3 years you might have Zeta or Open BeOS available.
I have not found anything (except a mac, but I can’t afford one) that can completly replace windows. I have BeOS on one of my computers, and I love it. But it’s not a replacement, just a toy for now. In a couple of years, Zeta might be a suitable replace for windows, but probley not. FOr now, I will stick with windows as my main os, and just play around with the others.
I guess that you are trolling so I suppose I shouldn’t bother to answer. But just in case you are not, I can recommend that you try out some new Linux distro. A lot have changed since you had to put up with a CLI on Linux.
If you install Red Hat 8 or later, you might actually have a hard time finding a terminal window. All things that a normal windows user would configure can be configured without resorting to the command line.
To do more advanced things you may have to visit the CLI that is true. However this should be compared to editing often undocumented registry keys in windows.
You also have to realize that the Linux CLI is a very different animal than the windows CLI. In Linux,commands are well documented and have context sensitive tab completion for flags and arguments.
“i don’t care if microsoft ripped off of aqua…they just make crappy products in general…the last software i bought from them was MS Bob…which I thought was pretty useful.”
I fail to see what is so crappy about their products. I own windows XP pro, I click on the program I want, do what I want, close the program, I click on a movie I want to watch, watch the movie, close the media player, ditto music and games. I am just missing out on all this ‘crappyness’ everyone is screaming about. Maybe I need to hang out at slashdot some more to get educated (read: programmed) on MS ‘crappyness.’ “OMG IT’S SOO CRAPPY IT JUST DOES WHAT I WANT ALL THE TIME!”
Back when I was attempting to do UI development on an internet gateway product, I looked into Microsoft’s UI research, a lot of which at the time was focused on what they were calling “Inductive User Interfaces.” The idea behind an IUI is that sometimes it’s better to have many screens with just one or two questions on them that lead you down a task-oriented path. This seems paradoxical to those who’ve studied conventional UI design and want to beat you over the head with GOMS calculations and the like, but in Microsoft’s studies, IUIs were rarely slower for experienced users and were much faster for new users. Microsoft Money was the first program to get an IUI and it really works pretty well.
The problem with an IUI is that the more “open” the set of available tasks to a user is, the more arbitrary and forced the UI ends up feeling. People have noticed that IUIs tend to look like web pages, and that’s not coincidental. (Arguably, they’re modern reinterpretations of menu-driven programs going back to the TRS-80 and IBM mainframe days!) For something like a financial program, with a small, fixed number of tasks, IUI’s are great. (I think an IUI would have been great for the internet gateway product, too, but I wasn’t allowed to redevelop anything. I hear since I left that company they’ve redesigned the UI by changing the colors and finally making it modern HTML, which is great, but there were intrinsic problems in the UI concepts that I suspect are still there.)
Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to want to put IUI’s everywhere. XP showed this and I think Longhorn is going to be even worse. An operating system’s tasks are neither small nor fixed; Microsoft wants computers to behave like appliances. This is a common goal (see BeOS’s transformation into BeIA), but I continue to believe it’s a misguided one (see, well, BeOS’s transformation into BeIA). As I recall a reviewer saying back when Microsoft started pushing Active Desktop as a way to make your computer more just like a web browser, “and who was asking for this, exactly?”
As Jared White observed, it’s kind of ironic that Microsoft is pushing to have the “toy desktop” rather than Apple. But it may not be that unexpected. People are very quick to point out the (perceived) huge price difference between Macs and Wintels; the target market for $499 PCs may well be people who want something as easy to use as a toaster, whereas the “power users” who want workstations will be gravitating toward Macs.
FreeType 2 (which does the font rendering on Linux systems) is a very good font library and just as good as apple and microsoft’s ones. But most distributions don’t have font hinging enabled, which is why they look so bad.
The reason for this is Apple has a patent on bytecode font hinting, which makes it illegal for any free software desktop environment to have good quality font rendering.
The people who made FreeType are very competent coders and they produced an excellent font rendering library, but the product of their voluntary work will not be fully appreciated until the Apple patents expire. Does anyone know when this will be?
For some reason, I actually like this GUI, seems kinda strange, but IMO is better then Aqua… One thing is it seems they will unify the desktop on Windows Media like widgets… I don’t think I could use it though on a day to day basis, is far too pretty to concentrate on important things such as porn (well maybe not quite that pretty…)
When OS X was at a similar stage as Longhorn, it wasn’t that different from previous MacOSes. Here are shots more comparable to the current stage of development Longhorn is in (actually at a later stage as Longhorn hasn’t even had a Developer Release yet — that comes in October at the PDC).
OS X DP1
http://www.macobserver.com/news/99/may/990510/wwdccoverage4.html
OS X DP2
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/4q99/macos-x-dp2/macos-x-dp2-4.h…
You could improve the usability of the Linux UI shown in
http://www.divisiontwo.com/pictures/mdk91kde31.png
further by making the activity field at the bottom of the screenshot consist of one single row instead of two.
That way the the application buttons will be much easier to hit with the mouse as it is very hard to miss the bottom of the screen while moving the mouse. (Fitts law)
Sorry, for the slightly off topic post.
It looks fine to me, but like many others have said this is years off so it will probably look different upon release. I also imagine that the obscene amount of resources it will consume might just be standard by then (perhaps MS will alter it to require less as well). And of course you can skin so many OS’s to your liking (Thankfully). Not like it matters much to me because with all that DRM trusted computing crap I’m not touching it. I think XP was the last MS OS for me. Oh well…I’ll find an alternative, I’m not stuck on one tool or another.
I like the taskbar at two levels for me…it’s easier to find the button I’m looking for because they all group at the center, I don’t have to scan left to right to find the button (I’m running at 1280 x 1024), when I look down my eyes go directly to the right place. It’s a dynamically growing taskbar, as more applications are open it becomes wider and wider to accommodate. If no applications are open there is no taskbar at all.
I also got rid of the clock…that’s a UI choice someone made long ago that no one ever questions. Most of us really don’t need precious screen real estate taken up with a clock…they’re everywhere you look.
puta
Press here to play a Windows Media(tm) file with Windows DRM(tm)”
“Press here to send an email with Windows Outlook(tm)”
“Press here to edit a Windows Document(tm)”
better that than ./compile media player
find out where did it installed…..open it, oops no decoder…./compile…etc
If it was Linux, it wouldn’t say anything except “RTFM”.
“better that than ./compile media player
find out where did it installed…..open it, oops no decoder…./compile…etc ”
URPMI xine (plugins the same way)
KDE “start” menu–>multimedia–>graphics–>xine.
You know? We can keep this up all night long.
wtf.. seriously.. when will the copying stop? like literally they ripped the whole thing from aqua.. that ugly blue shit with the title bar in the same ‘frame’ as the navigation bar is like a blue brushed metal with no texture.. the window scaling and dynamic resizing sounds like expose to me… the transparancy is nothing special, nvidia drivers have had it for years… i wonder how they’ll do fast user switching? make it on the face of a sphere and rotate the sphere? like really.. msft’s been copying apple for years and STILL hasn’t surpassed the interface to classic… why ever attempt to go after aqua…
what a load of shit.
Longhorn’s interface looks a bit like what KDE running on fresco would look like (if that ever happens). A lot of eyecandy, which is not neccessarily a bad thing. But at the end of the day u will be looking for a gui that is fast responsive and gets the job done (at least i would). I mean how often are u going to rotate windows or have transparent windows(in kde i used to switch off or keep transparency at a minimum)
The installation process seems to have borrowed a couple of ideas from lindows (image being copied to the harddrive), but probably with more polish and fizz (like the pnp detection).
But the fact is all this borrowing is not neccessarily a bad thing, if the end result is
1)a polished OS that is
2)easy to use
3)responsive
4) eye candy to attract new users
5) stability and robustness to keep existing users from switching to other OSs
6) able to run on legacy hardware (would give a big advantge if this coexisted with features 1 to 5 but its a tall order)
then longhorn could be the next big thing. Wonder if it will have an equivalent of apt?
But 2 years is a very long time and i would be very surprised if some enterprising soul doesn’t ramp up a linux distro by then to nullify all these ‘advantages’ of longhorn.
(Remember what linux was like two years ago? It has come a very long way)
My guess is Lindows might decide it was time to do an update once its CEO looks at these screenshots
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[offtopic]
And to those cribbing about linux fonts. I am using a redhat 8.0 based distro with Vera fonts. What i have done is decreased font size to 8 and increased dpi to 127 and use subpixel smoothing (on a crt monitor mind u). The result is very smooth fonts and not at all blurry. But i use a 2.4ghz p4 with 512mb ram so performance is still smooth but on a lower conf i guess things will slow down considerably.
And fo cripes sake don’t use the stock redhat kernel use the Planet-CCRMA kernels with the low latency patch and premptive kernel patch These are ideal for desktop usage (i remember some time back somebody cribbed that xmms skipped while playing mp3s me thinks it was eugenia. These kernel rpms also solve that problem
http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/system.html
[/offtopic]
Also i really don’t understand this antagonism between different users i see on osnews? Each to his own poison folks. Whatever happned to Live and let live?
The reason for this is Apple has a patent on bytecode font hinting, which makes it illegal for any free software desktop environment to have good quality font rendering.
Hmm… Do you have a source? Not that I don’t believe you, but I’m just interested. Did MS licenced font hinting from Apple? I also wonder how you can enable font hinting in Linux. My fonts in Linux are quite similar to those in Windows without antialiasing and they’re way better than ClearType with antialiasing (except for some fonts like Verdana and round characters (0, o, O, etc)… Not that I really care as I usually use Vera).
In regards to your ‘OS X looked like OS9 in dev previews’..
I’d say that apple had already had aqua ready to go, but wanted it to be a big secret, and waited so it wouldn’t be copied… but Microsoft is trying to show off that they can look as nice as apple (which they can’t), so they would release GUI information as soon as they can get something working.
That’s how i see it at least.
//
Hmm… Do you have a source? Not that I don’t believe you, but I’m just interested. Did MS licenced font hinting from Apple? I also wonder how you can enable font hinting in Linux. My fonts in Linux are quite similar to those in Windows without antialiasing and they’re way better than ClearType with antialiasing (except for some fonts like Verdana and round characters (0, o, O, etc)… Not that I really care as I usually use Vera).
//
I dont think Apple has patents on ByteCode Font hinting. You can enable in in Freetype and XFree86. You just have to enable it at compile time, since its not built in by default. I did, and my fonts look AMAZING.
The old OSNews site (i.e. before relaunch) have some links, but the rest I have on my long bookmarks list are dead currently.
Coming from a MacOS X users perspective, the user interface doesn’t really float my boat. After having a look at the tweaks done to the MacOS X, making it more visually conservative, Microsoft despirately needs to learn the art of minimalistic styling.
I like greys, blues with a hint of grey, I can’t stand bright colours and unfortunately it appears that Microsofts is more interested in making some sort of statement that actually develivering something usable. As for the window backgrounds, this is the one thing I hate about all operating systems, the consistant bloody use of white for window backgrounds. Please, for the love of Pete, at 2am, and after 3 litres of coffee, I DON’T want a ultra-bright white background. Give me a nice, soothing off white for the window background and I’ll be happy.
As for Pauls site, eek. Did he get the same “artist” that designed Aero to design his site? can anyone say “exibitionist”?
Hmm, okay… Well, perhaps I have font hinting enabled after all. Do you know how I can check if it’s enabled or not (as I don’t really want to recompile right now)? Or even better… Do you know a site that made a comparison (with screenshots) with font hinting disabled and enabled? Thanks!
All windows has become is nothing more than a toy, a plaything for idiots to click large blue and green buttons. Its now just for people who want to connect to AOL and dont wish to expand their horizons.
Such a shame that people reject something they don’t know yet. Can you tell me the exact details of Microsoft DRM plans, with guarentees that it is accurate and would come out true? Unlikely.
Which clearly explains why Microsoft ditch Watercolor and went for Luna at the last minute, showing it off dozens of months after starting the project to create it as well as outsourcing certain parts (to make the icons, for example)……
Hmm, looks like Daryl was right…
http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html
http://www.apple.com/mx/software/macosx/server/screenshots.html
Looks a heck of alot better than the crap MS just put together.
“wtf.. seriously.. when will the copying stop? like literally they ripped the whole thing from aqua.. that ugly blue shit with the title bar in the same ‘frame’ as the navigation bar is like a blue brushed metal with no texture.. the window scaling and dynamic resizing sounds like expose to me… the transparancy is nothing special, nvidia drivers have had it for years… i wonder how they’ll do fast user switching? make it on the face of a sphere and rotate the sphere? like really.. msft’s been copying apple for years and STILL hasn’t surpassed the interface to classic… why ever attempt to go after aqua…
what a load of shit.”
So your stupid ass platform has a single digit of market share so you are reduced to slinging mud at the victor. Pathetic. Apple didn’t invent most of the shit it uses, windows and mice were invented in the sixties by researchers, and just about everything else used by major companies was actually invented elsewhere. Of course this is only an issue when MS does it, otherwise it’s fine. For example, you’ve never said “Lamborghini sux ass, they copied having a car cd player from so and so…” I mean that just shows how pathetic some of the alternative os people are really.. Every goddamn thing in your house was probably copied from someone else, your TV, your bed, your fridge, microwave, etc, WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE NOW? You anti-MS trolls need to come up with a new book of cliches, your current one is a little -too- cliche.