Submitted by Microsoft has released a new build of Windows Vista to Vendors and Beta Testers. The build is 5259, and was compiled on November 17 2005.
Screenshots of 5259 started appearing on forums yesterday (more here). 5259 contains new versions of Media Center, Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player 11, but little new when it comes to GUI. Microsoft Antispyware has also been fully integrated in this build. There is more on Vista’s new fonts here, and more on TCP/IP here. Update: more, high-res this time, screenshots here.
I have both IE 6 and Firefox 1.0.7 installed on my PC. When I click on the screenshots link in firefox, I get an annoying pop-up. However, IE blocks it. Now, this is not new. There are a lot of websites that seem to have defeated firefox’s pop-up blocker, but IE has managed to keep blocking them.
I’ve seen pops-up now in firefox for the last 6 months and it seems to be getting worse.
If OSS is so much better, why isn’t there a patch for firefox to block these simple pop-ups? If IE is so terrible, how is it that they managed to keep IE up to date with regard to pop-up blocking?
Firefox 1.5 seems to do a better job at popup blocking
Not for me.
These are my results with popup blocking. I’m using IE6 with the tabs/popup blocker add-ons which I think was part of their desktop search. Initially it said it blocked it in IE, then allowed the pop up window. Opened it in Firefox 1.5rc3 and originally blocked 2 pop ups. I click on a link to view the screenshots, and I get pop up from an advertiser. So neither one really blocked the pop ups. Guess its personal choice.
Firefox users – try Adblock + Filterset.G (or whatever the hell its called). Popup blocking gets a lot better that way
Adblock doesn’t really work well for me, in 1.5RC3 at least.
That’s a known issue with both browsers. One site which I regularly visit has some annoying javascript popups which Firefox doesn’t seem to block. It is annoying as hell trying to click a link and you get 2-3 windows opened.
In that particular scenario, IE blocks those popups while Firefox doesn’t. But I’ve also seen cases where IE wouldn’t block popups, while Firefox did.
Unfortunently we live in a world where most of the sites are controlled by morons who don’t seem to get that users don’t like popups and most probably won’t even see the ad, becuase they close it shortly after. But I wish the Firefox team would at least spend more time fixing the popup blocker as it is not much better than the IE’s (if even).
There is. Disable javascript.
Odd. My experiance was the opposite. Visting the links using Firefox showed no pop-ups. Visting in IE however did.
Funny, I’m using FireFox 1.0.7 with adblock and I tried every link without seeing a single pop-up window.
Indeed, I tried the site using Firefox 1.5 and did not see any pop-ups.
I did not try with IE though. I am not anal enough to look at the same site using different browsers to see the differences.
My brain automatically forces me ignore pop-ups and close them anyway.
NOTE to pop-up makers.
Stop wasting your time, they don’t work anymore. We do not need “Smiley faces” in our emails, we do not need “Screensavers for free”,
but the best one, one I actually clicked for a laugh……
I do not need you to “check my PC for speed improvements and better memory management under Windows”, when in fact, your own site detected that I was using Linux… but still offered to sell me the Windows package.
Knobs
Get a proper job
Your sample size is too small. It is statistically meaningless to present only one example and use that one example as a representative sample for the entire population (in this case, websites).
It’s like saying: “I phoned this one guy, and he voted xyz, so everyone is gonna vote xyz.”
I’m not saying anything about which browser is better– that is irrelevant to this explanation.
Whether it’s too small or not, I haven’t seen a single pop up in IE for at least 5 months. For me one pop-up is too many…
“Whether it’s too small or not, I haven’t seen a single pop up in IE for at least 5 months. For me one pop-up is too many…”
Your an idiot… Maybe IE is blocking the odd popup, but you are getting hacked and virus are penetrating your system as you type… Hmmm… Nothing here on Linux… Damn, the occasional popup… But wait… No Adware, Spyware, Virus’… Wooo Hoooo
You can have your s-h-i-t-y OS and Browser. Vista looks like hell compaired to my KDE desktop. HAHAHAA… What a smack in their face. They actually think they are creating someting “Pretty”. HAHAHAHHA
Edited 2005-11-23 18:13
I haven’t seen a single pop up in IE for at least five months, either.
Because I use it once a month to run Windows Update, and that’s it.
You can’t possibly tell me that you’re replaying the exact same 100%-identical usage pattern in both browsers 100% of the time, so therefore your point isn’t entirely valid, and it simply becomes your opinion (or, to be more precise, your opinion based on your own experiences).
Instead of belittling the guy for pointing out that in this one instance, IE does something right and Firefox doesn’t, a better response would be for someone with enough technical skills to look at the webpage’s code, figure out what technique is being used to defeat Firefox’s popup blocker, and file (maybe even fix) a bug.
The only chance OSS has is to listen to complaints from users and use the power of the many to fix them, not simply bash anyone who points out a flaw in an OSS product.
No popup in konqueror since months…
And konqueror doesn’t block all popups(smart mode), only bad popups are blocked…
Konqueror is just as bad as a night more as IE coding wise.
Hey
I did not make the screenshots, but i agree their way to small. Maybe when the heavy traffic is over, they will upload full size ones.
I can’t really comment on how Vista performs but the interface improvements are tremendous. It looks like they put a lot more thought on the layout and features. Vista looks a lot cleaner & more consistent.
Yea, it does look better. I still don’t think I could stand looking at it all day, but it’s getting better!
I agree on that one point about not being able to stare at it all day. I haven’t actually used Vista yet, but looking at the screenshots I can fairly say that so much use of the blurred glass effect is rather unattractive to me.
It seems to me like the blurred glass effect is entirely asthetic at the cost of practicality. For example if a dark colour is behind the blurred glass and some dark text is above it would be harder to read the text. Also the blurred glass will allow whatever is behind it to distract you with flashing, blinking and whatever else it may do.
Fortunately though I’m quite sure there is still a classic theme in Vista, when I have to use Windows XP I still use the classic theme.
It is thanks to Firefox that you, Microsoft asimilated troll, have now a more secure Internet “Exploiter”… they have finally reviced that piece of crap IE6 and have look at Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/Konqeror for inspiration.
And (am speculating) who knows if even for code to integrate ilegally, like in some cases, in to their IE…
[rant] MS is Monopolistic… and there tactiks are anticonpetitive… I don’t care if they improve… I don’t care, they can go to hell… for all those companies that they have hurt with their tactiks… [/rant]
-iMoron
“It’s amazing to me how much work goes into making a great font –sometimes we send back feedback just about a certain glyph (‘g’ looks weird in this specific situation) and they tweak the hinting just a bit to improve it,” Microsoft User Experience team member Jensen Harris wrote in his Web log last week.
Anyone who knows anything about type design takes this for granted. Was it just another excuse for Microsoft to get the word “amazing” inserted in a news article, and blind ordinary customers into implying Vista is “amazing”? Less hype, more facts. Thank you.
But another commenter downplayed such claims. “Of course Segoe UI is going to look a lot like any other sans-serif, variable-width, Clear-Type font,” a user by the name of Kawigi responded. “The patent on letters ran out a long time ago.”
This sort of comment might play well on Slashdot, but what’s it doing being quoted in a news article? Minute differences in fonts can make a real difference. Just because something looks the same doesn’t mean it is, and the IP claim is on the design, not the letters.
And this, my friends, is why OSS projects like KDE/GNOME will never match Windows. If Microsoft can have a team of people working for two years on the *fonts* that will be in use in the new GUI, then OSS literally stands no chance of ever being ahead.
That said, why are fonts always so butt-ugly in 99% of distros?
That is kind of the point with OSS. Instead of having _ONE_ funded project you have _MULTIPLE_ volunteer projects.
While the genrel quality of the ouput of those volunteer will be lower. Odds are that one of them will have a higher quality than the single funded project.
With a larger pool of volunteers the odds go up.
Now a days it isn’t unusual for some of the “volunteers” to be funded though.
Edited 2005-11-23 21:28
Speak for yourself, I hate fuzzy fonts…
Give me freetype and I’m happy: Fonts can only get so good.
IBM was doing the same sort of thing, dedicating large teams for long periods on tiny little tasks: It doesn’t really save you in the end; it opens you up to some really bad waste.
I’m not saying the font team at Microsoft is bad, just that having a dedicated font team doesn’t mean you’ll have the best fonts.
Not to mention, did you notice how many people switched over to XP to get cleartype? It’s just not that important.
People want fonts that don’t cause pain, don’t look blocky, and don’t show color bleed.
I personally think ClearType is the best font rendering technology out there. If the fonts look fuzzy to you, then you can adjust the settings on ClearType to be more blurry or more sharp. ClearType is very crisp, and I applaud Microsoft for their work with it and their work on fonts. It’s one thing they have done an amazing job with and deserve praise.
Same here.
btw, use this to further tweak. You can download it and it will install into control panel.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/Step1.aspx
Agreed. ClearType is excellent. OS X does a pretty good job on larger-sized fonts too.
Perhaps the parent is trying to use ClearType on a CRT monitor in ignorance?
Well, I use ClearType on my CRT monitors with no problems. You should always run the tweak tool though, or it generally will look a bit too sharp or too blurry. Most people enable it, think its too blurry, and disable it. Not only do they not run the tweak tool, they don’t give their eyes enough time to adjust. Enable it and run the tweak tool, and your eyes will adjust properly within 20 minutes.
Sorry, but the whole basis of the ClearType technology is that it uses the sub-pixel components on an LCD. There is a stark difference in how CRTs and LCDs display a pixel, and ClearType takes advantage of the LCD method.
On a CRT, fonts with ClearType will have bleeding colours around the edges, regardless of the strength setting used. They just look plain blurry on a CRT.
Uhh… I’ve used it on both LCD and CRT. With a good CRT monitor, it looks fine, but you HAVE to tweak it and HAVE to let your eyes adjust. Once in a while, I see bleeding edges, but it is rarely.
I understand how it works, by taking advantage of LCDs side-by-side use of Red Green and Blue in a pixel. But it still produces crisp text on CRT.
I’ve *got* a good CRT monitor, and I’ve tested ClearType on many other good CRTs. The effect is nowhere close to what it is on an LCD. On an LCD, the text actually becomes crisp and edges soft. On a CRT, the entire font becomes soft, and there is no crispness to it.
Well I’m sorry, but you must be doing something wrong then :/ Granted, it IS more crisp on an LCD, but it’s also quite crisp on my 2 19″ CRT monitors, moreso than any other type of font-rendering out there.
Look, you can tell me it looks crisp all you want, but if you truly understood the technology behind it, you would know that what you’re seeing is merely just softened fonts with colour bleed that you can’t make out at your resolution. They no longer contain any hard edges, but instead look out-of-focus. Sure, it might look “smooth”, but you’re really straining your eyes by using it that way.
I know exactly how it works, and I know exactly how it looks to me. It does NOT look out of focus, unless I don’t tweak the settings. You’re either not tweaking it, not letting your eyes adjust, have a crappy CRT, or have bad eyes.
It could also have to do with how far both of us sit from our monitors, or what resolution we use (I use 1600×1200 on both of mine on this machine). Who knows. Just don’t try and tell me that it DOESN’T look good on CRT at all because of your experiences.
There’s the problem right there … if something looks in-focus/crisp, you shouldn’t HAVE to let your eyes “adjust”. When your eyes “adjust”, that’s them forcing themselves/forcing your brain into thinking that what they’re looking at is crisp/solid.
Great bejeezus, man.
My eyes don’t have to adjust, but some peoples do, that’s why I said it.
All that matters to me is that it looks crisp to me, and obviously to many others.
Your eyes don’t because you’ve already raped them enough, but that other people have to adjust is proof enough.
I suppose you try using PS/2 mice in USB ports, and drive with chains on your tires in the summer too?
My eyes never adjusted to them.
Eyes adjust to a lot of things, it doesn’t mean when they adjust that what you are looking at is unnatural.
What do you care anyway? I use cleartype on my CRTs and it is crisp to my eyes. The end.
Because you are *WRONG*.
😀
Keep repeating it and maybe one day it’ll be true.
But I’m rarely wrong, so it’ll be a long time.
sappyvcv, don’t argue with Linux is Poo, he’s a known troll. I know we’ve crossed swords before, but I do have respect for your opinions. LIP is just here to argue and create discord. He thrives on conflict. I’d just avoid talking to him altogether, or he’ll eventually start insulting you.
Cleartype looks good on big CRTs (19″ and above).
Linux does have quite nice fonts, just because you don’t like them is no reason to say OSS will never match up.
And quite frankly I’ve had a good look at the new MS font and it doesn’t look any better than what’s been in Linux for at least a few years so far. If you have ugly fonts the distribution you tried probably didn’t take the time to clean them up, and you either didn’t try, or didn’t know how to choose a better font.
I for one much preffer the anti-aliased fonts in Linux over what Windows has, this new Vista font at best brings Windows back up to par.
Distro fonts are always either much too small, or much too big. Windows and OS X strike a nice balance.
I shouldn’t have to tune fonts when I install a distro — they should look good out of the box.
Windows default font size for the user interface is 8pt, which in my opinion is too small for higher resolutions.
Linux fonts in some distributions are good, in others you’re right they can be too small and in some they’re big enough to adorn billboards.
I don’t know about Gnome since I don’t use it, but changing the font sizes in KDE is simple. Changing the font size in Windows might be a little quicker since there are three size presets to choose from without having to change any manually.
As for tuning fonts, that’s a fact of life for every OS except maybe OS X and some good Linux distributions. OS X and Windows don’t have the same default font sizes, Windows fonts are size 8 and OS X fonts are more along the lines of window’s size 10 for the tahoma font.
Yeah, you’re right about Windows being too small for high resolutions. When you think about why that is, it makes sense — Microsoft designed the Windows UI back when 800×600 was more or less the standard, and the UI hasn’t changed much since then.
Vista will be fully resolution-independant though … I’m looking forward to that.
MS TTF fonts are nicer on my Kubuntu laptop than they are on my friends’ WinXP desktop. And the only thing I did was to uncheck the “hinting” option in the KDE control panel.
This is as true for UI fonts as it is for fonts in apps.
That said, I can still be functional on a Windows XP or even a Windows 2000 machine, despite the fonts being of lesser quality than on my Linux laptop – which goes to show that productivity is not directly linked to font quality.
And this, my friends, is why OSS projects like KDE/GNOME will never match Windows. If Microsoft can have a team of people working for two years on the *fonts* that will be in use in the new GUI, then OSS literally stands no chance of ever being ahead.
Don’t you have anything good to say about anyone? From top to bottom, I think, open projects suck hard for many technical, financial, and management reasons, but to solely focus on the negatives is pretty damn boring reading, obstructive, and slanted.
I’m not going to waste my time quibbling on a line by line, or post by post basis. The problem is your overall pattern of comments. The attention seeking, pestering, and negativity firmly places you on my list of people to be suspended or banned.
You might not think so, but your comments distort the discussion everyone else is having, encourage more idiots to post on this site, and are, quite frankly, an abuse of other peoples time and wellbeing. Unless you’ve got a good explanation, you should stop or leave.
Apparently you’re so negative against him as a person and all the past negative stuff that you failed to note that he was paying Microsoft a compliment (a target of much hatred and improper criticism on here and around the world; though they deserve a certain amount of both, they seem to get more than deserved by others that would logically be named :Microsoft is Poo” ) for caring for the little things many F/OSS developers don’t pay attention to, and are unlikely to pay as much attention to. Perhaps you should read more carefully
What is this some MS crap zone?
IE better? You must be truly living under a rock. I won’t even bother writing why it’s worse.
Fonts? True. I agree with this. But saying what you sayed about development team is simply another CRAP.
There has been one-man teams that beat zillion budget huge teams in IT. OSS is a type of developement model and oh let’s make a counter statement. There’s roughly half a million linux kernel developers out there. How can MS compete with such numbers?
Numbers mean little or nothing.
Let me try to “unhijack” the thread and leave this stimulating debate about pop-up blockers behind. 😉
Vista seems to be making steady progress. WMP11 in particular looks like it’s been cleaned up considerably. A lot of fit and finish is starting to come together and the product’s looking really polished. Though I don’t expect Vista to leave either MacOSX or Linux “in the dust” per se, it looks as if this could be a pretty significant release. Eagerly waiting for beta 2. 🙂
I thought that the transparency in Vist was done by D3D and that windows where textures.
In this screenshot http://www.activewin.com/screenshots/vista/nov05ctp/Vista-5259-23.P… you can see the desktop background through the borders of the dialog, which kind of hits that the transpaency isn’t better then what you can find in X11 apps today…
which is it?
The transparency is done using pixel shaders. If you are referring to the about dialog, that isn’t the desktop background you see through the dialog, it appears to be a shader giving the glass a different look in various places. Look at this shot and you’ll see the same pattern.
http://www.activewin.com/screenshots/vista/nov05ctp/Vista-5259-4.PN…
There’s something about it that doesn’t do it for me. I’m especially annoyed to see the small minimize-maximize-close buttons. IMO this is an incredibly poor choice for a default interface. I also prefer Juk and Amarok’s interface to every WMP I’ve used and WMP 11 looks to be no exception. Granted I customize them but there is something more appealing and user-friendly about window-like interfaces instead of ‘media-player’ interfaces.
And I personally don’t think the transparancy is all that great. When I’m on my Mac I have all transparancy turned off. Some people like it, but not everyone. I think it gets in the way more than it helps. Maybe MS’s implimentation of it works well? I dunno.
I have a XP box I use for gaming, but I keep it isolated and use it only for gaming. As it is, I see nothing so far to compel me to upgrade. And the license is such I can’t recommend it either. The more and more MS squeezes to hold on, the more customers they’ll lose.
I think they realized that ridiculous oversized widgets are annoying.
However, given the way avalon draws *all* widgets (according to their marketing) it should be no problem to have all the control widgets size controlled via a slider-bar somewhere.
It’s not just a pixmap, so size is irrelevant.
The build was not released to beta testers only to TAP.
i agree with the above poster.
i tried several distros. ubuntu, fedora, suse.
font rendering is one of reason i stay with suse.
i think the fonts in suse linux are much better than tiny thin looking windows fonts which hurt my eyes.
just go to shots.osdir.com and see for yourself.
bitstream vera and the truetype fonts from agfa monotype are great imho. expecially in wordprocessor and web surfing.
to me the best font rendering can only be found in OSX.
Agreed about MacOS X – I’ve got Tiger 10.4.3 running on this Apple iBook G3 600Mhz, and the text quality is fabulous – infact, better than my flat mates Windows XP Dell Dimension setup – its sad.
One obvious UI problem that I hope they will sort out.
The round start button.
As everybody knows the five fastest pixels to access on any screen are the one you are over, plus the four corners. This is why the start button in pre-XP Luna was seen as snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They placed the most commonly used interface element in the corner, near one of the fastest pixels, then put a two pixel border around it so that it could not be activated using the fastest pixel. This was fixed in the Luna theme, but if they choose to use that round start button it will once again be missing on an obvious trick.
Agreed. Though I don’t think the Start button is as much of a problem as the close button. I don’t have this build but I hope they don’t have any dead pixels around the X button like OS X does (or so I’ve been told). And Apple fans think this is a good idea! There’s nothing more painful then trying to aim for the X where you could just flick your mouse in the upper right corner.
Can someome with this build confirm that there’s not dead pixels around the Start and X button?
Microsoft fixed the problem with the Start button and Close buttons on maximized windows a while ago.
I can say with certainty, since I just tried it, that Luna (silver) on WinXP x64 doesn’t have this problem.
I know that Luna in XP doesn’t, since this is the theme where they finally fixed it. However the round start button in the screen shots of this build of Vista would break what Luna in XP fixed.
Vista is clearly picking up from the truly abyssmal first screenshots I’ve seen. It’s looking a lot more tidy.
Still:
– Half the About screen is about how bad it is to abuse copyright. Meh, I don’t care for that. Tell me something positive, please.
– The glass interface… you’ll be able to turn it off, I’m sure, but suppose you leave it on, what is that going to be doing to your underlying windows… I’m not too convinced about it.
– A -round- Start button… I don’t think so.
– the ‘new’ fonts. I’ve looked hard at Helvetica and arial and I see very few tiny differences. Why rename an existing font and tell the world you created new ones? What’s the point in that.
The fonts on OS X are very sharp and crisp, no problems there at all.
don’t have this build but I hope they don’t have any dead pixels around the X button like OS X does (or so I’ve been told). And Apple fans think this is a good idea! There’s nothing more painful then trying to aim for the X where you could just flick your mouse in the upper right corner.
Dead pixels? Haven’t seen them. The X button? Do I have an X button? Um… I must have looked over it these last five years… Where do you see an X button?
The Media Player is starting to look like something that wouldn’t totally suck, unlike WMP10 which absolutely does. Still, there is no compare to iTunes. I have not seen anything that even comes close to iTunes as far as ease of use and functionality is concerned.
So far, none of what I’ve seen justifies a 5 year development cycle. I hear some people hope that Vista blows away Tiger but the cow -still- hasn’t left the barn yet. I think Vista will probably be on a par with Tiger, if that. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
In the mean time I’m wondering what Leopard has in store for us.
I don’t think this version of Windows is going to be a huge success, because people have been waiting for it for too long now and they are less likely to be overwhelmed with features that they have seen ‘elsewhere’.
Can’t wait to see if our stuff runs on it too.
Microsoft® Windows® Vista™ Beta 1 and Windows Server™ “Longhorn” Beta 1 include a new implementation of the TCP/IP protocol suite known as the Next Generation TCP/IP stack. The TCP/IP protocol stack provided with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 was originally designed in the early 1990s and was modified and enhanced over time to meet the needs of home and enterprise users. The Next Generation TCP/IP stack in Windows Vista and Windows Server “Longhorn” is a complete redesign of TCP/IP functionality for both Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) that meets the connectivity and performance needs of today’s varied networking environments and technologies.