“Microsoft is honing the user interfaces of a number of its forthcoming products in a way that the company hopes will help users find and access information. At the heart of the redesign is the so-called task shelf component, code-named Sideshow, that will likely debut first in MSN 8, and later, in the Longhorn Windows. The WinBeta Web site last week posted what it claimed to be a Microsoft-internal-only release of Sideshow. And the Neowin site posted what it claimed to be several Sideshow screen shots.” Read the report at eWeek. Update: WinInformant reports that SideShow is not from Longhorn, but from an another version of Windows that it will be released sooner.
Let the Longhorn Sideshow Begin
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates described Sideshow as “a workgroup-communications tool that utilizes desktop cameras to determine a user’s status and creates an enhanced version of a task bar and buddy list.”
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How many people use a “web-enabled” desktop these days? How much hype did it get? How much hype did integrating the browser in the OS get, and how useful was it, in the end? Exactly.
Zzzz.
Sideshow, at least as it is represented in the screenshots, reminds me a bit of Gkrellm http://web.wt.net/~billw/gkrellm/gkrellm.html , but for “normal” people.
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Retry.
In the eWeek story there is a link to MSN8 screenshots which give a peek at what the Sidewhow part might be like.
a “web-enabled” desktop these days? How much hype did it get?
Few.
How much hype did integrating the browser in the OS get, and how useful was it, in the end? Exactly.
Very usefull.
Longhorn is … nothing too important so far.
Unless you like 3D GUI (3D GUI ? what’s that ? what can it do that a current desktop can’t ?) and other unimportant multimedia hype (the more multimedia I see the less I like it, but that’s just me, I would prefer to read my email from command line).
No important and original ideias on MS lately. Let’s wait and see.
“The big thing about Longhorn is the apparent new way of organizing data,” says one developer working with Microsoft, who requested anonymity. Avalon is the developer framework that will enable this, he says.
What does that mean exactly ? More cpu intensive multimedia GUI organization ?
(Avalon is the key to the new “inductive” user interface that will debut in Longhorn, sources say. The new UI will allow users to organize and share information more intuitively, most likely using some kind of “dock,” a la Microsoft Office XP).
http://www.neowin.net/images/screenshots/MSN8/
I think the dashboard files are probably what people are talking about…
Gawd, its 1997 all over again! muwahahahaha!
I wonder what’s more ironic, Microsoft calling something this freakish looking “Sideshow” or the administrator channel on Microsoft’s IRC network being called #collective
What’s so special about that screenshot? The bar on the right? That one really reminds me of the channel bar in Windows98 no one ever used.
If you get the 404 on the screenshots link, it’s probably because that neowin.net are having server problems at the moment
The presentation of MSN8 with the Dashboard desktop looks far more realistic (especially compared to *other* previews of Longhorn that I’ve seen) that the one linked in this article. I would suspect the latter of being manufactured.
a “web-enabled” desktop these days? How much hype did it get?
Few.
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Few by you or few by MS and the ZD-zombie media conglomerate? I remember it being shoved down my throat as necessary as the air I breathe, all over the media, and a BIG selling point for the new OS. I sorta looked into it and went: “bleh?” It is still bleh. Always will be.
MS does this to convince the masses it has something new and exciting. That may be so, but if we needed it, surely it would be used? The move to the NT kenrel is the last great thing they’ve done for their OSs.
(That and the shadow on the mouse pointer in Win2k).
As XP turned out well, especially the “silver” theme, I’m thinking will all the user testing that will be done for Longhorn, it will turn out just fine.
Avalon and the other frameworks are going to be a very large threat to every other platform out there anyhow. People don’t seem to understand what is happening … the entire Windows codebase is being brought up to current time. It’s easy to talk about the past, but Gates is on a mission to build a brilliant future for Windows. And I bet that he will do it.
Besides, I’ve heard ClearType3D is absolutely amazing 😉
#m
How long till that thing becomes an adbar? Once they have you using it, they could put whatever they want in there seeing how by the looks of it they control part of the content. If it was properly made, where it wasnt intrusive (unlike the screenshot), it could maybe have sorta some potential of being handy, but we are talking about MS, so i dont see that happening. If you wonder why i say it could be handy is cause it brings together a few common things such as MSN and Outlook, but most people that use MSN use their hotmail account and can already see if they have new mail with that.
XP became usable for me when I changed the start menu and theme back to the way it was in windows 2000, and went into services and killed everything that was not required for the system to boot, and get online. The first thing I do with a windows install is strip and remove everything possible from the disk, make a ton of tweaks, then install all my stuff on the box. Sideshow does not look like something I will use and the XP theme looks fisher price compared to Apple OSX or Win2k. The good news I think is that Microsoft to this point has removed very little code from previous versions, but will be removing quite a bit of useless code in the release of Longhorn. I wish MS would release a 100MB OS that is just windows shell for people like me that spend so much time removing everything. I would probably _buy_ it
Yes, that is feature ad space waiting to happen!
“I wish MS would release a 100MB OS that is just windows shell for people like me that spend so much time removing everything.”
Oh my god, this is something which I have been begging and pleading for the last 5 years from Microsoft. I hate their OS now, but only use it for I have to support it.
I have done the same thing with Mac OS X and Linux, strip away all the useless junk and I am a happy camper.
This once again showes that true innovation only comes from proprietory companies.
Who would have thought of a pane… err sidebar with a lot of appl… err tickets which can show certain information and control/communicate with applications?
Truely amazing.
Why do I feel so sleepy.
This really looks exactly like the panel apps most DEs on Linux/Unix already support… may be new for Windows users, but people who use KDE or Gnome or WindowMaker wont be excited by this.
gee, i hope they come up with some more useless geegaws with huge security holes! that would make it a bargain at any price!
let’s hear it for shiny new colors!
You’d better have a pretty damn good reason to try and take up that much screen real-estate on my desktop
Why don’t they try and figure out way to integreate this thing with the taskbar? If/when I ever install Longhorn, it’ll probably be the first thing that goes.
I also wish just for a 100MB install of Windows. It seems that MS is trying to find more and more ways to ‘idiot proof’ the OS for Grandpa Joe (adding tons of bloat in the process), and forgetting about the power users. Of course, Linux and its latest round of bloated GUIs are guilty of the same crime
And what is up with these fancy interfaces anyway? For example, IMHO, the menus in Win95 were fine. Do we really need blurred menus with fading effects, transparency, and the other crap that they’ve added?
Richard:
I’ve actually used it, it’s sitting on my server, it’s a nice little application…. you have FULL control of what ‘tickets’ go on it (tickets are items on the bar), it is very unobtrusive, seeing where as it can auto-hide, and i’m sure in more modern versions, you can dock it to the taskbar or someting like that.
Hm, really looks like a reinvention of GKrellM. Maybe next Microsoft will re-invent GNOME/KDE panel.
This looks like just another shitty windows app. Sorry, doesn’t look interesting at all. Wasting screen real estate for a chat window. A picture of the UK that DOESNT SHOW ANY INFORMATION. Other useless information with no bearing on anything. This ‘active view’ has no direction or purpose. Get it off the desktop.
CPUGuy, so far it sounds like a bigger and themable version of a panel. Are there other noticable differences? For example can you “dock” an application like Outlook to the sideshow or do you have to specifically add an Outlook ticklet to it?
Any other advantages over a, for example, a GNOME panel?
I’m just asking for new ideas to copy.
I think as much as Microsoft copies from other systems it’s more than fair to also copy their good ideas (like… uhm…).
RalphT: Thank you for the link.
Well, TheMostExperiencedWindowsUsers still prefer Winamp, not Windows Media Player? Fine
http://www.neowin.net/images/screenshots/MSN8/Downloading.JPG
Are these so-called tickets that you can ‘dock’ on the ‘panel’ actually ActiveX scripts? Sorry, couldn’t resist that!
And more importantly, is there a MS-BOB ticket available for use? Failing that, give me an XP avatar (the clothes pin or the dumb dog, either one will do).
BTW I heard M$ has a new version of notepad which has color hilighting. Maybe we can start hyping that too?
Been around for a very, very long time already. BORING AND UNORIGINAL! Is this the best a multi-billiondollar corporation can do?
http://www.bensinclair.com/dockapp/
What’s next? Virtual desktops?
XP became usable for me when I changed the start menu and theme back to the way it was in windows 2000, and went into services and killed everything that was not required for the system to boot, and get online.
In other words you wasted time making Windows XP into Windows 2000. Why not just use Windows 2000 in the first place then?
I wish MS would release a 100MB OS that is just windows shell for people like me that spend so much time removing everything.
They did, a few years back. If I remembered correctly, it was called NT 3.51
Come on, an average 20gig HDD cost around $70. That means you are complaining that you would loose $3.50 worth of HDD space.
I have done the same thing with Mac OS X and Linux, strip away all the useless junk and I am a happy camper.
The same way you could do it on Mac OS X and all desktop Linux distributions you could do it on Windows XP. Of course, you could except most of your apps on Windows XP to cease to work, but the same would happen on Mac OS X and Linux. Do I detech a tinch of hypocrisy?
This really looks exactly like the panel apps most DEs on Linux/Unix already support… may be new for Windows users, but people who use KDE or Gnome or WindowMaker wont be excited by this.
I never saw any of these on
– KDE 1.1- 3.0.1
– GNOME October release – GNOME 2.0 Beta 2
– E 0.16
– WM 0.8.1
– XFce 3.8.16
Sure, some of my WMs are outdated, but I have never seen anything close to being Sideshow built it. (Besides, as far as I read, Sideshow uses APIs and FS features not available anywhere on Linux).
gee, i hope they come up with some more useless geegaws with huge security holes! that would make it a bargain at any price!
Well, Longhorn would be the first desktop release after Trustworthy Computing initiative came out, I wouldn’t be too rash to judge it while it is still in alpha.
And what is up with these fancy interfaces anyway? For example, IMHO, the menus in Win95 were fine. Do we really need blurred menus with fading effects, transparency, and the other crap that they’ve added?
I used TweakUI to get rid of them. But come on, gulible grandmas would buy something for the looks, cause they wouldn’t be bothered the technical stuff behind it.
Hm, really looks like a reinvention of GKrellM. Maybe next Microsoft will re-invent GNOME/KDE panel.
GKrellM is very different from Sideshow. It may look the same, but it is very different. Besides, didn’t GNOME and KDE copied most of their panel ideas from the Windows taskbar?
This looks like just another shitty windows app…..
I actually said the same thing when I saw screenshots of the new Start menu in Whistler (back then, it didn’t look like the current Luna theme) – shitty, don’t need it. Now I think it is the single most useful thing I saw on Windows XP so far.
Been around for a very, very long time already. BORING AND UNORIGINAL! Is this the best a multi-billiondollar corporation can do?
Dock apps are very different from Sideshow, even the screenshots tells that. Quite a good troll anyway.
Sure, some of my WMs are outdated, but I have never seen anything close to being Sideshow built it. (Besides, as far as I read, Sideshow uses APIs and FS features not available anywhere on Linux).
Try the “shelf” on QNX.
I think the colors & design is ugly.
It looks a bit like Toys’R’Us.
Far away of the elegance and smooth design of the MacOS X Desktop. Just a bad imitation.
Ralf.
MS-Bob was more creative and original. Obviously, Microsoft is trying a different approach to the same target market, the Toyz-R-Us crowd.
Ralf: And yet this has absolutley NOTHING to do with OSX.
The skin that it is using is merely the default XP skin.
How stupid can trollers get?
Rajan says:
>>This really looks exactly like the panel apps most DEs on Linux/Unix already support… may be new for Windows users, but people who use KDE or Gnome or WindowMaker wont be excited by this.
I never saw any of these on
– KDE 1.1- 3.0.1
– GNOME October release – GNOME 2.0 Beta 2
– E 0.16
– WM 0.8.1
– XFce 3.8.16
You must be blind. Especially if we’re talking about WM. The doc defines the entire manager. Under Gnome tickets are called applets. You can dock them on an arb. number of panels. Going back, the NeXT time you login to a NeXT system, open a shell and cd ~/.NeXT/.dock
This is either a comment out of sheer and utter ignorance, or a troll.
*nix has been doing docking enhanced apps for *years*. This is nothing new. Which is why I make so many tongue-in-cheek comments here… this may be news but its *not* new technology.
M$ is just ripping off another idea. And doing a bad job I might add, because the dock seems to take up the entire vertical or horizontal real estate of the screen vs expanding as the number of docket apps increases. It is also displaying too much text, making it too wide, vs hot-popups over graphical elements. Some interface design here. Almost as bad as Apple’s.
The ‘bloat’ in Windows installations comes primarily from Microsoft’s (always overlooked) support for legacy software. An XP install basically contains every other version of Windows for compatibility. I don’t know why they’re not given more credit for this; Apple et al regularly break compatibility with little regard to developers and users.
because, they can take advantage of a.NET enabled internet so you can have desktop display of your web service that is notin the way in the work space.
You must be blind. Especially if we’re talking about WM. The doc defines the entire manager. Under Gnome tickets are called applets. You can dock them on an arb. number of panels. Going back, the NeXT time you login to a NeXT system, open a shell and cd ~/.NeXT/.dock
Is this a comparison of the NeXT Dock vs. a GNOME panel?
I’ve only used a NeXT machine briefly, so I don’t know how capable the NeXT dock became. From playing with GNOME, a panel with some applets is very capable.
#m
Try the “shelf” on QNX.
I’m gonna try it as soon as I have time.
Far away of the elegance and smooth design of the MacOS X Desktop. Just a bad imitation.
It must be that bad, cause to me it doesn’t seem like an imitation at all. Besides, as for it being ugly, it is probably caused by the format the screenie is in.
Under Gnome tickets are called applets.
These stuff are very difference. I know what applets are, it is my single most favourite feature in GNOME 1.x, but it seems nothing like Sideshow.
I never actually tried to real Dock, but I have read a lot about it, again, this isn’t the same thing.
But of course, I’m just making this conclusions just by reading it. We would see how it is like when it is released in the first place, the screenshots, nor any of the information actually tells how this works.
This is either a comment out of sheer and utter ignorance, or a troll.
This is a troll. You haven’t said how tickets are similar to applets in GNOME except the fact that you can dock it on the panels. You have no said how the Dock is similar to Sideshow except, well, docking stuff on it. If what they say it true, the Sideshow being similar to the dock in Office XP, GNOME’s panel nor NeXTstep’s Dock is anywhere close to being Sideshow. I’m not saying Sideshow is good, I have never used it.
Again, let’s wait till it is release, I would personally do a detail comparison between both. Right now, I’m (and you are too) making conclusions from screenshot and what little information they give about it.