Submitted by Build 5728 of Vista, which got released yesterday, has been released to the general public today, as an update to Vista RC1. Neosmart provides some more details concerning build 5728. APC Magazine takes a look at the various different themes Microsoft has included in Vista, which will be applied in accordance with system performance.
n/m
Edited 2006-09-23 18:32
i’m downloading it now
http://download.windowsvista.com/dl/preview/rc1/en/x86/iso/vista_57…
cheers
anyweb
Ok all I’ve been reading about vista recently is UI changes. Is that the most important thing that is being touted as a new feature? Can someone help me out.
Edited 2006-09-23 19:26
Everything big is already present and accounted for. At this point in the game, Microsoft is working on fit and finish issues: bugfixes and minor UI tweaks.
If you’re interested in Vista’s core improvements instead of news about last-minute polish, Wikipedia has a decent guide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista
Thanks for the link; I’m downloading the 5728build right now, so hopefully within a few days I’ll have a review up on my blog
Its going to be loaded on a fairly modern machine, Core Duo, 256MB Graphics card, so it’ll be interesting to see how it performans.
As for the naysayer in a previous post regarding whether its ‘beta 2 qualit’ – they are fixing bugs, the simple fact is, there is more to software development that fixing bugs under the hood, there are also visual bugs that need fixing too.
Although the reviewer bashes the look of classic, I’ve always preferred it over the flashier looks. Yeah it’s plain, but it’s fast, and like he says, I’d rather have my computer devoted to the apps, than rendering the interface.
However the reviewer seems to indicate that classic somehow got worse in Vista. I hope that is just an illusion when comparing it side by side to the slick looks, because I love my classic look!
leos,
What’s possible is that when the UI moved over to the completely new rendering infrastructure for Vista, that they had to reimplement the classic look in an emulated manner (I suppose a close example of this is looking at Swing on Java on some versions doesn’t look very native. Also consider the UI widgets in IE are all emulated and not the actual platform widgets… long writeup on Slashdot about this about a year or more ago)
So my guess is when they reimplemented the look ontop of the new structure, some things changes. Paddings changed, alignments changed, etc… just enough for things to look “hmm… that seems a little off”.
Which is a frustrating feeling, especially when you never realized JUST how atuned to the pixels of a previous layout/look you were… like knowing something is wrong, but can’t put your finger on it.
Nope.
Worse is an understatment, the classic theme in Vista looks horrible. The new Vista parts of the interface clash with the old look and many parts don’t even line up or fit properly. Text gets cut off, icons are jammed up into corners way out of their proper position, and many dialogs are solid white instead of gray. The whole thing looks like an amateur skinners unfinished attempt to make a classic theme for Windowblinds. It really is terrible and it doesn’t look like they care so it will probably stay that way.
Edited 2006-09-23 23:55
They call it eye candy and most I can see is black. They release it in the winter, people might get depressed.
New Start-button looks exactly like one of those ugly Feather Linux icons.
Who designed this stuff?? I thought they had some money at Redmond. I guess Stylish Steve drew it all by himself.
Well, it’s all about what’s under the hood…
Those Vista themes are really horrible. Currently Windows XP seems more designed. Take a look at Vista’s Explorer. It’s a mess.
I know what you mean. I hate how the files and folders light up when you hover your mouse over them, makes it very hard at least for me to work with it. Files should ONLY be highlighted when they are selected, this is a terrible design decision. Then there are all the legacy folders that aren’t really folders but junctions that point to the real folders. Supposedly it’s for backwards compatibility with XP but in reality it just makes for a big confusing mess. Don’t even get me started on the junctions that point back to themselves so they just go on forever.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v739/KR74/neverending2.jpg
I guess you have to install WindowBlinds go get:
* Classic Windows apps to look the same as new Windows apps.
* A window decorator that looks good.
* Widgets that aren’t all in different colors.
Somebody must have told MS that their Vista themes look horrible but if they didn’t listen with XP why should they listen now right?
buy a mac,
and you don’t have to spend time with headaches about security, design and perfomance.
omg… Yes indeed.
buy a PC.
and you won’t have to wait 2 to 5 years to get old PC games ported to your platform.
buy a PC.
and you won’t have to wait 2 to 5 years to get old PC games ported to your platform.
Mostly you don’t have to wait, and if you do, use boot camp.
But seriously, who care about games?
But seriously, who care about games?
Yeah, it’s not like it’s a multi-billion industry anyway.
Games is a multi-billion pound industry
…but that industry is very handheld/console based. Even the PC gaming market contains very few hardcore gamers; Most PC gamers are casual gamers. If you don’t believe me look at how many machines sell now with a noddy onboard graphics card vs that of a superninja graphics card, and thats with Vista potentially weeks away.
Saying that he hardcore gamers are a very vocal community.
“Mostly you don’t have to wait”
And why is then that I can only get Chessmaster 9000, and it isn’t even an universal binary?
I do care about games, especially chess games.
Sorry, I know that I didn’t follow the golden rule that irony don’t work in text. My point was boot camp. I prefer OS X as a proffesional platform, and think apple is leading hardware design (and software, to get on topic with the themes 🙂 ). Most of the popular games are available, but if you really want to play a game that isn’t available, use boot camp or parallel desktop.
SK8T, you want to know a dirty little secret? We can install MacOS X just as easily on our PCs as you can on your MAC. The difference is our hacked version is free but illegal.
Yeah you can Xaero_Vincent LOL
Question is why would you wnat to run that piece of garbage on a fast PC?
Lets have partially accellerated eyecandy that really annoys us and a seudo secure system with PIA media control systems.
And people here have the nerve to winge about Microsoft and DRM. Ha.
and did you know,
– that you can’t load any updates with the hacked version
– have a bad oder unstable drivers
– that most effects would work
All this for a RC release, 5600 is beta quality not RC status. Changing the UI and theme this late seems not right, bugs are more important.
The UI isn’t changed at all, except for UI bugs.
Also, even if it had been changed… UI designers are not the same people working on bug fixes.
I always notice on Vista screenshots how the Windows log is cut-off. Is that intentional? WTF?
ahh bootcamp. Now you can get the best (and worst) of both worlds.
I use Rc1, and i have an ati 9550
Aero is faster than basic, basic is slower rendering windows when you move the windows
and Clasic… is better than the one in beta2 but is worse than XP… really is almost usseles
Get XGL + Beryl + blur plugin + reflection plugin + 1 skin of vista and you have Aero for half the price!!!!
bye
Edited 2006-09-24 01:10
Blur in compiz is still very slow, and we don’t have any qt or gtk theme that makes use of ARGB colors yet.
Of course, Glass requires that your PC clears a specific hardware hurdle of possessing a compatible graphics engine with at least 128MB of graphics memory and supporting the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM). You’ll also want at least 1GB of system RAM.
At least 1GB of ram just to display the theme smoothly? I wonder what they’ve done to it to make it so resource heavy. XGL/Compiz runs smoothly on my athlon-tb 1200mhz with 256mb ram and a geforce4 ti. What does the vista UI offer that XGL/Compiz can’t, that requires som much resources? I’m not suprised though since it is after all Microsoft we’re talking about.
Hell it runs perfectly on my GeForce 2 Go and 1GHz Pentium 3M. CPU usage isn’t high so it can definitely can take a worse CPU. The real requirements for the vista-style affects in Linux seem to be something from the GeForce 2 era (original GeForce cards are infact too old) and probably around a pentium 2 and 128 MB of RAM.
At least 1GB of ram just to display the theme smoothly? I wonder what they’ve done to it to make it so resource heavy. XGL/Compiz runs smoothly on my athlon-tb 1200mhz with 256mb ram and a geforce4 ti. What does the vista UI offer that XGL/Compiz can’t, that requires som much resources? I’m not suprised though since it is after all Microsoft we’re talking about.
Those specs are overstated. The minimum supported specs for Glass requires a DX 9 GPU w/ 64MB of RAM and 512MB of RAM for Vista. The difference in minimum GPU spec vs XGL/Compiz is that MS uses DX 9 GPUs w/ Shader Model 2.0 as a base requirement so they can guarantee the availability of features they use for composition, rendering, scheduling, virtual memory, and resource sharing.
Now it is more difficult to quickly shutdown a NIC interface, because clicking on the interface icon or right clicking it would not bring the option to turn it off (called disable); unless of course you run “ncpa.cpl” and then right click it to choose “disable”.
Also right click desktop will not bring “desk.cpl” unless you select it from the menu that will appear later to choose from.
Control Panel includes multiple nested windows unless you decrease it with “Classic View”, which requires another click every time you start the control panel.
So basically vista is ergonomically a step backward from XP.
Add Inconsistency to all GUI, and it looks like a mess, even though its an advanced OS underneath.
Do they make any other themes?? Aero’s color sucks….
Do they make any other themes?? Aero’s color sucks….
There are ~7 preset colors for Aero Glass, and you can use custom colors. I think there’s also a setting to adjust some things like opacity IIRC.
So the colors will be able to be changed more than the current XP version?
All of the new computers/laptops will make sure they ‘optimize’ thier hardware and setup for Vista. I personally run Linux Fedora Core 5 with KDE as an desktop manager. With my vast knowledge of linux going back to starting with RedHat 6.0 and certification 2 years ago with my RHCT.
With the security layer hopefully under control in Vista and the eye appeal improving, I am sure they will do ok.
I’m a Apple guy through and through, I always have been since the 48k Apple ][.
I love OS X’s l&f. I didn’t think MS could close the gap on it, but I think they have with the glass theme, maybe not caught up yet, but certainly closing the gap (see if Leopard opens that back up again). I don’t mind the glass theme at all (which I never thought I’d say). I’ve only got Beta 2 as well, haven’t bothered with RC1.
I guess the thing is, if you are using Windows, then the glass theme just seems to work nicely. If you are on OS X, then Aqua seems nice.
I wonder how well Aqua would work in a Windows world if it was licenced out, or Aero in the Mac world 🙂 I’m guessing they would just feel very wrong on the wrong platform, but who knows…
I know that when I put Aqua themes on XP it always feels wrong and I switch back to Luna pretty quick.
I am using 5728 now. It’s absolutely coming along. I would recommend getting a Vista capable machine however, just for the improved audio stack (Windows HD Audio) and Aero glass interface it’s well worth it. I had a productivity spurt about 2 hours ago where I had to use about 10 applications in consecutive order one after another and the Aero interface made the process much more smoother than the cut-razor-work behavior of Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The UI in Vista is really smooth and it makes changing applications easier on the eyeballs.
I do have 2gb of ram and an Athlon 64 however, it takes about $500 of PC hardware to make Vista run smoothly but well worth it.
Clearly these people don’t use VMWare. I run Linux at work and use a WinXP box in VMWare, and all the bells and whistles in XP are most definitely off.
I’ll take a responsive machine over a pretty one any day.