Based on all the user feedback ignited by the Windows 7 beta, Microsoft has made a set of tweaks to the release candidate of Windows 7. The Engineering 7 weblog details 36 of those tweaks, in quite some detail actually. Let's take a look at some interesting ones.The Aero Peek feature has been received quite positively, as it really can be quite useful when working with lots and lots of windows. It reminds me a lot of Expose - not in how it works, but in how useful it is. When I first heard about Expose, my reaction was "meh". It felt like useless eye candy for Apple Store owners. However, as soon as you started using Expose, it became clear it's a massively useful feature, and I still consider it one of the best additions to window management since, like, forever. Aero Peek falls in the same category: looks gimmicky at first, but once you're used to it, you don't want to live without it. In the RC a much-requested addition has been made: Aero Peek can now also be triggered by the alt+tab switcher.
Another addition that really makes me happy (and I'm sure lots of other users as well), is the ability to drag/drop a file on a task bar item and have it open the dropped file in the program you dropped it on. For instance, if you have Notepad pinned to your taskbar, and you drop a html file on it, it will open that file in Notepad. This behaviour is not default, however; you need to press shift as a modifier. Still, a very welcome addition, as it allows for an easy way to open fiels with non-default applications.
In earlier Windows versions, the Win+e command launched an Explorer window located at My Computer. In the Windows 7 beta, this often-used command started in the Libraries view instead, which didn't make an awful lot of sense for many people. In the RC, the behaviour is back to default: Win+E opens an Explorer window at My Computer(or Computer as it's called these days).
A small but funny one: the on-screen keyboard now supports multitouch. In previous builds, the on-screen keyboard wasn't multitouch aware, which kind of made typing rather weird. Now you can type with them as if it were a real keyboard (I'm not serious, of course; typing on a touch screen will always be cumbersome).
There's more in the list, but they reiterate it's just a selection.
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It looks like a new "locally integrated menu" will make it into Unity, starting with version 5.6.0. There's basically no information about the new locally integrated menubar, except for two bug reports which link to some custom Unity, Compiz, Metacity and Light Themes branches so to see "LIM" in action, I've compiled all these branches and here's the result. The "locally integrated menubar" can be displayed on the panel (for maximized windows) as well as in the window decoration (unmaximized windows). But it's not displayed on both in the same time.
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Today Samsung AV product lead Chris Moseley had comments about Apple's rumored entrance into the television marketplace that sound eerily similar to that which Palm CEO Ed Colligan's said a few years back about how Apple's ability to simply walk into this market and figure it out like they had managed to do after years of research.
What your interface communicates to users can be just as important as what your software does, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister in discussing the latest edition of the 'Microsoft Manual of Style,' a style guide aimed at designers and developers who create Microsoft software, as well as those who write about it. 'The gist of much of Microsoft's advice is that a user's relationship with computer software is a unique one, and it's important to craft the language of software UIs accordingly,' McAllister writes. 'Occasionally, Microsoft's recommendations verge on the absurd. For example, you might not think it necessary to admonish developers to "not use slang that may be considered profane or derogatory, such as 'pimp' or 'bitch,'" but apparently it is.'
"It's tough being a journalist, especially if you're covering technology and living in Silicon Valley, because it seems as if everyone around you is getting fabulously rich while you're stuck in a job that will never, ever make you wealthy. What's worse is that all these people who are getting rich don't seem to be any brighter than you are and in fact many of them don't seem very bright at all. So of course you get jealous. And then you start thinking maybe you could find a way to cash in on this gold rush. But how do you make gobs of money when your only marketable skill involves writing blog posts?" Absolutely brilliant down to the last letter. Coincidentally, I hold no shares, interests, or anything, in any company whatsoever. I'm a freelance translator by day. Not that anyone cares, but hey, full disclosure and all.
"A hybrid solution that takes the best parts of iOS's one-by-one acceptance and Android's expressed and obvious intents seems like a proper model here. In fact, Apple has many of the pieces in place elsewhere." This is a big issue. Nor Android's model (just list a bunch of confusing permissions), nor Apple's model (individual modal dialogs for each permission) is particularly workable - I doubt regular users check them on Android before installing an application, and in the case of iOS, Apple didn't think it was necessary to secure the address book, so every application has access to it without alerting users. Justin Williams proposes a hybrid solution.
"Although current discussion of the Linux desktop tends to focus on the disharmony around Unity and the GNOME shell, the true revolution on the desktop is taking place out of sight of users. The Wayland display server is expected to reach version 1.0 later this year, and is seen by many as the long term replacement for the X Window System, with real potential to improve and transform the performance of the desktop for Linux users."
Mozilla has announced plans to integrate its Firefox web browser with Metro for Windows 8 - including Gecko. "Windows 8 contains two application environments, 'Classic' and 'Metro'. Classic is very similar to the Windows 7 environment at this time, it requires a simple evolution of the current Firefox Windows product. Metro is an entirely new environment and requires a new Firefox front end and system integration points. The feature goal here is a new Gecko based browser built for and integrated with the Metro environment. Firefox on Metro, like all other Metro apps will be full screen, focused on touch interactions, and connected to the rest of the Metro environment through Windows 8 contracts." I haven't checked - does Microsoft allow different rendering engines?
"One of the things that the GNOME design crew have been focusing on recently is creating a new approach to application design for GNOME 3. We want GNOME applications to be thoroughly modern, and we want them to be attractive and a delight to use. That means that we have to do application design differently to how we've done it in the past.""This is the first real release of Wayland and Weston. Wayland is the protocol and IPC mechanism while Weston is the reference compositor implementation. The 0.85 branch in both repositories is going to be protocol and interface stable. We have a series of protocol changes on the table before 1.0 but this branch marks a stable point before we jump into that." Change is coming to the Linux world. And yes, I get the irony of using this particular icon, but it's the closest I could find.
Well, this is good news. "Germany will not sign an international anti-piracy treaty, despite having already agreed to it in principal, government sources in Berlin said Friday, February 10." with Germany on the side of reason - for now - we're a huge step closer to stopping ACTA.
