“Over the weekend, I put Windows 7 build 7000 on my desktop and Windows 7 build 7057 on my laptop, and went through trying to spot as many changes between the two as I could. Although I go deeper than I did with build 7048, this is still not a comprehensive list. There is almost three months difference between the two builds: the beta was compiled on December 12, 2008, at 2:00pm and the leaked build 7057 was compiled on March 5, 2009, at 8:00pm, so there’s a lot of work to cover. This post is about tracking every noticeable visual change; although I do mention some fixes here and there, I’m mainly focusing on tweaks that are “tangible” as opposed to the thousands of bugs that have been fixed.”
Windows 7 actually looks very good and polished, and there’s a lot of stuff there that I hope to see in future Linux versions as well.
The Libraries-idea is good and I could use it. I like how the UI is very polished and I would like something similar on Linux with nice looking icons and good consistency. I especially like the large folder icons with indicators for music, video, documents, etc. I tried to use emblems on Ubuntu but they ended up too small for me. I like they way it looks in Windows.
I also like the new system tray in Windows.
If 7 is gonna be as fast as they say I can just say kudos to Microsoft, how evil they may be they are doing a good job on making Windows look nice. There’s still a lot of fundamental problems though that keeps me from using it but I like innovation and how things evolves for the better. Now all I can do is hope that the best stuff makes it way into Linux as well.
Another thing I miss in Linux is the Mac OS Timemachine (or whatever it’s called). I miss a nice backup system in Ubuntu.
for backup solution, keep an eye to TimeVault : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TimeVault
If and when KDE 4 gets fully going I think you be surprised to see that many of those features that you were missing, are there and available on the *nix desktop. Sun Open Solaris guys have already demonstrated improvements to nautilus (albeit they could have done it with a slightly less heavy and sluggish file manager .. that or work on speeding nautilus, but thats a topic for another off topic discussion).
And when it comes to Libraries its definitely a step in the right direction. What I was expecting to see though was a reimplementation of the “Union Directory” concept that plan 9 has and that Microsoft kinda has in the “All Users\Desktop” folder behavior. But its a start down the right path.
Back on topic though .. appearance looks like the framework has pretty much been established and they are leaving it up to the themers to do their thing.
Emblems used to be much bigger, then they became uselessly tiny in one of the updates.
Perhaps, once btrfs is complete and ready for production use, something like this will be available.
In the meantime, you can always use FreeBSD with ZFS, or OpenSolaris with ZFS, or even just Solaris with ZFS.
Microsoft’s choice of colors, the aurora theme, vista start orb etc. has always sucked. They should really look into getting some GUI input from an external design firm, since Microsoft obviously lacks taste in the GUI style department.
GUI should be: minimalistic, matte, efficient, ergonomic.
However, if Microsoft continues their current design trend, then we have: bubblegum, pinball machine, rainbow colored, lollypop, clownish, ostentatiously shiny, bling bling.
How about Microsoft steps up to the plate and for once tries to at least deliver something with similar quality in appearance to what Mac OSX has provided for some time now..
Edited 2009-03-17 21:28 UTC
This guy has way too much time on his hands if he documented the myriad aesthetic detail changes between Windows 7 beta and release candidate. Who cares? Really! Who cares? All most people care about at this point is that Windows 7 had better be better than Vista. Whether this proves to be real or perceived is another matter. In the meantime, I for one couldn’t care less about which color predominates in the Welcome section of Windows 7!
This was a good article. Many of us will end up using Win7 whether we like to or want to or not, and it is helpful to see how this OS is progressing and addressing all that was broken with Vista. MS has produced at least one good OS in the past (Win NT 2000), and maybe Win7 will be another one – it seems like they are at least trying to move in the right direction. Let’s just watch the action and see what shakes out. I look forward to another comprehensive article when the next milestone build is released.