Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Sat 7th Oct 2006 22:42 UTC
A lot has been said about the new user interface for Windows Vista. In this chapter from his latest book, Paul McFedries runs through the foundation, functions, and eye candy for Vista's latest UI.
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Member since:
2006-03-20
1. Beautiful textures and backgrounds are not a Vista innovation. There are literally millions of nice images that float around, for free, to use for background.
2. Transparency of the window frames is a bad thing. It is very confusing.
3. Flip 3d is a joke! most people have a problem with overlapping windows, let alone windows floating in 3d space...
4. Taskbar thumbnails are useless. Most programs' screens look similar: a bunch of controls and a main white area with black letters and images on it.
5. Taskbar application window stacking is useless. The stack can not be navigated.
6. File dialogs are disorientating. They contain many unnecessary and confusing functions. Burn CD? email? what the heck?
7. Metadata search will not work for any data type, simply because the O/S is not datatype aware. Microsoft applications will use the relevant feature, but other apps will not: it is simply too much to have to cater for such a beast, especially when my apps are cross platform and I have to cater for other O/Ses as well. And can the text be a query? can I say to Vista "bring me all the pictures that contain the word 'gypsy' from this to this date"?
8. Even with Vista, the user can not organize his/her data into user-defined live views based on queries.
9. The preview pane will not work for all kinds of data. Of course Microsoft Office documents will display fine, but smaller companies would have to struggle.
10. Live folders is another joke. Live icons are too small to be able to tell what they contain.
11. Gadgets are useless for serious work. They are even distracting. There may be useful under certain circumstances, but they are there simply because they look cool.
12. WFP primary API would be in C, right? so if we take into account every C API Microsoft has written so far, I expect it to be a mess of flags, nested data structures and functions with tons of arguments. Of course the .NET interface would be nice, but for us developers that do not want to sandbox our apps (using C++ or C for example), I seriously doubt it would be nicer than Win32 (and Win32 is a nightmare!)...
Microsoft will fall under its own weight. If it wasn't for new computers, no one would go into Vista. The "innovations" Microsoft offers are not what enterprises and home users want.