
Microsoft has revealed a general release date for its upcoming operating system Vista -
5 December, 2006. Speaking to IT professionals, parliamentarians and senior law-enforcement officers at the Parliament and Internet conference in London on Thursday, Microsoft revealed its release plans.
"We will officially launch Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 on 5 December," said David Hipwell, a Windows client sales professional at Microsoft. On a very, very related note, the EC says that Vista will
not be delayed due to regulatory issues. Also, the Shell: Revealed weblog has an item explaining
why Aero Basic looks the way it looks.
Update: ZDNet has removed the release date story, and since they are being rude by not offering an explanation, I have no idea what is going on.
Member since:
2006-07-04
That's a *good* thing.
Office does whatever it wants, and the Windows team follows.
Generally, Office implements their UI, ignoring Windows "guidelines", then widgets based on Office UI make their way to 3rd party dev tools and Visual Studio, and eventually those become standard widgets in Windows. For example, that's what happened with Office97's command bars (allowed for detachable menus, "flat" toolbars, and whatnot). Office hasn't used standard menus for years (since Office97).
There's already 3rd pary libraries implementing the Office 2007 "Ribbon" (well, they're *trying* to, anyway). I'm sure the Ribbon will become a standard Windows widget in the future.
As for Office 2007 removing the nonclient area and rolling their own, more power to 'em! They know more about UI than the Windows team does. Other apps can roll their own UI as well, but most don't have the talent and/or will to do so.
We'll see more of this with WPF; it seems to encourage "non-standard" UI; basically standards go out the window. This will lead to garish UIs at the beginning before things settle down (like what happened when VB 1.0 was released).