Microsoft has released some official screenshots of the just released beta 1 of Windows Vista, their upcoming Windows version. Microsoft has passed a major milestone with the release of its first full test version of Windows Vista, the next generation of its flagship operating system.
To say ‘This looks like/is a ripoff of OS/GUI xyz’, nobody cares, so save yourself the effort please.
What’s with the deffensive attitude? You noticed something similar too?
Way too dark. Hope they’re going to lighten up the default theme before it ships.
Well that’s a matter of preference, it’s not like it’s rocket science to select a different theme anyway.
Personally I find dark high contrast themes easier on the eye.
Operating systems should never even have the ability to theme them, It only creates even more inconsistancies. But then, the UI should be well-designed from the start too, so its a catch 22.
sure it can create inconsistancies between computers, but done properly you should never have to see an app that looks different on your own machine.
Too many per app UI themes is a problem that both windows and mac os have right now.
Is there a skin for this already?
looks great…not too much new from previously posted/leaked screenshots, though
Not much new, except they did fox the “Shut Do…” option in the start menu.
I didn’t like the theme on the previous screenshots too much, just as I don’t like this theme too much. I understand that it’s difficult to create something Groundbreaking for Microsoft though as they have to be backward-compatible mindwise. Those vista-buyers want their new OS to behave kinda like what they’re used to. (or they need it that way)
However, I thought there’d be a new innovation around the taskbar or startmenu paradigm, (where were introduced in 1994 and probably could be .. expanded, by some genius minds
)
The visual effects seem to be nice, and I bet that opaque/blur effect looks great when moving windows around, but as a previous poster mentioned, it’s all a tad dark.. And I don’t like them still using many WindowsXP/WIn2000 icons, and most of those new icons (maximize, minimize for example) look out of place too.. imho.
I wonder if they’ll change the theme again before they’ll go final, although I guess not..
People this is not the Areo GUI… it’s just an XP style theme. No new GUI till beta2
Would have liked to see some more.
Looking good so far to me.Polished and professional.After the first look the icons seem a bit too candyish.Not spooked, indicating from xp they can usually be changed anyhow.
Good showing overall.
Hey someone leak ie7 plz
Just horrible.
This is something Wonderful!
I’ve seen way better with people using windowblinds.
a cross between KDE, XP, and OS X. The only thing that I think looks like OS X is the rounded corners of the windows and the brushed metal looking graphics. I think there the similarities end. The buttons look like the are from a KDE theme, and of course the start menu is all Microsoft.
I think that it lacks personality, its kind of blah.
Will somebody please explain the rationality for creating such a glaring interface inconsistency as having a window’s border and title/toolbar area translucent, while the client area is opaque.
What is up with the quality of these images? It is as if they shrunk the image for a thumbnail (first link), and just stretched the original for the second link. This causes the second link to appear blurry and is unnecessary. They would have been better off releasing an uncompromised image instead, allowing the press to expand if they decided to print.
Apple has done this correctly at their PR site, and here is a link to their Mac OS X PR site:
http://www.apple.com/pr/products/macosx/macosx.html#
As for the images, I am not digging the translucent title bars and toolbars. I remember Apple had translucent title bars for inactive windows and later removed them. They were hard to read with certain backgrounds and window overlays.
Concerning the “All Documents” image, they really should differentiate between the list on the left with those on the right. Maybe an adjustable frame (like they currently offer with the folder Explorer bar on XP)
Is it me, or does the new explorer look incredibly cluttered with several files / folders? There are buttons, menus, icons, previews, details everywhere!
This is the most shallow sort of eye-candy imaginable. Just tweaking the colors and arrangements of ancient widgets.
Too many color variables and way too dark.
I really don’t care if it looks like XP or uses Avalon, Excalabur or the Lady of the Lake for it’s graphics. Tell me about how it works. Does the seach engine work as well as spotlight? Worse? Better? How about the other improvements?
I agree it shouldn’t be about the look, but that is the first thing everyone notices. Personnaly I think they should have stuck with the W2K interface and focused on performance and functionality.
I wonder how much R&D was spent on “eye-candy” vs. performance and security issues.
Such comments are so annoying.
Take the time and think for a second. Is a UI developer (someone who only does UI, who specializes in UI, etc…) going to be working on security? The answer is NO!!!
Would you even want them to?
Not to mention that the UI needed/needs to be revamped to meet design goals for things like search, finding applictaions, and other files, and just getting work done easily/more quickly.
Actually, it looks ugly, and I am pretty sure that this is not a final version, because I expect much much more of Aero. Five screenshots, five different colors, one uglier than the other. Search is a nice addition, but wtf is “keyword” doing there combined with “file type” (who cares, for Gods sake), and where are short excerpts containing my search word?
And what in the name of Lord are those monstrous semitransparent things in “virtual folders”? And pleeease tell me that they don’t move, play or slowely open realtime.
“order prints online” when I open pictures. Nice. I wonder where will that take me.
“keyword”, “type”, “rating”, “author”, well, metadata tagging seams to be a big theme of new Windows.
“order prints online” is also in WindowsXP. You get a list of vendors that have such functionality.
A GUI can be cute,more important personally i think is what’s inside/behind.I’m looking toward some heavy articles about Vista security mechanisms and other features.However with MS genuine check again cracked for the millionth of time i doubt it will saw some thick wood.
http://www.extended64.com/blogs/rafael/archive/2005/07/27/1026.aspx
I want the BETA now.
…important thing is how the beta performs in usability, how are the new doploying technologies integrated in the OS, what is the advantage for sysadmins, how is the overall os response compared to XP, what are the security enhancements, etc.
GUI and other end-user features will change when beta 2 arrives and will change again with the final release. This is what Microsoft has done in the past and this is probably what they will do with Vista.
No more leaked alpha releases boys and girls, this is the fisrt beta of one of the major software releases for the upcoming 2006 -like it or not-; when can we expect an in-deep review?
David
It’s so bleeding ugly. I can’t stand it. Maybe, they should hire b0se or licence XPM Classic. Aqual looks a billion times better than that piece of junk.
Besides the looks, it’s just XP Service Pack 3. Most of that stuff will run on XP.
Pathetic MS, pathetic!
That’s because you know they just tryed to rip off OS X and the way it looks and failed badly !
Wow I wish my Mac had this type of eye candy…..oh…one second…..it does!
I would have liked to see the start menu paradigm to end by now, just something different. MS is loaded and need not spare any expense to get something revolutionary. What is it these folks do with the millions if not billions?
It’s BETA 1, not including AERO & new GUI. This modified XP GUI is only there because one is needed to start something. Could you please hold your tears until BETA 2 at least?
Be happy, it does not look like OS X or KDE…. So for once they did not copy on anybody else.
Be happy, it does not look like OS X or KDE…. So for once they did not copy on anybody else.
Actually, it looks just like SkyOS. MS just found somebody more obscure to copy knowing most folks wouldn’t place the theme.
Just like it was said before, no Aero in this version.
About the spotlight-like skills, it was already announced that it wouldnt be included in the launch of Windows Vista. It will be available latter on (how many more years??=D) as an upgrade.
Vista, even in Beta1 is supposed to include built-in MSN Search like features (a la Google Desktop Search).
It’s NOT WinFS, this will be included in SP1 of Vista, we hope….
The Spotlight-like features will be included with the final version of Vista. WinFS is so much more broad than Spotlight, and that functionality won’t be available til later.
the shipping search technology of Vista will still pale in comparison to spotlight, however, winFS will be waay more powerful then spotlight.. only remains to be seen when WinFS will actually ship..
of course, it also stands to reason that spotlight will have evolved by then too.. that is if leopard ships around the same time Vista does.. either way.. exciting times ahead
Spotlight and the shipping search tech in Vista are equal.
you can sit there and try to deny it but the pictures speak for themselves. You’d think they would move away from the whole start button and task bar phase in doing so but I guess they weren’t that “creative” and “innovative”.
Have these people ever heard of PNG? Oh wait, PNG support in the proprietary Internet Explorer is horrible. Stupid piece of shit proprietary Microseft software.
That skin looks like shit, btw. I’d rather run CDE than their new piece of shit proprietary software.
Wow dude, take some valium! You’re gonna blow a vein, and for what? An anti-Microsoft religion?
Get help.
When I save the 1,5MB JPG as PNG it gets 2,6MB big, not really an improvement. Also IE has only problems with transparency in PNGs, not something you would need for screenshots.
PNG is a losless format, JPEG is not. that’s why PNG’s are bigger. But maybe you want to check the PNG compression rate, not all apps compress the PNG file to the optimum…
Screenshots, IE, and transparany are no problem at all because screenshots should not use transparancy. Anyway, IE only has transparancy problems if you use multiple alpha channels for your PNG file.
Microsoft just doesn’t like PNG that much, on the other hand: you can store PNG files from MS Paint.
Evert:
Hmm, somehow you tried to correct my points by stating them again.
The original poster was whining about 1,5MB JPEGs, so I pointed out that a lossless PNG would be even bigger. If what the poster really wanted was a lossless image, well PNG is not the only format for that, a BMP or TIFF would do just as well.
Then he ranted on about PNG support in IE, but the only issues are related to transparency, nothing of relevance for screenshots.
OK, thanks for your comment. I have to get used to the reply functionality that leaves awat quotes 🙂
Lossless compression is very differently grounded to lossy compression.
In short, jpeg adds rubbish to an image to fill up the spaces. When you then make a png version, you save all that rubbish, pixel for pixel, which takes a lot of memory. If you went straight to png on the other hand, you would simply save the fact that there was an empty space at a particular point.
Obviously, this is exactly true, but I think it gets the point across.
Phil:
In short, jpeg adds rubbish to an image to fill up the spaces. When you then make a png version, you save all that rubbish, pixel for pixel, which takes a lot of memory. If you went straight to png on the other hand, you would simply save the fact that there was an empty space at a particular point.
Me:
Sure, if we were talking about a screenshot of, say DOS. In this case going from lossy to lossless wound preserve the boundary-artefacts and increase the size of the PNG.
But the screenshots in question contain a photographic wallpaper and lots of gradients which will result in poor compression in most lossless formats. Some jpeg-“rubbish” will make no significant difference.
Just in case you all missed it, the press info link [1] has some vaguely interesting information (although it’s encoded in marketspeak[2]). It tells us why Glass is good!
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/winxp/VistaBeta1FS.mspx
[2] an encryption related to legalese and rot13, but subtly different
The objects inside the windows look good, but I’m not crazy about that theme. The taskbar is a little too dark for my tastes, the start menu looks cluttered (as it did in XP), and I was never a fan of transperancy. I am looking forward to seeing what GUI they have in beta 2.
…is looking most lickable. But I can’t believe they plan to charge me $125 for an upgrade just 18 months after the last release!
Well, the oft-mentioned translucent titlebar should prove annoying to some of us more visually-challenged people. Though, I imagine there’ll be an option to turn off translucence or adjust it somewhat. It would probably be OK if they did a more “frosted glass” kinda effect where you’re just seeing very subtle hues and whatnot from whatevers behind it.
It’ll be interesting to see what they settle on for the GUI. I can’t see them straying too much further from where they are now, but maybe they have something cool up they’re sleeves. Everything’s still pretty much XP with a skin.
Eh, this is all just blathering on a beta anyway. Would be cool to have an article on how things are shaping up system feature wise. Who has to break their NDA for that one?
Dosn’t look too bad. Although the icons and folders are extremely big. Seems as if Vista would be more suited to mobiles and webpads. I somehow also think users will be squeeling over transparencies as if they were just invented.
Although I’ll be sticking with my Gentoo + E17, thankyou.
i agree, looks not bad. the search is nice, the skin looks good, and explorer got a update that might turn out good.
but why the crystal-like icons? they get more and more everaldo-like…
and apart from the search, new look (with accelerated graphics) and better explorer, where are the big innovations? if longhorn is to last 10 years, it’s gotta have at least what Mac OS X offers (if not way more)… KDE 4 will be able to do all this and much more before Vista comes out, and i think it’ll also have lots of innovations Vista should’ve had in the first place.
sorry, microsoft, but this isn’t enough. not for something that is still more than a year off. it’d be cool if it was ready now. it’d be old if it is finished next year…
What’s with the fuzzy JPG screenshots? Where is the buzz? Where is the sizzle? This has to be the most uninteresting unhyped OS since Windows ME. Here is what I think:
Windows 98 SE -> Windows ME (simply aweful)
Windows XP -> Windows Vista (stinkbomb in the making?)
Looking at the Control panel screenshot, it seems fairly nicely done, when one considers the window (Not the actual contents). The buttons and stuff on the titlebar look petty cool and handy. It’s just a shame it looks like a poor version of System preferences on OS X.
Also, the transparency of the windows would piss me off big time very quickly. I’ve never quite seen the need for this. It just means that you cannot quite see clearly the window itself, or what’s behind it. It’s no wonder Apple dumped the idea pretty quickly.
Well, Im downloading the Beta V1 down from my universal MSDN subscription, should be able to play about on it after work tomorrow, am really looking forward to this!
If these were screenshots of an upcoming KDE or GNOME version, I’m certain that 90% of the people who are now bitching would say: “Wow that’s so cool! Opensource innovation strikes again! Linux is so superior!”
But hey, it’s Microsoft, it *can’t* be good, right?
Naw, my KDE install (using Keramik) looks better than those fugly screenshots.
It’s not (for me) an anti-Microsoft thing. Those screenshots look like a really bad copy of MacOS X onto Windows XP. I sure hope Aero looks better.
Aero hasn’t been enabled yet. Do you people even read the comments? None the less, we all know that Vista will be great, maddog microsoft haters will continue to spew bile and linux will continue to be the preferred desktop for hobbyist geeks whose time isn’t worth anything, while Microsoft dominates the desktop as usual.
Have fun in your parent’s basement dweebs.
No. MS dominates clueless schweens like you. Remember, the first step toward curing yourself is to admit you have a problem.
Face it, your OS of choice is losing relevance with each passing day. MS never used to see Apple as a threat. Well, I’m here to tell you, Gates and Co. are sh*tting serious bricks. They’re getting squeezed by Linux on one side and OS X on the other. The fact that Apple is going Intel will only make matters worse for Billy Boy. Not to mention the fact that MS is eating Google’s dust in the search, mapping, etc. game.
Apple’s good press has coming fast and furious while we get daily reminders to patch the unending security holes in MS’s craptastic products. Yep. There is a better computing experience out there, but it ain’t being delivered by Microsoft.
BTW, how many more years until Vista actually sees the light of day?
I agree that is OSX like…
But don´t even compare AERO with Gnome or even KDE this is years ahead…
uh huh… because gnome and kde don’t have translucency support, vector graphics icons, or theming abilities, or video/image thumbnailing in the filemanager, or desktop administration tools, or desktop search, or whatever the new feature of the month is.
I’m so tired of this “Linux is years behind” troll. Its mainly because companies like Microsoft hype things that are still two years off, and people are unaware of whats in development in Open Source because there is no massive hype machine.
Please, if you want to compare things in windows that aren’t here yet, please compare it to linux things that are in a similar state and aimed for a similar timeline. XGL, Beagle, Plasma, Topaz, E17, etc… are all good examples of this, although some of them will likely be out much earlier than Vista.
What is the build number of WinVista Beta 1?
I think the looks are a huge improvement over the “fisher-price” look of Windows XP.
But I’m wondering how much system resources some of the visual effects (like the non-solid window border) are going to cost.
Also wondering if we can turn off much of the resource-heavy visual effects.
I hope this doesn’t require a 1GB system with a 4Ghz CPU.
As it has been said a million and one times…. All graphics work will be offloaded to the graphics card.
Typically sloppy MS “implementations” of eye-candy that’s been available for years in OS X. C’mon. The blue folders and Recycle Bin are disturbingly Mac-like! The Control Panel is a “wordy” disaster. I can’t believe that you still need to click Start to Shut Down. Ha ha ha.
Jeez, you’d think with all that dough, they could at least hire a good icon designer. Vista is a kludge. Why is that MS just can’t seem to put professional polish on anything it does?
Oh, wait! I can hear the wails now…”it’s just a beta, it’s just a beta.” Well, how many more years will we be hearing that statement? I can understand adding small refinements as completion date gets nearer, but this beast needs a complete UI overhaul.
How do you know Aero will be able to compete with GNOME or KDE? Who says it will be any good?
Seems to me we should hold both positive and negative judgments of Vista’s graphic interface until after we see Aero in full action.
If that was a screenshot of KDE I’d move to Gnome so fast it would make your head spin. Please stop pulling assumptions from your arsehole !
I looked at the screen shots, I think this new windows looks kida ugly. MHO.
but, what’s the matter with MS? Why are their screenshots on that page either zoomed out or zoomed in, nothing at 100% (normal) zoom? We want to see what it looks like, not a blurry thumbnail NOR the individual pixels. Oy.
Where does MS want me to send them the money for this Windows XP skin? woot! , oh wait this is the new Windows….
I can’t get over how much the new Windows Explorer looks just like Firefox running on OS X.
There are so many elements that seem ripped from OSX and then just … eww
I will wait for Aero, but I don’t like how Windows seems to be going to the clutterful KDE type. Windows has enough crap throwing on screen as is… new Explorer looks like its doing too many tasks for its own good (rating music and such)
I think that Apple has it right in having single apps focusing more and them working together, than having one app do it all.
“To say ‘This looks like/is a ripoff of OS/GUI xyz’, nobody cares, so save yourself the effort please.”
Oh, we do care. The reason is that today, you can get every feature that Vista is claiming to have but will fall short on (and require 512MB of RAM and 3Ghz for).
Just buy a Mac.
… and that GUI just aint sexy. “But it’s still in beta” – indeed, when do Microsoft products ever get out of beta?!
“Just wait for Avalon” – why wait? This is a fast moving industry. Those that wait get left in the dust.
I’ll be getting a Xbox 360, forget this Vista kludge.
sincerely
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=%22rod%…
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=%22rod%…
I’m an OS X guy, so Longhorn is more of a casual interest to me. My main focus is what is MS doing better do I can hope Apple does the same/leapfrog ahead.
Looking at the screenshots (and again, knowing MS is sandbagging the cool stuff until Beta 2.)
1. I like the details at the bottom and the ability to change things. Not sure if I want Apple to copy, since I would prefer dedicated apps like iTunes and Spotlight. I think if Apple get OS X search to the next level I may not be using finder windows much anyhow.
2. I think I like the paradigm of dedicated apps for manipulating files. I think I’d rather iTunes or iMovie, etc., than this functionality being at the OS level. It seems more intuitive, powerful, and easier for the companies to upgrade on a regular basis.
But I may be wrong, and I am open minded about new ways of working. I never thought Spotlight was going to be a big deal until it became habitual for me.
Anyway, for my Windows using friends, this looks like the beginning of a great update. Microsoft, for all of their mistakes and all of the features stripped out of Longhorn, looks to present a pretty good OS.
Beta 2 will be the real test.
looks expensive
As a OS X/Apple fan, I really hope Apple is getting their act together on the next version of OS X.
Tiger is insanely buggy and a lot of the functionality is poorly thought through. The iApps like iCal, Mail, and Addressbook–especially iCal and Addressbook–are pretty pathetic in the functionality department. iCal reminds me of a calendaring program from 1987.
As an Apple guy, I hope the pressure of Longhorn and the big ego race between Bill and Steve pushes Apple very hard to release a breath taking update in 10.5.
I hate to say it, I really do, but I think Tiger will go down as one of the worst releases in OS X history. The bugs and design flaws are just brutal. (Still 1,000 times better than anything else on the market. It’s just that I expect more from a company like Apple.)
I hope the iPod success has not blinded Apple to the new opportunities in the PC market. There are cracks in the Wintel monopoly, but Apple needs to execute perfectly.
actually tiger is proving to be the Best OS X update up till now ( based on sales )… i think it was pretty obvious when Steve Jobs mentioned it in his keynote
“Glass and new Window animation. The Windows Vista desktop experience will deliver a new visual identity — translucent glass with more animation. Because it is visually intuitive, the glass helps users focus on the task at hand, whether reading a document, viewing a Web page or editing a photo.”
Newsflash! Animation and translucent objects makes you smarter and more focused!
I think the translucency is alright, until you get 5 or 6 Windows open, then it is just so hard on the eyes.
I know Microsoft has no issues with bandwidth, so why did they drop the jpeg quality so much? At full size those images look … crappy. It looks good, but not the images they shipped.
If you have IE, it will scale the images down to the size of your window, and they images themselves look really good.
“If you have IE, it will scale the images down to the size of your window”
You think Firefox can’t do the same thing ?
Besides, it’s better in Firefox because you can increase image size just clicking on it
I like it!! and Next BETA will be Better, not to mention the final release.
well, now wi’ll wait how that OS X Leopard will look like, and compare!, but if steve force me to buy a mac for that leopard , i will stick with VISTA !!
yea OS X and Vista is the future.
Linux is FV)K1N ugly, and so much primitive (imagine a 2005 OS that need you to edit text file to configure …blah ), and those Linux GUI just a Crude, ugly copycat of XP UI, i don’t get it why they inisist on their GUI is better , ever see Gnome and KDE Apps on same screen? ..blah..
Ever see a person using Opera, and the Gimp, and Office at the same time on a windows machine? Thats got to be worse, since you’re getting one more UI (lets not even bring apps with seperate themes, or the classic look and the themed look in windows.)
Ever had to edit the registry? Or suffered through the complexity of having three different configuration apps that all seem to do the same thing differently, or that seem the same, but work completely differently? Theres a reason why even windows uses text config files in some places. Hasn’t microsoft said they’re replacing the binary registry with XML anyway? (if so, there you go, a 2007 OS with text config)
Excuse me but XP GUI is worth sh** compare to gnome or kde, or even icewm IMO.
Doesn’t really seem worth all the talk about it.
why does microsoft keep getting more and more in the way of production with each new release. All this eyecandy is just XP+even more waste of window space. Get out of my way, I have applications to run.
i think it looks really great. i like dark themes really. if they are done well, they can look so good. this looks so much better than the windows xp look. xp was ugly, and this is so much nicer looking.
“$125 for an upgrade” OUCH!!!
i sorta like the new skin, but its sorta ugly too. the window buttons like maximize and close, are uglier than in xp. and im not sure i like the transparency. i do like the taskbar. somewhat better than the default xp.
they really just need to hire alot of designers, who are minimilist designers, or good designers. paying programmers to design ui graphics is retarded. but i think thats what they are doing.
I really feel sorry for Windows users now. Microsoft took a lot of time and resources to make Longhorn (Vista) the best OS ever. From what I see it looks like Vista is going to be the greatest dud ever, even bigger then ME. I’m not saying anything about functionality or performance of the OS (obviously, I don’t have it and I can’t try it) but GUI-wise, they completely lost the plot.
*Looking at the My documents window, why the hell almost half of the window is used as a preview/info space.
*Control Panel is even more confusing than XP one.
*Why moving the toolbar underneath the address bar?
*OK, we got it, the windows can be transparent, but why the icons are still opaque, something doesn’t look right to me.
Is this the best design Microsoft can buy with all the money they have?
First I read on the website that they plan to encript the OS so other operating systems can not access it.
Then looking at the system specs, I find that they want at least 512 MB of RAM, a direct-X 9c compliant video card, and a modern Pentium or Athlon as a minimum.
So for people like me with a mixed network, forget getting Vista to play nice with other computers. And for gaming–I’ll going to need to take out a loan at the bank to get a system powerful enough to run the OS and my games.
I think I’ll just stick with XP, and Linux and maybe buy a new Mac instead. It will be cheaper.
“Vista” in Latvian nmeans “chicken”.