With Release Candidate 1 now out the door, Microsoft is putting what it calls the ‘fit-and-finish’ on Windows Vista’s user interface, and the company is looking for feedback from users testing out the beta release. Dave Vronay, a research manager with the Windows User Experience Compliance team, says Microsoft is taking a lot of time to track down minor UI glitches – something it has never done before. “You can actually participate in this process by providing your feedback on the various pre-release versions of Vista we are putting out,” says Vronay. The company is hosting a forum in which users can offer their rants and raves. Also, Microsoft has confirmed all versions of Vista will ship on the same disk.
http://osnews.com/Microsoft%20Taking%20Vista%20UI%2… doesn’t work
Where did the link come from? Because it’s not a valid link, nor one you found on OSNews, because the %20 indicates a space, and we don’t use spaces, we use dashes in our URLs.
This makes me wonder if this is just Yet Another Microsoft Attempt of creating a “community feeling” (trendy in software companies these days). Is this going to be useful, now that -RC1 has been out the door for a while, -RC2 is on the way and it’s not going to change anything (it’s a release candidate, after all) except minor things?
I just feel that there’s a increasing number of PR moves done by big software companies, not just Microsoft, to try to look “more friendly” by trying to look like open source communities but that doesn’t have any real purpose at the end. When I downloaded the vista beta2 .iso, I though that Microsoft would keep updating it online with the latest improvements (it’s not rocket science, debian and ubuntu had been doing that for ages with APT), just like “Firefox nigthlies”. But instead they only shipped a couple of critical updates, although they released a much improved version to their beta testers shortly after releasing the beta 2. So what was the purpose of releasing a public beta 2 build, if you’re going to leave the users with a huge amount of buggy software for months and users can’t report you how the vista development is evolving? Was that something that Microsoft did thinking in the users, or just a “smart” PR move?
Edited 2006-09-22 15:52
MS has a lot of customers, and it’s probably trying to determine if there are serious adoption blockers. Mostly for corporate types — but also the mom and pops, too. Given how close MS is to shipping Vista, it’s probable that they can’t change that much and still meet the ship date; however, it isn’t unprecedented for MS to slip its ship date in order to fix serious issues. If, say, GM or Ford or FedEx (or even the little guys) were to find serious adoption blockers, you can pretty much bet that MS would adjust the ship date accordingly. After all, since MS missed the Xmas ship season, it doesn’t much matter if it slips out another couple weeks … or a month.
This makes me wonder if this is just Yet Another Microsoft Attempt of creating a “community feeling”…
You must new to the MS scene. MS always have had a good community relations.
You must new to the MS scene. MS always have had a good community relations.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!
Oh wait… you weren’t joking?
Awww, he thinks he’s being clever, isn’t that adorable?
It’s very true, they have always had a strong relationship with developers, and with corporate users, they are probably just trying to extend that to home users, which isn’t a bad thing
[EDIT: sorry RC1]Isn’t a release candidate “feature complete”? How many people are going to see it as feature complete if there’s the chance of the UI changing radically? If there isn’t, then why make what will then amount to a PR move?
This isn’t like the launch of Win95, where people who didn’t know Macs and didn’t know Amigas were fooled into thinking 95 came up with new ideas – if people are supposedly given the chance to critique Vista, and then see their criticisms not being acted upon, there Will be a Big Stink whether the progress of Mac or Linux means the Windows sky is falling or not.
Edited 2006-09-22 15:53
I think it’s a question of expectations. Users shouldn’t necessarily expect their criticisms to be acted on in the next few months unless they’re serious issues.
<rant> This will Vista delay again as soon they find out it does look to similar to OSX </rant>
Regardless, I think thats a smart move on Microsoft’s part listening to users. The only question is: Are they willing to change things if enough users complain about a certain button, toolbar etc… ?
———-
Vancouver Website Design http://www.medora.ca
Dear Microsoft,
Please consider removing all fonts except for Comic Sans from Windows Vista. Please only allow Comic Sans in everything and make it 72 pt please.
Also, make the interface yellow, green and purple. Add plenty of clipart and fuzzy animals n stuff.
Make the logon sounds loud, maybe kittens meowing or something equally cute. Then make the default wallpaper little fuzzy puppies or something. Then add lots of cute animals to other wallpapers.
Thank you for considering this awful request.
–Secretaries everywhere
Wait, wait, you forgot this one:
Please put Solitaire and FreeCell on the desktop, and remove all those other icons.
The inconsistent user interface should have been sorted out years and years and years ago. It should also have been picked up by internal testing and usage.
THis is good news.
What’s going on at Microsoft?
Would that the C# team were also open minded:
CheckedException
and
HashSet
greatly needed…
The C# team, and .Net, are both notoriously open to feature requests. Have you tried asking them? They may offer you a reason they don’t, or you may see it get included at some point…
Seriously, if you’re going to criticize Microsoft for things, do it with evidence which has a leg to stand on.
Sorry, I just hate it. I used RC1 for a week and had to go back to Windows XP because of all the little annoyances I kept running into. The worst part was that I couldn’t go back to the classic theme because it’s horrible and unfinished looking. The interface is slow, kludgy and confusing.
If Microsoft had spent their time building on the Windows 2000 GUI, adding security updates and new features and hardware support instead of spending years trying to come up with fancy special effects and shiny buttons I really think they could have had the greatest operating system ever made and it probably would have been out long before now. I know that they have done other things in Vista too and a lot of them are really nice, but the new interface just ruins it. As it is right now I don’t think I’ll buy Vista, not unless they seriously improve it by RTM.
Edited 2006-09-23 17:11