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Longhorn Update | |
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| Time: 11:16 EST/16:16 GMT | News Source: ActiveWin.com | Posted By: Byron Hinson | ||
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Ok for all those doubters - the screenshots posted by Winbeta.org from Longhorn are real. We have received screenshot after screenshot of fakes over the last few months but finally on Saturday proper ones came out. Here are some other snippets of news that have trickled through to us from Microsoft today.
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| #51 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 10/21/2002 9:34:06 PM |
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"Oh yeah, I expect inconsistancy from any new interface." That's a low expectation. I agree it's probably unavoidable in places, but most of the inconsistencies I was mentioning are specific to a NEW feature. MS too frequently comes up with a good idea and applies it to bad situations or quickly loses sight of what the good idea was, and rather than becoming more consistent, simply becomes more and more inconsistent.
Sometimes the same happens to Apple too, but more often than not they introduce a new feature with less options... people will whine for flexibility, but ultimately, the flexibility either arises from 3rd parties or gets introduced by Apple as they evolve the original idea into a more fully functional feature. I prefer the slower evolutionary process instead because it's more likely to maintain consistency. New features need to be considered abstractly first and then the principles need to be firmly established and reenforced. MS too frequently says: this would be a better way of doing this one thing, let's introduce the feature... Without considering how it will be implemented going forward or what inconsistencies it creates. I bet they don't even realize that the Start button doesn't offer anything over the Slideshow/Dock... except maybe a consistent and stable location... I suppose that's worthy, but the redundancies are too great... This post was edited by sodajerk on Monday, October 21, 2002 at 21:35. |
| #52 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 10/21/2002 9:37:56 PM |
| enforcer brings up a good point too. I actually could care less (well, in most respects) about look and feel... What I'm talking about is how the feature works, how you interact with it, what expectations it produces.... These are much more disturbing inconsistencies. They actually interfere with the user/UI interaction... icons and textures don't have much of an effect. |
| #53 By 1845 (12.254.162.111) at 10/21/2002 10:01:07 PM |
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Task panes. Well they try to be tied to the doc, but aren't always. For instance. Open Word. I see a blank document with a task pane. (If I have an open document, why do I need the taskpane?) Click File | New. The New Document task pane appears (unless it was already open). Click on a doc from the MRU list, the current window opens the existing doc. Click on blank document, and you get a new window with a new doc. Now you have two windows each with a blank document, neither with a task pane. That's inconsistant to me.
Command Prompt. 20 or 30 thousand programmers, and there wasn't one of them that could figure out how to replace the form header reference code, with a reference to the new API which says to use Luna or Classic? That's just pathetic. I can see a reason like, the wanted to keep cmd.exe small or something like that (I'm not sure the UI is there or not), but still. I could hae looked for that code and taken a year to do it back when I was in college needing money. Microsoft could've had a really good deal on me AND they'd have a consistant UI. ; - ) New UI, low expectation. Hmm, I don't know. I expect the finished product to be dang good, but not perfect. I found a bug on Office 2000 less than 30 seconds (literally) after installing it, but I still consider it a great suite. The bug still exists in Office XP. It's probably an OS bug. (The bug is that when get the OpenFileDialog on in the file type combo box, you can't scroll over to see all the extensions in the list. Quite often something like All Word Documents will have a million extensions, and you can only see about 5 of them.) Start button vs. Sidebar. Oh yeah redundancy! I haven't seen the finished product, nor do I know how customizable it will be, so I'm not sure yet what I think about it. |
| #54 By 3339 (67.119.193.2) at 10/21/2002 10:15:02 PM |
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Bob, what you are describing isn't inconsistent--it just doesn't conform to your expectations. You have Word set to open with a task pane (that's why... I thought that's how you liked it), but Blank Doc doesn't trigger a task pane... i.e. each new doc has its own triggers for task panes (if for example, there was a selection to open a task pane with blank docs instead of just Start Up... which is a stupid UI decision or they overlooked it, you'd probably be satisfied), you desire for task panes to be triggered by the app only. So whether you opened new docs, old docs, had no docs, whatever... the app would maintain the task pane that was last used within the app. That's not a question of consistency--that's a question of your expectations vs. Microsoft's and which is actually more useful to the general audience.
Just because you have high expectations for the overall product, doesn't mean that that's not a poor perspective to have towards new UI features. If the presumption is that new UI features will create inconsistencies, you aren't very focused on UIs or what they really mean in the first place. If they produce new inconsistencies upon introduction, they will probably tend towards doing so and ultimately create more inconsistency rather than working the other way... to make things more consistent, which should always be a goal. |
| #55 By 1845 (12.254.162.111) at 10/21/2002 10:55:17 PM |
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I meant that if you select an item from the task pane that results a document opening (new or otherwise) it should appear in the same doc window as the task pane that caused it to open.
As for task panes tied to doc windows and not the app itself, well, I'm annoyed with it, but it is consistent. That option you suggested would satisfy me. Sad it isn't there (or if it is, I haven't found it). As for UI in general, you are much more UI metaphor based than I am. I just think, do I like it? does it help me or get in my way? If I like it and it helps me, then I don't much care whether it is consistent to the metaphor or not. I just like it and I feel like it makes me more productive. |
| #56 By 3339 (67.119.193.2) at 10/21/2002 11:24:30 PM |
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I'm a little confused by what you mean by having two doc windows in the same window... maybe that comes from still running 2000, maybe that comes from my inherent dislike of the Application Window/Document Window paradigm, who knows...
No, it's not there, and it's very stupid. Why would you only have an option to launch a task pane at startup, but not with a new doc? If you want task pane functionality at startup, doesn't that mean you probably want it whenever a new document is begun? Oh, because Microsoft isn't very good in this territory. And note that although it is still consistent how task panes are tied to docs--why wouldn't the trigger also be tied to docs (new ones) rather than the app (start up) when setting preferences. That's what I mean about approaching the issues abstractly first--the more attention that is given to it, the more intuitively its functionality elucidates itself... rather than requiring the user to hunt around for and hope for a feature that would seemingly make sense. I'm productive when an interface is intuitive and reliable. If I can't expect a feature to behave as I expect it to or if it functions differently under arbitrary circumstances, it's not productive to me. Or at least it's less so. Moreover, if it's confusing, distracting, unpleasing, than it's frustrating and counter-productive. There are many times when I prefer the Mac--nt always because of functionality, sometime it's simply because it doesn't piss me off so much. This post was edited by sodajerk on Tuesday, October 22, 2002 at 02:42. |
| #57 By 3339 (67.119.193.2) at 10/22/2002 1:58:56 AM |
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I would hope most of us understand that look and feel is held to the very end, that various mix-and-match schemes are tried and tested while building out features to aid the look-and-feel visual design team, that these experiments get refined, that the visual team doesn't see or care what the developers are building, and the developers certainly don't care or know about the one or several finally approved look-and-feels... We all know that, right? That certainly graphics, text, dialogs, icons, images will be in flux, look like crap, or be cooler than the final product? And that none of this is set until it's Final, sure, I hope we all get that...
I think I've tried to observe where and how they will use transparencies, shadows, etc... and wonder about the transformations, effects (I haven't bothered to watch no crappy vid yet...) that will be used; not because these are look and feel elements, but because that's what's important--the graphical subsystem how it uses bitmaps, 2D vectors, 3D objects, effects, transformations, integration of media--For all that anyone tells me about GDI and/or DirectX, I am not impressed in the least by any Windows GUI including XP--it's simply not appealing or powerful (or it's power goes unharnessed) in my mind. But I think they should have all the elements now that it's interesting to follow through its development. But I'm limited in what I would like to observe: speed, performance, actual comfort level, etc... So I'm trying to look at changes, additions, new features which are either as they will appear or near to it ("Do we all think the start menu is staying as is?" I don't know. "We all agree we all like it?" I don't, but I don't know about you... etc...), observe truly "new" features that change how we use the computer or approach our tasks (where's the dynamic/live data in the Slideshow for Christ's sake?), and critique the state of the Windows GUI as it is, today, in shrink-wrapped products, as it is in beta... (tasks can suck when poorly organized and inconsistent, different ill-conceived levels of tasks are stupid, and big space-consuming stock photo banners are gay... See, criticism. [No offense to any gays or lesbians, I meant the bad sense of the word, but I didn't mean that word referred to you.]) Based on what's been said about the file system, managed code, .Net, Palladium, backward compatibility, and a few thousand other things, we can't imagine or guess at very much for this Whistler/Blackcomb-Longhorn or is it Longhorn-Blackcomb/Cairo-Palladium release of an OS that's scheduled for end of 2004, maybe 2005, who knows what we'll get in the final product Windows without sounding like monkeys. (But it's fun to make monkey noises sometimes, I guess.) What I've seen in no way reflects live data or much customization really so I won't try to bring up Cairo the magical SQL-Yukon file store/system (not when we have so many problems with Exchange at work, praise Jesus, I'm not IT), but you would imagine that would have a substantial influence on interface, yeah? So, yeah, these are alphas of something 2 years away. Yup, but I think there's plenty to discuss still. Hell, if you don't like my previous comments, I'll throw out some new topics for discussion: |
| #58 By 3339 (67.119.193.2) at 10/22/2002 1:59:21 AM |
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1. What will "they" call "it"? [Slideshow, Dock (I figure people are gonna mostly use the Mac name for the time being but we'll see), Sidebar, NetDoc... hmmm, who knows? Who cares? (I vote for .Doc, but I've got a sick sense of humor.)]
2. Where is the dynamic data? [Sorry, I'll rephrase...] Was the guy doing screenshots just stupid and/or not chat with, email, etc... the outside world and/or connect to networks, What's up? OR Maybe this data is dependent on the file system so they've gone a step back from Sideshow because Cairo has progressed? [Now there's a conspiracy/rumor!] 3. .Doc definitely has discrete locations for certain functionality/tasks--What does the API offer developers beyond Microsoft's intended use of .Doc? For example, can I develop a little graphical app like the clock but different with the dimensions 600 x 2? Or could you easily grab web data and/or mine your network, computer, and files for data easily? [I presume so... or rather, I presume Yes on all accounts But to a Degree in all respects, but mostly I'm seeing common apps, start menu crap, control panel stuff that I don't care about seeing ALL the time, I just want instantly a couple of times a day....] 4. What transforms unique from Apple do you think they'll use? Will they do anything weirder than scale/magnify (magnify can be pretty weird already) like genie? How 'bout some spinning, rotating for the ladies in the crowd? 5. Do you think you can break the .Doc into pieces/palletes? Why not do this? How much control does someone need to exert to preserve A GUInterface? 6. What's going on with the systray? What's up with those weird little widgets over there? |
| #59 By 3339 (67.119.193.2) at 10/22/2002 2:10:40 AM |
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Oh, did anyone notice they haven't worked out text wrapping yet, but that .Doc is resizeable? I forget where/which one, but one of the screenshots shows the header text running off the image on the right side. ...I know, maybe it's not the full screen in the snap--well, the crappy little icons that are right justified are at the edge, and the text runs into and through them from the left.
Big deal? No, not exactly, but if the .Doc is resizable (say from 400 to 10 pixels), which it should be, how do you reconcile that with 20-50 characters of text running horizontally left to right? It's stumps me to think of the best answer. So is that a hard thing to build or easy? It's certainly small, but considering that... I also wouldn't be thinking that we're getting a whole lot more than what's already been discussed, promised by Microsoft (and I wouldn't necessarily expect that either). |
| #60 By 1845 (12.254.162.111) at 10/22/2002 2:50:07 AM |
| .Doc ? You've got to be kidding. Sorry, but that creates a sligh name collision. Well, I guess Microsoft never has been good about naming conventions. Why start now? The folks that leaked it said it was officially "SideBar", I think. I don't feel like looking it up right now, to verify that though. |
| #61 By 1896 (216.78.252.186) at 10/22/2002 4:06:08 AM |
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This is an updated, "official", document about Sideshow:
http://research.microsoft.com/scripts/pubs/view.asp?TR_ID=MSR-TR-2002-87 . Very interesting reading. |
| #62 By 10 (64.108.37.32) at 10/22/2002 7:08:30 AM |
| does anyone know what happens if msn8 is run on longhorn? does the dashboard become part of the sidebar as a ticket or do u have to deal w/ both sides of the screen being taken up if you choose to do so? |
| #63 By 10059 (63.78.179.4) at 10/22/2002 11:32:54 AM |
| nView is crap? I have a Geforce3, that does not have nView, and I can only have my video on one device at a time. I really dont understand it. Its either Monitor or TV. Even my laptop with a S3 card can do both the TV and Laptop LCD screen at the same time. |
| #64 By 1896 (66.20.200.6) at 10/22/2002 5:04:41 PM |
| #86 this is the $100,000 question!!!!!! |
| #65 By 1896 (208.61.157.122) at 10/22/2002 5:27:05 PM |
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Sorry, double post. This post was edited by Fritzly on Tuesday, October 22, 2002 at 19:29. |
| #66 By 1845 (12.254.162.111) at 10/22/2002 6:58:45 PM |
| By the time longhorn comes out, msn will be in 10 or 11. Wait a while to find out, eh? |
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