Wanted Features

I was wondering what type of Features or Bundled Apps you guys would like to see in the next version of window meaning after Vista. Since Vista is pretty much feature complete we can’t expect any of these things to be included.

Heres a list of things that I would like to see,

• Paint replaced with Acrylic Express or something of that nature.

• Word Pad replaced with Word Express. And these express versions shouldn’t have any nag screens to buy the full featured versions.

• A Virtual CD/DVD Drive. Or ISO management capabilities

• A System wide Spell Checker.

• A GPU resource monitor. (since the desktop is now renderd and stored in your graphics card)

• Mousegestures (TURNED OFF by Default of Course

• A Download Manager like what we saw in build 4015

• Ability to assign a password to a folder. So that everytime you go to open up a folder it asks for a password only.

• Advanced shutdown features that would allow you to auto shutdown when a certain task has been completed or to simply shutdown at a specified time.

• I would have love to see those Glass Toasts notifications back instead of the crap balloon pop ups.

• Actual 3D animated icons. Kind of like what we can see here. Even though that icon looks crap And the animated start menu icons shown at PDC 2003

• Views such as Carousel view and Phodeo.

• And if only we had the Glass version and Shell shown back at PDC 2003. here & here

• The old theme styles from the 3xxx and 4xxx builds Longhorn builds.

• The tabbed thumbnails again shown at PDC 2003

• The features and high quality look of Microsoft Max merged in with windows Photo Gallery. I DON’T see a point in making two Image Gallery type of apps.

• And an OS mode selector. Basically this would offer you a list of modes in which you could run your computer in. For example Gaming Mode. This would then only leave OS critical services running and would close down all other running tasks. So that you can use almost your entire computers power to run the game. Or an Office Productivity mode. This would then down clock your hardware to make it use less power and create less noise. Would be great for laptop users. This has actually been done by Creative for the X-Fi sound cards in which you select what mode you want the card to operate in.

•Ability to have “Surround Sound” WMP files or other media formats to be attached to the windows sound themes. I have an awesome set of surround sound speakers set up and I would like it if windows was able to use them in a more creative way.

•Explorer to Auto Refresh itself. Like Properly I mean. For example, If you copy some files into a folder they get put down the very bottom, which you have to then manually refresh to get them places back in the Alphabetical order or how ever else you have them sorted.

So what features would you guys like to see?

 

I have split your suggestions into two groups, the good and the bad.


The BAD

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• Paint replaced with Acrylic Express or something of that nature.

• Word Pad replaced with Word Express. And these express versions shouldn’t have any nag screens to buy the full featured versions.

• Mousegestures (TURNED OFF by Default of Course

• Ability to assign a password to a folder. So that everytime you go to open up a folder it asks for a password only.

• I would have love to see those Glass Toasts notifications back instead of the crap balloon pop ups.

• Actual 3D animated icons. Kind of like what we can see here. Even though that icon looks crap "> And the animated start menu icons shown at PDC 2003

• Views such as Carousel view and Phodeo.

• And if only we had the Glass version and Shell shown back at PDC 2003. here & here

• The old theme styles from the 3xxx and 4xxx builds Longhorn builds.

• The tabbed thumbnails again shown at PDC 2003


• The features and high quality look of Microsoft Max merged in with windows Photo Gallery. I DON’T see a point in making two Image Gallery type of apps.


• And an OS mode selector. Basically this would offer you a list of modes in which you could run your computer in. For example Gaming Mode. This would then only leave OS critical services running and would close down all other running tasks. So that you can use almost your entire computers power to run the game. Or an Office Productivity mode. This would then down clock your hardware to make it use less power and create less noise. Would be great for laptop users. This has actually been done by Creative for the X-Fi sound cards in which you select what mode you want the card to operate in.

•Ability to have “Surround Sound” WMP files or other media formats to be attached to the windows sound themes. I have an awesome set of surround sound speakers set up and I would like it if windows was able to use them in a more creative way.


•Explorer to Auto Refresh itself. Like Properly I mean. For example, If you copy some files into a folder they get put down the very bottom, which you have to then manually refresh to get them places back in the Alphabetical order or how ever else you have them sorted.

The Good

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• A Virtual CD/DVD Drive. Or ISO management capabilities

• A System wide Spell Checker.

• A GPU resource monitor. (since the desktop is now renderd and stored in your graphics card)

• A Download Manager like what we seen in build 4015

• Advanced shutdown features that would allow you to auto shutdown when a certain task has been completed or to simply shutdown at a specified time. 

I don't have the time to point out why I've put them into either the good or bad but I have good reasons in most cases (more the neg' ones than the pos' ones).

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• A Download Manager like what we seen in build 4015

The word is "saw".

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• Ability to assign a password to a folder. So that everytime you go to open up a folder it asks for a password only.

What's wrong with NTFS permissions?

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• Advanced shutdown features that would allow you to auto shutdown when a certain task has been completed or to simply shutdown at a specified time.

You can do this already with task scheduler. It's just not very intuitive.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• And an OS mode selector.

This sounds like a mix between something they mentioned before and powermanagment for laptops.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

•Ability to have “Surround Sound”

I'd like if Windows was able to control the volume of my S/PDIF out.

Basically I'd just like everything to work, especially in x64.

If I had to add one thing that's not in there by default it would be either a DVD codec or something like XPlay so that I'd only have to use iTunes if I want to buy music from the store.

Manip
I was actually asking for use to list features not pick on mine.
Anyway it seems like you either don’t like eye candy or didn’t like the PDC 2003 look.
I mean why wouldn’t you want views such as Carousel and Phodeo?
And theres nothing BAD with alot of things in that list. How is having Windows Support Surround sound for its system sounds a bad thing...? GOD. If you arent going to take the time to explain why then dont bother posting.

Andokai, in regards to the Passwording of Folders, you cannot achieve this with NTFS permissions.

I want the ability to "Password Protect" a folder. Which means that when a ANY user goes to enter a folder it asks for a password. And I want it to ask me EVERY single time I want to access its contents. That means I double click a folder and it brings up a Dialog box asking me for nothing more or nothing less than a password. That means no bloody user name or crap. Just a password. There aren’t even any 3rd party apps that do it this simple.

I know a lot of people that want to be able to just do this. "Joe" doesn’t know how to tinker with NTFS permissions. So there should be a simpler option in which the average home user just has to Right click on a folder and go “Password Protect”.

And about the surround sound thing. I simply meant that it would be nice if I could assign multi channel sound files to the windows sound themes. This CANT currently be done. You can only assign Stereo or Mono sound files to themes in Windows XP.

Oh and also,
Manip you put this under BAD.

• The features and high quality look of Microsoft Max merged in with windows Photo Gallery. I DON’T see a point in making two Image Gallery type of apps.

So its good that there wasting there time in making 2 applications that pretty much do the same thing is it? Max is far more polished and has great sharing abilities. So they SHOULD merge the features of MAX into WPG. And just work on one great app instead of wasting there time.

I like your list, I'd like them all.

Andokai, in regards to the Passwording of Folders, you cannot achieve this with NTFS permissions.

I want the ability to "Password Protect" a folder. Which means that when a ANY user goes to enter a folder it asks for a password. And I want it to ask me EVERY single time I want to access its contents. That means I double click a folder and it brings up a Dialog box asking me for nothing more or nothing less than a password. That means no bloody user name or crap. Just a password. There aren’t even any 3rd party apps that do it this simple.

I know a lot of people that want to be able to just do this. "Joe" doesn’t know how to tinker with NTFS permissions. So there should be a simpler option in which the average home user just has to Right click on a folder and go “Password Protect”.

I didn't say you could do it with NTFS I was just asking what was wrong with NTFS. Why would you want to have to enter a password every time? Is it not enough that the contents of your "My Documents" folder is inaccessable to anyone else unless you want it to be. And that's setup by default so involves no tinkering.

And about the surround sound thing. I simply meant that it would be nice if I could assign multi channel sound files to the windows sound themes. This CANT currently be done. You can only assign Stereo or Mono sound files to themes in Windows XP.

I know what you meant and I was contributing something I would like in a related area, like you asked for. But in response to what you said, what it seems like you want is to increase the amount of sound formats supported by windoes sound themes. Personally I don't see the point but I'm not here to criticise.

delta4s wrote:

I like your list, I'd like them all.

Thanks.

But maybe everyone’s missed the large text down the bottom.
What features would use like to see?

I didn't say you could do it with NTFS I was just asking what was wrong with NTFS. Why would you want to have to enter a password every time? Is it not enough that the contents of your "My Documents" folder is inaccessable to anyone else unless you want it to be. And that's setup by default so involves no tinkering.

Because i dont want to have to Lock my computer everytime i leave for a few min. I wouldnt use it for things such a My Documents since it would bother the piss out of me . I simply want to beable to lock done certain folders.

What it seems like you want is to increase the amount of sound formats supported by windoes sound themes. Personally I don't see the point but I'm not here to criticise.

Yes, I simply want Windows Sound themes to support more file types like say WMA!!!! And since WMA supports surround sound the problem would be totally solved.

The point simply is that as I said, I have a very nice set of speakers and surround sound is only ever being used in games or movies.
Its going to be 2007 by the time Vista is out. And I would expect an OS of this day and age to support multi media in a richer, deeper way.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

 I simply want to beable to lock done certain folders.

Password protected zip files.

Yes, thats the method inwhich is use. Hardly stream-lined though.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• A Download Manager like what we saw in build 4015

If they include a Download Manager, they better include options that allow me to download (or at the very least, queue) more than two files at a time.  My God what a pain in the arse.

I've indicated the many missing features I'd like in many other threads, so I won't bother trying to remember them all now.  Some day I'll start a list and save it...   

BTW, I'd like to be able to tab from this textbox to the 'post' button... sigh...

AndyC wrote:

Password protected zip files.

This can be an asspain when dealing with very large groups of files. Windows insists on compressing them (what, with it being a Zip and all).

Don't say you didn't ask for this...

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• Paint replaced with Acrylic Express or something of that nature.

NO! ... Clearly you have completely, 100%, and totally missed the point of MS Paint... Don't worry, many have done so before and many will continue to do so in the future.

Acrylic Express, apart from being an unfinished product is also a full drawing application which means one thing: Complexity. Complexity is the enemy of the user, they have enough trouble checking their e-mail without worrying about which 'layer' they are painting to.

If anything MS Paint could do with being made even simpler, which would open doors to a lot of users.

I personally have 'full' painting/drawing suites installed but when I need to, for example, rotate a picture I just do it in paint. With paint there is no bull, there is no "Why isn't this working the way I expected?!" it just works, and it just works the way you expect it to all the time.

MS Paint is as fundamental to Windows as is notepad or the calculator. Frankly I think it is a great shame that on no Linux Distribution that I've ever tried that they do not have something similar.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• Word Pad replaced with Word Express. And these express versions shouldn’t have any nag screens to buy the full featured versions

Bloat Bloat Bloat... Although WordPad could be greatly improved (e.g. Drag + Drop behaviour) it does not need to be removed, nor would I welcome it. WordPad is an extremely basic, extremely simple and extremely effective little text editing and formatting program.

What would "Word Express" have that WordPad doesn't? You can't include too much otherwise Office wouldn't sell. All you'd end up with is another version of WordPad with some of Word's more useless features and none of the things we actually use the real Word to get (e.g. Spell Checker).

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• Mousegestures (TURNED OFF by Default of Course

Mouse Gestures are SO clever they're stupid... We have 108+ key keyboards but yet people want to use the mouse? But not only do they want to use the mouse, but they want to do crazy, and often difficult movements, instead of a simple click? ...

For example in a browser, by the time you've done the movement, and with the chance of getting it wrong, or having it detect a different movement, you might have well have clicked the back button the old fashioned way.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• Ability to assign a password to a folder. So that every-time you go to open up a folder it asks for a password only.

Windows already supports this.

Making it easier just leads people to a false sense of security... I can see it now... "I'm going to sue Microsoft... I put that data in a secure folder which someone (via the 'admin' user) gained access to! No doubt the result of a Microsoft Security bug or bad design!"

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• I would have love to see those Glass Toasts notifications back instead of the crap balloon pop ups.

I actually want to SEE notifications when they appear. What is the point of a notification you can't see or that doesn't alert you as well as it could? ...

Seems almost self-redundant.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• Actual 3D animated icons. Kind of like what we can see here. Even though that icon looks crap "> And the animated start menu icons shown at PDC 2003

Vista is already laggy enough and I can't afford a super-computer to generate the 3D icons while I'm trying to write an e-mail.

How exactly do 3D icons make me or anyone else more productive?

How exactly do they make the computer easier to use?

What purpose do they serve?

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• Views such as Carousel view and Phodeo.

Such views aren't very efficient nor are they user friendly. I'm sure they look great on the big screen, just as it was fun in Microsoft Max for all of five minutes... But long term such views are at best unproven and at worst not a great mechanism to meet that end.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• And if only we had the Glass version and Shell shown back at PDC 2003. here & here

• And if only we had the Glass version and Shell shown back at PDC 2003. here & here

See my 'rant' about the notification box. What is the point of a transparent desktop?

You can't click or use the items behind the "in focus" one; thus it could only lead to confusion.

If you are THAT desperate not to see things then I suggest you turn your monitor off.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• The old theme styles from the 3xxx and 4xxx builds Longhorn builds.

Hideous.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• The tabbed thumbnails again shown at PDC 2003

Say for example that I have three Windows... All white, except with the words "One" "Two" and "Three" written on them. Could you say that the tabbed-thumbnail view is the most efficient one for that scenario?

IE 7 does support something like what your asking... But when you get as small as that (which IE 7 doesn't) it becomes almost useless except in rare cases when it is clear which is which.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• The features and high quality look of Microsoft Max merged in with windows Photo Gallery. I DON’T see a point in making two Image Gallery type of apps.

Because Microsoft MAX is about *SHARING* photos, The Photo Gallery is about *VIEWING* photos. They each have their own purpose.

It is like suggesting merging Windows and Windows Server lines, because you "don't see the point" in releasing two versions.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

• And an OS mode selector. Basically this would offer you a list of modes in which you could run your computer in. For example Gaming Mode. This would then only leave OS critical services running and would close down all other running tasks. So that you can use almost your entire computers power to run the game. Or an Office Productivity mode. This would then down clock your hardware to make it use less power and create less noise. Would be great for laptop users. This has actually been done by Creative for the X-Fi sound cards in which you select what mode you want the card to operate in.

The Operating System already does this... It also has process prioritising build in, such that any game developer (or other application developer) could completely monopolise the computer system.

Not to mention that Windows is excellent at it even without the developers having to change priorities.

Such "modes" wouldn't be useful to anyone... And a general purpose Operating System like Windows would only suffer by trying to define its main uses.

Not even to mention all the application developers who would have to sign up to this for it to be even a little bit effective.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

•Ability to have “Surround Sound” WMP files or other media formats to be attached to the windows sound themes. I have an awesome set of surround sound speakers set up and I would like it if windows was able to use them in a more creative way.

You can already. Install the Dolby Digital (AC3) codec; change the audio panel to point at your AC3 sound of choice and your off.

No real need to integrate this into the Operating System any more than it is already. And having 3D sound (more than two streams) on the startup just sounds like your asking for lag to me.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

•Explorer to Auto Refresh itself. Like Properly I mean. For example, If you copy some files into a folder they get put down the very bottom, which you have to then manually refresh to get them places back in the Alphabetical order or how ever else you have them sorted.

You don't "really" mean refresh at all... You just want it to auto-sort every time it updates...

Well sorry but that would be far too laggy... Browsing though and sorting an entire directory of perhaps hundreds of files takes time and CPU power, if you do it all the time the users will start to feel the effect and they won't like it.

However, I would like to see Paste auto-re-sort the folder on use.

CoLD FiRe wrote:

I want the ability to "Password Protect" a folder. Which means that when a ANY user goes to enter a folder it asks for a password. And I want it to ask me EVERY single time I want to access its contents.

I guess you've a load of pron to hide?

The problem is, with those applications the DOJ would be getting ready to bend Microsoft over the barrel.

Heya mate,
Funny coz I just read a news article saying that Europe won’t allow Microsoft to sell Vista unless they remove some features.

And I guess it’s clear that MS wouldn’t be allowed to bundle more advanced apps.

Why doesn’t MAC get picked on?

Because Apple only has about 5% of the market.

Silly question huh

Edit:
BenZilla, i just noticed that your head on your Avatar looks like it would sit perfect on my Avatars body