Windows Vista 5361

I saw this in the morning over at Longhornblogs.

I think it looks great.  Explorer finally looks better now that they've removed the ugly watercolor at the bottom.

I'm curious about the IE7+

mVPstar wrote:

I'm curious about the IE7+

IE7+ is name for IE in Windows Vista.  It's a "plus" because it has additional features beyond those in IE7 for Windows XP or WS03.

The enhancements are primarily Protected Mode, and Parental Controls.  Both of these features depend on functionality only available on Vista.

I think it looks elegant. Very visually appealing.

I like it a lot actually. A lot of people say it looks like an OS X clone but yet I fail to see how exactly people reach that conclusion.

I like the visuals and have liked them for the past couple of CTPs, but nothing that could be captured in a screenshot will make me choose to upgrade XP to Vista.

It's part about fluidity.  (The last version of Vista I've used is 5308, so pardon me if this is no longer an issue in Vista.)  When I open something in Vista, it takes longer to open than on XP, and the graphics are jumpy.  This is on a new dual-core Athlon 64 computer with an nVidia 7800 GT GPU... what Vista calls a "5".  On even relatively slow Macs (including one that was originally installed with OS 9), OS X 10.4 has fluidity that Vista hasn't mastered.

I'm not bringing up Macs to troll... I'm bringing them up because I like Windows and Microsoft will have to get Vista right or lose a substantial number of customers to Apple.  The reason people call Vista a "Mac clone" is because Apple has had their OS out for a while and many of the visual features in Vista are similar to those found in OS X.  Microsoft has taken a very long time to push Vista out and several people I know have already made the switch.

The second thing I can't stand about Vista is the visible side of the user security model. As a person who understands the point of security, if I get annoyed at the "Are you sure you want to do this?" popups, my mom will not understand at all why this changed and will ask me to put XP back on the machine.

Third, I'm sad to see many of the great features that have been pulled in order to get Vista out in a (relatively) timely manner.  I hope Microsoft plans to release those additions in service packs.

Besides that, I think Vista is a step in the right direction for Microsoft... I just hope not too little and too late.

suryad wrote:

A lot of people say it looks like an OS X clone but yet I fail to see how exactly people reach that conclusion.

I know why they say it, but it's just not a valid reason.  Vista has a lot of animation, smooth transitions, and is, in general, nice-looking.  (just like OS X)  Apple does not have the exclusive rights to "elegent", and it bothers me when people use that as a reason why Microsoft copied Apple.

bondsbw wrote:

The second thing I can't stand about Vista is the visible side of the user security model. As a person who understands the point of security, if I get annoyed at the "Are you sure you want to do this?" popups, my mom will not understand at all why this changed and will ask me to put XP back on the machine.

It's my understanding that they aren’t "are you sure you want to do this?” They are, "May I [the system] elevate the privileges of this app to do what it needs to do?  The reason I ask this is because it may be malware and you might not want to run it” This is the same concept of having to press CTR+ALT+DEL when logging in to your user account.  It makes sure that it's an actual human who is making the decisions, not a piece of malware.
However, I would like to see another solution to that.  Like if the OS had a list of safe programs or something.

re bondsbw:

<disclaimer> its a beta - you cant judge the performance yet.. but i agree - for something built on wserv 2003 - the fastest leanest thing ive ever seen released out of ms - something must be bridling it - debugging code or whatever it is

to the Mac stuff you mention - it reminded me of a question i wanted to ask - but didnt want to start a whole thread - as it is about the ui differences between mac and win..

the question is: Did Windows ui ever have strengths over mac os?  - i say it did/does...and - is a user - a long time user... wrong for liking what made windows ..Windows - the file tree - c:/ drive etc - and how it aided the user in viewing the hard drive as a simple list

macs have been around forever - and the pc designers i know all could have bought macs - year after year at any given time in last 10 yrs..   so why didnt i/they?  because we like windows differences to the mac.

so i ask - is this wrong?  lets say it is.  this means microsoft was wrong too - all along ... for years.  Silly them - actually helping users to understand data structures - and where thier files are

seems to me ms/windows just threw its hands up in the air and said: "ok - ok - no one understands any of this - people like the mac way of doing things (and google).  we'll remove (or basically bury beyond recognition) the one thing that set us apart as windows

change is good - i have vista - i try to use it - still prefer the windows of 10 years - over the windows of mac.

im sure many will chalk this up to old user... then again im sure New Coke tastes good - if youve never had Classic

ps - on topic...page 2 didnt load - page one looked just like 5308/5342

Jamie, in the third picture see on the left both the "most used folders" and the usual folder view? At the same time?

Wasn't that what you wanted?

jamie wrote:

ps - on topic...page 2 didnt load - page one looked just like 5308/5342

But...there's only one page.....

ah - i went to google and typed the build and got this:

http://www.winfuture.de/index.html?page=wfv4/BSv2/scg-ia.php&id=1684

i saw the win future .de  and thought it was win news .de

ps to paolo m
i couldnt find any part of any image that had most used folders written on it - but i was aware they are brining back list - if thats what you meant (yay list!)

jamie wrote:

ps to paolo m
i couldnt find any part of any image that had most used folders written on it - but i was aware they are brining back list - if thats what you meant (yay list!)

It's in the correct link which the rest of us are looking at.

here's how i see that screenshot (duck)

The breadcrumb bar has no more text than the regular address bar, and it's more useful at that.

Who's to say you can't change those favorite links?  Typically that's what "favorites" means in the Windows UI.

You also can't tell that the folders list doesn't have any relation to the actual layout of the drive.  From all you can see here, you're looking at c:\Documents and Settings\bern\Public\... and the folder tree could very well reflect that.  It's just not sized big enough in that one screenshot.  As a matter of fact, the rest of the directory tree has to be there, because the folder list is scrolled very far down.

I'd rather have text labels on those toolbar items than have to wait on a tooltip if there's plenty room.

re the breadcrumb bar - you must remember in older builds - this was designed to disappear unless you clicked there.(slate versions) someone at sometime - other than yours truly ;p realised that was a load of reading - and might clutter up the ui - so they made it go away. (the correct idea imho)

i like the BC bars functionality - but for cleanliness sake - im voting "UP" or the disappearing BC bar version for now

The problem with the BC bar is that we're used to clicking the Up button 4 - 10 times really fast.  I am giving the BC bar a chance though and am learning to live with it - it definitely has a good chance to replace the Up button but I just haven't got the speed with it yet (at least I think this is my issue with it).

bondsbw wrote:

It's part about fluidity.  (The last version of Vista I've used is 5308, so pardon me if this is no longer an issue in Vista.)  When I open something in Vista, it takes longer to open than on XP, and the graphics are jumpy.  This is on a new dual-core Athlon 64 computer with an nVidia 7800 GT GPU...

See, there is your problem right there. NVidia drivers for Vista just plain suck at the moment. On an ATi card everything just feels super smooth, much better than XP ever has.

Looking at the screenshot Jamie posted, I must say I am very unimpressed. 5 years of development and the end result is an explorer windows almost as ugly as in windows XP and with almost every promised feature removed??? What a turn-off.

Where are the virtual folders? The only virtual folder that seems to be left is Recently used, which we already have in XP in the FileOpen dialog box.

The left bar with "Favorite links" and Folders looks awful, and contains  links to Music ("My music" on XP) and Pictures ("My pictures" in XP).  WOW that really must have taken 5 years to figure out - to drop the "My".

So the only new thing is Search, which I admit is good (although Windows desktop search does that).

So I guess there is going to be a big reveal of a radically different look for Vista, because this explorer screenshot really can't be it, can it?