Questions about Longhorn UI | The Coffeehouse

on

I know i won't get exact answers but i would like to know what you think about these questions:
Will it be more consistent? Will it be more customizable?
Will it beat the so-called "prettiness" of Mac OS X?

I have a lot of questions but these covers most of them basically.

Yesterday I found Tjeerd Hoek's blog but there's no much information about the user interface. That's a personal blog.

on

Certainly i've already read the interview with Hillel Cooperman and Tjeerd and i saw the Kam VedBrat video on Ch9 but it's not enough Smiley

Finally i've found a Codeproject article about the UI changes. It's a very interesting read.
http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/LHChangesUA1.asp

stgeorge

I hope you understand that the article you referenced is extremely old. I don't see a date on it, but it acts as if WinFS is still around, so it's at least a year old.

Since then, the following has been dropped:

1. Avalon and Indigo won't be part of the default install for Longhorn, it will be a separate user-initiated install. (As of a recent Chris Anderson interview). This means applications can't depend on Avalon being installed on WinXP or Longhorn.

2. WinFS has been dropped. (Not being part of the initial release will mean people won't download it, just like .NET is languishing at a 20% adoption rate).

3. WinFX has been dropped (as of the 5000 series of builds). This it the ".NET stuff they wasted so much time on" as mentioned in the Mini-Microsoft blog.

4. Longhorn Help has been dropped (customers told Microsoft they were not interested in this feature). Expect more of the same in this arena, which renders 75% of that article useless.

Also, consider the following:

1. Microsoft itself doesn't use .NET, so I doubt they will use Avalon or Indigo either. Most other companies will stick their current massive libraries of Win32 code. Don't expect an Avalon version of Photoshop ever.

2. Microsoft has been trying to get people to create "task-based" applications since Office XP came out, and no one has bothered.

3. Microsoft added skinning capability to Windows XP and promptly required all skins to be signed by them. It'll be the same for Longhorn.

4. Microsoft wants all applications to look the same, but the skinning craze happened anyway without their approval. Expect more of the same.

5. Microsoft has already said that since corporate customers don't want to retrain their users, don't expect too many UI changes. It may look prettier (but most companies force the Win2000 battleship gray look anyway), but don't expect any consistency.

6. Yes, you'll still see a single sloppy window with a 16-color 16x16 Windows 95 icon, a 256-color 32x32 Windows NT icon, a 64k-color 32x32 Windows XP icon and a true-color 128x128 icon in Longhorn on the same screen. And a single sloppy screen with a "Longhorn-type" button, a hardcoded "Luna-type" button and a hardcoded "Win2000-type" button.

7. Everything in this article is opposite of how I use a computer, so there is no way Longhorn can be user-friendly to me or any other power user. Things look bleak.

8. In the name of backwards compatibility, Microsoft has never been and will never be able to break the shackles of the limitations of Windows without a complete rewrite. This is a well-known fact.

Tom Servo
W-hat?

Actually, I started to pick the crap above apart, but after rereading it all, I simply gave up.

on

ROTFLMAO....

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

Heh. I'm also rather baffled at what he's rambling about. Smiley

mVPstar

on

stgeorge wrote:
I hope you understand that the article you referenced is extremely old. I don't see a date on it, but it acts as if WinFS is still around, so it's at least a year old.

It's from July, 2004.

stgeorge wrote:
Since then, the following has been dropped:

Please, give us sources of your news. Each of them.

stgeorge wrote:
Microsoft itself doesn't use .NET, so I doubt they will use Avalon or Indigo either.

LOL..

stgeorge wrote:
Don't expect an Avalon version of Photoshop ever.

Adobe made their apps available on Mac OS X after Apple made the "second transition" from OS 9. Did you tell the mac users the same thing 5 years ago?

It's pointless to argue with you but this is your opinion - I accept it. I think you're wrong in many cases. Don't bother...

bonk
Ich bin der Wurstfachverkäuferin !

Tom Servo wrote:
Actually, I started to pick the crap above apart, but after rereading it all, I simply gave up.

Agreed, I think there is not even one correct assumtion that stgeorge made there or at least that would survive when looking at it objectively. Most are just plain wrong, some not quite correct.

Thank you Mary J. Foley !

eagle

3DUI and that's no FUD bud!

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

eagle wrote:
3DUI and that's no FUD bud!

How "3D" are we talking?

Like... window = texture on polygon with cool shader and transform effects on the shape, or like MacOS-X and WindowFX where the window is only animated for transitions?

nightski

Great question. Although, I have a suspicion it is going to be more the latter than the former. "If" they provide true window texturing on polygons (I.E. Avalon) that will be amazing.

But if they previous guy was right, and Avalon isn't central to Longhorn, I doubt it.

It is weird how a while back Microsoft promised it was going to be so "Open" about everything it does from now on. I heard the evangelists at the PDC 03 screaming "transparency"!

But now that many features have been dropped or compromised, and new ones yet to be announced - it seems we are back to the old Microsoft. That is, as far as Longhorn is concerned.

Maybe they decided transparency wasn't so great after all? Or maybe it just isn't easy.

gaelhatchue

stgeorge wrote:
I hope you understand that the article you referenced is extremely old. I don't see a date on it, but it acts as if WinFS is still around, so it's at least a year old.

Since then, the following has been dropped:

1. Avalon and Indigo won't be part of the default install for Longhorn, it will be a separate user-initiated install. (As of a recent Chris Anderson interview). This means applications can't depend on Avalon being installed on WinXP or Longhorn.

2. WinFS has been dropped. (Not being part of the initial release will mean people won't download it, just like .NET is languishing at a 20% adoption rate).

3. WinFX has been dropped (as of the 5000 series of builds). This it the ".NET stuff they wasted so much time on" as mentioned in the Mini-Microsoft blog.

4. Longhorn Help has been dropped (customers told Microsoft they were not interested in this feature). Expect more of the same in this arena, which renders 75% of that article useless.

Also, consider the following:

1. Microsoft itself doesn't use .NET, so I doubt they will use Avalon or Indigo either. Most other companies will stick their current massive libraries of Win32 code. Don't expect an Avalon version of Photoshop ever.

2. Microsoft has been trying to get people to create "task-based" applications since Office XP came out, and no one has bothered.

3. Microsoft added skinning capability to Windows XP and promptly required all skins to be signed by them. It'll be the same for Longhorn.

4. Microsoft wants all applications to look the same, but the skinning craze happened anyway without their approval. Expect more of the same.

5. Microsoft has already said that since corporate customers don't want to retrain their users, don't expect too many UI changes. It may look prettier (but most companies force the Win2000 battleship gray look anyway), but don't expect any consistency.

6. Yes, you'll still see a single sloppy window with a 16-color 16x16 Windows 95 icon, a 256-color 32x32 Windows NT icon, a 64k-color 32x32 Windows XP icon and a true-color 128x128 icon in Longhorn on the same screen. And a single sloppy screen with a "Longhorn-type" button, a hardcoded "Luna-type" button and a hardcoded "Win2000-type" button.

7. Everything in this article is opposite of how I use a computer, so there is no way Longhorn can be user-friendly to me or any other power user. Things look bleak.

8. In the name of backwards compatibility, Microsoft has never been and will never be able to break the shackles of the limitations of Windows without a complete rewrite. This is a well-known fact.

This whole stuff just means that Longhorn is a failure, even if it hasn't been released yet.

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

Larry explains well why no new features are being announced yet..

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PageIndex=2&PostID=76285#76285

I guess patience is a virtue... Sad

mVPstar

geekling
I am an artist

I hope its pretty lookin' from a user-stand point, and from a developer standpoint has more advanced widgets (hello, task-panes should be part of the default widget library =D).

bonk
Ich bin der Wurstfachverkäuferin !

W3bbo wrote:
eagle wrote:3DUI and that's no FUD bud!

How "3D" are we talking?

Like... window = texture on polygon with cool shader and transform effects on the shape, or like MacOS-X and WindowFX where the window is only animated for transitions?

With DWM enabled in Longhorn a window is exactly that: a texture on a polgonal d3d Mesh. Each Window consists of about 150 polygons.

reinux

So Avalon's gone, WinFS is gone, what's left of it? What's so Longhorn about Longhorn?

Sure it's nice of them to give us all this functionality for WinXP, but I don't think that fact in itself packs enough punch to keep Windows going.

People just aren't going to see the significance of WinFS. Unless it's installed in the OS to begin with, people are just going to dismiss it as a powertoy for power users.

I'd really just have to have Longhorn than have to have Avalon and WinFS and WinFX and yadda yadda yadda. The whole dependency and fragmentation thing is part of Linux's problem; it's the problem most practical users point out.

Stgeorge does have a point. I'm tired of people telling me they don't want to install .NET. 23mb is too much for most broadband users (many of them hardcore pirates), if it's coming from Microsoft. And don't tell me it's not mature enough, it's five years old already.

I guess this is part of Steve Ballmer's gradualist strategy, but I really don't see it working at all.

I'm sure it's been discussed 489753656903 times already, but could someone please point this out again to the big guys?

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

reinux wrote:
So Avalon's gone,

Since when is Avalon gone? Backported, yes. Gone, no.

reinux wrote:
WinFS is gone, what's left of it? What's so Longhorn about Longhorn?

A good 70 to 80% of features we do not yet know about (the percentage I'm kinda making up, but there is plenty we don't know).

reinux wrote:
Sure it's nice of them to give us all this functionality for WinXP, but I don't think that fact in itself packs enough punch to keep Windows going.

You miss the point in this strategy. If MS created all this technology just for Longhorn, who would develop with this technology? Firstly, the tech would be off to a ridiculously slow start considering after people get their hands on it, they won't be developing anything major for months. It's better to get started on the tech so we have plenty of apps to support this tech and longhorn when it comes out.

reinux wrote:
People just aren't going to see the significance of WinFS. Unless it's installed in the OS to begin with, people are just going to dismiss it as a powertoy for power users.

Adobe Photoshop isn't installed on your system by default and because of that, I know plenty of users don't see the significance of Photoshop. </sarcasm>

reinux wrote:
I'd really just have to have Longhorn than have to have Avalon and WinFS and WinFX and yadda yadda yadda.

Huh?

Think, then write.

reinux wrote:
The whole dependency and fragmentation thing is part of Linux's problem; it's the problem most practical users point out.

The more the reason to implement it correctly in the OS.

reinux wrote:
And don't tell me it's not mature enough, it's five years old already.

Age of software release is in no way analogous to that of software maturity. .NET 1.0, .NET 1.5 may be fine, however, I think .NET 2.0 would be considered the actual release of .NET.

mVPstar

Cairo
I want my waffle sundae, give me my carbs!

eagle wrote:
3 DUI and that's no FUD bud!

Maybe you should do something about that type of behavior.

reinux

You took my quotes completely out of context.

mVPstar wrote:

Since when is Avalon gone? Backported, yes. Gone, no.

Like I said, gone, as in gone from Longhorn. Longhorn doesn't mean Avalon anymore. It's blunt, but that's the level of bluntness the IT industry has right now, especially end users. Look at ANY news source, and they all expect Avalon to be a Longhorn thing. As far as the media's concerned, Longhorn lost its coolness. They don't know or care what Avalon or WinFS is, even if those are still cool.

mVPstar wrote:

You miss the point in this strategy. If MS created all this technology just for Longhorn, who would develop with this technology? Firstly, the tech would be off to a ridiculously slow start considering after people get their hands on it, they won't be developing anything major for months. It's better to get started on the tech so we have plenty of apps to support this tech and longhorn when it comes out.

Avalon and WinFS, from what I understand, are coming after Longhorn. That's a problem.

mVPstar wrote:

Adobe Photoshop isn't installed on your system by default and because of that, I know plenty of users don't see the significance of Photoshop. </sarcasm>

Photoshop is a product that can be described in 30 seconds. Show a picture made with Photoshop, and people will immediately exclaim "Oh my God". Can you explain .NET in 30 seconds? 3 minutes? 3 hours even? No. That's why it needs to be experienced, not explained. Microsoft can't be expecting people to have love at first sight like they would with Photoshop, especially considering the severity of skepticism around everything Microsoft does.

mVPstar wrote:

Huh? Think, then write.

That's what I mean by out of context. I explained my thoughts, as so:

reinux wrote:

The whole dependency and fragmentation thing is part of Linux's problem; it's the problem most practical users point out.

mVPstar wrote:

The more the reason to implement it correctly in the OS.

Personally I'd rather wait longer for Longhorn and see it with all its features in perfect shape, than have it early and go through more hoops later. People are going to think "oh man, WinFS and Avalon are going to break my computer again!", the way they do when they install service packs and .NET.

Or, more likely, they'll think, "what's so great about WinFS?", and no one will be able to explain it in time for them to understand.

Maybe it's not an acceptable option for Microsoft, but I honestly don't think the benifits of an earlier release are going to outweigh the benifits of a complete or near-complete release.

mVPstar wrote:

Age of software release is in no way analogous to that of software maturity. .NET 1.0, .NET 1.5 may be fine, however, I think .NET 2.0 would be considered the actual release of .NET.

People don't understand that. As far as users are concerned, 5 years is long enough. Why? Because most people aren't developers, and because developers need to think about their users, who again aren't developers.

.NET 2.0 does have almost everything I think is missing from .NET 1.1 that'd make it "perfect", but .NET 1.1 is nothing to by shy about.

Cairo
I want my waffle sundae, give me my carbs!

reinux wrote:

Photoshop is a product that can be described in 30 seconds. Show a picture made with Photoshop, and people will immediately exclaim "Oh my God". Can you explain .NET in 30 seconds? 3 minutes? 3 hours even? No. That's why it needs to be experienced, not explained.

Will dot net two point oh run Paint.NET any faster than 1.x? Cuz it's a little poky on the UI drawing.

reinux

Somewhat. The JITter seems to be a bit better in .NET 2.0 Beta 2.

But more importantly, go try Paint.NET 2.1. It's a lot faster. And I mean A LOT. It's not exactly Photoshop, but then again, it was never meant to be.

ZippyV
Fired Up

"3. WinFX has been dropped (as of the 5000 series of builds). This it the ".NET stuff they wasted so much time on" as mentioned in the Mini-Microsoft blog.

4. Longhorn Help has been dropped (customers told Microsoft they were not interested in this feature). Expect more of the same in this arena, which renders 75% of that article useless."
___

Source?

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

reinux wrote:
You took my quotes completely out of context.

Nah, actually I didn't. See, if you get rid of the quote tags from my post, you'll notice that it's 98% of your post just chopped here and there. Smiley

reinux wrote:
Like I said, gone, as in gone from Longhorn. Longhorn doesn't mean Avalon anymore. It's blunt, but that's the level of bluntness the IT industry has right now, especially end users. Look at ANY news source, and they all expect Avalon to be a Longhorn thing. As far as the media's concerned, Longhorn lost its coolness. They don't know or care what Avalon or WinFS is, even if those are still cool.

AFAIK, Avalon has more functionality on Longhorn.

Operating System A contains this awesome, totally rad, out of this world feature for developers. When Operating System A comes out, one would not expect more than around 25% of users using the older version to have successfully upgraded to Operating System A. If only 25% have access to the new feature during the first months, how can that feature thrive..how will the other 75% of users be able to develop for that feature? It's not always easy to upgrade to a new OS because you are always bound to run into numerous problems that will hinder your capability to use said OS. Some users never get around upgrading for another year or two (my school is still running 2000 Pro as are many other companies in my area).

That said, how will these ill-fated users develop for the new tech if they can't even get access to it? BAM, that's where backporting comes in.

How else do you think we were able to sustain the Win32 wave? Win32 apis were backported were they not?

reinux wrote:
Avalon and WinFS, from what I understand, are coming after Longhorn. That's a problem.

What's your source on this? WinFS is the one that's coming later on. Avalon has nothing to do with WinFS. If perhaps you're getting confused with WinFX...they're two totally different things.

reinux wrote:
Photoshop is a product that can be described in 30 seconds. Show a picture made with Photoshop, and people will immediately exclaim "Oh my God". Can you explain .NET in 30 seconds? 3 minutes? 3 hours even? No. That's why it needs to be experienced, not explained. Microsoft can't be expecting people to have love at first sight like they would with Photoshop, especially considering the severity of skepticism around everything Microsoft does.

Photoshop and mostly any application begs for the user to test each varying software in a particular category and figure out which suits him the most. User experience then becomes a necessary step, regardless of what kind of software it is. Showing a simple picture will generate excitement but I doubt it will be the only driving force to a product decision.

Let me ask you this...can you explain Microsoft Word in 30 seconds? Fitting your explanation of the difference of user hype over products that produce "cool" and "sexy" results that can easily explain what the product is versus those that need to be actually forcefully experienced for one to catch on, clearly seeing a printed out word document generates enough excitement and COMPLETELY describes MS Word right? Tongue Out

Probably not. If presented with 5 different printouts made by different Word processors, the user will have no way of deciding which Word Processor is "better". He'll just end up trying them out and seeing which suits them the most.

The key there is user curiosity, a natural phenomenon that affects almost every user decision in purchasing software.

reinux wrote:

mVPstar wrote:
Huh? Think, then write.

That's what I mean by out of context. I explained my thoughts, as so:

reinux wrote:
The whole dependency and fragmentation thing is part of Linux's problem; it's the problem most practical users point out.

The sentence I quoted was complete gibberish that was no where close to passing a grammatical validator with more than 20% if such a tool existed. I had no clue what you were saying. Smiley

Your next sentence was perhaps a follow up or perhaps not. Hard to tell. That sentence, however, could be understood well as opposed to the other which I had no clue what you were saying.

That's why I said, think before you say it.

reinux wrote:
Personally I'd rather wait longer for Longhorn and see it with all its features in perfect shape, than have it early and go through more hoops later. People are going to think "oh man, WinFS and Avalon are going to break my computer again!", the way they do when they install service packs and .NET.

Would I want Longhorn to be nice and polished? Yes.
Does delaying the product longer help? No.

This delay AFAIK is because MS want a nice and stable OS, and rolling out 50 thousand different features without proper testing and then releasing it to the world in the shortest amount of time is perhaps not the best idea.

mVPstar

reinux

mVPstar wrote:

AFAIK, Avalon has more functionality on Longhorn.

Does that mean developers will have to watch out to avoid specific features, so that they'll be backwards compatible with WinXP? I doubt there are any significant features that come without any API differences.

mVPstar wrote:

If only 25% have access to the new feature during the first months, how can that feature thrive..how will the other 75% of users be able to develop for that feature? It's not always easy to upgrade to a new OS because you are always bound to run into numerous problems that will hinder your capability to use said OS. Some users never get around upgrading for another year or two (my school is still running 2000 Pro as are many other companies in my area).

Actually, like Stgeorge said (even though we don't have sources for his information), I don't doubt the fact that .NET has an adoption rate of 20%. So I think there's more to getting people use some software than just making it available freely. Does anyone "need" .NET? No. But for that matter, does anyone need the Internet?

Upgrading to Longhorn could indeed cost an arm and leg, but it would be much more rewarding and worthy if it actually had the features that they talk about.

mVPstar wrote:

What's your source on this? WinFS is the one that's coming later on. Avalon has nothing to do with WinFS. If perhaps you're getting confused with WinFX...they're two totally different things.

Sorry, you're right. I did have those two confused. But my case still stands true for WinFS, does it not?

mVPstar wrote:

Photoshop and mostly any application begs for the user to test each varying software in a particular category and figure out which suits him the most. User experience then becomes a necessary step, regardless of what kind of software it is. Showing a simple picture will generate excitement but I doubt it will be the only driving force to a product decision.

...

Probably not. If presented with 5 different printouts made by different Word processors, the user will have no way of deciding which Word Processor is "better". He'll just end up trying them out and seeing which suits them the most.

The key there is user curiosity, a natural phenomenon that affects almost every user decision in purchasing software.

Unfortunately, that's only one type of user. The other type (which might even be the majority) won't care to try it they hear that it sucks. And you don't want to underestimate the contagiousness of anti-MS comments.

Curious is the developer/engineer/scientist/geek type, but I think a lot of people just want "something that gets the job done", and will never be amused by anything until you actually throw them in. Most of the people I know didn't think the Internet was worth the time and money until they actually needed to use it, at which point they thought it was absolutely awesome. They didn't try it out of curiosity.

So it could be that Microsoft had to choose between these two types of audiences to impress: power users and novice users. Evidently, they chose the former. I personally don't believe that that was the better option, but I guess we'll never know.

mVPstar wrote:

The sentence I quoted was complete gibberish that was no where close to passing a grammatical validator with more than 20% if such a tool existed. I had no clue what you were saying.

So are you just taking a stab at my grammar? I'll rephrase then:

"I'd prefer to have to upgrade to Longhorn, than have to install Avalon, WinFS, WinFX and yadda yadda."

mVPstar wrote:

This delay AFAIK is because MS want a nice and stable OS, and rolling out 50 thousand different features without proper testing and then releasing it to the world in the shortest amount of time is perhaps not the best idea.

Yes, but that doesn't explain why delaying the product won't help, especially if it's to wait for certain key features to catch up.

bonk
Ich bin der Wurstfachverkäuferin !

Avalon and Indigo (WinFX) will come as part of Longhorn and ship with Longhorn. Infact you cannot run the Aero Glass and Aero Express without Avalon. At the same time both parts of WinFX will be released for Windows 2003 SP1 and Windows XP.
Avalon on WinXP/2k3 will have exactly the same featureset as an Longhron. There is no distincition between Avalon for Longhorn and Avalon for XP/2K3.
The DWM enabled Longhorn Desktop (Aero Tiers) does not have a 3rd dimension. Allthough it uses D3D.L (WGF) to render and composite and although a window is a Mesh with a Texture, its just plain flat 2D.
WinFS will be Beta by the time Longhorn is RTM. It was delayed because MS extended the scope of WinFS to both Client and Server.
WinFS come for WinXP/2K3 at the same time it comes for Longhorn.
MS has never stated that longhorn help has been dropped (AFAIK).