Author Topic: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing) (Read 244,562 times)

f0dder · « **Reply #50 on:** October 29, 2008, 08:46 AM »

Ah yeah, the Vista cursor set is also nicer than previous versions - I've fallen in love with Entis cursors, though

Darwin · « **Reply #51 on:** October 29, 2008, 01:21 PM »

Quote from: nosh on October 29, 2008, 08:11 AM

So pretty!
( I wonder why no one at MS has thought of incorporating a popup launcher like FARR/Launchy into the OS. )

Waitasec, is that what the Run dialog is supposed to be?

The search field in the start menu functions as a file/program launcher in addition to finding content. It's not as robust as FARR or other dedicated launchers (for example, I don't think it can be trained), but it works quite well.

Josh · « **Reply #52 on:** October 29, 2008, 01:41 PM »

Not as robust? Hell, I have had to stop using it due to little nicities included in it's search functionality. It's extremely quick and allows launching under admin rights simply by hitting CTRL+ENTER on the selected result. Very handy indeed.

Darwin · « **Reply #53 on:** October 29, 2008, 01:46 PM »

Quote from: Josh on October 29, 2008, 01:41 PM

Not as robust? Hell, I have had to stop using it due to little nicities included in it's search functionality. It's extremely quick and allows launching under admin rights simply by hitting CTRL+ENTER on the selected result. Very handy indeed.

Well... as noted, you can't set it up to default to a particular program to launch, for example. I do find it very handy and don't run any other launcher under Vista. Thanks for the CTRL-ENTER tip

nontroppo · « **Reply #54 on:** October 29, 2008, 07:30 PM »

Jump lists. That there is the single nicest feature I've seen UI wise:

[attachimg=#]
{source: ars technica}

Contextual tools and links, wrapped in a nice API. This really has the potential to be a nice unique feature. OS X has it for a few apps like iTunes, but it is not standardised and ubiquitous as MS are aiming to do. Really lovely

It reminds me of Quicksilver in a good way.

I also welcome the user regaining full dominion over the (horrible) system tray, a welcome poke-in-the-eye to all the apps that fight over this piece of screen realestate (seems much better than the systray hiding mechanism of XP).

The other bits seem nice tweaks, they are playing catch-up to functionality elsewhere. I do think the window thumbnails are better than the kludgy flip3D.

Quote from: Darwin

So, er, reading between the lines, I'm sensing that overall performance is an issue for you, Superboyac?

zridling · « **Reply #55 on:** October 29, 2008, 09:14 PM »

Note the single 'shut down' button. Redmond must have listened.

nontroppo · « **Reply #56 on:** October 30, 2008, 06:11 PM »

Memory use of the Window manager has been cut 50% per window:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20081029/windows-7-dwm-cuts-memory-consumption-by-50/

Seems to be using the GPU better than it did before (why was it so inefficient before I wonder, is it really some magic that could only come with DX10.1?).

And it seems some more love is being given to font management:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20081030/improvements-to-fonts-in-windows-7/

Now, the crappy font handling in Windows is one of the main reasons I prefer OS X. Apple really sweated the details and for anyone who loves typography and book layout etc. Windows is uselessly primitive. What is a shame is that Microsoft have really helped the technical underpinnings of digital font technology (e.g. opentype), they just failed to implement it much in their OS. Anyway, it looks as if MS are slowly waking up from their slumber, and finally thinking about some of the smaller UI details. They still have to do *much* more, I'm still shocked that their major contribution (the wonderful opentype) is still not anywhere to be found in their OS. I can use contextual ligatures even in Leopard's notepad equivalent, but can't do so in MS's flagship word processor!!! I can but dream that Windows 8 will finally support something MS pushed in 1994...

40hz · « **Reply #57 on:** October 30, 2008, 08:42 PM »

Quote from: nosh on October 29, 2008, 08:11 AM

So pretty!
( I wonder why no one at MS has thought of incorporating a popup launcher like FARR/Launchy into the OS. )

Waitasec, is that what the Run dialog is supposed to be?

Careful! If Microsoft ever does decide to include a popup launcher in Windows 7, the very first thing Steve Ballmer will do is accuse all the people who have already written one of stealing intellectual property and prior art from Microsoft.

That claim might even fly when you consider the astonishing amount of code Microsoft employees have written over the years. I'm sure if they dug deeply enough into their source repositories, they could find something close enough to convince a gullible judge and jury.

[attach]

nontroppo · « **Reply #58 on:** November 01, 2008, 10:53 AM »

40hz: is that Ballmer reading the prior art document!?

One of my enduring interests and deepest wishes in an OS is full metadata support. So I'm interested in the Windows indexer to see where they're heading. In windows 7 the changes seem incremental but very welcome:

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/10/13/windows-desktop-search.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/10/23/follow-up-windows-desktop-search.aspx

Most of the discussion is still about speed and the compromises they're making to balance this. I'd rather they were trying to extend metadata models on Windows, but it is clear that the indexer is becoming a fundamental core part of the OS which is great!

On the UI side there is a *lot* of nice tweaking going on. If you can, like, get, like, over the, like, awesome, presentation style, like, of this channel9 video, the awesome contents, like, are worthwhile:

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Dan/Windows-7-Find-and-Organize-Part-1-The-User-Experience/

Awesome. Like.

Libraries are copies of the smart folders in OS X (metadata-based dynamic collations), but the UI in Windows 7 for "drilling down" is clearly better. As alluded to in the blogposts and clarified in the video, writing search queries has be GUIed in Windows 7 and this is brilliant for general users. These are great first steps forward for making the huge benefits of a metadata-based file interface accessible to general users.

nontroppo · « **Reply #59 on:** November 02, 2008, 09:59 PM »

A very slick talk on the new UI features:

http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/d1/pdc08/WMV-HQ/PC24.wmv

Although he claims the prior art is Windows 1, anyone who has used the dock will be immediately familiar with the Win7 taskbar. However I can say that MS are finally "getting it". His talk is the cleanest description of why the Win95->Vista UI is such a mess (the example of the number of outlook icons is indicative of the larger problems he highlights), why OS X is currently better (the reduced clutter of redundant launch surfaces), and why Win7 will beat leopard. It's the first UI that, at least on paper, will beat Exposé+dock for window/application management IMO (though I wish they would add multiple-desktops). I can't wait!

zridling · « **Reply #60 on:** November 03, 2008, 09:29 PM »

Thanks for the link, nontroppo. If Microsoft manages to pull this off, maybe we can all pretend Vista never happened. Point is, users don't want mere change, but improvement. And the 800-lb. gorilla in the room is legacy support, viz., "compatibility code." At some point, Microsoft has to cede it. I thought they'd do it with Vista, leaving XP for the rest of us. But it's big part of the reason Vista was so slow for new hardware (and to market).

When you do the same with the UI, though, it's painful. It's typical of Apple to say, "Take or leave it; here's the new way." But when Microsoft did the same with Office's ribbon, with no way to revert to classic toolbars, I was turned off. Same with the taskbar. I'll take functional over sexy every time.

nontroppo · « **Reply #61 on:** November 03, 2008, 11:11 PM »

Indeed legacy support will still be the lead weight on MS with W7. I wish they would break completely. Offer a VM environment for all legacy software (MS-DOS - > Vista), but don't cripple your software on each release. Offer clean APIs for programmers at the core of your OS, not libraries on top of libraries on top of libraries. Not cruft going back to ms-dos still lying about. And I wish they'd rip out the horrid DRM system, and pointless activation systems.

I think in the UI, MS are cleverly using existing motifs from Windows, but removing the horrible mess we've lived with since Win95. I think functionality will be radically improved with the combined buttons, the fantastic jump lists, window peeking, contextual thumbnails, user-focussed systray. I'd personally get rid of the start button, and I still think that the unified menu bar is better than the window-locked bar (multi-monitor being the exception). But I can't think of anything that is a step back in Windows 7 UIwise (he says bombastically), and I'll be so bold to say it may offer the cleanest and most functional workspace of any OS to date (caveat being I ain't actually used it, reality may be different

)

electronixtar · « **Reply #62 on:** November 04, 2008, 12:48 PM »

I heard that under Win7 wallpaper could be changed with an RSS

Is there a sample of this?

zridling · « **Reply #63 on:** November 04, 2008, 09:36 PM »

If Win7 is as good as this ActiveWin preview, then it will be pretty fantastic.

"It's safe to say I am overwhelmed, overjoyed and most of all excited about Windows 7", the author concludes.

nontroppo · « **Reply #64 on:** November 28, 2008, 10:48 PM »

Cool! cloud data (flickr in this case) pulled into windows explorer transparently:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20081119/windows-7-seek-and-you-shall-find/

And you can play Crysis without a graphics card (in slooooow-motion)

:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20081126/direct3d-warp10-to-enable-you-to-play-dx10-crysis-using-software-renderer-only-albeit-slowly/

zridling · « **Reply #65 on:** November 29, 2008, 12:09 PM »

Way useful, that's for sure. Lots of people keep their photo collections backed up on Flickr instead of on their own drives. (According to the comments, though, Firefox and Apple have already done this.)

nontroppo · « **Reply #66 on:** November 29, 2008, 02:23 PM »

Yes, Sherlock was Apple's interface introduced way back in OS 8.5 which allowed both local and cloud searching through one interface, it used SGML files to configure search providers easily (Mozilla later made Mycroft to share these search providers, and incidentally, I made a mycroft > Opera search provider database a while after).

This is the same broad idea as Windows 7 functionality (it uses OpenSearch, an XML replacement for the sherlock/mycroft style providers), but Windows 7 seems to be a much more robust implementation in terms of file-system handling. The cloud items pulled in through Win 7 will be treated like files, not like search results, thus allowing a more transparent UI (context menus, thumbnails etc.).

Leopard's spotlight allows network searched files to be included in the local mix, but not cloud files (Sherlock was sent to an Old peoples home with Leopard too).

f0dder · « **Reply #67 on:** November 29, 2008, 11:45 PM »

Quote from: nontroppo on November 28, 2008, 10:48 PM

And you can play Crysis without a graphics card (in slooooow-motion) :

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20081126/direct3d-warp10-to-enable-you-to-play-dx10-crysis-using-software-renderer-only-albeit-slowly/

Hm, what's so new about this? The DirectX SDK has included a reference rasterizer (ie, software-only) for ages.

Cloud sucks.

nontroppo · « **Reply #68 on:** November 30, 2008, 04:38 PM »

Quote

Hm, what's so new about this? The DirectX SDK has included a reference rasterizer (ie, software-only) for ages.

Really? OK, so one less point for 7. I was impressed that the software-only DirectX was faster than Intels integrated solution though...

Quote

Cloud sucks.

They are however great for dreaming in...

Lashiec · « **Reply #69 on:** November 30, 2008, 04:54 PM »

The possibility of retrieving (and I hope uploading) data from the cloud is absolutely cool. I hope it's flexible enough for most companies to jump in, and we can retire superfluous apps for specific services.

f0dder · « **Reply #70 on:** November 30, 2008, 04:59 PM »

Well, the old reference rasterizer is typically <1fps iirc, so they've probably done some work. But it's still somewhat pointless for gamers, as soon as a software rendering path is taken, frame rates drop to unplayable. It's really mostly useful for developers as a tool to check if graphics glitches is a bug in their code, or flaky video card drivers.

As for faster than intels integrated solution, keep in mind that they compared a beast of a processor, and intel's GMA was (afaik) designed with relatively low power consumption in mind... a quadcore at 3GHz running maxed out isn't exactly low-power

Hirudin · « **Reply #71 on:** December 04, 2008, 09:31 AM »

Quote from: zridling on October 15, 2008, 08:14 PM

I like going back to simple numbering over fancy/faux names and years. I find Ubuntu's numbers fine, but their naming scheme is truly dumb imo. But a ribbon touch calc? NOOOO!!
(see attachment in previous post)

What the hell is that thing???? If that's a real picture of the new calculator I might have to reconsider my plan to buy and install Windows 7...

zridling · « **Reply #72 on:** December 04, 2008, 05:34 PM »

Yes, the ribbon is not efficient in all contexts, and Microsoft should not force it onto simple apps.

zridling · « **Reply #73 on:** December 13, 2008, 11:44 AM »

The latest Win7 Benchmarks are fantastic news. Speed might likely be the single most important factor in getting users off of Vista sooner than later.

[attach]

MrCrispy · « **Reply #74 on:** December 15, 2008, 02:26 AM »

Add me to the Win 7 fan club! I just bought a new laptop for my brother with pretty decent specs - HP Pavilion with 2.2Ghz C2D, 4GB Ram, Intel 4500HD integrated graphics (I don't trust Nvidia cards!). Even on this, a fresh install of Vista x64 SP1 was not exactly mind blowing, and it failed to detect a lot of hardware (wireless network, camera etc).

I decided to play with the latest Win 7 build 6956. As part of the initial setup, it found my home network over wireless and configured it, and everything works! It feels a lot faster and polished than Vista and so far I have had no issues. The new Libraries feature is awesome and so is the superbar and Aero peek. Control panel is organized better, with more items. Its a lot of small touches that I can appreciate after using them, even after I read all the previews. Can't wait to try the beta in Jan.

Also worth noting - this is a 32-bit Win 7 build (can't use the full 4GB memory) yet it ran faster than 64-bit Vista.

In fact it works so much better than Vista that I almost wish I could give it like this to my brother instead of with Vista. But I know I can't in good faith do that