Author Topic: The Monkeys Have Hit The Button (Read 39,710 times)

wreckedcarzz · « **on:** January 05, 2009, 04:55 AM »

Go ahead and laugh. It's OK. At least I know I'm not the only one laughing. Right?

Anyways, it would appear that the monkeys have hit the button - and from what I can assume, the first public alpha of the Cairo Shell will be released in 10 days.

Cairo is an alternative shell (ex: Explorer.exe, ugh) for Windows XP/Vista/7 (compatibility has been verified for all 3) - from the screenshots, news and hype, it should be one awesome shell replacement.

The Monkeys Have Hit The Button

Disclaimer: I don't do any testing or anything for the Cairo team; I'm just REALLY excited to see that this may FINALLY become a program that I can use. In all seriousness, it looks/sounds just amazing.

Last second edit: I know, the image is huge. Don't blame me, I didn't want to download it, edit it, upload it and re-link it.

Darwin · « **Reply #1 on:** January 05, 2009, 05:06 AM »

Thanks for alerting us to this, Brandon. I’ve been waiting for Cairo to be released myself, though I'm not as sure today as I was a year ago that I'm that interested in running an alternative shell... I’ll have to wait and see!

Target · « **Reply #2 on:** January 05, 2009, 05:28 AM »

glad to see there is something happening - ran across this one recently and while the hype seems to promise a lot, browsing the site didn't reveal too much...

I might feel more confident if they'd managed to line the digits up with the frames in the countdown timer

EDIT: The countdown does render correctly in firefox, but not in Explorer

electronixtar · « **Reply #3 on:** January 05, 2009, 05:54 AM »

I was about to post this to DC also. Looking foward the M1 test. Hope someone will show us some screenshot here.

J-Mac · « **Reply #4 on:** January 05, 2009, 07:47 AM »

Thanks wrecked! Looking good - it'll be nice to be able to at least give it a try.

Jim

fenixproductions · « **Reply #5 on:** January 05, 2009, 09:55 AM »

I hope they will allow a lot of people to beta-test it. IIRC I read yesterday that this "release" will be given for those who donated BUT I might be wrong.

Hirudin · « **Reply #6 on:** January 05, 2009, 08:56 PM »

I'm in!
What's this thing again?

j/k... I have a vague idea, and will research it myself.

nontroppo · « **Reply #7 on:** January 05, 2009, 09:31 PM »

Hirudin: it is a magic carpet app which flies the user to the Egyptian Capital to buy cheap bootlegged software in a bazaar. Having used the private alpha release, I snagged myself a finest copy of Windows 8 BTTF (back-to-the-future edition) for 50 Egyptian cents!

{me=very excited about Cairo}

wreckedcarzz · « **Reply #8 on:** January 05, 2009, 11:22 PM »

Quote from: nontroppo on January 05, 2009, 09:31 PM

Hirudin: it is a magic carpet app which flies the user to the Egyptian Capital to buy cheap bootlegged software in a bazaar.

That could be manipulated a bit to represent a certain popular online application...

Quote from: nontroppo on January 05, 2009, 09:31 PM

it is a magic ~~carpet~~ downloading app which flies the user to the ~~Egyptian Capital~~ Pirate Bay to ~~buy~~ download ~~cheap~~ bootlegged software in a ~~bazaar~~ matter of minutes, days, or weeks.

µTorrent, anyone?

Edit: I can't spell to save my life.

nontroppo · « **Reply #9 on:** January 06, 2009, 01:26 AM »

Edvard · « **Reply #10 on:** January 06, 2009, 05:11 PM »

I've been waiting for this since the site was nothing but a picture of monkeys.
Glad to see it's actually going somewhere.
With all the dramatic build-up, I hope it doesn't dissapoint. Litestep and bb4win are hard acts to follow...

raybeere · « **Reply #11 on:** January 06, 2009, 08:38 PM »

Quote from: Target on January 05, 2009, 05:28 AM

The countdown does render correctly in firefox, but not in Explorer

One more reason to be glad I only use IE when MS forces me to: at update time.

I know I'm ready to give Cairo a try, and if the reality is half of what is promised, I'll never hit the uninstall button... (except to reinstall, of course).

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #12 on:** January 07, 2009, 08:45 AM »

Seems to render fine in IE 7 here ???

Target · « **Reply #13 on:** January 07, 2009, 10:40 PM »

could be, I'm using greenbrowser (an IE shell) over IE 6 here (not my browser of preference) and the counters are only half in the frames

nite_monkey · « **Reply #14 on:** January 08, 2009, 02:14 AM »

I just read the FAQ page, and xp users are SOL

They aren't going to support xp until the stupid vista version is fully working, because

Quote

Cairo will fully support Microsoft Windows Vista at the time of release. Support for Windows XP will not begin until the Vista version is complete and relatively bug free. The rationale behind this decision was due in part that Vista is a newer operating system and is the environment of choice for future software development and compatibility.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #15 on:** January 08, 2009, 02:20 AM »

That's just ridiculous - XP is still the most used OS and Vista is basically dead in the water with Win 7 on the horizon.

4wd · « **Reply #16 on:** January 08, 2009, 04:06 AM »

Quote from: raybeere on January 06, 2009, 08:38 PM

One more reason to be glad I only use IE when MS forces me to: at update time.

And not even then if you're still using XP: WindizUpdate

f0dder · « **Reply #17 on:** January 08, 2009, 04:15 AM »

I wonder which new Vista API calls they're using in order to make it initially non-XP compatible? Seems relatively retarded and pretty incompetent to me, especially when considering the huge base of XP installs still available...

Don't tell me they require DX10 for the shell

Lashiec · « **Reply #18 on:** January 08, 2009, 08:05 PM »

Well, since the screens screamed "WPF" to me, I did a little googling and...

I guess that explains why XP is not supported for now.

f0dder · « **Reply #19 on:** January 08, 2009, 08:31 PM »

Ugh, Cairo is built using WPF? I might be mistaken, but isn't WPF the reason that stuff like the control panel runs so sluggishly in Vista? (Aero and the hw accel is good, btw, but there's those extremely laggy system components that suck, and my impression (which could very well be wrong) is that they're WPF).

Lashiec · « **Reply #20 on:** January 08, 2009, 08:42 PM »

WPF hasn't been used that much by actual applications, but from what I know is hardware-accelerated.

f0dder · « **Reply #21 on:** January 08, 2009, 08:47 PM »

Graphics drawing speed isn't everything - have you tried resizing the control panel in Vista? Graphics are smooth enough, but it feels super laggy. if that is because it's a WPF program, then WPF sucks

electronixtar · « **Reply #22 on:** January 09, 2009, 04:37 PM »

Quote from: f0dder on January 08, 2009, 04:15 AM

I wonder which new Vista API calls they're using in order to make it initially non-XP compatible? Seems relatively retarded and pretty incompetent to me, especially when considering the huge base of XP installs still available...

Don't tell me they require DX10 for the shell

The reqire the Aero API on Vista. Some WPF, too.

electronixtar · « **Reply #23 on:** January 09, 2009, 04:40 PM »

Quote from: f0dder on January 08, 2009, 08:47 PM

Graphics drawing speed isn't everything - have you tried resizing the control panel in Vista? Graphics are smooth enough, but it feels super laggy. if that is because it's a WPF program, then WPF sucks

control pannel is laaaaagy because Windows has to collect *.cpl under system32.

btw Silverlight is built on top of WPF.

IMHO WPF is just a 'managed' version of GDI

f0dder · « **Reply #24 on:** January 09, 2009, 05:39 PM »

Quote from: electronixtar on January 09, 2009, 04:40 PM

Quote from: f0dder on January 08, 2009, 08:47 PM
Graphics drawing speed isn't everything - have you tried resizing the control panel in Vista? Graphics are smooth enough, but it feels super laggy. if that is because it's a WPF program, then WPF sucks
control pannel is laaaaagy because Windows has to collect *.cpl under system32.

That has nothing to do with the lag I'm talking about - I'm talking about resizing the GUI, which feels about as laggy as X11 applications on linux (and that's a frigging disgrace).