To everyone slamming that UI,
It's a placeholder. It's not the UI they are going to use. It's just dressed up to not look like xp. It might be ugly, but it's a little early (2006 release date) to start slamming them like a few of your are. (mangoduck)
I think the sidebar is just as stupid as the next guy. But who knows.
i admit i was a bit harsh out of the gate, but such is the nature of a rant. however, this is the the second or third set of screenshots of longhorn that i've seen so far, each sporting a different appearance. how many times do they need to change it during alpha? don't they have other things to worry about before cosmetics? and why change the look of something if only so it doesn't look like the last product? says a lot of their marketing tactics.
1) The sidebar will replace the taskbar by default, but for now the sidebar can't show task buttons yet so both are turned on at the same time.
2) The Explorer window is in thumbnail browsing mode, if you were to switch it to details a list of files would replace mose of the window.
3) The picture (slideshow) in the sidebar is just a placeholder until actually sidebar objects (sort of like widgets) are made.
4) They will impliment a new GUI-composing system that uses DirectX. It will be part of the new Aero interface and although it it was disabled in this build you can see demonstration screenshots of it at
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcas...review_2003.asp .
1. i don't see why a sidebar is needed as a separate element to begin with. can the taskbar not be further modified into the same thing while retaining options to keep it small and out of the way?
2. thumbnails, ok. but still, you have the title bar, a toolbar (that's way too tall for the functionality it offers), a menu bar, an info bar (huge!) that gives the same type of info as os x does in column view, and a space on the left side where the previous information currently resides in xp. not only are all these elements present at once and unnecessarily kept separate (the last 2 should be consolidated into one pane), but everything is big and clunky and circus-like. excessive, no?
3. this sort of function could be better accomplished as konfabulator does on the mac.
4. good to see they're taking this seriously (finally). looks like they're going about it the same way as apple by offloading graphic intensive tasks to appropriate hardware via directx. with a major difference - i give you this snippet from the same page:
The bare minimum Longhorn system will have to be able to display at least 1024 x 768 with 32-bit color, and it must include a hardware accelerated 3D video card with at least 64 MB of RAM. But this is the base requirement: To take advantage of the fun eye candy Microsoft has planned, you'll need advanced video hardware with at least 128 MB of RAM.
...vs the 32 megs (actually only 16) needed for quartz extreme. transforms and transparency are easy in 3d, but it says nothing of the quality of the images they're making flap around. have they developed anything underneath this that resembles display postscript? is there full alpha transparency and accurate (pdf quality, cleartype doesn't cut it) font rendering? quartz had this and more even before "extreme" came along.
i don't bash only to bash. if they can make a respectable interface and display system - professional, not fisher price - then hooray for them. but professional this is not.
) although i have nothin against honda. why dont you go show a amd forum your love for amd.
