Tag: ui

Rumours that a new Windows 7 UI is yet to be unveiled

There have been rumous mainly started by Paul Thurrott at his Windows SuperSite here that Microsoft are keeping under wraps a new UI.

It doesn’t seem that possible this late in the game, sure if they have all the UI coding already in Windows 7 then there are less chances of bugs, but there are still UI bugs that would need testing, visibility/overlapping problems etc.

My theory is a new theme to distance itself from Vista, there are less chances of bugs and they can keep it secret much easier, however looking at how refined the theme is currently (provided it was carried over from Vista and there wasn’t much work to do anyway) it doesn’t look like they would have done all this refining if they had a new theme ready. For example, Windows XP Watercolor wasn’t that refined before they switched over to the much refined Luna, of course refining the current UI to such an extent creates doubt and that’s necessary for a major announcement to gain full surprise.

On second thoughts: Paul Thurrott supposedly already knows what the big announcement is, or at least some of it, so it’s possible he’s just spreading this to get site hits, I see nothing wrong with that.

Windows 7 at the PDC

For now I do not have access to Windows 7 so I can only go on other peoples’ experiences and of course the live stream of the Microsoft PDC, but so far it looks amazing, take a look at some screenshots here at my favorite tech site, Neowin.

From a UI standpoint I am very excited about the possibilities that will be available.
From a web developer standpoint I’m eager to learn how it fits in with Windows Azure and the cloud computing vision.

I hope to do a review once it is available and look forward to other peoples’ reviews, expectations and experiences.

In other news I put Xubuntu on my laptop, I’m actually using it at the moment, It’s a great OS to run when you have an older PC, in this case 4 years old, my laptop maintenance guide will be up soon, I’ve been meaning to finish it but it’s one of those articles you can take forever to write if you wanted to.

I have decided to put up interesting facts, the first fact is that my review on D-Link SharePort on the DIR-655 has had the most views of any posts, you guys seem to like it so I will hopefully bring more of the same in future reviews.

Ribbon UI in Windows 7 M3

It appears going by the 2 images that have so far been released showing Paint and WordPad that Microsoft have decided to extend the Ribbon UI used in the Microsoft Office Suite to the included applications in Windows 7.

It’s a small change, but it shows that with Windows 7 Microsoft are willing to try new things. The Ribbon is a fairly handy part of the Office UI, in the case of WordPad it will allow people who are familiar with Word use WordPad much quicker.

I don’t believe the use of Paint will be more productive necessarily, as previously in Paint there was only 1 layer to most of the functionality, however the upside is that this allows Paint to increase in features if necessary without having to have yet another UI change.

Overall I believe it’s a nice addition to the Windows UI, even if it only affects a few applications, I look forward to seeing more of Windows 7 Milestone 3