Windows Vista & IE7 Beta 1 Released 727
gdsotirov writes "Today on the IE blog the availability of two new beta tests - Windows Vista Beta 1 and Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 - was announced. These tests are mainly targeted to developers and IT professionals. Thus the betas are only available to MSDN subscribers. Tom's Hardware has details as well." From the article: "While the code also includes an early look at the new user-interface design, the majority of end-user features in Windows Vista will not be included until Beta 2. In addition to these fundamentals, Windows Vista Beta 1 also includes the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 built into the platform. The technical Beta of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP SP2 also is available today." Any early thoughts, MSDN subscribers?
For the first time I agree with John C Dvorak. (Score:5, Interesting)
For the first time I agree with John C Dvorak.
pcmag [pcmag.com]
"Vista? As in "Hasta la Vista, baby?" That name might be appropriate as a symbolic goodbye since it might be the end of the line for Microsoft's dominance in the OS business."
"The new OS is getting zero buzz. Zero. now the name Vista, along with the new Microsoft Vista logo, has made it worse. Could anything be less exciting?"
"THE FUTURE OF DESKTOP COMPUTING: Apple. Vista will open the door to what I believe will be a radical change in the computing landscape. The trends are clear. Once the new Mac OS appears next year it will gravitate toward the existing x86 community much more rapidly than anticipated..."
"Right now, and as much as x86 users do not want to admit it, the Mac OS is already better than Windows in its modern look and feel as well as its functionality. I see too many smart people with Mac laptops nowadays."
"...it is always possible that Apple doesn't understand the power play position it's in and might actually believe that it's better off somehow keeping its OS in a small niche rather than the big market. If the world changed tomorrow to 85 percent Mac "OS x86" its laptop sales alone would triple overnight. Apple didn't put together what many consider the finest in-house industrial design teams in the world to fool around with piddly sales and more redesigns of the iPod."
"That said, how much more of Steve Jobs can we handle? Do we really want to hear him say "I told you so?" If it gets some excitement back into desktop computing, yes, we do. I think we can take it."
Wine (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:For the first time I agree with John C Dvorak. (Score:2, Interesting)
I do believe Apple intends to make their OS X86 bootable only on Apple x86 machines. However, given the vast quantity of PC users already out there, many of whom have had it with Microsoft, would it be a wise decision for Apple to simply allow any and all PC users to use their new OS? Of Course it would cut into their hardware sales, but how well have those been doing lately anyway? (exluding the iPod of course)
OS redundancy? (Score:5, Interesting)
So in other words, beta 1 is just XP with RSS? They already yanked everything else out of the system as is. The reason they call it Vista is because that's all that's left of the OS; a view.
Windows Vista is visually intuitive! (Score:5, Interesting)
- Glass and new Window animation. The Windows Vista desktop experience will deliver a new visual identity -- translucent glass with more animation. Because it is visually intuitive, the glass helps users focus on the task at hand, whether reading a document, viewing a Web page or editing a photo.
Apparently the best way to develop a "visually intuitive" user interface is glass and more animation!
IE7 _built in_ ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't this fly in the face of the US DOJ ruling that they had to separate it from the OS?
MadCow.
I stopped having time for betas long ago (Score:2, Interesting)
Feel free to call me lazy. I just know I have interfaces to write and queries to improve. Those things can't wait.
Putting the sandbox in the wrong place. (Score:3, Interesting)
On a lighter note, I'm not sure that having self-aware COM objects is a good idea. Apart from this being a dubious application of strong AI technology, won't this make shutting down your computer equivalent to murder?
Acid2? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:some FFT [food for thought] (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh let's return to the good old days where programmers had two big keys with 0 and 1 written on them and programmed opcodes like playing bongos..
Microsoft continues to make Windows worse... (Score:4, Interesting)
For me, the user interface of Windows peaked with Windows 3.11 and NT 3.51. In these systems, virtually every control in every program could be easily navigated to using only the keyboard, with consistent shortcuts everywhere. This was a significantly better environment than Apple has managed to provide even now, and probably the best feature of the Windows UI. In 95/NT4 the Start Menu and Task Bar required new shortcuts. Then companies started shipping keyboards with extra keys (making the spacebar shorter and a harder target to hit, and not really solving the problem for people who have to work on multiple computers with a variety of keyboards). Newer versions of Office applications removed the ability to keyboard-navigate through toolbars (with or without he new keyboards). What's next?
Re:Acid2? (Score:2, Interesting)
Enjoy the mess.
one thing I can say is... (Score:2, Interesting)
CSSS support (Score:1, Interesting)
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/27/44400
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?F
"CSS improvements. CSS is a widely used standard for creating Web pages. Internet Explorer 7 is prioritizing compliance to CSS standards by first implementing the features that developers have said are most important to them. As a result, in Internet Explorer 7 beta 1 Microsoft has addressed some of the major inconsistencies that can cause Web developers problems producing rich, interactive Web pages. The work Microsoft has done includes fixing some positioning and layout issues related to the way Internet Explorer 6 handles
Re:Paul Thurrott has a pretty good review (Score:3, Interesting)
- Power management menu in task bar (picture) [winsupersite.com] - looks familiar.
- Search engine (picture) [winsupersite.com] - Spotlight, anyone?
- User home directories can now be found in C:\Users\name - similar to how *nix does it
Then again, Apple borrowed Fast User Switching from Windows, so fair is fair...Virtual Folders (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't this just a fancy way to say playlist? I fail to see the usefullness of adding yet another layer of confusion to getting to a users files. Not to mention, this ought to make user migration a joy for enterprise users.
Re:IE7 _built in_ ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Pirate Bay (Score:2, Interesting)
2/ good things like msdn attract devlopers to ms platform along with Vstudio++.net.whocares.
3/ they have lready paid for the priveldge of developing for MS product. licence fees for the OS and IDE [the ide at least adds value to their investment.]
ergo its a little cheeky for MS to charge money for the privelege of being part of their dev community. but oh wait they're the only game in town. so you shuld be grateful they are hepling you develop for their popular OS with all teh potential cutomers using it. despite their braindead platform bad buggy API.
also: alot of the collated info comes from MSDN subscribers. a not so open collaboration. big reports etc. tips and tricks, etc.
so yeah we are the lucky ones.
no no no. MS has it all backwards. the devs are gold:
"DEVLEOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!"
familiar?
after all who uses MS PAINT or notepad or ms movie editor or wmplayer to play their dvds ot of the box? answer: no-one.
so they need apps. devleopers. a stcok fresh install xp box is worthless. doenst do anything.
oh wiat its got IE6.
wooohoo!
MS have subverted the entire concepts of IT.,
anything they say. do or wnat you to do. thuink of the opposite and it makes sense. emperor has no clothes and night is actually day. just take off the blindfold.
now apple who gets no love from me probably are worse as you prbably get less from them for the same sort of dev subscription.
Re:The Pirate Bay (Score:2, Interesting)
I seem to recall hearing this story before, except that "a guy" was actually General Electric, and the "mechanic" was Charles Steinmetz [wikipedia.org], and it was a thousand dollars.
Re:some FFT [food for thought] (Score:2, Interesting)
If any single "build" is that large it means you're not developing software properly and have to learn to refactor code.
As for "100s of developers" that has nothing todo with any of the languages. You can use a CVS for Java just as easily for C# or C.
Writing in C isn't always about "getting the fastest program." In my case C is a very easy language. The syntax is easy to describe and the standard C functions are consistent [for the most part].
The fact that C programs build out of the box on things like embedded targets is a plus.
Tom
Re:Microsoft continues to make Windows worse... (Score:3, Interesting)
No shit. I just said that. The problem is that being the best graphical user interface to use with a keyboard is such a low bar that Microsoft doesn't seem to feel it's necessary to really try any more. And starting with Windows 95, they've shown increasing signs that they've quit trying.
As for toolbars, everything on them should be available on the menus too
Mostly, yes, but that's not the point. The point to keyboard navigation is to make it easy and convenient to use the program, as presented, without a mouse. Having to dig through the menus to find something instead of tabbing to it and selecting it is counterproductive.
I mean, consider the options.
1. Include toolbars in the focus list.
They actually seemed to do this for Windows 3.x, you could keyboard through the file manager toolbar to select drives, for example.
Downside: you have one more control per toolbar or icon (depending on whether you treat them as a list or a collection of controls) to tab through.
Upside: all controls would be available whether they were in the menus or not. The user interface model remains consistent.
2. Exclude toolbars from the focus list.
Upside: It's marginally quicker to cycle through all the controls in a window, though since the toolbar is above the default focus most of the time you'll never need to tab through them.
Downside: Breaks the mental model of everyone who's become used to being able to use any control on the screen with the keyboard. Makes it easier for application developers to accidentally break keyboardability by leaving duplicates of toolbar controls in the menu.
Seems like an obvious decision to me. but what do I know, I'm just a user who really liked the Windows 3.x user interface and wishes Microsoft paid as much attention to users as they did in the '80s.
It's IE6 with tabs... (Score:2, Interesting)
I did about 30 min of testing, going around all the quirks and compliance sites. The rendering engine has either not been worked on yet or maybe they are pushing that "feature" out to IE8.
Got some more details on my blog [halr9000.com], case yer interested. (No ads, don't worry.)
Vista on a Tablet TC4200 -screenshots and comments (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Early Thoughts (Score:2, Interesting)
My first impressions of it was not too good. I goto install it and it forces me to validate my XP install. For some stupid reason it passed
Once it's loaded the interface is fucked.
Screenshot [solosoft.org]
I don't like the point that you can not have your file menu on the very top of the screen. Oviously the graphics are not done because the little box beside those tabs makes a new tab. The interface is very very quick. Switching tabs is extreamly quick. I also like that it has the middle button thingy so when you press it, a window opens up in a new tab.
It also comes with a totally cut off version of it's self (similar to the safe mode in firefox). Im guessing this is for pooched IE's that won't start or people who wish to browse with IE without plugins.
Screenshot of Safemode [solosoft.org]
Well
All in all
solosoft