Windows 7 Search

One thing which always bugged me about the Windows Search technology in Windows Vista was the unintuitiveness. Don’t get me wrong, I think integrated search is clearly one of the best features of Vista and I use it constantly – I would hate to have to go back to Windows XP even with Windows Search.

What I found lacking however was the ‘semantic’ aspect of the search technology… the ability to know what it was someone, particularly a non power-user, was looking for. Take for example something as simple as wanting to uninstall a program from your computer.

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Min Win via Shipping Seven

“Shipping Seven” is a name that was first associated with a blog supposedly by a Microsoft programmer working on Windows 7. While choosing a name for our Windows 7 blog we decided upon this not to rip off the original blog, but because the name has become associated with the general Windows 7 development process.

I have no reason to doubt that the anonymous author of Shipping Seven isn’t a Microsoft employee, although he certainly doesn’t offer up any sensitive information. In fact wether he is an insider or simply a very well informed tech reader his contributions are interesting and informative regardless.

He just today updated the blog for the first time in a couple months with a response to the Slashdot posting entitled “Windows 7 Won’t Have Compact “MinWin” Kernel”

Calm down.

MinWin is not some magical new kernel. It is Windows with every single feature stripped out - It is the base ingredient of any version of Windows. (I forget the exact size. But it is pretty tiny - small enough for embedded stuff.)

Read the rest here…

Multi-Touch. Big Whoop.

Well I think my header is better then this lot that I see in my feed-reader today

See the demo of Windows 7 multi-touch

Windows 7 gets all “touchy-feely”

Next Microsoft operating system has touch controls Windows 7 Features Revealed Microsoft demonstrates Multi-touch Microsoft to add multitouch interface to Windows 7

Microsoft demos ‘touch Windows’

Microsoft demonstrates Multi-touch Windows 7

Microsoft Touts Touch-Screen Feature for Windows Windows 7 likes it when you touch

So much for the tech echo chamber anyway.

I’m not criticising Microsoft here, just the tech coverage of it. Multi-touch sounds is a great addition to Windows, but this huge explosion of coverage just shows how starved for news most of us tech websites really are.

While it was nice to see some of the Windows 7 technologies in action, none of this was new or unexpected. What’s with everyone sounding as though the last thing they actually expected was for Windows 7 to have improved touch capabilities?

Considering Windows XP had touch capabilities about 5 years ago should there be really be such shock that Windows Seven has made the natural evolution towards improved technology and being a better product? I mean seriously…

The cat’s out of the bag now, Windows 7 is going to have Multi-touch support.

Whatever. Does anyone remember this last year?

On December 11, 2007, Hilton Locke, who worked on the Tablet PC team at Microsoft reported that Windows 7 will have new touch features.

Yep, 6 months ago. Pretty damn exciting stuff then too.

Ed Bott Fails us

Unfortunately for us tech-news leachers here at Shipping Seven, those people who have usually been the sources of rumours, news and inside information (Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrott, Long Zheng) are coming up against the Sinofsky wall.

Steven Sinofsky made his name shipping Microsoft Office to a strict deadline and based on his recent success re-inventing the software suite has been put in charge of getting Windows 7 out the door on time. For better or for worse he has said nothing about what is happening over at Microsoft aside from actually admitting that they are indeed developing the new OS.

In fact news has been so slow lately that Long Zheng had to resort to a dubious, ‘is it fake? isn’t it?’ post about a Windows 7 start menu concept.

So what to do when you have nothing new on Windows 7 to write about? …write about having nothing to write about. Ed Bott himself has obviously become a tad frustrated with Microsoft’s ‘information lockdown’ as you can read in his latest blog post.

If this were like previous Windows development cycles, we would have already been treated to at least one developers’ conference, two rounds of dog-and-pony shows for the press and analysts, and a stack of white papers three feet high. Early releases would already be in the hands of outside testers, and a much larger community would be gearing up for official beta releases.

In fact the only information officially released about Windows 7 has been an affirmation that Windows 7 has begun development and that a development cycle is 3 years. If it wasn’t for the 2 leaked Milestone 1 builds (6519 and 6474) then we would have very little idea at all about what to expect. As it is much of what we have assumed is guesswork and rumours.

The nature of the Windows ecosystem means that Microsoft can never deliver a Steve Jobs-style surprise, so eventually that information lockdown has to relax.

Ed Bott’s article is quite good and offers up 3 arguments against the accusations that a silent Microsoft will hurt the end product and Its worth reading. He concludes his post with the following statement:

Ultimately, what customers want to know now about the next version of Windows is simple. Corporate Windows users want Microsoft to provide a road map they can use to make decisions. Tell us what you plan to concentrate on in this release and how you intend to reduce the pain of deploying and managing Windows systems. Software and hardware developers want a platform that they can count on so they can have solid code ready on the day Windows 7 ships. Consumers want fewer marketing buzzwords and more concrete reasons to believe that the experience of using Windows 7 is going to be dramatically better than what they got with Vista.

More than anything else, we want you to tell us what you’re going to do, and then do it.

Go ahead, surprise us.

 

I agree with the suggestion that Microsoft has a much greater obligation to reveal its plans then say Apple, but at the same time I think objecting to Microsoft’s new ‘translucency’ policy is really just a lot of people being frustrated because they can no longer feel like they have some of inside pass to products the general public doesn’t.

If you look at Sinofsky’s internal memo a year back he said the following:

When we have to change our plans, modify what has been said, or retract/restate things we not only look like we don’t have our act together, but we cause real (tangible) pain to customers and partners. One need look no further than the Longhorn/Vista product cycle and the cost to the PC ecosystem of us being out there talking broadly before we really were able to speak with the accuracy our customers and partners assumed. Plans were made. Plans were remade. And then finally people just decided to wait until we really delivered, with some folks not really believing us until the DVD was in their hands, which meant they were no on board with drivers, compatible applications, or the support their customers expected.

…

Customers and partners want to know about SP1 for Vista. Actually they need to know. We want to tell them. But we want to do so when our plans and execution allow that communication to be relatively definitive. We are not there yet.

I think this is fair enough. There is little point in going through the whole Longhorn mistake again, revealing details of huge features and then backpedalling later. Instead wait until details can be released with a certainty and confidence that encourages consumers and businesses to base their decisions upon it.

Releasing early information may help feed the tech news sites, but ultimately

"It makes it so the message we want to get out there—the features we delivered, the quality of the work, the scenarios we enable, etc.—just doesn’t make it through the cacophony of chatter about the rumors, partial information, and other guesses."

If this is what it takes to deliver a quality OS, then I don’t see anything to complain about.

Windows 7: Radical UI Change

My previous post provided showed some of the subtle visual style changes to the Windows theme that have been revealed in the Windows 7 Milestone 1.

The theme is simply a part of the Graphical User Interface of an operating system. The theme is what affects aesthetics and makes the system more appealing to use. It is a part of the User Interface. The complete UI is the system by which users can execute actions and interact with their computer.

The theme itself actually has little or no bearing on productivity. For example Windows XP can be used in either the Luna interface or Windows classic. They look different but function in exactly the same way.

The question then isn’t really about what Windows 7 will look like… as clearly there will be various cosmetic changes, but wether it will additionally feature a complete new UI.

Some have suggested that the news of Julie Larson-Green joining the “Windows User

Experience” and of Steven Sinofsky being in charge of the Windows 7 interface indicates a dramatic change for the UI of upcoming operating system. While this is somewhat likely, the main cause of this conclusion is from the following Microsoft advertisement:

“Come lead the effort to update the Windows 7 platform with the latest advancements in User Interface design. Bring the Ribbon, Jewel, and other new UI concepts to the Windows platform.”

This advertisement for software engineers and programmers is fairly good reason to believe Windows 7 will incorporate a number of changes to the UI, but not in a ‘tear up the guidelines’ kind of way as has been suggested in this article and here:

We knew that Windows 7 would look different from Vista and its other Windows ancestors. Now it’s becoming clear just how different that will be. The next generation of Windows, due around 2010-2011, will sport a radical facelift that borrows elements such as Office 2007’s ‘ribbon’ toolbar and the orb-like ‘jewel’ application menu. More than that, the UI will be based on XML and what Microsoft describes as “a small, high performance, native code runtime” rather than the Win32 framework, in order to deliver a “rich, graphical, animated user interface”. In shorthand: think functional, flashy and fast.

Well I’m sorry but before we get too excited over this maybe we should think for a moment about certain user interface revisions of late that didn’t go down too well. Vista had integrated search, a streamlined start menu and numerous other changes which merely resulted in a general “so what?”

If you have the idea that Windows 7 will be a radical departure from everything that we have known then I would suggest instead it will be a consolidation of the changes that occurred in Vista and the major UI refresh will be for Windows 8.

So with Windows 7 don’t expect something like the fake screenshots below. It’s nice to think of Microsoft secretly working away on some killer productivity boosting UI, but I doubt very much in this being a reality.

So what is Sinofsky referring to then?

Well Windows 7 will be a continuation of what Vista has started. Vista already began an “advancement” of the user interface design and already incorporates elements of these concepts. Looking at it from the point of view that it would seem Windows 7 is a minor update to Vista then it would make sense.

More details on this soon with part 3, subscribe to our feed to get the latest news on Windows 7.

Windows 7: Some Visual Changes

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is the system that allows anyone to interact with a computer or device. The aspect of the GUI that most average users are aware of is predominantly the themes and skins that make up the look and feel of an operating system.

A Short History

Windows 95 introduced the interface that would become the default Windows theme for the next 6 years. A few changes were made here and there such the addition of shadows under mouse pointers in Windows 2000.

However the next major change was with Windows XP which introduced a significantly different interface that was much more graphically focused. Sometimes derided for having the “Fischer-Price” look, XP was the first real attempt Microsoft made at making Windows more attractive appealing for the consumer.

5 years later Windows Vista introduced a brand new interface named Windows Aero. Aero was the name of both the theme and a completely rewritten graphical system to control the composting drawing of windows. Aero featured transparency, vector based icons, animations and a 3D interface which was much more aesthetically pleasing, but also required more system resources

Much of the criticism has been of the perceived slow-down due to Aero requiring much more system resources. although in reality it often has less of an effect then is often suggested.

Windows 7

Windows 7 is likely to be an evolution of the interface rather then any kind of dramatic change. Considering the 6 year gap between the introduction of Windows classic and Luna, and the 5 years between Luna and Aero we can assume that Windows 7 will have some minor changes including a number of tweaks and refinements.

Vista provided the necessary technology with its new graphical system for Windows to be capable of taking advantage of the generation of hardware.

In Windows build 6519 a number of small visual style changes where picked up on by Raiker, a Russian blogger who wrote a detailed review of the leaked operating system. You can see some of the examples below:

As you can see from these two screenshots; the Windows 7 taskbar to the right is significantly more transparent then in the Vista screenshot.

Another change is the addition of a new blue aurora style background to some of the windows. The green window on the left is a screenshot from Vista on my computer, the blue window is from the Windows 7 screenshots.

Vista switches between solid colour and transparency depending on wether the windows is maximized or not. You can see in the screenshots below that Milestone 1 remains transparent when maximized, although wether this is simply a bug or deliberate remains to be seen.

These are, as has been said, very minor visual style changes. In a future article we will be going into a great deal more depth on the Windows 7 UI and some of the more major changes that may be coming and have already been released.

An anonymous poster going by the name MSBob made the following comment on istartedsomething:

“The thing to remember, however, is that this is the end of M1 (i.e. milestone 1), and there are three milestones. There won’t be any major visual refresh until after M2 (i.e., everything will be implemented with the Vista look-and-feel until after M2). Whatever the new visual look of Win7 will be will be kept under wraps for quite a while. This is no different from Luna for XP and Aero for Vista.”

So It’s worth keeping in mind that nothing you see in these early builds has any permanency or guarantee of making it to the final product. However there are a great deal of other interesting changes, so subscribe to our feed and check back soon.

Sources:
Wikipedia images: 95 desktop, XP Desktop, Vista Desktop
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