Here’s a little info to prepare you for the arrival of Windows 7. Sure, it’s still well over a year away and sure, all this stuff could change at the drop of a hat, but let’s just run with it.
According to Technologizer, an early build of Windows 7 may contain some or all of the following:
- A fancier calculator.
- The Office 2007 Ribbon thing may cross over into WordPad and MS Paint.
- Potentially less annoying User Access Control.
- My Documents will be called Libraries? Come on Microsoft, there’s no need to rename that stuff all the time.
- Control Panel will have System Tray settings.
- There will be a lightweight version of Windows Media Player for playing videos.
- Internet Explorer 8
So nothing too earth-shattering yet, but there’s still plenty of development time. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has also been quoted as saying that he wants to make going from Vista to Windows 7 “less jarring,” which may mean fewer interface changes and (hopefully) not as much incompatible driver rigmarole.
You can get more Windows 7 information at Microsoft’s Engineering Windows 7 blog.
[Image from Thinknext.net]
- Potentially less annoying User Access Control.
thats sounds very good!!!
I’m just excited for the fancier calculator. Will I finally be able to make some sweet sine and cosine waves?
Finally! A fancier calculator!
Microsoft you’ve finally listened to the billions of voices (in your own head).
Man…. I was so excited for 7 just a few months ago.
However if they really have reduced the footprint as much as they say, it could still be good.
I was sceptical too. So I installed it on my old Tablet. Read here: http://max.zamorsky.name/2009/01/13/windows7-auf-einem-motion-computing-le1600-tablet-pcwindows7-on-a-motion-computing-le1600-tablet-pc/
Meh — completely unimpressed.
And totally bummed out by the stated intent to extend the ‘ribbon’ metaphor into more apps.
The ribbon sucks the proverbial Equus asinus wedding tackle. There’s no way that anyone can convince me that using the ribbon is more productive than the classic menus.
Windows 7 appears to be what Vista *should* have been when launched. Nothing to see here folks, move along….
Does the calculator turn into a scientific one when you turn the screen around?
Well, I mean…if it won’t make it easy to calculate tips…I’m not sold.
Wow, that fancier calculator just blew me away…Microsoft sure knows how to create hype.
How many Microsoft developers does it take to build a fancier calculator?
where are the “fixing all the super annoying things that make me want to tear my hair out???” :)
Too early and too out of context to really form an opinion on what you are seeing/hearing. I promise, things are really looking great and will make more sense when you see everything come together.
Keep watching the Windows 7 blog,there are some really great posts up there and I expect more. http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/default.aspx
Thanks,
Aaron
Microsoft
http://twitter.com/screwdriver
Judging from the “usability” of that dev blog, I wouldn’t get my hopes up… who at this point creates a post column that stretches across almost the entire screen?!? Readability is horrible… and there isn’t even a “Recent Posts” sidebar widget.
Who cares what it looks like, and what new user features there are? Vista looks great, but performs like a dog. What is important is that they fix what’s under the hood. As it stands Vista is a cosmetic improvement over XP while killing system performance and bringing nothing to the table.
More Microsoft junk. Nothing to see here,move along…
Didn’t Microsoft just botch the release a bloated OS that nobody wanted?
But I do commend the M$ dude for posting here.
Every morning I kiss the ground in front of my Windows 2000 machines.
FYI Here is a Ribbon menu hint.
At the top of every app with a Ribbon menu is a down arrow with options to customize the toolbar/menu. Select “Minimize the Ribbon” if you don’t like it taking up the real estate.
Aaron
Aaron,
Thanks for the comments. I suspect you’re not the guy who designed the Ribbon, so sorry to take it out on you. But I have to tell you, it’s crap.
Microsoft should be establishing a set of “smart defaults” that minimize the learning curve, and still provide a lot of capability for the power user. I have watched MANY Word and Excel Power Users look at that Ribbon and just pull their hair out, trying to find the simplest things (like Find and Replace, Document Properties, etc). After one of our more leading-edge customers went to it, and it set back their productivity tremendously, we started recommending AGAINST upgrading.
Microsoft had a huge installed base, and the inertia of that is strong, but Microsoft’s done everything they can to piss it away. The pitch now is “if you are going to have a huge learning curve, why not switch to a free product, like Open Office. Then you are done paying forever.”
@Office user – agreed on pretty much all points, the “ribbon” re-design made Office a horrible user experience. What was wrong with fully customizable drag&drop menus?!? Too user friendly? Too elegant?
The name of that little “Quick Access Toolbar” is quite telling incidentally, like a Freudian Slip type of admission that that Ribbon is “slow access”… :) And the Q.A.T. is really too small to be very useful, so with the Ribbon too large, we literally got the worst of both worlds.
I was very already very annoyed with the Office 2007 usability when fate intervened: One of the nightly Vista updates (automatic, which I then immediately turned off), killed my MS Word install. Several attempts to patch via the Office site, etc. failed, so I simply installed OpenOffice to hold me over.
Well, I’ve never gone back for the Word-processing, because the OO Writer is pretty much sufficient, and the menu is fully customizable still. The Spreadsheet program is fine as well, though I still use Excel out of habit (until another Vista update kills it off as well perhaps?).
The only MS Office software that I still deem essential is Powerpoint, the OO Impress is just not at the same level yet, neither are the Google Docs spreadsheets. Powerpoint can be pretty much used as a quick & dirty image editor among other things, due to Adobe’s labyrinthine ways (another story of poor usability). It’s still the most powerful preso software out there, and may be the only MS software one would still want to pay $ for. Get the $130 stand-alone PP version and be done with MSFT…
microsoft today = headless chicken
fancier calculator!!
windows7 – vista = negligible
Vista is a turd. Doesn’t work with my printer. Can’t encode mp3 files without crashing the converter (and no, I don’t have malware, unless you count Vista itself). UAC is a noisome joke (I turned it off). Internet Explorer is only interested in making sure the user understands that if something bad happens, it’s their fault because they agreed to something they never understood in the first place and stopped reading a long time ago out of sheer annoyance.
On the other hand, as a professional software trainer for over 8 years and an expert user of Microsoft Office, I have to say that it’s about time they did what they did. The ribbon has existed for years… in Dreamweaver. It takes some getting used to, but not anything a few hours of training can’t fix.
Once you know your way around. It is faster, period. And if you don’t think so, then you don’t know what you’re doing well enough. The speed with which I can create full books in Word is amazing. The new calculation and data visualization features of Excel are nothing short of amazing. The ribbon does not hide anything, it just moved things around.
But at some point, people will have to stop using XP. Don’t drop the ball, Microsoft.
PS – The Zune is also a turd.
great move! microsoft knows any significant changes to 50 million lines of crappy code will blow up in their face.
I’ve actually had the exact opposite experience with Ribbon. It’s driven my productivity way up, and I can make much better more professional looking docs now. Seriously, the difference is huge. This is why I’m a fan of MS pushing this paradigm into the OS and not just the productivity suite.
YMMV, I guess.
Something that people hasn’t look because are shined by the calculator is that among the features leaked by those pictures are Windows Accelerators, which imagine alas IE8 Accelerators (they even share the same icon) will blend webservices with the desktop experience… now that’s a really cool new feature.
Check out my blog for my take on it here
http://bits.samiq.net/2008/09/accelerators-coming-to-windows-7.html
Fancier calculator? How about updating Minesweeper?
they did in vista…contrary to what many believe, vista has been updated tremendously…do your research before you make a comment like that
You forgot to mention that Clippy comes back. He reappears in the shower. Apparently it was just all a dream….
Umm just realized that it will look like that comment came from the Microsoft Aaron that was posting earlier…but this Aaron (the one whose post ended with the Media Center bit) is a non-MS employee.
Good thing my next computer is going to be a Mac.
http://www.thinknext.net/archives/2268
More screenshots to see
It is so much fun to bash Microsoft and they do deserve to eat crow over Vista but frankly I am getting tired of it all. If it was that bad everyone would own a mac.
Let’s look at the big picture. Over time applications will move away from being written for an OS and towards being written for the browser. Yes these are early days and browser applications are still relatively primitive but the writing is on the wall in 72 point font. The end result is that the OS will become far less important.
Windows 7 may be nice and have more than just better gradient fills on the calculator buttons but if Microsoft does not embrace this browser-based future and tool up to compete toe-to-toe with this reality, Windows 7, 8 or 9 may be too little, too late. There is still time.
Macs are too expensive and I’m pretty sure they don’t have enough stock for the 90% market share of PC users.
I agree that nowadays the OS is less important. Most applications I use are web based, that’s why I use Linux. It’s free, it works. It can’t run many of the most popular games and has compatibility issues with some hardware, but that’s because game developers build games specifically for Windows and hardware manufacturers build hardware to be compatible with Windows. If more people used Linux that would change. There’s still is hardware you can use and games you can play, you just have to choose them carefully. This compatibility issues also happen with Macs.
PLEASE, Microsoft – ADD A THUMBTACK FUNCTION TO ALL WINDOWS! I would love to be able to make windows “always on top” when I need them to be. I thought this was going to be in vista, but…
Ribbon – it’s a good thing as there are more keyboard shortcuts, esp for formating and it gives you faster access to many functions. U need to be a retard if you have hard time finding anything since looking through all menus takes less than 5 seconds.
Vista, the first week was horrible because of the starting and closing times, but after that, I can’t complain about anything – I see improvements in stability, funcionality and aesthetics.
I had to download new drivers for my 3G modem from the manufacturer (MS didn’t have them), and that took me… 4 minutes + restart.
Anyway, so far I see no reason to upgrade to W7.
That calculator has me hooked!
How about some increased security?
An option for automatic updates that will update automatically without intervention from the user?
Features that are less annoying and intrusive?
How about some increased security?
An option for automatic updates that will update automatically without intervention from the user?
Features that are less annoying and intrusive?
Maaan,
I can’t imagine how I lived without this fancier calculator until now.
Bryn, Windows does not equal PC.
А еще в форточках 7 можно будет грабить корованы !
“- There will be a lightweight version of Windows Media Player for playing videos.”
Sounds like another OS X ripoff: This time, it’s of the QuickTime Player that will play almost any video format by default.
Пожалуй так оно и есть, на самом деле все очень просто :)
My next computer will be promptly formatted the moment I get it home and XP will be installed.
The moment the ribbon becomes OPTIONAL (the way it should have been in the first place) allowing me to continue to use standard menus if I want to is the moment I start seriously considering any new OS’s from Microsoft.
To those of you who like the ribbon, yay for you. A large portion of the installed base do not, and there is NO compelling reason why MS could not have made the ribbon an OPTION.
I have never heard so much whining about menu customizability. PLEASE! Check your self-righteous attitudes at the door…
I train people daily on MS Office, and like maybe 2% or LESS of the market customizes their menus or uses anything remotely like this feature in versions of Office up to and including 2003.
More often than not, I suspect people like Chuck are people who have NEVER actually TRIED nor USED the Ribbon/Fluent interface before dumping on it.
Newsflash, Chuck: Using the Ribbon ISN’T HARD.
In fact, it’s pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it, and it actually makes a lot of sense.
The reason why Microsoft changed the interface wasn’t to piss you off (though I know that makes a great argument for you all who just love to knee-jerk react on this topic), but to improve and make things EASIER for NEW users to find stuff.
I had lots of nightmare scenarios in my head when Office 2007 showed up on my desk.
I’ve been using it for years and as a trainer, change, especially badly implemented or poorly-considered change could be a real nightmare for me.
But I bit the bullet and I was very surprised when I got used to things a LOT faster than I expected.
It took me about 2-3 weeks to adjust, when I was in fact expecting a much longer time frame, or never.
Sure there are some things that could be in more logical places, hence the argument for customizability of things like Ribbon Toolbars.
I’m not saying that wouldn’t be helpful in the future, but for now, it’s probably as well people CAN’T change stuff, so they can actually USE it, which is WHY they DIDN’T make the Ribbon an OPTION.
Once you make something optional, then there is the potential for many people to just dismiss it (like you have) out of hand without even trying it.
I’m betting that Microsoft WILL put optionality AND customization of the ribbon in for 2010, but even if they don’t, you can still customize the Quick Access Toolbar, and that’s better than nothing.
The whole intent of QAT is to make sure that people didn’t go against the primary Ribbon functionality.
And that makes sense too – how many customizable crazy buttons can you work with before things become unmanageable and difficult to use in your day-to-day work?
I have about 8 or 9 very specific function buttons (like Document Properties and Import Export functions) which I use constantly on QAT, allowing me to focus my energy on the parts of the Ribbon that I need to use, and that’s what I encourage my Students to use…
Amazingly, they find this to be a relatively EASY and SENSIBLE method, and it doesn’t stop them from doing what they want in their Office apps, nor does it *ruin* their productivity, cause blackouts, astigmatism, or aliens to arrive…