some thoughts on the Vista UI

[Andre Da Costa [Extended64]]

I couldn't bother read it all, but Glass does have its purpose by putting
more focus on the content of a window, so less focus is given to the window
frame, in XP, the Luna frame is always in your eye sight. Window titles are
not difficult to decipher, when Glass windows are are over each other, the
intensity of the outer glow is more visible, making the text very legible.

Flip 3D, yeah, its a gimmick, but its just more fun switching between
applications. :-D Classic Alt-TAB still exist, so you don't lose anything.
Glowing taskbar buttons, I don't see any issues there, works just fine, if
you don't like it, choose a different colour scheme from Personalization
(Control Panel) > Visual Appearance.

The rendering of the interface through DX 10 provides a more reliable
graphics subsystem, since graphics drivers are not in kernel mode anymore
which prevents things like BSODs. It also contributes to a better multimedia
experience for user, better sound stack, no jaggy video and just a smoother
overall experience.

I think the Start menu's hierarchial layout plus built in search makes it
way faster to access an application than Windows XP's or prior versions of
Windows cascading menus. Just hit Windows key on your keyboard and start
typing in the name of your desired app, "Word" hit enter and its open.
Compare that to opening the Finder > navigate to Applications > Microsoft
Office > double click Microsoft Word, its a waste of time there and its no
different accessing it from the Finder menu > Recent items, just as slow.

Doing a search in the system is not slow or lousy, just like OS 10.4's
Spotlight, Vista has to index the files on your system, especially if you
keep and access data in multiple locations. Its still a work in progress, I
have read reports in Mac World where a OS X beta tester reported 10.4 early
versions were horrendous and did not get better until it was near launch,
this was like close to WWDC 2004. So, present versions of OS 10.5 might be
just as horrific, just that you don't see that. Microsoft has made Vista
very transparent/open to the public, you can easily download it legitmately
or illegitimately. As for Mac OS 10 betas, you have pay $500 a year to get
that.

I won't cast judgement until it RTM's, but I see progress, and it takes some
getting use to, OS 9 users had to get accustomer OS 10 plus transitioning to
it, using Classic apps in dual boot scenario's or booting into Classic which
was chore. On Windows that is an exception in many cases, because the focus
of Windows since day one is to maintain compatibility as much as possible.
Yes, UAP is annoying, it can be turned off if you know what you are doing,
but for the novice or intermidiate user, its a life saver I would say.
--
--
Andre
Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta

 

[darius]

Couldn't wait for the public beta, so got a friend with a MSDN sub or
whatever you call it to let me play with his beta 2 setup, and here are
my thoughts.

I think the problem is MS started out with the HW in mind, and designed
the UI to target it, instead of thinking about what the UI needs to be
then seeing how it can be implemented. It's like they were designing a
game and thought "wow, we can do this and this and this with DX9/10; now
where/how can we put this stuff in?"

take the beloved Aero glass thingy. Looks cool and gets people excited,
but how functional or useful is it to see what's behind the window's edge
"through a glass darkly"? (Keep in mind you wouldn't need to see behind
the window in the first place if the frames hadn't been made so much
bigger.) Not that useful, really. What it does do is leads to more
visual confusion and blending the windows together. It also makes it
harder to see the window caption at a glance (you actually have to LOOK
at it now). In fact they must've realized this so now many dialog
windows don't even HAVE a caption in the title bar, but incorporates it
somewhere in the window itself. Now it's just a piece of glass you click
on to move. But why waste the screen real estate?

and yet with all the new gfx toys to play with, they've made it HARDER to
see what window has the focus. The main visual cue is the different
colored close button.

the flip3D. Wouldn't it be more useful to just display a rectangular
grid of window snapshots or just large icons with titles? On a 1024x768
(typical minimum these days) you can easily get 4x3 quite large snapshots
on the screen and let user select one very quickly. But it sure is
cooler to flip through 3, 4 windows at at time IN SUPER 3D!!!

The taskbar: the glowing effect as you mouse over task bar button is a
little cheesy and makes it harder to read the caption. Again: just
because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you should.

The way the Mac handles the taskbar with the expanding/contracting icon
is both cool and functional. It's done in one smooth motion and
addresses the problem of having too many items in the bar. The Windows
team has a dilemma here. They couldn't copy the Mac, out of self-respect
if nothing else, so they tried to outdo it. But here is another instance
where less is more. The window thumbnail popup doesn't feel as good. I'm
not sure why exactly. I think it's b/c it gives you too much visual
information to process. Users learn to recognize application icons after
a bit of use (and people tend to use the same few apps most of the time).
So the enlarged icons are all that's needed for ID. The window snapshot
is too much and often changes depending on application state. Plus the
click target is still the same size. If you have a lot of windows opened,
you still have a shrinking target to click on. So it's only a fancier
balloon tip.

I think the start menu is a disaster. And no you can't revert it back to
the XP start menu, only the 98 menu. What's the idea here. Did MS
decide we'll all be using Windows on a cell phone or PDA or a TV via
remote? Click click click. Then click click click to go back. And you
lose track of where you are.

I suppose they wanted to address the problem of the ever expanding menu,
but there must be better ways to handle that. For example, detect when
the menu no longer fits on screen and walk the user through reorganizing
it. Or grouping infrequently used item under a folder. Or something.
But not throwing out the cascading menu system which most users have now
gotten used to. Heck, it's even used on web sites now.

As for aesthetic, I think it looks better than Luna blue, which I detest.
But to me it still doesn't compare to the Mac for simple elegance. It
still looks too toyish. I mean, look at the start button. That doesn't
belong in a computer OS. It belongs on a gaming console.

At least they've put back the folder tree in beta 2. Phew. It still has
a habit of disappearing and I didn't find an obvious way to get it back.

UI aside, beta 2 is more usable than the last build I tried. Doing a
search is still slow as heck, but at least doesn't bring the system to
its knees. (The machine I tested on has X2 3800+ and 2G RAM). Much
fewer UAC nags, but now the screen goes blank and resets whenever it
throws up a "do you want to..." dialog.

 

[Chris Altmann]

I think the start menu is a disaster. And no you can't revert it back to
the XP start menu, only the 98 menu. What's the idea here. Did MS
decide we'll all be using Windows on a cell phone or PDA or a TV via
remote? Click click click. Then click click click to go back. And you
lose track of where you are.

As opposed to scroll scroll scroll. Then careful mouse movement careful
mouse movement careful mouse movement. Then you move too far off the menu
and it's back to the start.

I suppose they wanted to address the problem of the ever expanding menu,
but there must be better ways to handle that. For example, detect when
the menu no longer fits on screen and walk the user through reorganizing
it.

So, instead of launching the program I wanted to complete my task, I'm now
sent off to clean my room?

Or grouping infrequently used item under a folder.

The programs menu has had the ability to hide infrequently used items for a
while. Have you noticed how many people hate that? Do you want that one
program you only use once a month to be tucked away in some submenu instead
of where you remembered it to be because the system thinks you don't use it
enough?

Or something.

Or what they've done in Vista. I think it's one of Vista's best new
features.

But not throwing out the cascading menu system which most users have now
gotten used to. Heck, it's even used on web sites now.

And most web cascading menus more than one level deep (and many that are
only one level deep) are usability nightmares. Most of them work by hover
only and have no hysteresis[1] like Windows and Mac menus do. You have to
have really good fine motor skills to navigate those things. And $deity
forbid you have to use a laptop trackpad on one.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis#User_interface_design

 

[Gerry Hickman]

I think the Start menu's hierarchial layout plus built in search makes it
way faster to access an application than Windows XP's or prior versions of
Windows cascading menus. Just hit Windows key on your keyboard and start
typing in the name of your desired app,

Except in my experience, user's just don't think like that anymore. Half
the time they don't even know which app they're in or what it's called.
I had a user the other day say she couldn't find the "Out of Office
assistant" on the tools menu. I asked her if she was in Outlook and she
said "I'm in the usual one". I then worked out she was actually in Word!
They also don't seem to know what "Internet Explorer" is. I say "Are you
in IE" and they just say "I'm on the internet". When I say the "address
bar", they say "what's that", I then see they were typing ALL URLs
directly into Google and have never used the address bar!

The idea that they would want to "start typing" in order to launch their
app? I just can't see it. I'll be keeping all menus as tight and clean
as possible and make sure everything they'll ever need can be seen right
away.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

So turn it off. Simple.

Couldn't wait for the public beta, so got a friend with a MSDN sub or
whatever you call it to let me play with his beta 2 setup, and here are
my thoughts.

I think the problem is MS started out with the HW in mind, and designed
the UI to target it, instead of thinking about what the UI needs to be
then seeing how it can be implemented. It's like they were designing a
game and thought "wow, we can do this and this and this with DX9/10; now
where/how can we put this stuff in?"

take the beloved Aero glass thingy. Looks cool and gets people excited,
but how functional or useful is it to see what's behind the window's edge
"through a glass darkly"? (Keep in mind you wouldn't need to see behind
the window in the first place if the frames hadn't been made so much
bigger.) Not that useful, really. What it does do is leads to more
visual confusion and blending the windows together. It also makes it
harder to see the window caption at a glance (you actually have to LOOK
at it now). In fact they must've realized this so now many dialog
windows don't even HAVE a caption in the title bar, but incorporates it
somewhere in the window itself. Now it's just a piece of glass you click
on to move. But why waste the screen real estate?

and yet with all the new gfx toys to play with, they've made it HARDER to
see what window has the focus. The main visual cue is the different
colored close button.

the flip3D. Wouldn't it be more useful to just display a rectangular
grid of window snapshots or just large icons with titles? On a 1024x768
(typical minimum these days) you can easily get 4x3 quite large snapshots
on the screen and let user select one very quickly. But it sure is
cooler to flip through 3, 4 windows at at time IN SUPER 3D!!!

The taskbar: the glowing effect as you mouse over task bar button is a
little cheesy and makes it harder to read the caption. Again: just
because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you should.

The way the Mac handles the taskbar with the expanding/contracting icon
is both cool and functional. It's done in one smooth motion and
addresses the problem of having too many items in the bar. The Windows
team has a dilemma here. They couldn't copy the Mac, out of self-respect
if nothing else, so they tried to outdo it. But here is another instance
where less is more. The window thumbnail popup doesn't feel as good. I'm
not sure why exactly. I think it's b/c it gives you too much visual
information to process. Users learn to recognize application icons after
a bit of use (and people tend to use the same few apps most of the time).
So the enlarged icons are all that's needed for ID. The window snapshot
is too much and often changes depending on application state. Plus the
click target is still the same size. If you have a lot of windows opened,
you still have a shrinking target to click on. So it's only a fancier
balloon tip.

I think the start menu is a disaster. And no you can't revert it back to
the XP start menu, only the 98 menu. What's the idea here. Did MS
decide we'll all be using Windows on a cell phone or PDA or a TV via
remote? Click click click. Then click click click to go back. And you
lose track of where you are.

I suppose they wanted to address the problem of the ever expanding menu,
but there must be better ways to handle that. For example, detect when
the menu no longer fits on screen and walk the user through reorganizing
it. Or grouping infrequently used item under a folder. Or something.
But not throwing out the cascading menu system which most users have now
gotten used to. Heck, it's even used on web sites now.

As for aesthetic, I think it looks better than Luna blue, which I detest.
But to me it still doesn't compare to the Mac for simple elegance. It
still looks too toyish. I mean, look at the start button. That doesn't
belong in a computer OS. It belongs on a gaming console.

At least they've put back the folder tree in beta 2. Phew. It still has
a habit of disappearing and I didn't find an obvious way to get it back.

UI aside, beta 2 is more usable than the last build I tried. Doing a
search is still slow as heck, but at least doesn't bring the system to
its knees. (The machine I tested on has X2 3800+ and 2G RAM). Much
fewer UAC nags, but now the screen goes blank and resets whenever it
throws up a "do you want to..." dialog.

 

[Licantrop0]

and yet with all the new gfx toys to play with, they've made it
HARDER to see what window has the focus. The main visual cue is the
different colored close button.

totally agree.

the flip3D. Wouldn't it be more useful to just display a rectangular
grid of window snapshots or just large icons with titles? On a
1024x768 (typical minimum these days) you can easily get 4x3 quite
large snapshots on the screen and let user select one very quickly.
But it sure is cooler to flip through 3, 4 windows at at time IN
SUPER 3D!!!

LOL, beside that flip3d looks very cool for common users.

I think the start menu is a disaster. And no you can't revert it
back to the XP start menu, only the 98 menu. What's the idea here.
Did MS decide we'll all be using Windows on a cell phone or PDA or a
TV via remote? Click click click. Then click click click to go
back. And you lose track of where you are.

add another thing: i want the icon NEAR "computer", "network",
"control panel", ecc... label, not one for all!
It is very hard to see at glance what is the right label without icons
nearby. I am an official beta tester, and I tryed to submit this suggestion,
but they ignored that.

As for aesthetic, I think it looks better than Luna blue, which I
detest. But to me it still doesn't compare to the Mac for simple
elegance. It still looks too toyish.

expect extra work in gui for the final version.

I mean, look at the start
button. That doesn't belong in a computer OS. It belongs on a
gaming console.

so? curve are cool, don't you think?

bye,
Licantrop0

 

[Andre Da Costa [Extended64]]

"I am an official beta tester, and I tryed to submit this suggestion,
but they ignored that."

Just keep sending them in and get fellow tech testers to vote on them.
--
--
Andre
Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta

 

[John Jay Smith]

glass has only one purpose: to make people say wow and get money in MSs
pocket.

 

[Ed Dixon]

Gerry makes a good point. I divide PC users into three groups: 1 -
Novices, 2- Experienced users, 3- Experts. There are many more 1s and 2s
and 3s combined. Sometimes MS designs with 2s and 3s in mind, yet 1s buy
and use most PCs.

1s have simple view of PCs and programs. Making things easy for them is not
the same as for others. Some portions of Vista are missing that
consideration.

Ed