Project Looking Glass, from Sun **EDIT: Now a flamewar on UIs, come on in!**

[beer]

Originally posted by: Descartes

Originally posted by: Elemental007

This thread was not about the technology behind OSes, nor their stability/security/etc. It was about the way a secretary would organize her work while she has Outlook, Word, Internet Explorer, mainframe software, etc., all open at once. She doesn't give a flyign fsck about the HAL or NTFS or the load-balancing on the servers that are routing her email. Which was exactly what that Project Looking Glass video demonstrated.

Since you updated your post I'll reply again.

The vast majority of users do NOT want a change. You have employees all over the world who memorize their daily functions by keystrokes; if you change even a single thing you're left with irate users who have to relearn their process. This would be a huge cost to the enterprise, so it's much to MS' benefit not to thrust macro changes in the interfaces upon the end-user on a frequent basis.

You mean, just like DOS -> Windows, right?

The fundamental way the application works isn't going to change. Just some of the way the interfaces can be organized will. Win95 basically had a fullly-supported command line for DOS users to give them some time to migrate before MS totally axed it. Why would the progression from 2D -> 3D be any different than the progression from command line -> 2D GUIs was?

 

[OutHouse]

wow that is some cool stuff!

 

[WinkOsmosis]

What kind of dipsh!t uses Realplayer? Not one who would use anything but Win95.

 

[beer]

Where's your reply, Ameesh?

 

[Ameesh]

Originally posted by: Elemental007

Originally posted by: Ameesh
dont bother with him hes a complete eye candy whore if he doesn't see little graphics flying around he doesnt know that there is a difference. to name a few giant progressions made in windows you can look at features such as direct x, wmp, IE, the NT thread pool, security subsystems, filesystems improvements, load balancings and management services in the server sku, hardware compatibility and optimization, .NET Frameworks, etc.

Elemental007 when you actually know something about Operating Systems we can talk , but until you do shut you fvckin dumb n00b mouth.

Did you seem to ignore the fact that I mentioned 'user experience?'

I specifically said:

Win2K was technologically a huge jump from NT 4 but didn't change much to the end-user

I was specifically talking about the way the user interacts with the OS. I am not doubting that Win2K had 50 million improvements upon NT4, because it did. I am just saying that the user interface has not changed significantly since Win95. Why do you seem to warp people's posts into something virtually totally unrelated?

This thread was not about the technology behind OSes, nor their stability/security/etc. It was about the way a secretary would organize her work while she has Outlook, Word, Internet Explorer, mainframe software, etc., all open at once. She doesn't give a flyign fsck about the HAL or NTFS or the load-balancing on the servers that are routing her email. Which was exactly what that Project Looking Glass video demonstrated.

Why dont you re-read what you wrote:

Or maybe because Microsoft hasn't fundamentally changed the way that an OS has worked since Windows 95, released 9 years ago? I don't think anyone expects anything huge and Microsoft's track record for the past decade would seem to go alogn with that. Win2K was technologically a huge jump from NT 4 but didn't change much to the end-user. XP has nothing that 2K and a few third-party programs couldn't do. None of Microsoft's products have changed anything significant in several years now. And with the situation MS is in, there is not much of a need to spend money redoing UIs either.

end-user can mean a lot of things, it could be the gamer whos playing a direct x game on his new rig, it could be a developer who just used wrote the next big distributed computing client, it could be the information worker who has access to all the dynamic data he needs because services that integrate with his apps, it could be the grandma who recieves emails with pictures from her grandchildren.

once again, you need to pull your head out of your ass before you start spouting off utter nonsense.

 

[Ameesh]

Originally posted by: Elemental007
Where's your reply, Ameesh?

sorry i was in meetings.

 

[beer]

The whole context of this thread was user interface. Don't make it into something that it's not. -

 

[Hubris]

Jesus Christ, ladies, how about we all settle the hell down?

 

[RaiderJ]

It's funny, I was in that group that would have said "Windows UI sucks. I could design a better one. What's their problem?"

Until I took a class in UI Design. It's really amazing to see how much is really involved in designing a GOOD user interface. I can't say Microsoft has done the best job... but they have done pretty well considering the depth of Windows.

A UI can ALWAYS be improved, and good changes should be easy for the user to learn. There is of course a fine line between keeping the familiar and improving on it, but I think revamping an OS from the ground-up every 10 years or so is certainly appropriate.

And finally, a big thing to remember is that user's DON'T want an operating system, they want to run programs they have. If Longhorn is less intrusive, it's definitely a move in the right direction.

Linux is for user's who want an operating system!!

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: RaiderJ
It's funny, I was in that group that would have said "Windows UI sucks. I could design a better one. What's their problem?"

Until I took a class in UI Design. It's really amazing to see how much is really involved in designing a GOOD user interface. I can't say Microsoft has done the best job... but they have done pretty well considering the depth of Windows.

A UI can ALWAYS be improved, and good changes should be easy for the user to learn. There is of course a fine line between keeping the familiar and improving on it, but I think revamping an OS from the ground-up every 10 years or so is certainly appropriate.

And finally, a big thing to remember is that user's DON'T want an operating system, they want to run programs they have. If Longhorn is less intrusive, it's definitely a move in the right direction.

Linux is for user's who want an operating system!!

I agree mostly what you say. It's good, but it could be better, pending technology and research.

I agree with your opinion on Linux. Too many things need to be done to make it work effectively IMO, unless you have it for a specific task, not general purpose.

 

[lowfatbaconboy]

i can't wait for NGSCB and DRM because those are gona be oh so fun
go longhorn oh wait screw that im gona stay with wink2k until software i need no longer runs on it