Microsoft plans a completely
new GUI for versions of Windows 7 running on the kind of high-powered
computers that now run Vista. The same team that designed Office 2007
is in charge of this interface, and it's likely we'll see something
like the Office 2007 Ribbon in place of Windows' traditional menus and
toolbars. Unlike the Office Ribbon, however, the new UI—whatever it
finally looks like—will be something you can turn on or off, so
corporate users can maintain the same interface they've been using for
years, without expensive retraining.
Many clues to what the Windows 7 development team is thinking about
can be found in the Windows Feedback Button found in the early builds.
This Feedback tool invites developers to comment on the five "pillars"
on which Windows 7 will be built. Each is divided into a number of
scenarios that have only brief and vague descriptions. Here's a quick
description of the pillars, with some guesses at what the associated
scenarios might portend for Windows 7. The fullest analysis we've seen
of these pillars is a long posting by "Bryant" at AeroXperience (www.aeroxp.org).
The first pillar is "Specialized for Laptops." Scenarios associated
with it include data security, speed, wireless improvements,
synchronization, and power management. One scenario is called "Touch
and Tablet Usability," which may have something to do with the rumors
that Microsoft, having been stung by the touch-screen keyboard in
Apple's iPhone, is planning something even better for Windows. Indeed,
Microsoft recently announced plans to integrate multi-touch technology
in Windows 7, making user input possible by touching and gesturing your
fingertip around the screen—a way of one-upping the iPhone interface
while covering your monitor with greasy fingerprints.
The second pillar is "Designed for Services." This includes the Live
Mesh–type experience that I described earlier, plus promised
improvements to system upgrades from Vista to Windows 7—the kind of
upgrade that has never been a Windows strong point. This category also
includes "The Family Friendly Web Experience," which presumably means
some form of site filtering, perhaps integrated into Live Mesh.
The third pillar is "Personalized Computing for Everyone," a
category that includes customizable desktops and a vaguely defined
scenario in which the desktop can link to local culture—presumably
meaning that the desktop will make use of local music and images. This
pillar also includes the ability to access your files from anywhere (as
in Apple's Back to My Mac feature), and secure roaming, apparently a
scheme to let you access your bookmarks and passwords from anywhere—a
convenience that also sounds like a potential security nightmare.
"Optimized for Entertainment," the fourth pillar, promises
home-media streaming, better high-DPI graphics than in Vista, and a new
version of Windows Media Center codenamed "Fiji," already in a late
stage of development. Fiji will be built into Vista-based Media Center
PCs later this year, but an improved version will clearly go into
Windows 7. New Fiji features include QAM support (so digital cable TV
signals can flow into a PC without a set-top box) plus support for
DirectTV tuners and better guides to available HD programming.
The fifth and last pillar is "Engineered for Ease of Ownership,"
which includes improved installation time (10 minutes is one figure
being bandied about), and lots of promises about "just works"
functionality and similar conveniences that Microsoft has been
promising, not very convincingly, since the Windows 95 era.—next: Virtual Environments >
