Rumors have been circulating for months that after the debacle that was Windows Vista, Microsoft has been planning to move swiftly on to Windows 7 in much the same way that it dealt with the ME shambles by cutting its losses and rushing out XP. And now we can be certain of it. Join us as we take a look at some of the important changes and improvements you'll see in Windows 7.
Contributed by Bruce Coker Rating: / 1 January 27, 2009
The distribution of pre-beta copies of Windows 7 to journalists, developers and hardware suppliers is the clearest signal yet of the company's determination to bring its new OS up to speed as quickly as possible. It has even been hinted that the first commercial version could be ready as early as the summer of 2009 - almost a year ahead of the expected schedule.
But quick is not always good, so what is to be made of this early version of the code that is likely to be powering the vast majority of new PCs in around a year's time? In this two-part article I will be taking a look at the most significant features of the pre-beta release. Part one will cover the many enhancements to the user interface, while in part two I'll be looking at the new networking and security features, along with a selection of the new applications that are expected to be included when Windows 7 eventually rolls out.
The first thing to clarify about Windows 7 is that it shares the vast majority of its code base with Vista. This will no doubt upset large numbers of people, but it isn't actually as bad as it sounds. The problems with Vista were never about the underlying code, but have more to do with the lack of hardware drivers, legacy application support, poor interface implementations of various types, and overbearing security.
These are things that Microsoft should have been able to fix without having to rebuild from the base. That it has attempted to do so will delight partners and hardware suppliers, who are no doubt heaving sighs of relief in all corners of the globe at the news that there will be no repeat of the driver and application fiascoes that marked the release of Vista. Basically, anything that works in Vista will also work in 7. And despite Microsoft's confidence in the Vista code being open to various interpretations, for the time being the company probably deserves the benefit of the doubt. After all, the signs are that in the most important areas, 7 is a major improvement over its predecessor.
Given that its code base is little changed from Vista, it comes as no surprise that the majority of changes in Windows 7 are to the user interface. The most striking of these is the extensive makeover that Explorer has received yet again, with many of Vista's own innovations having been abandoned as rapidly as they were introduced. Other significant changes include various enhancements to the Task Bar and Start Menu, additional functionality in the Aero interface, modifications to the behavior of gadgets, and touch screen support.
Explorer
For generations of releases, Explorer has been one of the most criticized elements of the Windows interface. For Windows 7, the development team have attempted yet again to come up with a straightforward solution that is functional and looks good.
At first sight, the results are promising. At the visual level, a sleeker, slimmer offering manages to retain most of the functionality without the clutter. Vista's confusing color-coded toolbars are gone: all toolbars are now a uniform pale blue, and they are so shorn of icons that the term toolbar barely seems appropriate.
Digging a little deeper reveals a series of more fundamental changes under the hood. The most noteworthy of these is the introduction of a new storage concept Microsoft has chosen to christen Libraries. These are an attempt to separate entirely the user's experience of using the system's storage resources from the actual hardware storage locations. A fine idea in principle, this means, for example, that the folder known as My Documents in XP and simply Documents in Vista is now no longer a single folder, but a Library that contains a composite of the information contained in two new folders: Personal Documents and Public Documents. Other default libraries include Downloads, Music, Pictures and Videos, and users can create their own as well as customize the locations that are used in the existing ones.
It's easy to see the sense of this: ever since XP - arguably even longer - Microsoft has been trying to protect users from having to deal with storage at the device level, and in 7 it comes within a whisker of achieving this entirely. Most users will probably never know or care where their files are really located. The important thing is to be able to find them when needed.
Having said that, it's easy to envisage this causing confusion when, for example, the locations used in a library reside on different physical drives or partitions. Users can only be protected so far, and they will have to figure out which files to delete when one of their drives reaches capacity.
Abandoning its 13-year identity as the location for the icons of running applications that began with Windows 95, the Taskbar now takes a leaf out of the Dock in Apple's OS X by playing host to a combination of both running and non-running applications. It has also been slightly enlarged, given an attractive semi-transparent finish that floats over the desktop instead of obscuring it, and is locked from editing by default.
It is still sub-divided into three areas, with the Start Orb to the left and the Notification Area to the right, while the icons occupy the area in between. However, there is no longer any Quick Launch Area: the icons for running applications and open windows are the same size as those for non-running ones. The only visual clue to the difference is the border that is placed around the former.
In another bold step, Microsoft has finally made it possible to rearrange the icons' order by dragging and dropping them, and has introduced a thumbnail preview of an icon's associated windows which pops up when the mouse hovers over it. Clicking a thumbnail restores the relevant window.
All in all, these developments mark a major improvement to the Taskbar, which at last is starting to behave in a manner appropriate to the primary navigational tool of a modern OS. The Start Orb itself has also been livened up. Not only does it light up like a beacon when the mouse goes near it, but the locations shown on the new Start Menu it invokes can now be customized to include things like Videos and Music. It also supports Jump Lists - extended context-sensitive menus which pop out into the right hand pane of the menu, and touch operation on touch-screen devices.
On the other end of the Taskbar, the Notification Area has been thoroughly overhauled. It now shows just four notification icons by default. Any that are added by newly installed applications are hidden unless specifically enabled in the new Notification Area Icons control panel, which at last provides one central location for managing the behavior of all such icons. Finally, on the extreme right is the Peek Panel, which turns every open window transparent, enabling desktop gadgets and shortcuts to be seen without having to minimize everything.
In the interests of space optimization, the Vista sidebar has been abandoned. This may come as something of a surprise to users of desktop machines, but the decision will make sense to laptop users who were expected to sacrifice a large chunk of screen real-estate to it. The gadgets that occupied it such as the Clock, Notes and Calendar remain intact, but are relocated to the desktop, where they can be easily viewed using the Peek Panel.
Aero
Aero remains. This news will no doubt delight and disappoint in roughly equal measure. However, it isn't entirely unchanged. Aero Snaps is a new feature that uses drag and drop to adjust the status of open windows. Dragging a window to the right or left of the screen will tile it to that side, where it will take up half the screen width. Dragging to the top maximizes the window, and even when maximized, it can be dragged down from the top to restore it to the way it was.
Touch Screen Support
Comprehensive support for touch screens in Windows has been a long time coming. The developers have finally taken the plunge in Windows 7, with an implementation that works throughout the OS to allow a range of iPhone-like touch control gestures. These include zooming in and out, rotating, right-clicking and sorting through folder contents. This is likely to be of limited usefulness in standard desktop configurations where touch screens are in limited supply, and in any case are usually too far away to be touched ergonomically. But on smaller personal devices, this will no doubt turn out to be one of the key features for which people will want to upgrade.
That completes this look at the major changes to the user interface that have been introduced in the Windows 7 pre-beta release. Part two of this two-part series will take a look at the way Microsoft has implemented networking and security, and discuss the new operating system's application set.
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