Last week in LA, Microsoft held their biennial Professional Developers Conference. This year, they showed off for the first time the new user interface that will be standard in Windows 7, due for release somewhere around late 2009.
Unfortunately, MS has already been and will continue to be accused of copying Apple with Windows 7. But Windows 7's UI appears to be, from a functional standpoint, superior to that of both Vista and OS X.
There's one simple reason why the copying accusations will fly, and that's the new taskbar (below).
Unfortunately, MS has already been and will continue to be accused of copying Apple with Windows 7. But Windows 7's UI appears to be, from a functional standpoint, superior to that of both Vista and OS X.
There's one simple reason why the copying accusations will fly, and that's the new taskbar (below).
Like OS X's Dock, the new taskbar is a combined launcher and task switcher, meaning that persistant icons are either shortcuts to the app when inactive or the place to switch to an app when it is running. The icons get outlines when the program is running, with multiple nested outlines if there are multiple windows or tabs of that application open. Furthermore, running apps have the square pane around their taskbar icons highlighted on mouseover with an app-specific color to distinguish them from unlaunched apps.
At first glance, this does look a lot like the OS X dock, except that the overbearing angled reflections and glowy blue indicators aren't there.
At first glance, this does look a lot like the OS X dock, except that the overbearing angled reflections and glowy blue indicators aren't there.
But when we get to switching between windows the differences really become apparent. In short, task switching in Windows 7 looks more intuitive and easier than either Vista or OS X.
Imagine the following scenario, typical for an experienced computer user writing an essay. You have email, a web browser, iTunes or your favorite media player, chat, two Word documents and three PDFs open at the same time. The web browser has at least three or four tabs open. In XP/Vista, this means six total items in the taskbar, with one of those six being a group of the PDFs. I can switch between the Word docs at will but I have to identify them based on the text in the taskbar. To go from a Word doc to a webpage, I have to switch first to the browser and then to the appropriate tab. If I want to get info from one of those PDFs, I have to click on the PDF stack in the taskbar and then identify the correct PDF by text label before switching to it to read or copy/paste.
OS X is substantially the same except that switching between the Word documents is harder because only the app icons exist in the Dock. Once I'm in Word, I have to either hit the "active application" Exposé button to give myself the "flying windows" effect and pick the right one based on its half size image, or else choose it from the text list in the Window menu. OS X does give me Exposé across all open windows with a different key, but by the time you have 8 windows open with 5 of them being text, the shrunken images don't lend themselves to immediate identification, especially on a laptop screen. In addition, there's no consistancy to where Exposé puts the windows - it changes based on which application is active when you press the button, so you have to search the entire screen each time.
Quick, find the PDF on China's military development.
Here's how Windows 7 is better. Imagine I'm starting in the same scenario, looking at one Word doc and wishing to switch to one of the PDFs. The PDFs are again all grouped under one application icon, but now when I hover my mouse I get a Vista style thumbnail of ALL three PDFs in a row right about that icon. This wouldn't be that great except for two points. First, the thumbnails themselves are clickable to switch windows. Second, on thumbnail hover, all other windows on the desktop go transparent. This means that you aren't selecting the window based on its thumbnail, icon, Exposé resized self or taskbar text - you're selecting it based on seeing the window itself at full size in its actual location. Furthermore, you can close windows directly from the thumbnail and the thumbnails will of course be lined up consistently based on the order in which you opened the documents. Check out between 3:00 and 4:00 below to see what I mean.
Imagine the following scenario, typical for an experienced computer user writing an essay. You have email, a web browser, iTunes or your favorite media player, chat, two Word documents and three PDFs open at the same time. The web browser has at least three or four tabs open. In XP/Vista, this means six total items in the taskbar, with one of those six being a group of the PDFs. I can switch between the Word docs at will but I have to identify them based on the text in the taskbar. To go from a Word doc to a webpage, I have to switch first to the browser and then to the appropriate tab. If I want to get info from one of those PDFs, I have to click on the PDF stack in the taskbar and then identify the correct PDF by text label before switching to it to read or copy/paste.
OS X is substantially the same except that switching between the Word documents is harder because only the app icons exist in the Dock. Once I'm in Word, I have to either hit the "active application" Exposé button to give myself the "flying windows" effect and pick the right one based on its half size image, or else choose it from the text list in the Window menu. OS X does give me Exposé across all open windows with a different key, but by the time you have 8 windows open with 5 of them being text, the shrunken images don't lend themselves to immediate identification, especially on a laptop screen. In addition, there's no consistancy to where Exposé puts the windows - it changes based on which application is active when you press the button, so you have to search the entire screen each time.
Quick, find the PDF on China's military development.
Here's how Windows 7 is better. Imagine I'm starting in the same scenario, looking at one Word doc and wishing to switch to one of the PDFs. The PDFs are again all grouped under one application icon, but now when I hover my mouse I get a Vista style thumbnail of ALL three PDFs in a row right about that icon. This wouldn't be that great except for two points. First, the thumbnails themselves are clickable to switch windows. Second, on thumbnail hover, all other windows on the desktop go transparent. This means that you aren't selecting the window based on its thumbnail, icon, Exposé resized self or taskbar text - you're selecting it based on seeing the window itself at full size in its actual location. Furthermore, you can close windows directly from the thumbnail and the thumbnails will of course be lined up consistently based on the order in which you opened the documents. Check out between 3:00 and 4:00 below to see what I mean.
Not only does this work on windows, but it also works for tabs. So a hover over Firefox gives a thumbnail of each tab, and hovering the tab hides everything else.
Even better, Windows 7 supports accessing a lot of an application's functionality without ever switching to it at all. That transparency effect is great for finding the window to switch to, but what if I just need to see that date of publication in the PDF? I can simply hover the appropriate thumbnail and look at it, at full size, without switching to the PDF reader. Simply move the mouse off and Word is back at the front. In addition, MS is including basic controls in programs such as Windows Media Player so that users can hit play, next track etc. right on the thumbnail without switching focus, and this is accessible to third party developers for implementation in their programs. A new feature called "Jump Lists" lets you right-click an application icon in the taskbar to get a custom menu - Word would show recent docs, media players could show tracks, playlists and so on. OS X has a similar feature, but it only works if the application is running, whereas in Windows 7 this is available all the time. And last but not least, there's a new button that turns all windows to glass on mouse hover (the far right end of the new taskbar) so that you can see the desktop; click and the windows are hidden so you can interact. Combined with the fact that gadgets/widgets simply live on the desktop now as seen below, this puts a lot of information within a mouse hover rather than a focus switch.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this is customizable. You can turn text labels in the taskbar back on. You can ungroup windows in the taskbar. You can make the icons smaller so the taskbar goes back to Vista height. Either way, all of the new functionality remains.
Microsoft deserves a lot more credit than they may get for redoing their UI in this way, but I for one am looking forward to using it. I hope that Office 2007 and Windows 7 mark a turning point for how MS innovates and is perceived to innovate by the Windows community.
For those interested, here's the entire developer overview straight from PDC.
6 comments:
Excellent article, Jackson. I think you bring up some fine points. Personally, I find that I use osx a little differently than you. I tend to use multiple desktops to segregate my apps then use cmd tab / cmd tilde to swich between apps and instances of apps. In theory, I agree with your appraisal of win 7 usabilty, but I'll really have to try it first hand and see for myself. I'm sure ms will install the latest stable version on their workstations. What I think is important is what you have already mentioned, namely that it's good to see ms moving forward with some real innovations in their new products; this and the new office are fine examples.
Looking forward to more!
Yeah, the app segregation idea is a good one for sure, but I find that:
1. I use Word too much, which has lots of brokenness but is needed for things like long bibliographies and footnotes
2. Command-tab, which is a mainstay of my app switching (though irrelevant to this article since it == clicking the dock icon) does not play nicely with Spaces.
Whether Win7 will do multiple desktops we still don't know.
I have to say also, I am pleased that with the ability to go to square icons a side-mounted taskbar will no longer look totally wrong. Certainly will have to try all this for myself (moving the mouse from app icon to thumbnail seems ripe for mushiness) but as we agree it's nice to see MS doing more than making XP transparent.
Windows 7 is definitely cool looking. Like Adam, I will reserve my judgement until I can try out the final product. I hope that Microsoft can avoid the demons that haunted the Vista launch.
I really like Vista and I have not used my XP partition in several months. For me, Vista has crashed during the use of one program, World of Warcraft, which has since been evicted from my hard drive. Any performance improvement from using XP has been negligible in my experience.
My fingers are crossed.
Great article. I loved your analysis because it relied on one single deliciously common case. I was particularly excited by the full display size preview hover effect.
You said that we are not yet sure how win 7 will support dual monitors. I like Adam rock the dual monitor display, and am frustrated in general with standard windows support and hope that they steal some of the obvious innovations which are offered by third party programs like ultramons which extends a second monitor-only taskbar and adds an icon next to the max/min/close buttons to send windows between monitors.
I wonder though, if we are approaching the optimal general interface, as all the major players seem to be feeding off of each other in such a way that we are asymptotically approaching some not too distant perfection.
Might we see at that point a operating system interface specially crafted for ease of use in a given specific field - a very primitive example of which might be windows media (just the media part). Maybe a Windows 9 Photoshop Designers edition (which could be dual or tri or quad booted on partitions) with Windows 9 Gamers edition, Windows 9 Vido Producer, and Windows 9 General Home.
It seems to me that this is where os's will have to go to seek a competitive difference (and hopefully advantage) as disk space costs continue to plummet and computing needs continue to specialize.
IDK... fun article, Jackson.
Oh Jackson, remember the time when I'd stop by your apartment and you'd be like, "Alb! Come look at this!!" And I'd be like, "What?!" And then ten minutes later, after you giggle (yes, giggle) over the sweetness that is technology, I agree with your sentiment.
Those were good days. I never realized how much I rely on you to update me on the world of tech (and games).
I second Alb's sentiment.
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