Im really not sure if this counts as "fit and finish"

How I want vista to look ; http://forums.wuggawoo.co.uk/images/attachments/29361156886984.jpg

How I dont want vista to look http://forums.wuggawoo.co.uk/images/attachments/29381156887324.jpg

I beg of you guys, please don't force us into darkness when we maximize a window, at least give us a choice!

Next - The blue bar in Windows Mail (vista). Its ok by some people but generally I think its hated. Could you not use the same dark style for that bar as with Gallery and WMP?

Lastly, http://forums.wuggawoo.co.uk/images/attachments/29001156523016.jpg

but wait I forgot the inconsistancy; http://forums.wuggawoo.co.uk/images/attachments/28991156522759.jpg

Hi guys, thanks for the opportunity to post our comments about Vista. Honestly I have no problems with the color scheme of Vista; while my favorite colour is blue I like the oxidian/ blackish colors used in Vista. I am sure that the "real" Aero was way beyond what we have but for now this is a nice step ahead. I don't know if you are in charge of background themes too but, if yes, please bring us back the theme with the beach and a wood fence we saw in previous beta release, I really loved it.

Why oh why...?

Why were first promised (and shown) amazing window animations (see here: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1154262,00.asp ) and then have all of it removed. It was working over 3 years ago, but didn't make in the final product? Jeeez...

Compared to what OSX and Linux (see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYHcAO2VxFQ&mode=related&search=) have / have had for years, Aero is too little, too late. Why are we told to have DX10 GPUs and huge amount of mem in graphics cards when none of this power is actually used? I'm sorry, use of pixel shader in minimize buttons is pretty lame when compared to real window animations. Ok, maybe it is "useless", but a) it would have sold more Vista boxes (just think how cool it would have been on commercials) and b) so are shadows and transparency - useless eye candy, but nice and what people want.

So why, oh why didn't we get what was promised (and already working)? How come companies / single individuals are able to make things so much more beautiful than the largest software company in the world...?

Did some comittee decide it would confuse so 90 -year old grandma, and that's why everyone loses now?

Hello,

Thanks for this opportunity to speak about Windows Vista fit and finish.

The Install New Font Dialog which is accessed on the file menu of the Fonts folder looks as though it is is from Windows 3.11.  It is not used or needed and your team might consider removing it altogether.

Secondly, I agree with azz0r that the Blue toolbar color in Windows Mail looks inconsistant and out of place in Vista.  I too would like to see the black toolbar used throughout Vista.

If need be I can provide screenshots and more detailed information, but I believe this should suffice.

Thanks again for your time, and considering these modifications.

Ryan

Hello Dave,

It is good to see a blog from the guys working on the visual part of Windows.

Can you comment on exactly when you plan to provide developers and designers with an updated Windows Vista UX Guidelines? The only one released that I know of is from PDC 2005 time and contains certain incomplete topics.

I certainly look forward to reading what you guys have to say and show on this blog.

You're a brave man opening this up for feedback :)

I'd love to see an article go up on how all the different aspects of Vista get so out of wack with each other.  How do certain apps slip out using Tahoma while others correctly use the new font?  How does the vertical height of certain controls differ across teams?

I'd also love to hear how such a weird folder icon got picked?  I have the hardest time with that icon because it always looks like the papers are about to fall out and because the tab is at the top it looks unstable.

Thanks everyone for the feedback!  I'm not sure I want to become the Vista UI apologist but I will certainly try to address all of your concerns in future posts.  And please - turn on the feedback firehose.  If you can do what azzOr did above and provide links that clearly show problems, that is ideal!

Turn on the feedback firehose? You're asking for it!  I'll just share a few of my top gripes with Vista's fit & finish (or lack thereof):

1. There are still too many pre-Vista icons.  95-style (16-color), 2000-style (similar to 95-style but with 256 colors), and XP-style icons are still seen throughout the UI.  Take a look inside the Windows folder, for example.  The "Offline web pages" icon is 95-style, and the "Downloaded program files" icon is 2000-style.  These have got to be updated!  There is ZERO excuse for not doing it: updating an icon takes virtually no time and should require no testing: it's just replacing a resource, no code changes involved.

2. There are too many slightly-different shades of blue/green throughout the product.  For example, the Aero Basic title bars/borders are one color.  The button/scrollbar hover color is a more vibrant blue.  The highlight color is a shocking electric blue.  IE's tabs are another shade of blue/gray.  The preview pane is a light blue.  The folder toolbar color is a turquoise.  The login screen, welcome center banner, and control panel all use a slightly-different green/blue gradient mix.

Throw in the shades of gray and you have another problem.  Have you looked at a Command Prompt window (with glass off)?  A light bluish title bar, and an *ugly thick gray border*.  It's hideous.

What I hate the most, however, is the rebar background color.  It has a purplish look to it!  It is awful!

3. Wordpad's toolbar buttons are the same since it debuted in Windows 95.  What makes it especially bad is that several of the Vista help videos use Wordpad as an example application.

4. Forward/back buttons.  Open up all the different Vista apps that have back/forward buttons and compare them all side-by-side: their normal/hover appearances, their disabled appearance, how they look in aero/classic modes.  Each of the following apps have different back/forward buttons:

- Windows Explorer

- Internet Explorer

- Help & Support (*quite* different)

- Windows Media Player/Photo Gallery (these two are the same--yay!)

- Windows Defender

- Throw MMC in the mix for *completely* different back/forward buttons

The first issue should be trivial to fix in Vista before you release it.  The second and third issues should be relatively simple; however, making those kind of visual changes now is probably not going to happen, since you guys have already produced things such as Help videos and screenshots and you don't want the appearance to get too out of sync.  I don't expect you to fix the fourth one for Vista--it would involve designing and coding for which it is much too late.  But there is a path for going foward:  Now that you have a bunch of apps that have needs for back/forward buttons, someone in the Common Controls team should create a back/forward control, which can then be used by all of the other apps.  And by third party apps too!

PatriotB -  You will be glad to know that literally hundreds of new icons will be in the product by the time it ships.  There will still be the occasional old-school icon in some strange system folder or legacy wizard, but I think we got most of them.  (Hey, even Apple has a few hoary icons - have you seen the one for their chinese character settings?  And what was up with the dogcow?)  We are also fixing a lot of the little consistency issues, like arrows, search boxes, etc.  There is a "herding the cats" factor to some of these things, but we do care about it and we know it drives people crazy when we get it wrong.

Trekntech - I am sad to say that the Install New Font dialog will not be getting a Vista facelift.  :-(  It will remain the same ugly thing you get in XP when you go to c:\windows\fonts and choose "Install new font" from the File menu.  If you really hate it, you can always install using drag-and-drop.   We really only left it in for legacy support reasons.

Second the black maximized titlebars have be an option.  I understand turning off transparency when maximized, but why black?

The best excuse I've heard so far is that it "blends" in to the monitor.  Not everyone has a black monitor and it looks hideous on my own silver Samsung.

"Not everyone has a black monitor and it looks hideous on my own silver Samsung."

I believe this given reason wasn't talking about the color of your monitor, but the blackness of underscan borders that can appear on either black or silver monitors, and especially common on CRT's. Personally I like the contrast the black title bar gives.

Dave, thanks for the opportunity...

here's one I just found this morning:

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseand...temRequirements

go click the demo preview of the new keyboard/mouse combo...

under the "Innovation" tab, look closley at the "Instant Viewer" preview on the left side of the screen... what do we have here? Expose in action - I am not kidding. One of the features of this new mouse/keyboard combo is that you can shrink all open windows on your desktop by pressing the scroll wheel on the mouse, then being able to select which window you want, just like Expose, IMHO a far better solution then Flip 3D.

any comments or thoughts?

Cheers,

DK_

As for my own feedback, it's something I saw brought up in one of Paul Thurrott's recent articles, and about Vista's wizard pages that often has a "Next" button in the lower right together with "Cancel", but the "Back" button has turned into small arrow in the upper-left corner to mimic an Explorer behavior. I think that violates common UI standards where you attempt to group related controls layout-wise.

In this case, I'm not sure putting "Next" next to the "Back" arrow as a forward arrow, since that would leave "Cancel" at a wildly different location. Personally, I'd vote for skipping the Explorer thing and just have "Back", "Next", "Cancel" all in the same place as buttons as usual.

Another thing I've thought about is the lack of a "Parent" button in the Windows Explorer view. I think "Backspace" still worked as a shortcut for that feature, but I just have to wonder if going up in a directory tree (as opposed to just going back in the folder history) isn't useful enough to warrant keeping its icon?

I made an account just so I could speak out about the maximized toolbars.

I completely agree that the transparency should be turned off for maximized windows.  However the color scheme should not change to black.  It should stay whatever the user chose in the control panel.  After all, they chose the color for a reason right?  It's so jarring when I'm maximizing and "unmaximizing" a window to have my window switch between black and a very light and translucent shade of blue.

DK: The link you posted doesn't work.  I'd really like to see what expose thing you're talking about.

First of all, hello to everyone on this blog.

About the Install font dialog: what's with "legacy support"? Does "legacy support" REQURE the install dialog to be that hideous? It’s one of the most hated things in Windows and while it had its place in Windows since Win3.x through to XP (for whatever “legacy” reasons) there is absolutely no reason for it to be overlooked in Vista with its UI departure from all other previous versions of Windows. It shouldn’t have been let out of sight for as long as it has in the first place…

There are tons of inconsistencies in Vista. Someone here pointed it out: can't the MS developers agree on the visual appearance of various controls before they start building them rather than trying to hunt them all down later and get them in line with each other? Why do some apps have menubars of one style (take Windows Mail for one example of a menubar style there the selected top menu buttons have a flat, simple color highlight type of mouseover effect) and other bundled apps totally different (WordPad for example). Some applications even have a weird mix of styles like the menubar in Windows Explorer that  has  buttons drawn in 3D WordPad style and then redrawn on top of that with the flat color highlight of Windows Mail type of highlight. That is to an extent excusable (if at all) for the early beta stage of development but not release candidate. But why have all that jumble of styles in the first place? That is something that has me totally bewildered.  Can’t you stick to your own UI guidelines on this?

The menus themselves also differ from one spot to the other. For example the Recent Items menu that gives you a list of documents has highlight of selected menu items drawn in one style (it is not curved at the corners and it has a different shade of blue to it) and say the desktop popup menu has another kind of menu selection style (lighter shade of blue with curved corners on the selection overlay). This has been addressed by someone between Beta 2 I think since at some point Recent Item menu had the old school style menu (like XP flat style selection) but they did it only half-way! WTH? Its things like that that I think piss people off – why take time to do something and then just do it half way as if the guys making that difficult adjustment heard the 4 o’clock whistle at one point and went: “Heck that’s good enough, right? Lets’ go get a beer!”

Tahoma in dialogs here, MS Sans Serif there and now and then you have both Tahoma AND MS Sans Serif in addition to Segoe UI (tabs, labels and combo boxes). Icons introduced into menus have white/light grey ugly square backgrounds when selected (as if they’re not using transparent backgrounds).

Black areas in maximized windows: why? You should avoid using such extreme color schemes. Icons generally do not look good on a black toolbar (but yes, they look worse even on that ugly blue toolbar in Windows Mail). You should avoid high contrast elements (white lines on black surfaces). Oh by the way: menus flicker when you move the mouse over them selecting the menu items on the way – why in God’s name do we have FLICKERING in the UI??? We never wanna see anything flicker, EVER in Windows!  The “non-centerdness” of the separator line in the start menu just above the All Programs/Back button is still there. Is that so hard to do? I mean you guys don’t do that manually (as in some guy with two inch thick glasses positioning it with the mouse and going “Well I’ll be darned if anyone gets this one better!”)? Please tell me you don’t!

Why is the first button in the Photo Gallery not a BUTTON but a weird mix of a “hyperlink and an icon to the right side of it” type of element? What is so different about performing the action of adding something to the library from any other action you perform on the image?

Back buttons have a tendency of being placed at different locations in the identically looking toolbars. For example when you open your Photo Gallery and double-click on an image it appears in a new “page” where you have an identical toolbar with the exception of the first element (again not button) that now jumps two or three pixels to the right even thought the buttons in the new page keep their original positions. That looks really lame…

And we could go on forever like this…

Chris Pirillo has done a great review on Vista’s UI. I refer you to them:

http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/05/24/windows-vista-feedback/

http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/05/28/65-more-windows-vista-mistakes/

I don’t wish to repeat all that he’d said about the UI so please check it out. Virtually none of the points about the UI he makes there were addressed to RC1.

Anyway I really hope you guys are listening to the suggestions and pointers in the community and are making your best efforts to address not just some of the issues that you may deem important “enough” because quite frankly that is not good enough (anymore). We shouldn’t care if Mac OS X has some legacy prehistoric icons still hiding someplace in the system  and that shouldn’t stop us from doing a thorough job at getting Vista in the best shape. If it means delaying Vista, well, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea at all and honestly I feel that vast majority of people would deem it as desirable if it meant (and I am sure it would) higher fit and finish quality.

fakpuppet: well said...

Dave - if OTOH things are supposed to be the way they are as of RC1, then could you perhaps give us an explanation and/or analysis of why things are the way the are?

Cheers,

DK_

Hi Folks,

I have a feeling that this blog entry will have pages & pages of comments, so I created a new forum specifically for this - <a href="http://shellrevealed.com/forums/19/ShowForum.aspx">Windows Vista Rants & Raves</a>.

Post your feedback there so we can get a chance to respond to each of you!

Thanks,

Vinny Pasceri

Vinny, "this page can not be found"... error...

Sorry about that.

Rants and Raves forum - http://shellrevealed.com/forums/19/ShowForum.aspx

Thanks,

Vinny

Vinny - good idea moving it to the forum.  If people post their complaints there, you can be sure I will look at them.  I always encourage people to let their feedback be heard.  We deal with literally thousands of issues - the hardest part of us is to prioritize what to fix.  User opinion is an important part of that process, so please keep it coming.

DaveVr opened the flood gates with his post &ldquo; Windows Vista &ndash; Fit &amp; Finish ,&rdquo; and

Fakpuppet - actually I know Chris and he has been great source of feedback for us.  Plenty of tough love there.  In fact, I think I still owe him a Fit & Finish SWAT team hat.

If there are other blogs that you think we should be tracking, let me know.

One thing I noticed while using this release of Vista is the way either the Windows Explorer or the Registry Editor distinct (icon wise) between open and closed folders (or registry keys), it doesn't. Of course you can always tell where you are by looking at other items on your screen but especially in the Registry Editor it bugs me a bit.

Just my 2 cents (more to come maybe) :)

Here goes:

- Im not sure that the idea of having 3 types of applications (work, multimedia and explorer I guess) really shows off by the use of three different menu styles. I think it causes more confusion, than it does good, consistency is key.

- I must say I really like the new Media Center start-up animation, too bad the Windows start-up animation isn't really spectaculair when you compare them. I think the Windows Login screen: the stage (had a bit too much of the Barney-factor: too happy), I was expecting better graphics and a nice overview of recent users. Nice job though on bringing normal users and domain users together.

- In azz0r's screenshot (http://forums.wuggawoo.co.uk/images/attachments/29361156886984.jpg) you can see the Add gadget bar on the top-right of the screen. Why does it have to be visible all the time, that really annoys me. Maybe only show it when I'm hovering over the Sidebar (just like the Sidebar border?). Ohh and if you can, can we have our WMP gadget back :)

- As said before: better use of colors, and not 50 different shades. Cure the weird back arrow on the top-left, and the next arrow as a button on the bottom problem. And you guys are worried that a maximized screen (if not black) causes confusion ;)

- For the UAP team: allow to turn it off on a user-basis not on a machine-basis. Some advanced users feel comfortable with just some security tools, but don't want their family to drag-in the malware.

- Great job on the newest build of the Upgrade advisor! It looks nice, works nice, easy to use and offers enough information to users of all degrees. Could be a bit faster though, but I can imagine it has to check a lot of device and software info.

- For the Device driver team: Get Creative to join the party. In a lot of fora, I read the complaint that after setup every hardware device seems to work great, except for the Creative soundcards. I personally had the same problem with my Audigy.

Keep up the great job, a lot of great changes since Beta 2. I guess I'll digg up this post when the RTM is out, and hope to see an even more polished experience.

1.  why dont you replace the hideous taskbar color with somehting like this mockup http://static.flickr.com/83/229591107_3718f08a6b.jpg?v=0 (light grey would be nice).

The maximized black windows are just awfull! why allow the user to select ui colors if you intend to keep most of it black.

2. why don't you use a standard open file dialog to install fonts? the dialog is built into windows, it can't be that hard to use it.

3. why the ugly min/max/close buttons on vista basic? they can be made similar to the aero ones see http://www.deviantart.com/view/27363349/ (that is running on xp)

4. http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/2070/image4sv0.jpg

the UI inconsistencies amongst other MS applications are really getting worse with each Windows release...

- for example MS Live Messenger has by default no glass window border - why?

- MS Live Desktop Mail same thing - no glass window border - why?

- why aren't the right click context menu's somehow made to look like glass?  in their current form the completley fall out of place when you look at the rest of the desktop (the add gadget window however, is made to look like glass...?!)

more to come...

Mr. Vronay,

Thank you for your response about the font dialog.  Is that dialog anything more than a standard open dialog? Why must it remain the same for compatibility? Compatibility in what sense? I appreciate your answer but am perplexed as to why this particular dialog has to look like that to maintain compatibility.  The dialog can't even be accessed unless the user unhides the menu.  What's the harm in updating it or removing it? As you said when drag and drop works just as well and potentially faster and easier why is this dialog needed?

Thanks for this opportunity and for clarification.

Ryan

Well, I'm starting to think that is not your intention to really listen people. If you did that, Vista would still be in Beta stage and you were "fitting and finishing" for real.

You asked our opinion and reading this blog and many others is clear that the Vista UI is far to be a cool experience...maybe too many teams and too many program managers...who knows?

Here my points about your incomplete and inconsistent UX:

- why no drag&drop or paste and zoom&crop for User Picture? See OS X and WMP11

- why no drag&drop or paste and zoom&crop for Contact Picture? See OS X and WMP11

- productivity tools with blue toolbars? ok...so why windows contacts has greeen toolbar? just because they are simple files in a simple folder? uhm...

- calendar search box inside the toolbar, mail search box inside the menu bar,  IE search box inside the glass area as windows explorer, photo gallery search box inside the content area, WMP ...this little box is moving to much I think!

- IE with separate Refresh and Stop buttons, Windows Explorer with unified buttons!

- Why, if taskbar and sidebar are on a secondary display and I maximize a windows in my primary monitor, they become black? It is so difficult to make a check about this situation and avoid such unneeded behavior?

- Again...flickering averywhere...flickering in an 2006 OS?!? Come on!

Yes, we are all repeating the same things, more or less! You wanter to hear us? Now that you heard us what you will do? I'm suspecting that you will do exactly what you always did: nothing.

Or maybe I'm totally wrong and some day in a near future I'll fill myself a stupid seeing a great UI in Windows Vista RTM. Still hoping...

Bye

Santosha

Me again.

I was thinking on Font Install Dialog and what the most of us fill on that and I realized that there is at least another Dialog into the system, not as bad as Font Dialog but a lot more used: Change Icon Dialog; it's old and I've the suspect that it's not Vista UX compliant.

You totally revamped the wallpaper selection so why not give a Vista look also to Icon selection? After all, I suppose people change Icons of folders or shortcuts more often that wallpapers.

Ideas: well...a Windows Explorer like window with icon preview, properties and a size selection slider (I'd like to see how an Icon appears in 128x128 or in 256x256 before assigning it).

Asking to much? Already in Release Candidate State? No time? Ok...I was only dreaming...sigh!

Bye

Santosha

5. http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/2848/image1wl8.jpg

6. http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/4382/image4dy0.jpg

7. http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/4108/image2ss9.jpg

Every time I bug a fit and finish issue, it seems to get closed as 'Will not resolve' - I'm confused as to whether you want us to find these things or not! I'm a techbeta member if it helps.

hello again...

- why does the search window (ie. the one you access through "Start" -> "Search") open up in near full screen mode when 90% of the window has nothing in it?  It would be much better to have it open just large enough to display all the options, etc. then upon typing a search query the window opens dynamically to display the results.  Another benefit would be that you could leave the default search window open at all times on your desktop...

- if that's too much to ask: why isn't there a simple, single line search box available to be placed anywhere on the desktop?

PS: NOTE TO ALL...

Vinny setup a specific thread in the forum section about this - Dave mentioned he will be more likley to capture all the information shared that way...

davevr said:

Vinny - good idea moving it to the forum.  If people post their complaints there, you can be sure I will look at them.  I always encourage people to let their feedback be heard.  We deal with literally thousands of issues - the hardest part of us is to prioritize what to fix.  User opinion is an important part of that process, so please keep it coming.

here's that forum:

http://shellrevealed.com/forums/19/ShowForum.aspx

"Vinny - good idea moving it to the forum" ... the problem is that posts require approval and I'm still waiting for mine to be approved (2 or 3 posts).

I find very strange that the forum is still empty...maybe MS guys are too busy in making a secret new UI for Vista ;)

Santosha

Santosha...

you are correct - didn't notice that until I posted something myself...

Vinny?! Bueller? Anyone?

Sorry everyone - I'm still learning how to use Community Server :) The forums were marked as "moderated" and we had a whole bunch of posts that needed to be approved.

I approved all of the posts & removed moderation in the future! Thanks!

Can you guys give us some feedback on our recent posts in here?

Or else it would seem like a waste of time.

By the way, how do you guys decide what does get to change?

How do you prioritize?

Thanks

Hey guys,  I actually do read every post and comment.   Now that we know why nothing was in the forum, expect more updates!  

Hi, I know that the UI team has done a really good job but still have many consistency to check.

I will not write too much about these things.. but the most about the way we are able to personalize our computer.

As you said davevr, I will try to make "screenshots" of what I want.

The Window Color and Appearance panel is that one :

http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=1215&sid=27a65c619560fd07dd6aa3d5724e2e89

It is a good choice, but here is how I would like it to be :

http://theromantic.skyblog.com/pics/579758159.jpg

I think that users have to get more and more choice ! It can seem overloaded but maybe an advanced dialog

should be used as for the "color mixer". More choice we have, more

My changes are:

1°) same Windows Color and Appareance for Aero Glass or Classic mode (why not?),

i felt like being in jails when I had Vista with a graphic card that was not able to run Aero glass.

It could be possible to be able to change colors no matter if we have aero glass or aero basic.

2°) it should be great to have aero glass in subwindows, I mean "in the windows of applications",

look at that screenshot :

http://theromantic.skyblog.com/pics/579759234.jpg

I find that Photoshop will be so much better with aero glass as windows theme and not the aero basic.

Imagine.. if Adobe makes applications with transparency as background, we will be running GREAT quality

application but we will have what? Still a non-aero them for subwindows.

3°) we could choose between transparency or not when maximized, I really hate when there is no transparency,

I like to see what is hiden behind every windows, and I hope that we will see application like Notepad

having transparent background and not that "blank" background.

I want to add something else, I find these things really sad on that screenshot:

http://theromantic.skyblog.com/pics/579763508.jpg

1°) the blue is so much different between the no transparent maximized window and the non-maximized window, why?

2°) there is "white" color in the non maximized window but we have asked for FULL blue color, why?

3°) the buttons are not the same, and have not the same color when the windows is maximized or not, why?

4°) it's impossible to personalize color of those button, it should be nice to be able to do it, why not?

But, the worst for me.. is what happens when I make the FULL transparency :

http://theromantic.skyblog.com/pics/579764779.jpg

1°) when making more transparency ... the blue color disappears.. and has totally disappeared when having 100% of transparency.

2°) the full transparency color is ONLY and ONLY black, we can't have nothing else .. for maximized windows

3°) the appearance from the maximized window to the non maximized one is too much different

I think that it is time to make colorful transparency even if a glass is white-transparent, we could choose to have a blue-transparent glass effect.

Another one is about the glass effect itself, it would be nice if we can disable it to have TOTAL transparency.

I like the glass effect, but I really would love to have transparency but with the glass effect.

All I am talking about is a question of point of view, but I think that more choice we will have and more happy we will be.

About the inconsistancies, I think that it should be great to have the ability to hide the "file edit .." menu toolbar as in IE.

Some build-in applications are not doing this (i.e. : notepad, paint, ...)

And the last thing I want to add, is about the dialog that appears when the mouse is upon the tray icons (i.e. : network, sound,...).

It could be nice to have transparency possibilities. And same comment about the dialog that appears when clicking on it (i.e. : network, sound,..)

I don't know what you will think about this.. but I have tried to say what I was hoping for UI.

I can't come back to XP because of the nice UI of Windows Vista, but I think that the team can do even more !

to davevr : I want to know what do you think about is

The first link is not working, sorry. Even if it is not important, this link should work :

http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=1215

A lot of a GUI is "positional", and one problem that the Task Bar has always had is that it takes away your "positionality".  An app that is on the left (or upper left of a multi-line taskbar), when you close and re-open it, is suddenly on the right.  And if you open too many copies, suddenly the buttons will group together... but if you close the app that caused the grouping, they won't ungroup automatically... and there's no way to force them to ungroup.

I would really, really like to see the following enhancements:

* The ability to drag taskbar buttons to where you want them.  If I close and reopen an application (moving it from left to right on the bar), I'd like to be able to click-drag it back over to the left.  I would like to be able to re-arrange buttons at will.  I understand that windows from the same application are kept "adjacent" to each other, and that's fine if that continues, but if so, I definitely need to be able to re-order the buttons within that adjacent grouping, as well as move the grouping around (ahead of or behind other application groupings).

* The ability to right-click a grouped button, and select "Ungroup"... as well as right click one of a set of open instances of applications and request that they 'group'.  I want control over this process.  Even better, I'd love to be able to mark an application as "never group" (no matter how many) or "always group" (never more than one button for this app).

This stuff seems obvious to me, and I am FOREVER (constantly, several times daily) having to deal with buttons I don't want grouped suddely *grouping* and then having to stop what I'm doing, and exit everything, and re-launch everything in order to get the task bar back to the way it was (and should be).  All because an IM window popped up and threw something over some arbitrary threshold.  UGH.

Please, please, please consider fixing this!

Okay, I just put this on another site, but I guess this is a more appropriate place for it:

Seeing the UI as it's evolved for Vista has been really intriguing. I really enjoy the UI as it stands now (RC1), although it's not without its faults. My absolute /biggest/ pet peeve at the moment is inconsistency. Here's the experiment: Open up WMP11. Also open up the Image Browser. Now, compare the big, flat button area at the bottom of each program. They're almost the exact same thing -- you've got functionality for 'playing' a slideshow just as you do 'playing' music. So they look the same, good. Now, click on an unused part of WMP11's flat area down there and move your mouse. You can move the window by clicking anywhere down there! Great! Now try the same thing with the image browser. What? It didn't work? How much sense does /that/ make?

That annoyance aside, I actually find myself wishing I could move my system to Vista now. There's just something about it that makes it look nicer than XP. It's just nicer on my eyes, I guess. Well, maybe not the login screen, but the rest of it, haha.

The Welcome screen for Vista is way too busy. It looks nice, but it also looks like it's not done yet. With XP, it was well laid out and and everything was in its place. I think a less busy background image and maybe some /straight/ lines might help. That being said, of course, you don't want it to just look like XP redux or something.

I'd also welcome some sort of "thin" taskbar. I don't need all those extra pixels in my way, taking up space. Gimme 5 pixels above and below the size of the font being used down there and I'm good to go.

I'm not all complaints, heh. I want to heartily commend the Vista team for the new Start button/menu. The button (the gem) is gorgeous and perfect. The Menu, with the new way 'All Programs' works should've been in XP. Flyout menus are gross; the new way it works is genius.

Over at the Windows Shell blog, Program Manager Vinny Pasceri explains the balance necessary to be struck...

Just finished looking through RC1 on my TabletPC and still can't find the number one requested item from 30% of the TabletPC users...the left handed ones.

There is still no system-wide way to have scroll bars moved to the left side of all windows.

As a lefty on a TabletPC you can't use a right hand scrollbar and see anything you are scrolling. Worst thing about Windows and a TabletPC.

-Lefty

Hidden features in Windows Explorer

Quite by accident I discovered that pressing ALT in the Explorer window brings up the menu bar with handy things like "View/Status Bar" and "Tools/Folder Options"

I had previously looked for these options by right clicking on the title bar, "toolbar," etc.

It would be discoverable if you were consistent with IE ("Menu Bar" on the toolbar context menu) or Media Player (main menu items on context menu in unused button bar areas.)

Well, nice to see you guys are hunting down these things..

Here's my 2 cents:

Start mmc.exe and add a new task: [img]http://www.aeroxp.org/board/uploads/post-1466-1157399364.jpg[/img]

More Mmc/snapin inconsistancies, printer management for example (check left and right icons): [img]http://www.aeroxp.org/board/uploads/post-1466-1157442205.jpg[/img]

Add new fonts dialog (many people want this fixed), at least add an 'include subfolders' checkbox: [img]http://www.aeroxp.org/board/uploads/post-1466-1157400111.jpg[/img]

This supervisor form (icrav03) is a bit too small... Is c:\windows\system32\icrav03 still needed": [img]http://www.aeroxp.org/board/uploads/post-1466-1157442211.jpg[/img]

And who on the planet is still using IEXpress 2.0. Get rid of it: [img]http://www.aeroxp.org/board/uploads/post-1466-1157466206.jpg[/img]

There are loads more icons/inconsitancies that need to be fixed but I guess time is running out!

As for design.. I don't like the glow effect on the titlebar-text of an in-focus window. Its amateur-looking. Solving a designproblem the easy way. It's horrible!

The cyan-like border of an aero-in-focus window at the right and bottom are a bit too much.. Subtle is key here!

Flickering of the screen should be avoided at all times if you want to give vista a high-quality feel. Subtle fades are the answer. An perfect implemented example is the photo viewer. It's perfect! Fading (subtle) can do soooo much.

I will add more stuff if you want it... ;)

Let's not forget, you guys are doing an amazing job lately. It finally seems you guys found the road to victory! Just don't rush there... There are traps laying around!

ther are some problems with the vista GUI. for one the sharing of system memory to the Graphics and if you onlg have 1GB of system graphic then when system memory is shared to 2 GPU's that both use 256MB that only leaves you with 512MB of system memory.

Thus slowing down your pc.

Is there a way to disable it.

And Vista Rc1 does not surport SLI. Sli would improve the Aero feachurs greatly

I understand this is about fit and finish, but i'd really love to be able to move the tasks on the taskbar just like i move the tabs in IE7 , by drag and drop.

About the install new font dialog i see absolutely no reason that cant be changed due to backward compatibility reasons.It cant be like that, cause the UI is used only by the user.Applications cant use UI.

Why dont u delete it if you claim that "people can drag and drop"?

If u cant fix it, at least put nice icons instead of the 16-colors ones.

Over at the Windows Shell blog , Program Manager Vinny Pasceri explains the balance necessary to be struck

Pretty please with sugar on top... Would really be nice to have an option and/or registry edit to turn off the cyan border on the right and bottom of an active window frame in aero.  For the graphite color scheme it sticks out like a sore thumb.