Hello

So cool effects could be confusing for the user base (really. . . uhm)? Ok, let them turn off or don't make them as default.

Maybe all these goodies are not useful for our productivity but at least they can convince us that you didn't sleep for 5 years!

Greetings

Santosha

I really like the "Microsoft´s  Max" user interface, specially when the thumbnails reorganizes automatically when the user increase or decrease the size of those thumbnails, that's cool.

Windows vista needs something like that in whole UI.

Good post, exactly what I would have said.

Although one minor point which I have posted in the black titlebar topic in the rants and raves forum (please approve), is that there isnt a maximise animation yet! We still get the old XP 'animation', that jerky randomness. Maybe it has been implemented since I used last used the RC.

I agree about this decision. I can't see the usability aspect of this. Actually, I can see how it annoys people and if the UI team is to spend time in designing things, I think that time is better spent elsewhere.

If time was free, sure, they could add it as a feature not enabled by default, but that's not the reality a developer is living in -- it's rather about which feature gains priority over which. For example, should they work on bug fixing and polishing the current AERO effects, or skip that and spend time on wiggly windows disabled by default?

Actually I find even the AERO open/close effects being a bit distracting at times. Not during regular work, but when quickly opening/closing many windows during some period of time. But it's not too bad and I appreciate that consistently throughout the history of Windows, usability has tended to gain the upper hand over beauty, where the latter has been added mostly just if it's either subtle or doesn't impact much on usability. One exception I feel to that was the restore/maximize effects I hated, but that's gone in Vista now! :-)

Maybe mu eyesight ain't what it used to be to the subtlety escapes me but what "subtle" visual effects are you refering to with regard to *maximizing* windows in Vista?

Vista have to be new visual effects for RTM release??

Chris Pirillo's been making a ton of noise over a video he posted showing off a YouTube video...

My guess as to why there is no Maximize animation is as follows:

You can implement the open and minimize/restore animations by scaling and fading a bitmap of the window, but to maximize an unmaximized window, you would need to resize the existing window to a new size, causing the window to reflow along the way for it to look right.

Also, note how minimizing or restoring a maximized window does have the animation.

Reflow or not, there always is a way of doing something if you just give it some thought. For example it could be possible to resize the window *offscreen* and then do a “morph” from a normal sized window into the maximized and reflown window. There could possibly be a sort of a “ripple” effect spreading out from the normal sized window edges to the screen egeds giving the user a visual queue about maximizing window. I would take that over the ugly maximization that we have any in no time. This is just a simple idea – there are surely other and way more visually cooler and elegant ways of doing this. What we have now is basically a window jumping up and to the left and then spreading down and to the right while some elements (like a status bar for example remain in their original location) inside of the client area of the window subsequently move to their proper places (following the reflow of window content). Quite honestly that looks so unsmooth and out of character with all the other existing window animations.

Also there has to be a way of resizing a window without having to watch window controls such as scrollbars and statusbars being left behind and having the jump into the black areas in resized windows to fill them. I would rather settle for having windows that resize more slowly than having them break up and stretch like rubber while resizing…

I definitely agree that client area redrawing while resizing windows is quite ugly in a number of areas. For example when resizing the Windows Photo Gallery, you get a black ghost of the bottom glass pane that lags behind by an inch or so (on my admittedly bottom end FX5200) when dragging the lower right corner of the window to a larger size. Various plugins in the MMC also reflow and flicker in disturbing ways.

Resizing graphically rich apps in Mac OS X has been known to be quite jerky but they always (I think) keep the contents of the window in a consistent state. I was expecting the same with the DWM in Vista. It makes the apps feel more solid even if the overall size of the window lags a bit behind the mouse. Is something still not implemented or switched on in Vista RC1 to double buffer app client areas better?

I don't think it is being implemented because here we have RC1 and there is no trace of it even for testing purposes… Which is sad I think because the potential of new graphic system is not being utilized to fully implement features that will further enhance the user experience. What is the reason behind not having client areas resize offscreen? Please tell me it’s legacy support…

It’s the experienced Windows user who can really notice benefits of all new and great technologies in Windows but quite honestly these people are getting quite fed up with having inconsistent, unpolished and unfinished bits of the OS.

What is the point in putting so much work into something if you’re not going to use it? What is the poinf of double buffered desktop and translucencies when there is flickering everywhere and the OS quite bluntly shows you that those translucencies  are just pasted on top and not “real”? Try resizing WMP Photo Gallery and you’ll get it, just like Chris Altman described it (What is with that anyway? It looks like two different toolbars are placed one on top of the other, the translucent one for the normal and the black one beneath it that shows up as a ghost while resizing for maximized state of the window).

It has little to do with the power of the GPU (I have a Radeon x850 XT PE  and it is just as unbearable as with FX5200 I am sure) since similarly powered systems runnung OS X have not such ghosts for sure. It is the implementation that matters.

Do we have to rely on some third party hacks in order to feel good about things in Vista or wait another five years for Vienna to show up because obviously we can’t have great out-of-the-box experience with Vista? Or look for alternative OS solutions? I would rather not go through another cycle of using an unfinished and hacked together UI that requires outside bolt-ons to get some features desired in the os. Do I need to remind you of a creature with nuts and bolts on it? Vista already seems to share a trait or two with it.

I would love to see these issues addressed here openly...

Quote -"It is one of those things like the genie effect in OSX:  super cool when you first get your Mac, but then you turn it off after a month because it just becomes annoying. "

Im sorry but this is just not true, I know a lot of Mac users, and not one of them have turned this feature off, also it cannot be turned off via System Preferences.

I happen to think the genie effect is very cool and much cooler than the current Vista Max/Min animation. I would love to see some improvement in this area.

To disable genie effects on your Mac, do the following:

1)  go to  Apple Menu/Dock/Dock Preferences

2)  In the "Minimize using" control, change from "Genie Effect" to "Scale Effect"

There are some other useful options there as well.  

It's so exaggerated that it does become annoying after a while.

A more subtle distortion might be more enjoyable for longer.

Why do live thumbnails not work for minimized windows?  EG if you download a file in IE and minimize the download progress window, it's "live" thumbnail feezes which is stupid and misleading

And what do the IE team say about no live preview for minimized windows?: Thanks for filing. I sent this over to the IE7 development team and they resolved this as being a "Won't Fix" issue for the following specific reason(s). "This doesn't meet the bar since the user can see the progress by restoring the window. We don't think users solely relay on previews to see download progress."   <br />How monumentally lame.

vanessa0021

"I really like the "Microsoft´s  Max" user interface, specially when the thumbnails reorganizes automatically when the user increase or decrease the size of those thumbnails, that's cool."

I cant agree with you more!

Funny thing is, That file sorting animations was firsted showed off in Longhorn Explorer in the PDC 03 movies!

heres a link!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPEypljdPNQ&mode=related&search=

Despite my initial skepticism, I'm happy to report that my overall Vista experience has been good. I

Xgl is cool but it takes more than that