As we have seen it
here, yesterday a large part of the keynote of Microsoft, presented by Steven Sinofsky at the Professional Developers Conference,
was dedicated to the pre-beta of Windows 7, successor of Windows Vista.
Well, pending the launch of Windows 7 planned, according to rumors, for the end of 2009,
make a little ride on what was officially unveiled during the demo.
Begin with
the graphic interface of the desktop of Windows 7 that probably some of you will characterize it like a blending between Vista, KDE and Mac OSX.
As you can see, the Windows 7 interface, although similar to Vista, is announced as
lighter, more coherent and less flashiness than the one of Windows Vista.
The
Start Menu has less useless icons and should be
more functional.
The taskbar has been improved,
it is inspired by the famous Apple because now it will behave a little like
Mac OSX dock.
Some personal touches of Microsoft are added to innovate the principle. It is like this that we can see appearing at the passage of the mouse a thumbnail of the different windows of the same application...
...but also a very interesting novelty :
jump lists. With a simple right click on the icon of your application since the taskbar, you can access quickly to various documents, options and file in relation with the application. Here a video realized by
Neowin.net :
Apparently, Microsoft became more flexible with customization. They allow the user
to configure entirely the notification area and it may that we might be able to create and customize themes for Windows 7.
File Explorer should also be improved. It will include a new function named
Library in order to
better manage your content like photos, pictures and music. It allows you to add storage and keep the pictures stored locally across lots of drives but have links to the library.
Other new features will be improved in Windows 7, too, such as :
-
Action Center, a device to help the user resolving different problems that he can encounter
-
Device Stage, to manage all peripherals connected to you PC since the same area
- Windows Media Player, with the possibility to launch music remote, etc.
- A new interface for the calculator, a ribbon interface for Paint and WordPad...
- And also support multi-touch interface.
- etc. (for more, click
here or
there)
There are plenty others new features, but you have probably understood that
Windows 7 will be an improved version of Windows Vista, but
more simple and
adding lots of novelties and better performance.
For the moment it is only a pre-beta, so this interface isn't definitive and all may evolve before the final version of Windows 7.
Pending, you can put a touch of Windows 7 on your desktop by downloading
Windows 7 wallpaper in
the gallery of CrystalXP.
I like the interface! It's really clean, but on the other side I think it will need a very very fast PC in order to support the graphics which are used (like Vista did too). However, the changes are done really well. They changed interfaces into Office 2007. I like that.