David Flynn24 September 2008, 4:35 PM
Leaked screenshots show Windows 7 looks more like ‘Vista revisited’ and while some apps get an Office 2007-style ribbon, others are ditched altogether!
As Windows 7 heads towards its first beta release, leaked copies of the current M3 (Milestone 3) build 6780 edition of Microsoft successor to Vista are showing an OS which takes two steps forward and one step back.
One small step forward is the appearance of new apps such as Sticky Notes for desktop plus a slimmed-down Media Player designed for fast load time when all you want to do is listen to music or watch a video –which is, let’s face it, 90% of the time. If you want to rip content, manage your media library or access online content then the full-blown Windows Media Player (which will, in Windows 7, be updated to version 12) remains waiting in the wings.
Then there are minor cosmetic tweaks. The Documents master folder becomes the Library, which contains folders for Documents, Pictures, Music, Movies and Downloads. The Calculator gains Programming and Statistics modes, along with unit conversions (the latter has likely been ported across from Microsoft’s own
Calculator Plus freebie).
Most noticeable is the expected arrival of the Office 2007 ribbon as part of the
Windows 7 user interface. In M3.6780 both Paint and WordPad swap pull-down menus for a morphing context-sensitive toolbar (the ribbon-esque UI element itself is rumoured to be called ‘Scenic’, as opposed to Office 2007’s ‘Fluent’ architecture). The ribbon is of course the handiwork of Julie Larson-Green, who lead the radical overhaul of Office 2007’s UI before being made head of Windows 7’s UX (User experience) team.
Ironically and controversially, while some of Windows’ most anaemic and least-clicked applications get a facelift a trio of far more practical applets have been ditched. Windows Mail (formerly Outlook Express), Photo Gallery and Movie Maker will all be scrapped from the Windows 7 codebase. In their place, users will be asked to download the equivalent package from Microsoft’s Windows Live suite.
The risk is that this makes a fresh out-of-the-box Windows 7 PC less immediately useful than a Mac – or for that matter a Windows XP or even Windows 9x machine. Microsoft’s gamble is that sufficient users have the necessary broadband Internet connection and incentive to click a link on their Windows 7 desktop and not just download those programs but start using these and other Windows Live services for email, sharing photos, calendaring, instant messaging, blogging and the like.