Windows 7 User Interface

photo credit: Jule_Berlin

I just read an article on Ars Techinca about Microsoft’s announce user interface changes in Windows 7. They claim that these are most significant changes since Windows95. Looking at the screenshots it is evident that Microsoft are taking even more inspiration from Apple’s Finder and Dock. The new Taskbar will look very familar to anyone with a little experience with Mac OS X. The loss of the sidebar, with Gadgets now avaible across the desktop gives functionality almost identical to Dashboard.

I’m not being totally critical of Microsoft here. The closer the Windows experience comes to Mac OS X, the happier I will be to use it. What is interesting is that Microsoft have invested hugely in research with their User Experience program, you know, those annoying popups you see when you first install a piece of Microsoft software. The result of all this is come to the same conclusions that Apple had years ago.

That said, there are a couple of interesting ideas in there. I particularly like the idea of windows resizing and adapting depending on which side of the screen I drag them to. This isn’t totally original though, I had a dabble with Sticky Windows a while ago. The new Start menu functionality sounds useful, I just hope developers can access the new functionality outside of the .Net Framework.

The question is, will these UI changes excite users enough to finnally give up their old Windows XP habit? I think the big M$ might be able to pull it off this time as they clearly plan on improving how their software is used and looks rather than mess with all the hidden internals that most customers can’t appreciate.

• First Look at Windows 7′s User Interface Ars Technica
  
• Engineering Windows 7 Microsoft Blog