Posts tagged: windows

Windows 7 User Interface

Windows
Creative Commons License 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.

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categories Software | Matt | datetime October 28, 2008 6:41 pm | comments Comments Off

Everything – My Top Desktop Search Tool

The Slippery Slope of the Stock Market
Creative Commons License photo credit: Martini Captures

As a programmer with a very poor memory and a large code base I struggle with the task of finding the source files I need. Visual Studio lacks a decent file searching function, in the past this has led me to scouring through directories that contain hundreds of files to desperately trying find what I need. This isn’t a pleasant task as you can imagine. Windows desktop search is awful as it seems slow and inaccurate even on a powerful machine. I’ve tried Google Desktop search in the past, but it’s a bit of a resource hog and since I’m running 64bit Vista it’s not even supported on my computer.

Cue, Everything from VoidTools. This tiny little program is incredibly powerful, is somehow able to create its index almost instantly after install and works on all versions of Windows, including Vista 64. I’ve been using it for a few weeks and it has fitted in seamlessly with my workflow. Need a file, hit the hot key, type a partial filename, hit enter and it’s there in my editor. No more scratching my head trying to remember where that file I looked at 5 years ago is hiding. Oh and did I mention it’s completely free so competes well with Google on price.

This tool is well recommended for anyone who regularly has to search for files by filename. Download it now from the VoidTools website.

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categories Software | Matt | datetime October 13, 2008 7:34 pm | comments Comments (5)

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