PC24
Oct 29th, 2008
Windows 7: Welcome to the Windows 7 Desktop

Speakers

Chaitanya Sareen, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation,
The What and the Why…
The philosophy for Windows products is: Early and Often. If the customer’s experience is positive even the very first time they open or try a product, they will like it. That means: Customer satisfaction.
How can we use early and often to delight our customers (users)?
The agenda made some important points, such as a brief history of the Windows desktop, areas for improvement and goals, showing functionality and how to explain to our users the new features using the best practices and the “coolest” way to do it. / Mentioned Technologies
  • PDC
  • Win 7
  • IE
  • Office Programs
  • Media Player

Back to the Future…
It is very important to look to the past—especially when it has very cool ideas that will be very practical (resurrected).
The presentation started with Windows 1.01 (1985) which showed a very rudimentary taskbar and large icons that represented minimized windows. Each window had its own toolbar, its own identity. As the first goal since the beginning was multitasking, W7 will continue having this functionality. W1.0 was not able to overlap windows; each window had to be tiled.
After some years, Windows 3.0 (1990) was released. In this version, windows were minimized to the desktop and we were able to see them at the bottom of the screen. Overlapping windows were introduced.
At last Windows 95 (1995) gave us a real taskbar with a Start Menu and notification area. Caption controls (minimize, restore, and close buttons) and the quick launch were introduced as well.
In Windows XP (2001) we were introduced to taskbar grouping, Start Menu MFU, and balloon tips.
Finally, last year an enormous change came in the form of Windows VISTA (2007) which introduced windows switching and managing, a much better searching experience, programs in a list, thumbnails, gadgets and window grouping, etc.
Areas for Improvement
Currently there are too many launch surfaces, too much redundancy, too much noise, and arranging windows involves acrobatics. Some pools showed that just the 0.21 percent of users use the taskbar on the right side of the screen!
Key Goals
The top goals are to make it easier to get to the programs and destinations we use all the time, and being able to switch to the right window quickly, without mistakes. Also, personalizing and organizing the desktop and choosing what is important should be key features. We all want to make sure that our environment is organized and comfortable.
  • Large, more beautiful, and dynamics Icons:
Now we can enjoy large icons of the applications we want to use. We just drag the program to the toolbar and now we can open it from this point. We can switch and launch from the icon.
  • Thumbnails are much better. They are bigger and we cannot just see them, but “touch
them.” We can see a group of documents we have open from a program in a horizontal way and switch from the same thumbnail. We can peak at the one we want and even close from this very place. The programs from the toolbar can be rearranged as we prefer.
  • UI tabs in IE as TDI/MDI are now normal windows and we just go to the taskbar, one
place, tolaunch and switch.
  • Jump list: We have a mini Start Menu for each application. At the bottom of the
thumbnail of the Media Player is a toolbar. We just have to go to one place.

List of demos

Desktop Sneak Peek / A short overview of new features in W7 / About 15 min into the session
Extensibility—Delight your customer / A short description of the view or sight they will have as large and colorful icons, etc. / About 10 min into the session

Conclusion

  • W7 offers many improvements such as icons, jump lists, and thumbnail toolbars. Quick launch has been removed (so it will not be necessary to add shortcuts), notification icons will not be visible by default, and gadgets may be programmatically launched.

Salvador Fernandez