IE 9 Screenshot: Early glimpse of Windows 8?

[Mr. Dee]

Although Microsoft has focused on loosening the integration between Internet Explorer and Windows since the release of Vista, they still share a common philosophy in terms of user interface elements such as the Address bar and Back and Forward buttons. I wonder now with the recently unscheduled preview of Internet Explorer 9 with its clean, elegant design, if this is also likely an early preview of changes coming to the Windows 8 Explorer shell, moving command bar buttons into small pictorial representation of task. Currently, in Windows 7, these are worded buttons, but were pictorial representations in Windows Vista. Also, note that some commands on the command bar in Windows 7 are pictorial representations.

Your thoughts?

[techguy77]

Original Longhorn UI is back. Look at Longhorn Video Demo and you will see how similar this IE9 UI is to. Longhorn UI is one of the best ever designed after Windows 2000 Classic.

[Calum Veteran]

I'm starting to hope this is what the Windows 8 shell will look like :) Unless they come up with something even better and revolutionary :)

[The_Decimator]

Original Longhorn UI is back. Look at Longhorn Video Demo and you will see how similar this IE9 UI is to. Longhorn UI is one of the best ever designed after Windows 2000 Classic.

Wasn't Windows 2000 UI incredibly similar, (if not completely the same,) to the 95 UI & the 98 UI?

[Knife Party]

I hope this is fake

[Suren]

Long time no see Mr. Dee :) But I don't like this UI

[Mr. Dee]

Wasn't Windows 2000 UI incredibly similar, (if not completely the same,) to the 95 UI & the 98 UI?

Yes, Windows 2000's theme was basically similar to Windows 95 with some added enhancements such as animation transition, shadow under the mouse pointer, lighter color pallet, personalized menus.

I hope this is fake

Its not, its was on Microsofts Russia Blog.

Long time no see Mr. Dee :) But I don't like this UI

Hello, good to see you too.

I am not saying it will be exactly like what we are seeing in this preview, plus its probably still in the refinement stages. But, it probably gives a glimpse of what certain elements of Windows 8.

[Jan Veteran]

Original Longhorn UI is back. Look at Longhorn Video Demo and you will see how similar this IE9 UI is to. Longhorn UI is one of the best ever designed after Windows 2000 Classic.

You call this a good design?

[Calum Veteran]

You call this a good design?

[...]

That was nowhere near Microsoft's final mockup for Longhorn.

[Mr. Dee]

I think this is Calum speaks of:

[Jamushroom Veteran]

You call this a good design?

Snip!

Feast your eyes on what Longhorn eventually would have been:

[Scorbing]

You call this a good design?

What a horrible design. Microsoft needs to stop trying to imitate Apple and get rid of the annoying, system-hogging, totally useless and unnecesary animation effects and stick with a fast, modern, workable interface. There is absolutely NO need for animations. Personally, I want my folders and Windows to open as fast as possible. I don't care to see ghost or Genie effects or any of that other useless crap.

[thechronic]

am i one of a minority who actually loved plex?

[JonathanMarston]

What a horrible design. Microsoft needs to stop trying to imitate Apple and get rid of the annoying, system-hogging, totally useless and unnecesary animation effects and stick with a fast, modern, workable interface. There is absolutely NO need for animations. Personally, I want my folders and Windows to open as fast as possible. I don't care to see ghost or Genie effects or any of that other useless crap.

Don't worry, be happy:

[.Neo]

What a horrible design. Microsoft needs to stop trying to imitate Apple and get rid of the annoying, system-hogging, totally useless and unnecesary animation effects and stick with a fast, modern, workable interface. There is absolutely NO need for animations. Personally, I want my folders and Windows to open as fast as possible. I don't care to see ghost or Genie effects or any of that other useless crap.

Apparently you don't really seem to understand how Aqua and Aero work.

Feast your eyes on what Longhorn eventually would have been:

Poor Microsoft...

[Calum Veteran]

What a horrible design. Microsoft needs to stop trying to imitate Apple and get rid of the annoying, system-hogging, totally useless and unnecesary animation effects and stick with a fast, modern, workable interface. There is absolutely NO need for animations. Personally, I want my folders and Windows to open as fast as possible. I don't care to see ghost or Genie effects or any of that other useless crap.

Animations ensure the operating system is much more enjoyable to use, for many of us. I love the fact they're finally incorporating more animations in their software and hope they continue. They're not resource hogging if you use a computer with average hardware.

[Mr. Dee]

I think this is Calum speaks of:

[Mr. Dee]

Animations have been in Windows as far back as Windows 98. I personally do no experience any performance hit because it. Yes, Aero Glass which I would say was a major design improvement that focused on usability came across as graphically intensive and required powerful computer resources initially. But in essence it actually served its purpose, by putting GPU's to good use other than gaming. Combined with Animation effects, the purpose really is to provide visual cues for the end user, so when you snap the window to the side with Aero Snaps, you get a visual cue of what happens.

Or, when you hover your mouse pointer over a live thumbnail and it composes a full size preview, those type of animations in the operating system provide level of interactivity and response that makes the OS both productive and enjoyable to use.

[SuperJediMedia]

When can we D/L beta?

[bolerodan]

I find animations and eye candy do improve my work flow as it makes the system more enjoyable to use. Its not as over exaggerated as most people say when they complain about how long it takes due to "animations" and wanting their stuff "Snappy" or how useless animatons or pretty eye candy is. Why cant we have an enjoyable, visually pleasing to use environment? its like working in a dull boring office with one colour. It hits you hard.

[Jan Veteran]

Feast your eyes on what Longhorn eventually would have been:

Would have been... It never was and never will be.

[LightShadow]

All these concepts/beta UI's always seem to me to seem somewhat better than the final UI. I mean that LongHorn concept looks awesome and would have made Vista (If it stayed Vista) better. I just hope 8 has something like this new IE9 UI and similar to the Copenhagen Concept (Which looks even better!)

[RvXtm]

It's sad that lots of people don't get it that Aero and DWM are not only about the glass and eye candy, it's about the way (the right way) windows vista and 7 works with windows and elements that make up the UI. The new desktop window manager runs on WPF taking advantage of the new display driver model, where every app writes the output to it's independent buffer, and after that the compositing window manager merges the content into a single image, that's why (with aero enabled) don't get those XP artifacts when moving one window over another.

That was one of the biggest improvements in vista (and one of the biggest problems because you needed new drivers for the thing to run as intended)

[cybertimber2008]

I think this is Calum speaks of:

I look at that and I see where device center came from. I like :)

[hdood]

It's sad that lots of people don't get it that Aero and DWM are not only about the glass and eye candy, it's about the way (the right way) windows vista and 7 works with windows and elements that make up the UI. The new desktop window manager runs on WPF taking advantage of the new display driver model, where every app writes the output to it's independent buffer, and after that the compositing window manager merges the content into a single image, that's why (with aero enabled) don't get those XP artifacts when moving one window over another.

That was one of the biggest improvements in vista (and one of the biggest problems because you needed new drivers for the thing to run as intended)

WPF is a UI framework for .NET, it's not used by anything in Windows (no .NET in Windows.)

More specifically, what the desktop window manager (DWM) does is create a big 3D surface that covers the entire screen, and then draws each window as a 3D object (to make a square, you put two triangles next to each other.) This is all transparent to programs, which still use the same drawing APIs that they have for two decades (GDI.) The only difference is internal. Once the program is done drawing, Windows saves this as an image in memory. The window manager then displays this image as the contents of the window, while drawing the window border itself. Since it stores a copy of this image in memory, the program doesn't have to redraw its windows if they're moved or (un)covered. Windows 7 improves things further by updating GDI so that multiple programs can draw at the same time, which eliminates the artifact problem completely. In earlier versions, only a single program could paint at a time. This was true for Vista too, although it was less visible there (because the DWM keeps an image of the window in memory.)

Overall this ends up being a performance improvement, although it uses more memory than XP and earlier.