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Showing posts with label Windows7. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Windows7. Show all posts

Windows 7 review-Part2:Modification of apps.

Posted by Technoratti-Anuraag on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 , under | comments (0)








One of the most unsettling trend, that seams to have been broken with Windows 7, is that each version of Windows was more bloated than the last. Windows 7 unbundled some of the applications that few people would be using anyway, such as Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Mail, Windows Calendar, Windows Contacts, Microsoft Agent, etc.






While it was nice that Windows tried to be more functional as a fresh install, their offerings are too weak and bloated to be of much use, and this reduction of bloat is highly appreciated. While the quality of having everything you need installed out of the box has been a much touted Linux advantage, it seems the same does not work for Windows.


For people who still prefer to use the Microsoft applications for their simplicity of use, don't worry, most of these applications have not been abandoned. Microsoft has made available a Windows Live Essentials package which can be downloaded and installed to bring back the familiar Windows Mail, Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker applications. However, the Windows Contacts and Windows Calendar applications are missing, though most likely they will not be missed! The calendar and contact functionality is available to a certain extent in the new Windows Live Mail application.





To allow you to reduce the bloat even further, Windows 7 now allows users to remove / disable more of the core application than it previously did. You can now easily remove Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player, Windows Search, Windows Media Centre, and Windows Gadgets.
You can now uninstall more of Windows applications than possible before.


Windows Vista with all its reputation as a mere glossy coat on a rotten operating system brought with it an unnecessary visual upgrade to the games included in Windows. Windows 7 instead, goes for upgrading the core applications which have long been neglected into uselessness.

The new Windows 7 versions of WordPad and Paint have something more new than just the version number, they now sport the ribbon interface similar to Office 2007. They include many new features to go with the new interface, most important of all Wordpad can read and write both the new Office 2007 .docx files, and the Open Document .odt files. The new version of the calculator application now includes some very useful features such as a history, worksheets support, date calculations, statistical calculations etc.
WordPad
The Windows 7 WordPad ribbon UI



Wordpad displaying an .odt file

Paint is heavily revamped and now includes multiple useful brushes, shapes, displaying rulers and grid-lines and more. Paint now defaults to the compressed .png file format for saving images instead of BMP. While paint is still a far cry from a good image editor, after this upgrade, it is certainly a decent one.
Paint
The Windows 7 Paint ribbon UI










Windows 7 Paint UI
New selection of brushes in Paint
New shapes in Paint.
This is an example of a star shape, with a watercolor style red border, and a crayon style yellow fill.


Calculator












 The new UI for Calculator in Windows 7
 Calculator now stores a history of calculations allows easy tracking of previous calculations and reuaing results
 The new calculator support may more UI modes, and features.
 Simple tools exist to perform calculations on dates.
 Worksheets allow you to use predefined templates to perform common calculations.
Such as the mortgage calculation shown above.

With Windows 7, the On-Screen Keyboard utility has also seen a big change. The new version is now fully scalable, and sports a new glass-enabled interface. The new OSK however does away with all the menus and configuration options, making it impossible to change the font of the keyboard. A useful feature added in this release is the support text prediction. As you type text, the application will display a row of word completions allowing you to speed up text entry significantly.


On-Screen Keyboard
The new glassy On-Screen Keyboard utility in Windows 7

The magnifier too, has seen a functional upgrade. The interface is much simplified, and now supports three usage modes, a docked mode (similar to the functionality of older versions), a magnifying glass version, where a magnifying glass follows the cursor magnifying everything underneath it, and a full screen mode which zooms in the entire screen.


Magnifier










The much more simplified and cleaner Magnifier UI
The Magnifier window collapses into this icon after some time to preserve screen space.
This new mode in the Windows 7 magnifier allows you to move around a magnifying glass.
In this mode, the entier screen is magnified.


Among completely new applications to be included with Windows 7 is PowerShell 2.0, which is now installed by default with the OS. PowerShell allows the experiences user to write powerful scripts to automate many tasks. It is a much more powerful solution than the batch script support available in previous versions of Windows. Another handy utility included in Windows 7 is the "Sticky Notes" application which was used to showcase the Jumplists and tasks feature of Windows 7. The application lets you add sticky notes to your desktop and integrates with the Windows 7 taskbar by allowing you to create new notes from the jumplist. It is of limited use however, since it very little formatting options and few color options.


PowerShell 2.0



PowerShell 2.0 CLI installed with Windows 7
PowerShell 2.0 Script editor installed with Windows 7


Sticky Notes
Sticky Notes application in Windows 7



An interesting tool which could be of great use is the new problem steps recorder. It is a handy utility which allows you to record procedures and actions which lead to problems (bugs, crashes, errors etc), or even otherwise. However this tool has not been promoted much by Microsoft in the OS, and few people might even realize it exists. For now the best way to launch it seems to be by using the Run command, and entering "psr".

Overall Windows 7 manages to provide more usability in a smaller size than its predecessor, Windows Vista, which is indeed a remarkable feat.


part 1 of the review


The further reviews by me will soon be posted...If know some more features of windows 7 please do write them in comments.



Windows 7 review-Part1

Posted by Technoratti-Anuraag on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 , under | comments (0)





While Windows 7 was recently  launched, it barely feels like that. This time Microsoft has involved testers in such an extensive way, that for many people Windows 7 is already a familiar experience, after all, it has been around for nearly a year.

Windows 7 has changed little since its first beta release back in January 2009, which is all the more remarkable as it means that the operating system was nearly done by then. They have abandoned the search for a clever name, and gone for a clever operating system instead!

The biggest advantage of the extended public beta testing period of Windows 7 has been to the people who "tested" it, and essentially got a free licensed version of Windows for a year. However a lot of the feedback and bugs discovered during the beta period of Windows 7 was actually accommodated into Release Candidate which came afterwards.

While Windows 7 is essentially a minor update to Windows Vista, it has some significant and positive changes which have turned the utter failure of Vista to the critical acclaim it has received. Nearly every version of Windows has been considered to be too bloated for its time, and for the very first time, we have a version of windows which can run on a lower configuration than its predecessor!

Let us now take a look at some of the defining features of this new version of Windows, the good and the bad:


The Taskbar: Renovated after a decade




The taskbar is perhaps the most talked about aspect of Windows 7 -- this long stagnant icon since the Windows 95 days has finally seen a significant upgrade. Windows 7 makes the taskbar more than just a way to switch between windows, it has now become a way to interact with and control the windows themselves. In my opinion, its functionality is under-hyped!

The changes in the taskbar are more than just cosmetic upgrade to square icons instead of wide tabs: the preview functionality is useful for once, and makes managing lots of open windows easier. If the preview isn't enough, hovering over the window lets you see the active application in its own, with the other windows made "transparent." A button on the right-most corner of the taskbar lets you take a peek at the desktop through all your windows. Finally, we have the rather simple facility of actually moving around window icons on the taskbar, and the system tray. 

These features just let you manage windows better, just like grouping of tasks made working with multiple windows simpler, but as stated before, the Windows 7 taskbar is more that just that. Windows 7 lets application publish common actions that can be performed on them in a list which now appears on a right-click instead of the normal menu. While common examples show application publishing their frequently or recently opened files, and common tasks here, it can pretty much be used for anything. Seen from the popular context of a browser, it can show your recent history, bookmarks, and show tasks allowing you to open new tabs or windows.












Applications can use the Windows 7 taskbar API to provide a wide variety of information and control via the taskbar itself such as:
  • Displaying status icons (such as a available / idle / invisible etc. for an IM app, or playing / paused / stopped for a media player) on their icon on the taskbar, 


                                          
    Winamp taskbar icon                                       Winamp taskbar icon 
 with triangle icon overlay                                    with square icon overlay 
     to depict play state                                          to depict stopped state


  • Displaying progress using a green highlight. The highlight can display the progress information published by the application, and show determinate or indeterminate progress on the icon itself. A yellow highlight can depict a paused process, and a red one can indicate an error. 


                                             
    Winamp taskbar icon              Winamp taskbar icon                 Windows Explorer t
    showing playback                   showing playback paused         displaying file copy
 progress as green highlight    as yellow highlight                   error status using red highlight





  • Application controlled preview. The preview image shown by an application can be controlled by the application itself, which can result in much more meaningful previews of relevant content, instead of ones of the entire window.
Tabs can now show their previews straight on the taskbar, and you can use the taskbar to directly switch between, and close individual tabs from the taskbar instead of opening the window.
    
Windows 7 taskbar showing previews of tabs opened in Internet Explorer 8

   



  • Thumbnail toolbars are used by applications such as Windows Media Player to display information about the currently playing song in the preview of the window, and provide buttons to control playback. 
  
       Winamp displaying album art, track playback information, 
       and a toolbar of available actions in preview window




The new taskbar now also superseded the functionality of the older QuickLaunch toolbar by allowing any application to be "pinned" to the taskbar itself. A pinned application appears on the taskbar even when it isn't running, and gets highlighted while running as an indicator. This makes working with your favourite applications even more easily, as they are now easily available to be launched in a convenient location, and furthermore it will appear in the same location where it is pinned, making working with frequently accessed windows easier.

For those using Windows for a long time this may come as a break in tradition, and they will be required to adjust to the new mechanism, however the new interface is well worth adjusting to. So although an option exists to switch back to the older more familiar taskbar style, it is not something we expect much people to opt for, and certainly not something we'd recommend.

As you can see the taskbar has grown to accommodate some of the features that were earlier provided by toolbars, and to an extent the system tray. In the current scenario where multi-tasking is becoming increasingly important, the Windows 7 taskbar comes well prepared.

part-2 of the review