Win Vista experience: bid farewell to the classic menu

PCWorld editor Harry McCracken recently published some of his own experience with the beta version of Vista:

Windows Vista? I have been using it for three months, and I know that Microsoft and everyone don't think it's a good idea to use Vista so early - especially on a working PC, but the truth is that my intimate time with this new operating system is already More than hundreds of hours.

However, until today, I have no energy to write something carefully - the reason is very simple, and it took me a lot of time to fight with the bug - after all, the official version of Vista has been released for a year, I am not interested in detail List those annoying bugs - that's too boring, and Microsoft's professional testers are significantly better than me. (Editor's note: Well, indeed, they all found out more than 20,000 bugs.)

Windows Vista Build 5231 has been running on my computer for a few weeks (this version is also called Community Technical Preview 2), although The official version of Vista will also have a lot of discrepancies with Build 5231, but I think it's time to write something about Vista's features and interfaces. However, given that Microsoft will no doubt have to make more user interface changes before Vista ships, this article is limited to a temporary Beta summary, and has little to do with the official version of Vista.

For years, Microsoft has been continuing the standard menu format in software: file, edit, view, and tool multiple-column options - the problem is that the traditional multi-level classification of menus makes it easy for you to find Go to the option you want to find -- for example, Microsoft Office.

However, Microsoft did not give up its efforts. One of Microsoft's goals in 2006 was to simplify the existing menu format. Not only Vista, Office 12 also has this trend, one of the core components is "Ribbon" tool Articles can provide different options depending on the stage of operation you are in. The following figure is the next generation of PowerPoint's "Ribbon" components:

Ribbon is not directly in Vista Appeared, but in the Beta version, there are a lot of interfaces that originally existed in the menu - the traditional menu has completely changed.

For example, the default interface of Internet Explorer 7 hides the menu options (you can change back to the more familiar interface by selecting the classic menu), and the buttons on the right side of the window can be similarly printed, added to favorites, settings, etc. The function of the menu.

“Windows Explorer File Manager” There is no traditional menu setting, but unlike IE7, the function buttons are set to the left of the browser, some visual effects are strong, and some Just a Txt tag.

In the new "Windows Media Player", the text label button is completely used. In other words, the menu still exists in WMP, but it is different from the standard menu (there may be other improvements in the official version)

Windows Digital Gallery does not seem to have joined the menu interface evolution process, and we see the intimate classic menu options again.

I personally don’t have much dislike of the classic menu, but if Microsoft really wants to make innovations on the menu, then it’s best to do it a bit, completely end the classic menu, don’t In the past, I broke the wire. In fact, Apple's Mac OS X is much stronger than Windows XP in these respects. We hope that the official version of Vista will be able to complete optimization and innovation on all interfaces.

If the classic menu life is really coming to an end, the Ribbon feature in Office 12 will be extremely exciting - it will be a complete innovation and evolution in operation. Although I have not used Office 12 yet, Microsoft executives have revealed to us that Ribbon will be the most suitable functional component in document editing.

If the menu really disappears, would you miss them? Or, you have long wanted to kick them out of your computer.

Hehe, let's look forward to the next generation revolution of the final version of Vista and Office 12 brought to the PC. By the way, although the 2GB memory penetration rate is very low now, I am afraid it will be another situation after the release of Vista. .