The value of Longhorn is a new user interface?
The Wall Street Journal says Microsoft is now touting its new Avalon graphical user interface as the answer to user's challenges.
We are all in favor of adding visual cues to help users understand what is happening on computers. But Microsoft has a history of focusing on features instead of usability. For example, one of the features currently on Windows that many users find frustrating is menus that continually rearrange themselves to put the most recently used items first. That sounds great to a computer scientist, but ask an ordinary person about the feature, and they'll tell you it makes them feel as if they don't know where to find things. It also creates uncertainty for most users instead of the "I know where to find that" effect that most users actually desire.
And manual tagging of files through info boxes? Who has time for that?
All we can say is that we hope Longhorn goes through a whole lot of usability testing before it hits the streets. Meanwhile, we'll let you know how the competition does -- we're upgrading Blackfriars to Apple's Tiger next week.
Long a flash point in competition with Apple Computer Inc., the "GUI" is emerging as perhaps Microsoft's key selling point to Longhorn, scheduled to be released in a test version this summer and to customers late next year. Beyond just changing the look of the software, the interface is designed to work closely with technology that makes it easier to find information on a PC. Microsoft is attempting to use the combination to reduce the complexity of personal computers that now store a growing amount of files and information.
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Files and documents can be arranged in stacks of different heights that give a rough visual cue as to the number of files in a group. In the demonstration, a group of sample files organized under "advertising" are easily seen to number more than "legal" files.
Other tricks to improve organization include the ability to add identifying keywords to files, including photo files, Word documents or other data -- manually or automatically as a feature in new application software. Each file has a pop-up window that displays basic information about the file such as author, keywords and other comments that can be used to search for the file.
We are all in favor of adding visual cues to help users understand what is happening on computers. But Microsoft has a history of focusing on features instead of usability. For example, one of the features currently on Windows that many users find frustrating is menus that continually rearrange themselves to put the most recently used items first. That sounds great to a computer scientist, but ask an ordinary person about the feature, and they'll tell you it makes them feel as if they don't know where to find things. It also creates uncertainty for most users instead of the "I know where to find that" effect that most users actually desire.
And manual tagging of files through info boxes? Who has time for that?
All we can say is that we hope Longhorn goes through a whole lot of usability testing before it hits the streets. Meanwhile, we'll let you know how the competition does -- we're upgrading Blackfriars to Apple's Tiger next week.
posted by Carl Howe at
4:51 PM
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