The Windows GUI Experience

Posted by Oscar Meade in February 4th, 2008

Posted in: Blogs

Today, the Cairo Development Team announced they’ve reached their first milestone in the development process of their Windows shell alternative. Ever since I laid my eyes on a computer I’ve been interested in human-computer interaction since it has the most profound effect on the users perception on how they work with a system.

I remember watching my dad tinker with Norton Commander, a text based user interface for DOS back in the late 1980’s. It seemed like a gigantic hassle. When we made the move towards Windows 95 I can distinctly remember the headlines all over the news, and the lines of nerds back then waiting to get a copy. I had the chance to toy with a copy (Microsoft Chicago) before it hit the shelves and I was awestruck. In retrospect, the GUI made Windows 95 not an evolution of DOS and Windows, but a revolution in computing.

Fast forward to today, in a world of Aqua, Luna, and Aero the game really hasn’t changed much. Inelegant methods of bypassing system files and third party GUI customization programs are aplenty but the standard desktop remains the same.

When screenshots and leaked copies of Longhorn hit, I was excited about the route Microsoft was taking with the GUI and confident that the world class designers and the user experience personnel were on the right track. Watching Jenny Lam on Channel9.MSDN.com describe the reasoning for migrating to a transparent interface along with other eye candy seemed reasonable at the time. Heck, after Apple originally had a transparent menu bar in the early versions of OSX and subsequently dumping it, they’ve now returned to it in Leopard, so Microsoft is doing something right!

But for the most part I feel that because Vista was rushed to meet deadlines, we were left with a haphazard user interface experience across the entire OS. Unbalanced, lacking continuity, and overloaded with redundancy and ugliness. Perhaps with more time we would have gotten something that was truly revolutionary than evolutionary.

I’m not saying Microsoft totally screwed the pooch. I think they did some great stuff with the interface. I’ve bought into the transparency and clarity philosophy, but I need something to tide me over until Microsoft gets big with the desktop. Cairo aims to do this by “redefining” the desktop experience. Currently it looks more or less like a fancy WindowsBlinds alternative, but if LiteStep and BlackBox have shown, there is a demand out there for someone to do the Vista GUI right. Coding in C# allows the team the flexibility to really do the GUI justice and pick up where the MSX team left off.