Windows Vista es sin una duda la mayoría del sistema operativo orientado experiencia del usuario siempre para salir de Redmond. Windows aero-, aunque tan es revolucionario e innovador como Microsoft lo está aplaudiendo para ser, es un nuevo diseño en términos de interfaz utilizador gráfico y perspectiva visual divergente con respecto al sucesor de Vista, Windows XP, para esa materia. Y además del UI gráfico, Microsoft también ha mejorado el proceso de la conexión. Microsoft no pudo entregar el mismo volumen del caramelo del ojo a las representaciones visuales de la conexión como hizo a Windows aero-, pero en términos de detalles pequeños, realmente golpea el punto.

Y discurso de detalles pequeños, hay pares de los pellizcos retorcidos visuales entregados cerca Andreas Verhoeven, eso realmente servirá para pimp encima de su tablero del escritorio. En los screenshots incluidos en el fondo usted podrá observar los detalles agregados con el despliegue de las tostadas de cristal, de Thumbnail Sizer y del cuadro del usuario 3D. Confíeme en, él es las pequeñas cosas que cuentan, y Verhoeven tomó simplemente algunos elementos básicos de Vista y pellizcados les. (más…)

La fabricación de videos del spoof remataría definitivamente la lista de talentos de los empleados de Microsoft. Here’s a dated but rare video staring the infamous (and now disbanded) MSX design team who worked on the Windows Codename Longhorn project.

This time they poke fun at the user experience decision making process for Longhorn, what would become Windows Vista. Starring from left to right, Tjeerd Hoek - design director for Windows, Greg Melander - visual design lead for Longhorn; Cees van Dok - lead product designer; Mark Ligameri - design manager & creative director for Longhorn; and Chris Guzak - senior architect for Windows.

“The shell really doesn’t do that much.”

The Microsoft Update site in Vista has been replaced by a Control Panel applet. To automate the reminder in Vista, you’ll need to set up two automated processes: one for patching Windows, and another for launching a browser showing the Secunia Software Inspector.

Follow these steps to run Windows Update once a month after Patch Tuesday:

Step 1: Choose Start, type Task Scheduler, and press Enter. Click to confirm User Account Control.

Step 2: In the far right pane, click Create Basic Task.

Step 3: In the Create Basic Task Wizard, type the name of your task and (optionally) a description. Click Next.
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You can make Scheduled Tasks run a script that launches Internet Explorer 7 with Microsoft Update in one tab and Secunia Software Inspector in another. I use IE 7 in this example because Microsoft Update won’t run in most other browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox. The technique shown below is adapted from a Windows Scripting Host script published by Tony Schreiner in his MSDN blog.

Step 1. Open your favorite text editor, such as Notepad. Type or paste in the following five lines:

var navOpenInBackgroundTab = 0×1000;
var oIE = new ActiveXObject(”InternetExplorer.Application”);
oIE.Navigate2(”http://update.microsoft.com”);
oIE.Navigate2(”http://secunia.com/software_inspector/”, navOpenInBackgroundTab);
oIE.Visible = true;
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I get so annoyed when I install applications only to find that other programs are installed in the background and set to run automatically at startup, without asking my permission. Major culprits are QuickTime, Adobe Acrobat, iTunes and anything from Logitech.

If you want to stop applications running at startup with Windows Vista, there are two ways you can go about this:

Using the System Configuration Utility: (more…)

Announcing the Windows Live Suite on the same day as the new iPod touch crafted by God himself might not have been the brightest idea, but Windows Live still managed to get some attention by the usual suspects. The hype has been around this unified installer which not surprisingly does exactly what the label says and nothing more. I decided to give it a whirl but was surprised by not what it did, but how.

For those that haven’t tried already, you point your browser to http://get.live.com/WL/ and you will come across this splash screen. At first, it might look like a silly ’sign-up’ form which you must complete to gain access to the downloads, but in fact you’re asked to choose what you want to install in the suite. I thought to myself, “oh that’s neat. I’m choosing what I want to install on a web page.” Then I pondered, “how does this actually work?”

After pressing “Install”, you’re asked to download the installer’s executable. At this point, I started wondering if this executable was somehow dynamically generated or prepackaged to install only the things I selected, nevertheless I hyper-clicked all the next buttons until it eventually started installing. Not surprisingly, it only downloaded and installed the applications I chose. Whatever it did, it worked.

Unsatisfied with “it just works”, I decided to investigate further. I first analyzed the HTML to see what effect it had