pdc2008
Report a problem

Windows 7 design concepts & usability tests

Tom Warren   on 29 October 2008 - 19:44 · 16 comments & 14046 views

Advertisement (Why?)
We're just in a session on design practices in Windows 7. Microsoft just demonstrated a usability test where a user hovered over the new taskbar and was impressed so much they just continued playing around with it.

Check it out below:



Next up a design concept for jump lists was shown, an old version that is not going to be shipping was shown from old Win 7 builds:



I am posting this as live as possible so I will add more concepts as they demonstrate them.

Post a comment · Send to friend Comments · There are 16 additional comments
(1 reply) #1 zer0day on 29 Oct 2008 - 19:45
Says the vid is no longer available
#1.1 +TCLN Ryster on 29 Oct 2008 - 20:06
This article is only 21 minutes old and the vid is dead already. lol
#2 nam265 on 29 Oct 2008 - 19:49
no vid?
#3 thealexweb on 29 Oct 2008 - 20:05
Still no working video
#4 limok on 29 Oct 2008 - 20:08
dude, wheres ma vid
#5 Marshalus on 29 Oct 2008 - 20:10
It seems that YouTube had some troubles getting the video processed. We're waiting on it to finish. I apologize for the delay it should be finished soon.
#6 creamhackered on 29 Oct 2008 - 20:13
Sorry wrong link inserted for video, fail. Should be OK now...
#7 Marshalus on 29 Oct 2008 - 20:30
"OooH, it changes color!"
#8 JOHW on 29 Oct 2008 - 20:42
Sounds like the curiousity orb from GLaDOS
#9 Luis.A on 29 Oct 2008 - 20:53
I'm loving the changes. Now if we could have the ability to modify those action panes that would be awesome.
#10 GP007 on 29 Oct 2008 - 22:29
So it seems like the way to open an app again from the new taskbar is to do it through the jump-lists now?

This question was asked in the forum so maybe someone over at PDC knows the answer?

After you've clicked on a pinned icon which then starts the app, say notepad, clicking on that once will then bring it up etc, but what if you want to open a 2nd notepad? Do you have to right-click and then hit "notepad" at the bottom of the jump-list? Or do you like double click on the notepad icon to start it a 2nd time? How does this work exactly?
(1 reply) #11 qdave on 29 Oct 2008 - 23:23
uuuh it changes color. stupid woman
#11.1 gorash on 01 Nov 2008 - 02:27
qdave said,
uuuh it changes color. stupid woman


I think that's a man...
#12 geertvandijk on 30 Oct 2008 - 01:27
GP007: I believe that when you already opened an app and you hover the icon you will directly see previews from all open windows from that app. You hover a preview to make all the other windows translucent (this way you can quickly check which one you're looking for) and click a preview to switch to it. If you click the icon, you start another instance of the application (that's indeed where Apple went wrong, it's not that intuitive in the OSX Dock if you ask me).
(1 reply) #13 lomas on 30 Oct 2008 - 06:37
The icons are too huge..and takes up too much space...

Please make it smaller...

#13.1 GP007 on 30 Oct 2008 - 07:00
You can make them smaller yourself, they showed it at the keynote the other day. Just go into the taskbar options and select small icons.

Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!

Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.

Advertisement (Why?)