Microsoft bins Vista 'scrap metal'

By Steve Malone

Posted on 11 Jul 2006 at 11:23

Bowing to user pressure, Microsoft says it plans to change the 'Basic' Vista appearance, following complaints from beta testers that the Basic UI is ugly.

In the Windows Vista Team Blog, Vista Community leader Nick White admits the developers have heard the complaints 'loud and clear' and plans to improve the design before final release. However, the company is not yet giving a firm date when the new appearance will turn up in the beta cycle.

At issue is the new interface technology called Aero. By moving much more of the graphics processing to the GPU built into most modern PCs - as Games designers have done for some time - Microsoft has been able to create some of the graphics trickery, such as Desktop Composition, Glass window frames with coloured glass, window thumbnails and Flip3D, in the new UI that we have come to associate with the Macintosh interface.

Microsoft says that the Windows Aero functions are present in most versions of Vista including Windows Home Premium, the Business versions, and Ultimate, and will work providing you have meaty enough hardware. On Home Basic, you get Desktop Composition with opaque coloured glass windows frames.

Anyone who does not have a display driver capable of running WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) will get the Windows Vista Basic theme, which does not benefit from some of the more graphically intensive features such as desktop composition and glass window frames. However, many testers of the Basic Theme complained that the basic grey metallic theme was unattractive and dubbed it 'scrap metal'.

Vista tester, Brandon LeBlanc, who first broke the news of the design changes even before Microsoft announced them, is still not happy. In a further posting he had remarked that he is unimpressed by 'the way the maximize, minimize, and close buttons are so small. I also dislike how thick the borders are and how there isn't any real transition from the application into the window frame'.