Note -- you can click on each picture for a larger version of it. I use a 1600x1200 resolution, so the screen shots are rather large.
This picture just shows a few Explorer windows as well as Trillian running. I changed my desktop background to something other than the grass, but it's another stock image.
This shot shows RB 2005r2 running in Vista. And not that I don't trust you guys, but I blocked out the screen names of coworkers just in case. :-P In case you're wondering what project that is -- it's our regression test suite.
Now you get to see the form editor and the new look and feel to the various widgets in the OS. My personal favorite is the progress bar. It's shiny. :-P One of the bugs I fixed yesterday was the one where DrawInto was drawing the wrong theme on Vista, so this was just my test project to make sure everything has the new UI.
This ugly beast is IE 7, being run as an FTP client, uploading the screen shots to my FTP site.
Speaking of ugly beasts, this is the atrocious Windows Media Player 10. :: shudders :: It also shows the new look and feel for the Start menu.
Well. Some of the UI widgets look great. And yeah, some things look like a complete ripoff of RedHat's BlueCurve UI. I don't think some of the window framing is all that hot. And I don't think I like how they redesigned some of Explorer's look.
It would be nice if Microsoft had written the Presentation Manager (did I get that right?) so that it would theme all applications/windows/etc that ran in it. Nothing more I hate than applications running in WinXP that have a Win2k look. So if that's the case with Vista, I'll pout :P
I can't say I like IE7's redesign either. I guess it won't be that bad as long as I can switch it back to look like IE6. I don't like the way they implemented tabbed-browsing though. I'm guess that the blank one on the right is to make a "new" tab. That looks silly.
I hope they give a the user a lot of control over appearance in the final build. I would love if they give us the option to make it look like XP if we want. Also would be nice if we could skin the OS ourselves, without needing tools like Stardock's ObjectDesktop et al. Do they allow you to turn off certain special-effects and such to increase performance? I know I was peeved that XP needed 256MB just to run at a somewhat decent level for regular users, 512MB to run well. I'd be several miffed it I need 512MB just for the minimum requirements (and yeah, I can already here the chants of "but RAM is so inexpensive these days", but I think a well designed system should use as little RAM as possible).
Overall, looks great (with a few exceptions). But that's just *my* opinion :P
Wow... quite a change. I almost expect the active Radio button to blink at me. ;-)
I am guessing that applications without a manifest will still not look themed in Vista. It still uses the uxtheme manager, and so I'm fairly certain the rules haven't changed. And you're right, it's ugly that apps don't always look the same. However, I think they did it for backwards compatibility so that older applications don't suddenly start behaving differently.
I gave up on IE7 and use FireFox. Wayyyyy too many issues with IE7 (which I will blog about in the near future). And you're right, the thing on the right is the new tab button. Which I constantly hit to try to close the rightmost tab. :-P
Right now, it uses the same theme engine as XP, so you can make new themes for it, but it's not the easiest thing in the world to do.
I'm sure I'll blog about my gripes with the UI as time goes on. I'm just giving the OS a fair chance before tearing into it. :-P
@Phil -- the active push button does blink at you, but the active radio button does not. ;-)
The controls still look like they were made in 5 minutes. Single pixel gray border, and some text. Weee!! The push button looks alright, but text field looks pretty lame, don't you think?