Windows 7: meet on clothes

Judging by the many reviews on the network, daredevils who downloaded and installed the beta version of Windows 7 are mostly pleasantly surprised. Your humble servant also joined the ranks of the daredevils. I confirm: it’s nice to work in the “seven”. But, since the authors of other reviews wrote a lot about different new features, I will allow myself to insert my five cents on our profile: about the visual design of the interface.

Perhaps the lazy one didn’t scold the previous version of Windows, including for its appearance. Even if you do not take into account notebook retrograds that consider the blue panels of Norton Commander to this day an unsurpassed interface masterpiece, there are enough dissatisfied with the visual style of Aero. Some are annoyed by the transparent frames of windows, others by the ubiquitous glare a la Apple Aqua, others by the saturated ink shadows of the windows.

“Why did the designers do so much?” They ask and include the gray theme of Windows Classic. The correct answer to this question (although we would not want to admit it): because they could .

New technical features in the visual design of interfaces are similar to loaded guns hanging on the wall. They must shoot, and preferably kill someone. Can I make windows transparent? Bang bang! You wear. Can you add complex textures (this shotgun has already been fired, but it is multi-shot)? Bang bang! Are there any injured? In the infirmary. Can windows now appear and disappear smoothly? Bang bang! Has anyone hurt anyone? Well, this is an accident.

And only then, having consumed all the charges and waiting until the smoke blows out, you can recalculate the losses and try to correct all obvious excesses in future versions.

This is not a new story, and it will be repeated at every turn of technology development.

Apple designers can now mock at their colleagues from Redmond, but this is only because they were removed from their technological shackles a few years earlier, and they already managed to clear up all the striped horror that they painted for Mac OS X 10.0 .

So, the visual style of the Windows 7 interface is an evolution of Vista's style . A chance for designers to prove that they are not bruised from childhood on their heads, but simply when working on Vista they had a little dizziness from the opportunities they had acquired. Let's see what happened in the end.

Let's start with the Start menu:

Windows 7

Windows Vista

We see that before there were two white “islands” on the menu bar, but now they are merged into one. Due to this menu it looks a little easier. In addition, the menu and taskbar are now not so uncompromisingly black (in any case, by default). Now they have the same color and degree of transparency as window frames.

Also notice the shine around the round Start button. In Vista, only the window control buttons (Minimize, Maximize, Close) had such a glow.

Windows Explorer pleases us with a light blue toolbar. Now he is not so distinguished from the general background as the old log of the color of the sea wave:

Windows 7

Windows Vista

The column headings have become even simpler, although the former can not be called overly intrusive.

Windows Media Player has completely transformed:

Windows 7

Windows Vista

If you look closely, there are not so many changes, but the interface, rid of contrasting elements, looks much easier. The “cloudy” texture on the background also contributes to the airy impression. In this realm of peace, only the album covers and the Play button stand out (but this is the main button, right?). By the way, note that the main control buttons are no longer on a transparent background, as before.

For "sweet" I left the superbar. We will not talk now about its significant differences from the taskbar and about new features. Look better at how the button illumination works when you hover over the mouse. Not only is there a different color for each application, so it is also lively !

This seems to be a brand new shotgun. It shot Windows 7 for the first time and hit me in the heart, and in a good way, not like usual. Ah yes well done, here are the entertainers!

So, there is progress. Even if the visual design of the interface does not undergo any changes in the final version of Windows 7, already done enough to admit: it has become more pleasant to look at Windows .