rowan.depomerai

Microsoft recently released a public beta of Windows 7, which means you or I can go and download the next version of Windows right now and give it a try. This seems like a great opportunity to see what they’re up to, so I’ve had a quick play and I’ve read some reviews and articles around the web. Now we all know I’m a big Mac fan, so of course I have a habit of noticing the new features which bear a striking resemblence to existing MacOS features. And there are a lot. I thought about writing a post about that, but there were too many to mention, plus it would be pointless; good ideas are worth using, and Apple has certainly ‘borrowed’ features from Windows over the years too. Sometimes it just makes sense. So rather than moan about Microsoft stealing ideas, I thought I’d celebrate one idea in particular which they’ve stolen, because it leads to a big improvement in the usability of Windows. The feature I’m referring to is the task bar, which has undergone quite a radical overhaul in Windows 7. The thing is, some of the more vocal and established Windows fans seem to hate the new design – where I rejoice that it’s much more similar to Apple’s superior Dock interface, they complain that it’s too similar to Apple’s rubbish Dock interface. Hmmm… it seems this could be one for personal preference. Here’s why I like the Dock, and (mostly) Windows’ new taskbar.

The particular Windows comentator I’m thinking of is Paul Thurrott, and his article, Simple vs Easy. He suggests that “Windows 7 is turning into something that is simple, but not easy”, which is certainly an interesting hypothesis. He lampoons at great length Apple devices such as the iPod and iPhone, while simultaneously advocating very Apple-esque solutions to the problem of simplicity versus easy of use; notably starting from scratch, as the Microsoft Zune team did for v2.0. (What, Paul, you mean like Apple did with Mac OS X while Microsoft were still messing around with DOS-based versions of Windows?) I could argue against so many of his suggestions, but there’s no point, and what I want to discuss is the taskbar and Dock.

So enough with the blogger-baiting, on with the analysis. In Windows 95 and all subsequent versions upto and including Vista, the bottom of the screen is populated with a small strip housing the Start menu at the left, the system tray at the right, and buttons in between representing each of your open windows. In a world where multi-tasking meant running 2 or 3 applications at once, it made sense. On a system with a handful of applications installed, the Start menu was an adequate launcher (and incidentally, rather better than anything Apple had in 1995). Then we started to use more and more applications on our computers, and more and more at once. So Microsoft introduced Quick Launch, a set of small icons next to the start button which provided easy access to your favourite applications, yet taking away space from the ever more crowded set of buttons representing your open windows. Finally, in Windows XP, the overcrowding became too much and Windows started to group the buttons for windows of the same application into a pop-out menu for the application. This was sort of better, though it meant many windows became 2 clicks away not 1. And all the while the main indicator of the window contents was text, as the icons are so small as to be virtually useless. Put simply, once you go over a handful of open windows, the taskbar is useless at helping you find the one you want, and something needs to be done to improve it.

Windows vs Applications

In OS X, Apple introduced an alternative called the Dock. Having previously had no system-wide interface element representing open windows and only a drop-down menu of open applications, some hailed this as a rip-off of the task bar. To an extent the Dock probably was inspired by the task bar, though bear in mind its roots come from NeXTStep, a wholly different and now defunct operating system. And despite Mr Thurrott describing the taskbar and the Start menu’s ability to display system-wide commands like shutdown as “firsts”, he neglects to mention that other operating systems such as RISC OS had these features years earlier.

When Appple introduced the dock though, they did things a little differently to Windows. They had a bar which dynamically resized based on the number of icons it housed. As in Windows, it sits along the bottom of the screen (unless you move it), but instead of representing each open window, it displays icons representing applications. And instead of having a launcher area at the left and then a set of buttons for running applications to the right, it simply uses the same icon to represent an application whether it’s open or not, simply adding a little indicator icon (originally a small black triangle, now a glowing blue dot) to show if it’s running. You can add shortcuts to files and directories, and in OS X 10.5 (Leopard) even create pop-out menus of files and applications via Stacks.

And so along comes Windows 7. Guess what? The taskbar now shows an icon for each application rather than each window. And you can add icons as shortcuts to applications, files or folders, then the same application icon is used whether the application is running or not. They even add a little indication (a box around the icon) if the application is running. Sound farmilliar?

Of course, you can revert to the older style if you prefer.

Paul says that, “The taskbar has been simplified into a single panel that does multiple things. So it’s simpler. But comingling shortcuts with window buttons is confusing”. Now here is where I disagree. He continues, “Some [...] icons are ’shortcuts’ i.e. icons representing applications that are not, in fact, open. Some of them, however, are buttons representing open windows”.

Here’s the basic problem with his argument: Why should I care? Yes, some applications are open and some aren’t. If I really want to know, there are clear indicators of this fact. But fundamentally, if I want to use an application, I click it’s icon. Simple. Easy. Whether it is already running or not is irrelevant to me as a user, and in these days of increasing processing power and memory, it’s becoming largely irrelevant to my computer too. Put simply, I just don’t know what he’s complaining about.

Application Menus and Jump Lists

One feature of Apple’s Dock which I haven’t mentioned yet is application menus. When you right-click (or control-click or click and hold) an application’s Dock icon, you are presented with a menu that allows you to perform tasks like making the icon stay in the Dock when the application quits, hiding the application, quitting the application and so on. Additionally, the application menus can display options which are specific to the application in question. So iTunes for example has playback controls, while Finder allows you to open a new file browser window.

Windows 7 lifts this feature directly and without any shame it seems. It re-names these menus “Jump Lists”, which seems odd as Windows pretty much invented the “contextual menu”, which is all these things are. But nomenclature aside, this seems to be a good idea. Paul Thurrott disagrees once again though. He lists the contents of the Jump Lists for a variety of applications, and suggests there is no consistency. Not sure what planet he’s on, as every application seems to list the program name, pin/unpin from taskbar, and close window (or close all windows), along with some extra context-sensitive items, like a history list for Internet Explorer. Seems logical enough to me…

His other complaint is that opening a new window in an application is harder than before.

 

What about when you want to open a new window in, say, Microsoft Word or Mozilla Firefox? To do that[...] in Windows Vista, all you need to do is click the shortcut for that application[...] in the taskbar’s Quick Launch toolbar[...]. So it should work the same way in Windows 7, right?

Wrong. When you pin a shortcut to the new Windows 7 taskbar, [...] you lose the ability to open a new window by clicking that shortcut if another window is already open. So if you have a Word window open and you click the Word icon in the taskbar, it just minimizes (or shows) the currently running window.

 

I sort of see where he’s coming from here. But for me, the old way of doing things is the wrong way. To my mind, if I have an icon on my taskbar for an application, clicking it should show me that application, not start a new copy of that application. Opening a new window is an application-level function, whereas the taskbar is a system-level interface component. Opening a new window should be accomplished in the application itself as far as I’m concerned, and this has always been – and continues to be – possible.

Why I Still Prefer The Dock

So I think we can see that I am much more of a supporter of one of Windows’ key new features than some staunch Windows fans. The thing is though, I still prefer Apple’s implementation, and here’s why.

First of all, selecting an open window from the taskbar is still a 2 click process. If an application has multiple open windows, clicking the taskbar icon for the application reveals a series of thumbnails and I must then select one. See this video for an example.

In MacOS, clicking an application’s Dock icon brings that application to the foreground. What that means is I immediately see the last active window I used in that application, which, let’s face it, is most likely what I wanted. If I wanted a different window, I can just click it (if I can see it), select it from the Window menu or, most likely, use Expose. The latter option is invoked at a keystroke (or a mouse button press if you configure it so), and shows you in thumbnail form all the windows for the active application, or for all applications, depending which key you press. It’s like Window’s “Peek” but more elegant, more impressive and much, much older. See this (rather old) video for an example.

Another reason I prefer the Dock is it utilises glorious high-resolution icons to their full effect, while still keeping the amount of screen space it uses low. It does this by allowing me to resize it (to really quite small if I want) and then use magnification to show me a better view of the icons as I mouse over them. See the screenshot for an example.

Finally, look at the close-up dock screenshot of the Dock further up the page. You’ll see little red balloons showing the number of unread messages in Mail, the new news items in an RSS reader and so on. These ‘Dock Badges’ integrate much of the functionality of the system tray in Windows, but without having yet another separate set of little icons. Lovely.

So there you have it. Windows 7 really does look like it’s going to be a big improvement, and even as an avid Mac fan I can see that. But it’s not good enough to tempt me away from MacOS just yet…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Personal Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.