Vista making a mess?

[KimB]

But that's of course completely incomparable to what can be achieved in Vista.

Well, I'd sure hope so!

For one, I'd like to see some nice productivity effects, like, for example, something similar to the application switcher in OSX (which automatically shrinks all open windows so that you can see them all and select the one you want).

 

[ChronoReverse]

I'm curious whether the Classic mode will revert the old GDI+ methods or whether it'll use 3D acceleration in a more subtle way (probably GDI+ fallback). Even so, I'd rather run the GUI in 3D accelerated mode. There's no reason I can just use a "Classic Look" skin that only shifts whatever it can onto the GPU.


Incidentally, I don't see for CAD applications why WDDM can't simply specify viewports. You'd imagine a newfangle graphics layer would abstract that and let you have as many virtual "screens" as your hardware can take. It might not be as quick, but it shouldn't be that much slower either.

 

[Diplo]

I wonder what a 3D accelerated desktop will do for heat and noise? Currently most high-end graphic cards clock-themselves down in 2D (desktop) mode and reduce fan speed. However, if everything is accelerated through GPU then will there be any difference between running games and apps?

 

[ChronoReverse]

I wonder what a 3D accelerated desktop will do for heat and noise? Currently most high-end graphic cards clock-themselves down in 2D (desktop) mode and reduce fan speed. However, if everything is accelerated through GPU then will there be any difference between running games and apps?

I worry about that too but I'm also fairly sure that even the low-power "2D Mode" should be sufficient for the desktop GUI. At least I hope not. Snazzy as Aero Glass looks, it still shouldn't eat the equivalent GPU resources of Doom3.

 

[KimB]

I wonder what a 3D accelerated desktop will do for heat and noise? Currently most high-end graphic cards clock-themselves down in 2D (desktop) mode and reduce fan speed. However, if everything is accelerated through GPU then will there be any difference between running games and apps?

Well, the high-end accelerators where heat and noise is more of a concern shouldn't have to run in full-speed mode just to accelerate the GUI.

 

[PeterT]

For one, I'd like to see some nice productivity effects, like, for example, something similar to the application switcher in OSX (which automatically shrinks all open windows so that you can see them all and select the one you want).

Erm, the Window Switcher I talked about all the time is actually something like a stacked Exposè, but it doesn't shrink the Windows so much and tilts them a bit instead. In some ways that's worse than the apple solution, as you only see part of some windows, but it's also better because it preserves "depth" information.

Here's a screenshot (not by me, I also made some but can't find them now ) of it in action:

 

[KimB]

Yeah, I don't think that's quite as useful as the OSX solution, even if it is prettier.

On another note, I'd absolutely love to see some significant improvements to the UI in Linux. I haven't seen any significant changes to X (at least in the standard distributions) since I started using Linux about five years ago (though in many respects the Linux UI was better than Windows even back then).