Now that we have finished installing Longhorn Build 4051, let us explore the interface and see what are the interesting points that make Longhorn worthwhile talking about.
Figure 1. A screen shot of the interface in Longhorn.
Since Longhorn is in an early stage of development, none of the files have been optimized for speed and hence the startup takes quite a while depending on your hardware configuration and after the initial boot up the screen finally appears as seen above. What strikes the user about the first change that is due in Longhorn is the Side bar that you see in the right hand side with the analog clock.
The Side bar is a big investment by Microsoft and will be the centre of all alerts and notifications that is used by a variety of applications such as email alert, online messenger contact alert, custom system notification etc. Did you observe that when you were working on an application, all of a sudden you noticed that you had accepted the default button of a message that popped up on the screen and you didn’t even get to see what the message was and what it conveyed. With Longhorn all these notifications will now appear in the Side bar and also have an history to retain that can be specified by the user so that all notifications can be tracked down by the user. Items such as Classic tray, Clock, Quick Launch, My Tile, Slide Show, Synchronization are all available in the Side bar.
Now let us see the “Explorer” that remained the faithful utility of most users for the past decade. Most of the browsing of the computer, customizing views, copying and moving of files between devices was all done from within Explorer. Let us see what the enhancements are in Longhorn.
The first view of Explorer is seen below and it certainly has undergone a big change from the past.
Figure 2. A screen shot of Explorer in Longhorn.
The first thing that catches our eye is the header bar at the top of Explorer. The blue button is for browsing backwards and when you navigate further you see a new smaller button appearing next to it and it is for navigating forward much like in a browser. On the right hand side is a magnifying lens which is for Searching among the folders and the Star button is for adding that folder to My Favourites so that it can be opened at a click of a menu item in Explorer much as you would open your favourite web site in Internet Explorer.
Figure 3. The header bar in Internet Explorer.
Below the header bar is the well familiar menu bar that was our trusted navigator in Explorer since Windows 95 but there are some new goodies that have been enhanced in Longhorn. Notice the magnifying lens with the drop down arrow on the extreme right. On clicking it we see that it is a zoomer to zoom the view in Explorer.
On moving the slide up and down the view in Explorer is magnified depending on the position of the slider in the zoomer. Zooming in the current build will reveal the old ugly look because everything is bit-mapped as in the current versions of Windows. Note that as mentioned in the first article everything will be vector based in the final version of Longhorn i.e. whenever the icons are zoomed in or zoomed out they will retain the same pleasant look.
Let us navigate through some of the folders and see if there are any surprises in Explorer. Clicking on some of the folders gives this view as seen below
Figure 4. A view in Explorer when the bread crumb bar is clicked on.
Observe that the header bar shows “Documents and Settings”, but see further that the navigation path to arrive at “Documents and Settings” is revealed right below it i.e. “Computer -> Local Disk -> Documents and Settings”. This gives a quick glance the path to this folder so that navigation backwards or forwards is faster and simpler enough merely at the click of the drop down white arrow next to each word. Clicking the white arrow next to the menu item “Local disk” reveals a drop down menu with a short cut to the familiar locations that we are used with in the past. 3 ½ Floppy, Control Panel, Documents, DVD Drive, Games, Network drive etc… Clicking any one of the item in the drop down menu takes us straight to that location and surprisingly the header bar is updated with the new path.
This navigation bar is called the bread crumb because it resembles the top crust of a bread slice when viewed from the top and on moving the mouse over this location reveals that it is a clickable hyperlink, and when clicked reveals the drop down menu as seen below which resembles the menu that is common in Explorer in the current version.
Figure 5. The drop down menu when the bread crumb bar is opened.
Disclaimer.
"Since the Longhorn version is in a very early stage of development there is no guarantee that the features explained will be there in the final version and is subject to change. This article should be taken only for getting a general idea of what is going to be available in Longhorn and not the actual features that will be a part of the final release of Longhorn"