In the previous session I walked you through the Longhorn interface briefly and gave a tour of Explorer and also explained the new interface and features that Explorer sports.
Today let us delve further into the features of Longhorn and see more of the amazing features. Since I mentioned about the steep hardware requirements in the 1st part of this series especially the video requirements, let us see what Longhorn has done to make use of this high requirements. As already mentioned earlier, Microsoft is revamping the user interface known as Aero which is not available now in the preview version, but will be available in the final release. So let us have a look at the folder “Photos and Videos”.
Figure 1. Note the Photos and Vidoes link above the highlighted.Contacts link
Clicking on the “Start Menu” and then clicking the menu “Photos and Videos” opens the folder as seen below.
Figure 2. A view of the Photos and Videos folder when it is opened.
Note that it resembles the same look and feel as in the “My Pictures” folder in Windows XP. On exploring further there are a lot of surprises as we shall unfold one by one.
Remember I spoke about the slider bar in the previous section and explained what it would do. Let us adjust the slider and see what the effect is.
Adjusting the slider to the lowest level shows this view as seen below.
Figure 3. The view when the slider is set to the lowest level.
Adjusting the slider to the middle level shows this view as seen below.
Figure 4.
Adjusting the slider to the highest level shows this view as seen below.
Figure 5. The view when the slider is set to the highest level.
Clearly there is a difference how the images are displayed when the slider is zoomed up or down.
Now on placing the mouse over the picture reveals a thumb preview of it in a larger viewer with the size of the image at the bottom.
Figure 6. Note the thumbnail of the image in an enlarged view when the mouse is placed over an image.
Observe the bar below the menu which contains details of the pictures and interestingly enough, we find 2 new entries Dimensions and Lens Aperture. Investigating closely we find that there is a host of new items that are not turned on by default. They can be turned on at the click of a mouse as seen below.
Figure 7. The additional columns which are turned off by default.
Seeing the menu we find that some properties are checked and some are unchecked. We also see a menu item which says More… Clicking this menu item reveals a pop up window which enables to tweak with the properties such as moving the items up and down, showing and hiding the items on the toolbar when the view is switched to detailed view.
Figure 8. The dialog box which allows to customize the view of the images.
When a picture is double clicked in Windows XP it opens with the default picture preview application Now let us see whether there is anything new in the picture preview window.
Figure 9. The picture preview window in Longhorn has been enhanced.
Wow it sports a new look and is all black and definitely the picture stands out in the gleaming black environment. Isn’t that cool. The toolbar has been enhanced with new tools as seen in the picture above.
Let us explore the tools one by one. Sure enough most of the tools are familiar to us and exists in Windows XP. At the bottom you see the thumbnail preview. On the top of the thumbnail preview the tools such as “Best Fit”, “Actual Size” , “Zoom In” , “Zoom Out”, “Previous Image”, “Next Image” and “Hide Film Strip”.
Now let us examine the toolbar at the top of the viewer. Surely enough there are new icons which indicate that they are specific in Longhorn. They are “Select a region” which allows you to select a part of the image for copying, “Crop” which allows you to cut a part of the picture from the original one and reuse it elsewhere, “Fix Red Eye”, “Fix Exposure”, “Undo All”, “Undo Last Action”, “Print”, “Save”, “Open the picture for editing”, “Delete”, “Slide Show” and “Properties”.
Well we have explored a lot today and saw many features that will help a lot when digital photos become the minimum criteria in the next few years. In the next topic we will examine the new tools in the picture viewer in Longhorn.
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"