UIEye

Excellent and indepth look at the changes made to the UI of Windows 7 between Windows 7 beta to Windows 7 release candidate over at arstechnica.

Windows 7

I must say that these UI reviews by arstechnica are quite complete.

Nice little story over at ArsTechnica showing the Office 2010 technical preview screenshots that have been leaked.

They mention one of the biggest changes being the blue orb is no longer a menu, it opens up a dialogue. It seems that they have finally gone for greater consistency throughout the suite of products but considering their Microsofts poor reputation for consistent interfaces I will not be holding my breath.

Its now available:

http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2009/03/18/download-expression-blend-3-preview.aspx

Haven’t got much to say about it yet as I am just downloading it as I type this.

Interesting because of the subject matter but also because of the UI work done. I can’t see all their visions working in the near future, but some things we are already seeing today.

<object width=”400″ height=”220″><param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” /><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always” /><param name=”movie” value=”http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3732475&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1″ /><embed src=”http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3732475&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”400″ height=”220″></embed></object><br /><a href=”http://vimeo.com/3732475″>Microsoft Sustainability</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/tipodgraphic”>Alvaro´C</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.

SecondLight can project images and detect gestures above the display meaning the UI is no longer bound to the display surface. 

It also supports multitouch gestures on the surface.

More at http://www.research.microsoft.com/sendev

Interesting little video posted on MSDN’s channel 9 giving tips and tricks for Microsoft Expression Blend 2, mostly for new users of the application.