[BusinessTeam] experimental MS UI

Message-ID: <6B75EF096AE0BE428B8CEDEA89C5F6327822BC@exchange01.lab49.com> · Thu Oct 19 14:57:29 2000 UTC

DesktopX goes public
By:  <mailto:andrew.orlowski@theregister.co.uk> Andrew Orlowski in San
<mailto:andrew.orlowski@theregister.co.uk> Francisco
Posted: 18/10/2000 at 07:31 GMT

DesktopX - half of Stardock's attempt to recreate Microsoft's lost Cairo
project - was publically unveiled today in alpha form for widespread
download.

Ever it since it was burned by the failure of the Bob project, Microsoft
has been cautious about throwing new UI paradigms at the great unwashed.
DesktopX not only does this - with a vengeance - but smuggles in the first
end-user scriptable object framework we've seen since OpenDoc. It's very
gracefully subversive, and has the potential to do for Windows what
Hypercard did for the Mac in the eighties.

What's slightly surprising since we last looked is the quantity of useful
objects that are available. DesktopX objects don't just look purty,
there's one that controls WinAmp, another that's a visual biff for
checking your mail, and another that's a replacement drive icon that shows
free disk space as a pie chart.

Most of this has been achieved without programming - all the user has to
do to create their own is to call up a template and start filling in the
blanks from dialog boxes. A browser is not far behind, says Stardock CEO
Brad Wardell. "That should be possible in a few hundred lines of code," he
claims. It's still early days and the objects haven't really begun to
interact with each other.

So what doesn't it do? Well it doesn't fix any of Windows' underlying
problems - terrible hardware latencies for multimedia, registry bloat,
security ... we suspect you know these pretty well. But that would hardly
be fair, as it doesn't claim to. It isn't cross platform either, and there
are no plans to implement it on non-Windows operating systems.

However it's a idea bigger than any one platform, and extremely well
implemented, and so Stardock could benefit from tolerating the kind of
benevolent reverse engineering that AOL and Napster demonstrated with ICQ
and Napster the client.

Of the many impressive ideas floating around Linux GUI land, none makes
the break with the Mac/Windows metaphor, although as a development
exercise, writing cross-platform DesktopX objects would be far from
trivial.

A few rough edges remain too, and on release could benefit from some
wizards, and very clear "what do I do now?" signposts. Corporates will
almost certainly want the ability to turn disable many of the add/modify
object functionality - they're too damn easy to get to (which of course,
is the point).

As we noted when we first heard of the project, it could prove to have a
major strategic influence on future Windows, as OEMs have been dying to
take the "user experience" into their own hands for some time, and one of
the proposed DOJ remedies put limits on Microsoft being able to prevent
this. But as the Microsoft trial heads for the appelate court, with every
prospect of a mini trial rerun stretching well into next year, that day
won't come anytime soon.

It's version 0.50, although Stardock.net subscribers have been treated to
early previews. Windows 2000 users get a revamped task list, and
alpha-blended objects. Wardell doesn't expect a release before the end of
Q2 next year. Stardock plans to rewrite configuration files in XML, so if
the Windows goalposts move, it'll be easier to move DesktopX with them. 

Luke Flemmer
VP Strategic Ventures
nano
phone: (212) 402-7870
fax:      (212) 430-6374
www.nano.com <http://www.nano.com/>