lzim

The following was edited with the Word Web App on SkyDrive (skydrive.live.com)

Which even corrected facebook and itunes.. hmmm..

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So you know.. Windows Live Essentials? that stupid thing that includes Messenger, Photo Gallery, Sync etc?

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Windows Live Mail (garbage)
Windows Live Messenger (needs to be a tab in IE)
Windows Live Photo Gallery (awesome) and Movie Maker (IE needs library function, movie maker as a stand alone app needs to die)
Windows Live Sync (awesome since it finally allows more files per folder and app settings sync)
Windows Live now offers Web Apps based on Microsoft Office (should be useful, but are garbage)

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You know Google's Chrome OS that's something like a Chrome browser with tabs for applications?

Why doesn't MS have a tab for system properties in IE? Why aren't options (which are just links to control panel windows, available IN the IE application as a page?)

Like the one System page could easily reduce the difficulty of navigating the control panel for obscure settings AND give you a search option to quickly find a certain setting that you want to change but can't find using the classic control panel.

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You know (but you probably don't because it is near useless) you have a SkyDrive if you have a Live ID with Microsoft with 25 gigs of online storage? And they offer Web Apps like Microsoft Word so you can open documents in Internet Explorer and edit them?

I would ask who even has that kind of non-private data that they don't mind loading up into the Windows Live SkyDrive cloud? Many people who have photos and stuff that they want to be able to share and access at a moments notice from any connected device that supports Windows Live.

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For a while it has been bothering me that some of these applications and services just don't work well at all, or as stand alone applications or just because they have no connection with other Microsoft apps and services. Also that Photo Gallery and Movie Maker are now joined at the hip. I passionately hate Movie Maker but have come to require the cropping feature of Photo Gallery and generally like how feature rich and easy to use the Photo Gallery application is compared to My Computer, Windows Media Player and Movie Maker.

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All these things have finally come to a head. That they are all so separate and they mostly make no sense as independent applications with horribly different formats (how they deal with files), design philosophies (how they look) and functionality (how they work, and how well they work based on system limitations, hardware acceleration, 3rd party plugin support, and other Microsoft policies that nonsensically apply to some programs and not others).

They all need to work together, look the same and be efficient. Chrome OS wasn't enough inspiration by itself, not the way the broken Word web app versus Office Word just pissed me off a couple of minutes ago.

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So what's the plan?

A Microsoft Window.

Like why aren't Office applications one application with tabs for those features you want to use? Are they that different that they need their own window/application? And why are there so many Microsoft applications and features that need different windows when they do the same thing, some very badly and some very well.

If the Microsoft Windows Live team want to link all the Live Essentials service applications into one feature of windows (with check boxes for the ones you want), that isn't bundled into the OS but can easily be downloaded.. what's better than integrating all these applications and services into Explorer 9?

or Windows 8, Internet Explorer 10 since Windows 7 is somewhat still too old school, and Internet Explorer 9 is already the usual crap in progress that won't solve enough problems and will introduce new headaches.

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Like.. there's no reason for Office, Live Essentials and the Explorer apps (My Computer/File explorer and Internet Explorer) and Windows Media player which should be part of Windows Live, to have different GUIs and for them to behave differently but still try to do the same things.

Office's Word, Excel and whatever other Office applications you want to use, ARE almost one application theme shared in a suite. Certainly having them be stand alone makes things work more efficiently, but wouldn't having them in one window when both apps or more are needed at the same time? Like having Word and Excel open? as tabs in the same window, wouldn't it be more efficient than two standalone applications?

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Windows Live Essentials is taking that idea but ruining Photo Gallery and Movie Maker.. by doing the same stupid thing it did with Windows Media player and it's Gallery/Library/Guide that aren't in the same window.

Why? This is so stupid since the four apps, Photo Gallery (which has a library view, photo viewing and editing view, video viewing view but no editing, music playing support but no editing, etc), Windows Media Player Now Playing (which doesn't do anything well), Windows Media Player Guide/Library (old clunky and ugly compare to Live Essentials applications) and Movie Maker (must die) share so many of the same features. How is one app, one view, and tabs not more simple and efficient?

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Personally the features of movie maker should be folded into Photo Gallery which is a much better application, for starters. But why isn't Windows Media player and its crappy Library application not part of Live Essentials yet? I mean it is nonsensical for what is becoming a comprehensive Live Essentials suite, equivalent in relevance for the consumer as Office is to the workstation for being a useful comprehensive suite, why have Windows Media player still bundled with the Windows OS when Live Photo Gallery does almost everything Windows Media Player can (minus media guide which no one with iTunes needs) but so much better?

The three, media player, photo gallery and movie maker should be one application for viewing and editing photos, music, and movies and allow the user to easily organize them in ONE library feature. Wouldn't it be simpler to manage these features as one application instead of releasing new versions of what's become a very old one (Windows Media Player, effectively only updated when Windows is updated). Just look at how often new Live Essentials 'Waves' are released and how much better the suite of apps are with each update.

But to go one step further, why isn't Live Essentials a browser experience itself? Chrome does have limited in-browser media support thanks to plugins, as do many other browsers.. but Internet Explorer with a library feature (for sharing your photos music and movies, which is a feature of windows media player missing from Live Essentials, more nonsense), would work very well as an interactive tab in internet explorer.

You really have to try controlling someone else's Windows Media player with Play To to appreciate why Windows Media Player still has any relevance at all. Plus Media Center folded into IE would make that garbage feature actually be useful... if for nothing else than allowing it to support browser games and web browsing with full hardware acceleration without breaking the Media Center experience.

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It is something that My Computer has had for a while in its invaluable rich media player preview feature, but does it really get used that much? Instead of opening photo gallery or windows media player, you can preview photos, music and movies in my computer. Why do you need Windows Media player at all? because rich preview is a plugin.. and a nerfed one compared to either Photo Gallery or Windows Media Player.

So... if you have an IE window open anyway, wouldn't having that folder navigation and content preview with editing be easier?

And isn't previewing online content as streaming flash videos easier than downloading? If that feature was added to SkyDrive then you could preview non-private videos easily and share them, comment on them with messenger as a vertical tab in IE (so it can stay open while you browse the web), or a floating frame on every webpage (if you use Facebook's messenger you might understand this concept easier).

AND since the (Office) web apps are somewhat useful.. why not make them totally useful by integrating Office into IE also.

Like.. besides the active desktop itself, the taskbar and system tray, what else does Microsoft actually give you as services and with Office Suite that should operate in a window (as opposed to a tab in Explorer)? something like calculator, registry editor?

A Microsoft Window, one that looked new, for the first time in.. well ages since the windows aero feature doesn't count as an upgrade, that included all the live essentials as tabs you could optionally download (no longer standalone applications), Office apps that still required licenses but that could be downloaded for just the tab you want, like Word, and Excel, also behaving like Web Apps instead of stand alone applications, but working as efficiently as the stand alone apps, and not just toys, or candy apps that don't do anything to help power users and employees at a workstation. And better local and network folder navigation with support for previewing and editing music photos and videos.. Somehow it seems like it would be so much easier to deal with and manage for Microsoft AND the end user.

What bugs me though is why IE8 and Windows Live Office web apps don't function like their stand alone applications. Is it the fault of IE running in windows, or above it, without access to run services and access hardware accelration etc.. can't Microsoft make apps that use all system resources? IE9 should be able to make these things run better because it has hardware acceleration functionality.. but about tabs running their own services.. too dangerous considering how dangerous activx controls are? If that's all it takes great a certain about of user awareness keeps the wrong controls from being installed and allowed to run. Put Live Essentials into IE as a test run, phase 2, since Office Web Apps in IE8 work, just like crap.

It would be interesting to also have a cleaned up start menu that dealt only with non Microsoft applications that are designed to run offline and locally because it wouldn't make sense to have them run with connections to cloud services. Maybe I'm just not able to think of any at the moment besides file management and resource management apps like Virtual CD applications. A file sharing tab only makes sense as an extension of a download manager. Isn't Sync a file sharing app? I love it and it works. Why is it a standalone application if it requires a network connection to be useful?

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It's just too stupid to run Microsoft crapplications offline if you have a Live ID and already store non-private data in the cloud (SkyDrive) and have an interest in Web Apps. While certain MS crapplication are perfectly useful but their features are highly redundant across several applications for no reason putting them into IE keeps them available as tabs while streamlining features into something easier to manage. Somehow I get this picture of the Microsoft Window being a mini VM that can run any application, on any OS, attached to cloud storage and the user's settings. Something that ideally would allow you to simply load up your user experience on any computer, even a Media Center like Xbox (which is me intentionally stabbing at the uselessness of that platform).

It would also be hard to keep calling it IE if it started to focus on local and cloud data files and services, not just access to online services like web pages. Hence the Microsoft Window.

Where everyone that uses a computer, at least these days, does so to access the internet. The IE interface is far more familiar than the ancient My Computer windows interface. Browser are what we use computers for and Windows isn't adapting to that familiar interface.

And having tabbed folder navigation would be so welcome because it is something that should have been included since Windows 95 but is still missing from the core user experience.. My Computer is just so useless if you have to have more than one folder open... when you can look at IE with tabs (along with all kinds of 3rd party software), or Live Essentials' Photo Gallery's library view that lets you view your files in a context, and easily change that context based on what you want to view or manipulate while still being objects with properties you can modify.

Why is this important? Touch computing is also a growing interface which Windows does little to support with all it's tiny menus and billion crapplications sharing features that is hard enough to interact with using one pointer.. let alone 10 pointers (each finger on a touch screen), your voice and gestures.

It boils down to Windows has so many redundant features across so many useless applications, and a needlessly complicated interface, that adaptation and simplification should be easy, it should be the number one focus, but it isn't. It would make the user experience so much easier and enjoyable though.

desktop icons = bookmarks (clean desktop)
start menu = no redundant windows crapplications
system tab = better control panel interface
folders and apps = tabs (and groups of tabs or their content shown as objects in a page like Photo Gallery's Library)