Windows Vista – Post 5

Development of Windows Vista in Mid-2004 to Mid-2005 (Part D)

I was quite busy so I could not come to post since last week. This post is the part of the series I have stated about “Windows Vista”.

As the time was moving on its wheels and delay in the release of Windows Vista, it made a click on the memories of Vista team that they are losing sight for what it needed to release to the world. Some of the members of vista team started to describe Longhorn as “Cairo.NET” project , which never resulted in shipping (But ended with Windows 95 and Windows NT.)

On the front page of the “The Wall Street Journal”, on September 23, 2005 an article published in which some of the answers had been given which had been interview to Jim Allchin, Microsoft Co-president. He was the person who was responsible for the development of Vista. But the answers were not sufficient to focus on the subject “when the development will end”.

Allchin had to decide the next step. In the last of month of 2003 Allchin added two other senior Brain Valentine and Amitabh Srivatava to his team, former experienced with shipping software at Microsoft, most notably Windows Server 2003 and the other spent his career in researching and developing methods of producing high-quality testing systems.

A new team was build by Amitabh Srivatava who started to map-out the Windows Operating System. At that time most skilled engineers and developers were working on Windows Server 2003. It was decided to reset the development of Longhorn, building on the same code which was being used for Windows Server 2003, instead of Windows XP and the decision was announced to Microsoft employees on August 26, 2006.

Longhorn "D1"

Build 5000: As it was decided that the next code for the development of Vista would be the same coder used for Windows Server 2003, was in use. Build 5000, was the first build based on Server 2003 code-based, and completion date was September 8, 2004. But he interface was Windows XP.

Build 5048 (built on April 1 2005) was the official WinHEC 2005 preview build, described as the Longhorn Developer Preview, and made available to WinHEC attendees on April 24 2005. It was the only build from this time period that was made available by Microsoft; it was not officially distributed outside of WinHEC, but the build quickly appeared on file sharing networks. The Aero visual style made its first appearance in this build, and the Desktop Window Manager was present but disabled and hidden by default. At the keynote presentation, Bill Gates also announced that many of the WinFX developer APIs that were originally planned exclusively for Longhorn were going to be backported to Windows XP and Server 2003, and that the final user interface for Windows would not be seen for a while longer. Other features such as device-independent resolutions, rasterized icons, virtual folders, and registry virtualization were discussed as well.

Build 5048's closer resemblance to Windows XP than to the prior Longhorn builds from 2003 surprised many, leading well-known Windows enthusiast Paul Thurrott to write: "My thoughts are not positive, not positive at all. This is a painful build to have to deal with after a year of waiting, a step back in some ways. I hope Microsoft has surprises up their sleeves. This has the makings of a train wreck." Months later, Thurrott stated that the Vista development process has since recovered in the more recent builds.

Windows Vista - Post 4

Vista Review: Development of Windows Vista in 2003 and early 2004: New technology (Part C)

Milestone 4
Build 3718 was completed on November 19, 2002. After that for long time there was no sign of activity from Microsoft. But Microsoft was on its way to work. Next year, on February 19, 2003 Microsoft completed its next build – Build 4008. Like others which made its appearance on net in the first week of March, 2003. The Build 4008 was confidentially handled with selected group of developers. Some evolutionary features had been added to it, adding with a modified blue – Plex – theme, new simplified Windows Image based installer that was capable to operate in graphical mode from the outset, and complete an install of the operating system in around on third the time of Windows XP on the same hardware. A thinner taskbar than the previous build had been added to this new build which displayed the time differently.

Milestone 5

The next milestone for Microsoft was Build 4015, which was completed on March 28, 2003 and of course was leaked to internet on 28th April, 2003. Some new feature added to this build was (a) range of parental controls (b) additional configurability for the sidebar and (b) notion of libraries (virtual folders) of files. These libraries collected text or content from around the hard drive and the use could filter the content and save it to his/her desired folder. Initially Microsoft wanted to drop some special shell folder like My Documents, My Music, My Pictures etc., buy these change were dropped after the release of Beta 1 in mid 2005.

At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) conference in May 2003, Microsoft gave their first public demonstrations of the new Desktop Window Manager and Aero. The demonstrations were done on a revised build 4015 which was never released. A number of sessions for developers and hardware engineers at the conference focused on these new features, as well as the Next Generation Secure Computing Base (previously known as "Palladium"), which at the time was Microsoft's proposed solution for creating a secure computing environment whereby any given component of the system could be deemed "trusted". Also at this conference, Microsoft reiterated their roadmap for delivering Longhorn, pointing to an "early 2005" release date.

Build 4028 (build date of July 1 2003) was the first known Server build before Beta 1, and was based on Windows Server.NET RC1, which later became Windows Server 2003. Traditional client bits, such as visual style and look, were present but disabled by default. Build 4029 (build date of June 19 2003), was leaked on September 23 2003. This build contained few of the technologies new to build 4015. Windows Explorer went through a number of other changes. Larger image and video previews were displayed in a tooltip when the mouse hovered over a file, column-level filtering of results was introduced, and overall performance of Explorer was somewhat improved over build 4015, though the memory leak issues were not entirely resolved. There was also a new analog clock user interface. Batch image processing of images was also introduced, making it possible for a user to rotate a number of images at once.

Build 4029's name was displayed as "onghornLay rofessionalPay" (Pig Latin for Longhorn Professional) in various places around the operating system. While some had presumed that screenshots of this build were fake because of this seemingly obvious mistake, Microsoft later explained that this was merely a test of some new code to locate and reduce the number of places in the operating system code that the name was defined.

Milestone 6

Build 4033 (build date of July 17 2003) was similar to 4029, but contained some UI improvements, including an updated Plex theme.
Official PDC 2003 build (build date of October 1, 2003 with a build number of 4051) was not released to the general public, but it did leak on October 20, 2003. It introduced a new Slate theme. Some visual changes included:
Added the Documents folder, for sharing documents with other users.
Added the Photos and Videos folder, for sharing pictures and videos with other users.

My Contacts was replaced by Contacts.
My Computer was replaced by Computer.
My Network Places was replaced by Network Places.
Build 4053 (build date of October 22, 2003) was leaked on March 2 2004 and had some minor changes.

Milestone 7

Build 4074 (build date of April 25 2004) - Official WinHEC 2004 preview build. Leaked in May 2004. This build introduced a new Jade theme, and replaced many XP icons with new Longhorn icons. Also, the font Segoe UI was introduced for the Jade theme.

Build 4083 (build date of May 16 2004) - Leaked on November 10 2004, and was the last leaked 64-bit XP-based build. Both Sidebar and WinFS were dropped from this release. Considered highly unstable, including the absence of programs in the start menu and driver and installation issues.

Build 4093 (build date of August 19 2004) - The last leaked 32-bit XP-based build. Considered highly unstable. Contained Sidebar, WinFS, and an Avalon-based Windows Movie Maker.

Windows Vista - Post 3

Software Reviews: Development of Windows Vista in Year 2002 – (Part B)

Windows Vista is the name which revels the truth that everything is created by GOD. At the beginning even Microsoft did not think this grand release. Microsoft wanted to change some feature for XP and release Longhorn (code name of Windows Vista) as the intermediate between its next coming grand operating system. When XP was released the marketing policies and public relations were more focused on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, which was to be released in early 2003 and Windows Server 2003 was released in April, 2003. Simultaneously the development of Longhorn was on it secret way. But in the mean time some builds of Longhorn were leaked on some most popular file sharing networks, some of them are IRC, bittorrent, edonkey.

For these builds at the bottom-right-corner of the desktop there was a label, just like “Build 3683.Lab06_N.020923-1821” and it was the key by which it was recognized. The build number has some secret meanings. The build was made by different research teams, on completion build was tasted by developers and after tough examination it was added to main stream software. The lab from which the related build was generated, the come number was added to the build followed by date and time. Below I want to snatch your couple of minutes for these milestones:

Milestone 1

Build 3646: The first know build for Longhorn is “Build 3646” and it as was built on 12 June 2002 with build label "Lab01_N(portbld).020612-1346”.

Milestone 2

Build 3663: The Build 3663 was completed on 28 July, 2002 and was the first build for which screenshots were leaked. It was the first sighting of the "Plex" style which Microsoft regarded as a place-holder theme for their development versions, until they were ready to demonstrate Aero. Screenshots of Build 3670 (build date of August 19 2002) also showed a variation of the Device Manager implemented inside Windows Explorer.

Milestone 3

Build 3683: On 23rd September 2002 the next Build 3683 was completed but like others it was also leaked on 20th October 2002 but it was the first build which was leaked to internet, also it was the first Build with working tile “Longhorn XP Professional”.

Build 3706: The date of formation is October 29, 2002 and was leaked on May 22, 2006. Yes May 22, 2006. It was finally leaked on May 22 2006. It was one of the initial builds having Desktop Composition Engine (DCE) and Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) features.

Build 3718: Build 3718 was the last build for the year 2002. It was completed in November 19, 2002 and was leaked on April 20, 2004. It was incorporated with the Desktop Windows Manager features and some early hardware-accelerated Aero effects, such as alpha transparency and transitions.
In the next coming articles I will write about the development of Windows Vista in the year 2003-04.

Windows Vista - Post 2

Software Reviews: Development of Windows Vista (Part A)

You would be thinking that with the name “Development of Windows Vista” why I have added “Part – A”, only because I wish to publish more about the development of windows vista. First of all let me tell you some code names for windows operating systems:
Windows XP : Codename – Whistler
Windows Vienna : Codename – Blackcomb
Windows Vista : Codename – Longhorn

I have said already in my previous post that the development work for Windows Vista was started in May 2001, five and half years back, before the release of Windows XP. Then why Microsoft did not release Windows Vista before XP. It is all nothing but Market Policies. Microsoft wanted to release XP and then Windows Vienna in late 2003. Whistler and Blackcomb were the codenames for Windows XP and Windows Vienna. Windows Vista was then called Longhorn. The motto was to release Longhorn as a pool between XP and Vienna. Means it would have some new features comparing with XP and then after Vienna would be released worldwide as the final operating system.

But God wanted something different. Gradually, Longhorn (Windows Vista) assimilated many of the latest technologies and new features which were slated for Windows Vienna and it resulted, the delay of Windows Vista for release few times. On August 2004, Officially Microsoft announced that it was making significant changes to Longhorn and it would take some more time to be released.

The development of “Longhorn” stared afresh, from the beginning. This time Windows Server 2003 codebase was being used for Longhorn. Due to this reason Microsoft has to postpone some of its previously announced features such as NGSCB and WinFS.

Longhorn was named “Windows Vista” in mid of the year 2005. Simultaneously unprecedented beta-test program was started and it was involved with thousands of volunteers and hundreds of companies. Microsoft released regular Community Technology Previews for one year between September 2005 and October 2006. Development of Windows Vista was finalized and its completion was announced on November 8, 2006 by Jim Allchin, Co-President of Windows Development.

Though this post I have just given a structure for development of Windows Vista. In the next coming post I will write in some details and years wise about the development of Windows Vista.

Windows Vista - Post 1

Sorry, for delaying in posts. Now-a-days I am very busy with some of new projects for official purposes, and not getting time to sit on my personal desktop and post new posts. Anyway, I remember one of the readers, author of the blog http://mia76.blogspot.com/ posted a comment on my post http://gadgetcraze.blogspot.com/2007/02/itunes-not-working-on-window-vista.html, and she wanted to know the difference between Windows Vista and Windows XP. Then I did not know what to answer. I searched for, read other posts and software reviews and come to conclusion that in just only one post I will not be able answer all. So from this post with regular interval of time I will post my articles for Windows Vista. All of the post will have the same subject Windows Vista - Post _ _ , only the numbers will change at the end. I am also going to add an extra link at the top of my blog for Windows Vita, naming MS-Vista, and all related post will be with this link. From Microsoft Windows, Windows Vista is the latest operating system which will be used on PCs, both for business and home desktops. Its development work was started in May 2001, before the release of Windows XP. So it takes 5 years for manufacturing. Before release, “Longhorn” was the code name for Windows Vista. The development work finished on 8th of November, 2006. In the beginning it was not released to general public, and was give to some authorized Microsoft customers and manufacturers. Windows Vista was released worldwide on January 30, 2007, and was made available in market and users were allowed to upgrade their operating system online with Windows Vista by Microsoft’s official website http://www.microsoft.com or MS-Vista. Microsoft claims hundreds of new features for Vista over XP. Some of them include Windows DVD Maker, improved searching features, new multimedia creation tools, visual style, Windows Aero and graphical user interface. Moreover according to Microsoft, Vista will make it easier to share digital media and files between computers and devices. Vista also claims that with 3.0 of the .NET Framework, it will be help developers to write high-quality applications. Vista’s primary objective is to improve the state of security in Windows operating system.