It looks like our favorite camera-shy service pack is being hammered by the screenshot paparazzi as every die-hard enthusiast and his dog now has their paws on the Windows Vista SP1 beta which has been leaked left, right and center. I, for one, is not brave enough to pursue such a risky endeavor, so I’m glad someone else with an eagle-sight is scanning every pixel for user-interface changes as well.

From everything I’ve heard up to this point, there are no planned major user-interface enhancements, fixes or even polishes for Vista in Service Pack 1. And so far, that proves to be correct and my expectations remain very low as they should be. However, some of the more vigilant members at the JCXP community have spotted at least 2 interface tweaks worthy to note for the pixel-loving enthusiasts.

The newer Windows Vista alternate boot screen image in SP1. (Inset) Alternate boot image in RTM. Image credit: JCXP.

Most of you should be aware of the “/NOGUI” tweak for Windows Vista which enables the alternate “Aurora” boot-screen splash image. As spotted by “VistaReloaded“, it appears that in SP1, the aurora image has been changed to the same flair used in the “resume from hibernation” splash, with the text “Starting Windows Vista” also removed. This flair is far more consistent with the background image presented during log-in.

(Left) “Sound Properties” in Vista SP1. (Right) “Sound Properties” in Vista RTM. Image credit: JCXP.

The other change, as spotted by “Andrei999“, is an updated slider control in the “Sound Properties” applet to control volume levels. Compared to the traditional sliders in RTM, in SP1, the sliders are presumed to use the newer sound-sensitive volume controls which provide visual feedback on sound outputs as shown by a green equalizer.

It would be great to see Microsoft clean up some of the minor and obscure graphical annoyances around Windows Vista like the “Previous Versions” icon which they failed to check into the final build, but I know thats as high of a priority as removing the 16-bit icons in the systems folder. If anyone’s still hoping for a full UI sweep, stop dreaming.

On the second last day of Microsoft TechEd Australia 2007, everyone was invited to attend the closing party at Warner Brother’s Movie World theme park on the Gold Coast. It was a good time to wind down after two days of 8-to-6 learning. There was free food, drinks and best of all, rides! “Sci-Fi” was the theme of the event. I was too busy having fun so here’s only a very brief overview.

It took at least two dozen coaches to transport no fewer than 2500 delegates and staff to the event somewhat 30 minutes away. Everyone was asked to queue at the convention center from 6:15pm. It was an obvious logistical problem and I’m not sure this was the best solution, but everyone got to Movie World by around 8:30pm.

At the entrance, everyone walked through a somewhat obvious Stargate replica. Standing alongside were some not-so-obvious character actors.

Star-Trek reference on the big screens.

Not too sure what the light projection and smoke effect was intended for, but was still pretty cool.

Food.

And more food.

Everyone having a pretty good time.

Most of the rides were open including Batwing Spaceshot, Superman Escape, Wild West Falls Adventure Ride, Lethal Weapon – The Ride and Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster. Being subjective to motion sickness, I only opted for the Scooby-Doo ride which was an unexpectedly enjoyable. Not spooky by any standards, but had some great dips and corners.

Overall, it was a great night well organized. Hats off to Jack Morton for their events management expertise.

At the Microsoft TechEd 2007 Conference in Australia, Microsoft shook the entire cheezburger industry today when it announced official support for the LOLCode programming language in favor over C#. In an attempt to appeal to younger and more cat-loving programmers. The next release of Visual Studio, renamed to “Cheezburger Studio” will only support LOLCode to increase (kitten) adoption rates. The new LOLCode debugger, dubbed “Cheezburgler” is said to make programming “delicious”.

Nick Hodge was on the show floor giving a quick attendees a quick taste (pun) of LOLCode and Cheezburger Studios.

The announcement, appropriately delivered right before lunch, attracted many attendees looking for a tasty treat.

Nick was giving a quick history lesson on LOLCat, including many real-life imitations.

Nick goes through some sample code to demonstrate the breakthrough features of LOLCode.

Joe Pobar, program manager for CLR (Common LOLCode Runtime), gives his approval.

By the end of the day everyone agreed LOLCode was the future and was impressed to see Microsoft at the forefront of programming technologies.

This morning at TechEd Australia 2007, I attended the “Interface Design Patterns” session by Darryl Chantry, an architect on the Architecture Strategy Team at Microsoft (Australia). A session mostly directed to developed on how they should start thinking about designing application for the user, instead of themselves.

The many and overlapping disciplines of design. Darryl places operating systems under human-computer interaction.

The many ‘approaches’ to tackling design problems. User-centered design is becoming popular, but may not be the most appropriate because users might not know what they ‘want’. Darryl uses the Google homepage as an example of activity-centered design, where the search is the activity and simple search box on the homepage. He adds most developers use the genius design approach, whereas developers define what is right for the users.

Darryl told a story about a scenario at a Microsoft research activity in Redmond. The test involved two groups of users both using a poor quality PC for a week. At the end of the week, one group was asked to answer a survey about their experience on the same crap computer they’ve been using, and the other group answering the survey on another and presumably better computer.

They found the results were at two opposite ends of the scale, where the group who used the same computer for the week and survey were more forgiving about the experience and other group more critical. From the later interview they found out the forgiving group had ‘feelings’ for the computer and didn’t want to “hurt it’s feelings”.

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You’ve seen it on airport monitors, information kiosks, timetable displays and automatic teller machines, and now appearing on an arcade machine near you! I didn’t know arcade machines used real operating system, but apparently this one runs Windows 2000.

For those of you playing at home, the game is “Wasteland Racers 2071” by TrioTech.

“If you were in the middle of something”, say playing an arcade game, your coin is now lost.

On one hand, it’s interesting to see arcade developers utilizing the Windows (and presumably DirectX) platform to develop non-PC games. On the other, obviously it comes with certain risks. I wonder if you can download “Arcade.exe” anywhere.

Frank Arrigo formally kicked off Microsoft TechEd Australia today with an early morning keynote at the Gold Coast Convention Center. He was joined by a bunch of actors dressed as tourists pretending to be discovering TechEd, as a holiday destination. Weird, but I can live with it. Here was the introduction appetizer video teaser.

The featured speaker was Michael Twigg, production resource manager at Animal Logic. If you think you haven’t heard of Animal Logic before, then you’re not alone. Whilst most people have probably come across their work at least once, they don’t receive nearly as much credit as they deserve. I would even rank them alongside Industrial Light and Magic (Star Wars) as the leaders in the digital visual effects industry. Some of their fine work include The Matrix (Original and Reloaded), House of Flying Daggers, Lord of the Ring: The Fellowship of the Ring, 300, and their recent feature baby, Happy Feet.

From what I have heard, some attendees weren’t too impressed with the keynote (speaker). I’m guessing their reasoning is that it has no direct relevance to Microsoft or anything that benefits their professional career, which is what they paid thousands of dollars for. Reasonable. However since I’m here not here to ‘learn’ anything, and being a movie junkie, I was very impressed.

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