Unseen Windows Longhorn UI Screen Shots

[ReflectiaX]

Greetings all,

Some of you may remember me, but if you happen to have no idea who I am, you will soon enough. =) This is just a little teaser of things to come over the course of time. If you love Longhorn, I hope to stir your excitement back up as I know those were the best days to be a Windows enthusiast (well, for me, at least). Enjoy!

MSX "Longhorn Days" High-Resolution Demo Screen Shots
(Click each image for a larger version)




















-Stephen

[AviK]

WOW. Didnt see those before, thanks man.

[Kenneth]

Very interesting, even though I'm not really a LH guy.

[betaluva]

nice to see you again Ref, as usual, you pull a surprise out off your hat


#you probably dont remember but i was the second person to contact you when you asked for people to help you create OSBA, i was using my iexbeta screen name then - Betaman2003

[ReflectiaX]

Happy to be of service!

Yes, I do recognize your old ieXbeta name, betaluva! Those days seem like so long ago... hahaha. After all that time, though, I'm just glad I've been fortunate enough to be an integral part in what has blossomed into something way beyond my contributions from way back then. All I'm really interested in these days is sharing with everyone... Though I must say, I'd honestly like to build my pre-LH collection back up since I've long since lost what I had due to hard drive crashes and the likes, but, yeah... for those who were (and still are) as into Longhorn as I was/still am, I've definitely got some cool unleaked stuff to share!

These days, I'm seeking the really impossible-to-find stuff; such as one of the legendary Windows 97 compilations (essentially Windows 98 but most shell references said Windows 97), one of the actual Windows Neptune discs that were mailed to the select few testers, and similar impossible-to-find items. lol.

-Stephen

[PortalCake]

Man, those LH screens were awesome. Wonder if the source .fla files are still available somewhere on an old USB drive.

[ReflectiaX]

Man, those LH screens were awesome. Wonder if the source .fla files are still available somewhere on an old USB drive.

I've kept all my LH stuff backed up in numerous places all this time, so about the only things I've lost are like all the PDC 2003 presentations that contained all the images MS didn't want people to have. lol. They realized it quickly and corrected which versions they had up on the site, but... I've kept all my crashed hard drives to get professionally fixed one of these days when I can afford the cost (these have crashed beyond the old wives tales of freezing your HDD to get it to run for maybe 5-10 minutes and software that corrects issues). Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to make the whole demo available; just images. To note, it's about 700MB worth of prototype LH UX/UI goodness.

Just wait until I post some high-resolution images of Hillel Cooperman's PDC 2003 flash demo (the one he gave in his session, not during the keynote). That one's about 1GB of Macromedia flash stuff.

-Stephen

[jimmsta]

And now I understand your tweets from last night

[ReflectiaX]

And now I understand your tweets from last night

[angelwolf71885]

very nice...
i didn't think anyone actually had the flash file demos

and welcome back to the forum

[IsaacD]

Thanks for sharing, man.

The amount of concepts and Alpha work they did back in the Longhorn days were just brilliant, I just wish they could of implemented some of the UI work into Windows 7, but alas Windows 8 is coming along so maybe they will pull some old ideas out and implement them, it might be a pipe dream, but you can only hope.

Longhorn wont be Resting in Peace anytime soon, it's an addiction worse then heroin.

[ReflectiaX]

Thanks for sharing, man.

The amount of concepts and Alpha work they did back in the Longhorn days were just brilliant, I just wish they could of implemented some of the UI work into Windows 7, but alas Windows 8 is coming along so maybe they will pull some old ideas out and implement them, it might be a pipe dream, but you can only hope.

Longhorn wont be Resting in Peace anytime soon, it's an addiction worse then heroin.

No problem! Yeah, man... it really is amazing how much work went into the UI of Longhorn. In all honesty, I don't think we'll ever get a moment quite like that again. I mean, that was the paradigm shift for Microsoft's user interface. That was the time where they were just going nuts with all these crazy UI ideas and... seriously, that's why I don't think I'll ever enjoy a Windows development phase as much as I did Longhorn. But, I'm a user interface kind of dude, so... that speaks for itself.

I don't know if they'll ever make it out, but at last year's PDC, there was an all-day Windows 7 session held for select invited press (I wasn't one of them, unfortunately) the day before the conference started. Steven Sinofsky was one of the guys who presented and he showed some Windows 7 UI concepts. I was shown a couple of them via pictures taken, but they were shaky cam shots, so I didn't get a good look. I'm not sure if you caught it or not, but I landed a Windows 7 UI animation concept video and posted it on my blog a number of months ago. I added a sound clip to it and a goofy picture of myself at the end of the video, lol, but if you haven't seen it, definitely check it out: http://uxevangelist.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... early.html

Here I am rambling on, though. Long story short, I'm really excited to get back into the Longhorn stuff and it's nice to see that you're still into it too, man.

-Stephen

[angelwolf71885]

i like those concepts cept for the start menu it looks goofy on the start menu

[ReflectiaX]

i like those concepts cept for the start menu it looks goofy on the start menu

Yeah, that's one of those things where you can tell that was UI conceptual work coming straight off of completing Windows XP. Later revisions were absolutely better. =)

-Stephen

[SLAYERMAGGOT]

Wow, these screenies are stunning

[IsaacD]

I'm not sure if you caught it or not, but I landed a Windows 7 UI animation concept video and posted it on my blog a number of months ago. I added a sound clip to it and a goofy picture of myself at the end of the video, lol, but if you haven't seen it, definitely check it out: http://uxevangelist.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... early.html

Here I am rambling on, though. Long story short, I'm really excited to get back into the Longhorn stuff and it's nice to see that you're still into it too, man.

-Stephen

Yup, I caught it, it was a great clip to watch, I was amazed at the effects of the animated Start Menu and others, my jaw dropped at it, such a pitty we wont see it any time soon.

Now that would be something great they could put in, even if it's just a user selection option not set by default.

[adun]

Can you upload a screen of the "actual Windows Neptune discs", that would be very nice
it is Build 5111 ?

[Rob Jansen]

It was posted here on the forum some time ago but a search did not came up with it, but I know it is here.
And the actual disc, no cracks or anythings has also been on server here for sometime.

[Hackerpcs]

That animations are REALLY good, I wish they were in Windows 7. I feel a real jerk when I ask for unleaked stuff, so I'll just say upload them when you feel it is the time.

[tristan]

Ooh man, i never knew there were such HQ screenshots of this.
thank you so much!
I also like your blog very much, you are really making alot of work of it.
Keep us posted, i really really like your work!

I'm still into all the old longhorn builds, keep installing them on my notebook to mess around with them, trying everything to enable the nice effects (even found working drivers for my 8400m gs for longhorn, there is only one that works xD, gone through the whole laptopvideo2go collection on the forum).
Can't get enough of it!

[Emir214]

Nice! I thought these high-res shots would never see the light of day. I saw a low-res shot once of the My Music window. If I remember correctly, these were the same concepts that appeared on the "Longhorn" teaser for PDC 2003 (the one with the song "Get This Party Started" by Pink). It's also nice to see that Windows DVD Maker was already a concept back from 2003.

It's also nice to see someone who has been in the community for a long time (Stephen from AeroXP - Am I right?). Looking forward for all those "Longhorn" memories - especially those Flash files (.fla).

EDIT: Also looking forward about the "Neptune" details from the other topic. Anyway, do you still have the pictures in the first post of "Stephen's happy-happy, joy-joy thread!"?

[hounsell]

Wow, stunning. Probably my favourite concept of all the longhorns (I'm definately a Plex person ).

Great to see them, certainly making me think about where to take my 'protoPlex' theme for 7.

[moonlit]

I have to agree that Longhorn was probably one of the most interesting and exciting Windows development periods, though I think Chicago and, to a lesser extent, Whistler were just as important. Nice to see a familiar name back, and I love the thought of the interest in Longhorn sparking up again, I'm going through some of the builds lately because I concentrated more on collecting the most puzzle pieces I possibly could rather than actually playing with them. What I'd really like is an entire collection of running VMs (can we get some proper graphics support please?!) so I could boot into any period in the Windows timeline as if it were present day, though that's a heck of a job. Definitely a nice thought though.

Here's to Longhorn, long may it continue to surprise and amaze, and let's hope Windows 8 (and Windows Mobile 7) bring even a fraction of the awesome it did.


Edit: Oops, helps if I actually respond to the topic at hand: The screenshots are really quite nice, definitely something I would've like to have played with, a weird mix of 3xxx, 4xxx and 5xxx in there. The Windows 7 stuff you posted is also interesting, and shows how far the polish in the UI development has come since early Longhorn, I do agree with your post in that I think some of the effects would probably be a little excessive during day to day use, but it's great to see the effort going into working out how this stuff should look, and it seems like there's plenty of ideas floating around even now.

I can't say I really have any idea where things will go from here on out, and that's a great thing, anything new will be something of a pleasant surprise.

[ReflectiaX]

I'm glad to see that so many of you are up for reliving the Longhorn dream, so to speak. Hopefully you will all enjoy whatever I can over the course of the next however long. Working on completing a high-resolution video of part of the actual demo those screen shots above came from. Will be posting that soon.

-Stephen

[PortalCake]

Of course, most everybody here loves Longhorn.
If that build ever existed it would probably be in the 39xx's.