Windows Longhorn/Longhorn Days

A screenshot of a Windows "Longhorn" demonstration displayed in a Longhorn Days video.

Longhorn Days is a set of Macromedia Director demos created by Microsoft to demonstrate the capabilities intended for the Windows "Longhorn" operating system. The name Longhorn Days is from ReflectiaX, when he shared in 2009 screenshots of the demos.

Videos

Portions of the demos appeared in a promo video for PDC 2003, with "Get the Party Started" by P!nk playing in the background.

Stephen Chapman also made two videos based on these demos. These may be accessed here and here. These demos were also used to generate screenshots for patent filings. See the black-and-white photos in the Gallery.

Demos

Some of the demos are available at the website of Heesung Koo, product designer for the Windows team during "Longhorn" development.

The executable files showing how the Basket tile was intended to function were previously available at here. The .exe files have been archived by the Wayback Machine. Koo's page detailing how the Basket tile was designed to work (with links to the .exe files) is available here. A demo, bin4.exe, could not be opened. ReflectiaX analyzed its contents and concluded, "I think the file upload of bin4.exe died before it was complete and the client wasn't set to resume failed uploads."

Other demos were also available here, but access to this page has since been forbidden. The .exe files were archived by the Wayback Machine. These demos are:

1. bin8.exe - Longhorn Listmaker,
2. burn1.exe - Burn to CD wizard,
3. e2e photos.exe - My Pictures and Videos (the basic functionality of this is in Windows 10's Photos app, though not the user interface and the auto-rotate function),
4. msxday.exe - My Music library,
5. tree1.exe - Longhorn Listmaker navigation.

Other demos, including unused ones, were made available by ReflectiaX and may be downloaded here.

Gallery

These images and their captions were taken from Heesung Koo's website, specifically on his "Longhorn Music & Radio Overview" page, except when otherwise noted.

Acquire

M3

M4 (Partner-WMP) Ownership of specs (per LHMC discussions, next steps are to decide on the actual spec owners and roles for Music, including Acquisition and Playback). Next steps: Drive the specifics. Owner: TonyCh. Usability test planned for grouping algorithm.

— Heesung Koo, Longhorn Music & Radio Overview,

"Insert CD"

• "Since music place is not a physical space we can promote many virtual views. One we promote here is "most recently added" grouped view where cds users have copied recently are populated."

"Automatically copy and play"

• "Whenever users insert a cd our default experience is to copy and play it at the same time. We will provide a cue via countdown mechanism where users are given a choice to select other options. If users let it go, we will begin copying once the countdown has expired."

"Animating currently copy CD in most recently added"

• "Users can see animating CD in most recently added in music library. When users click this album, they can see the detailed status about it."

"Status of copying CD"

• "We want to leverage the preview pane to show progress off copying music to shell library. Here we will indicate Which song is being copied and what the overall copy Status is."
• "The status shows which song is playing and copying and how much time it does remain to finish."

First experience

M3

Designed a place holder null select preview pane.

M4 Define first experience in music library with new frame work.

— Heesung Koo, Longhorn Music & Radio Overview,

"First experience"

• "As first experience, we promote most recently add and music library. Most recently added is based on usage pattern we find songs that recently added in users' library."
• "We want to promote three tasks that we want to bubble up to users. These three tasks are not decided yet."
• "If users don't have metadata for thier CD, how do we want to update thier metadata? do we want to do it forground? or background?"

"Missing metadata"

• "Issue: We consider what the best experience to update and get metadata for music. which experience will be forground or background?"
• "Longhorn starts filling in the blanks for meta-data in your music collection automatically."
• "Missing Album art starts filling in, and a list of recently added music is created dynamically"

"Most recently added"

• "LH music will support auto preset based on users' usage patterns. Most recently added is one of these functions. After we filled up missing metadata, then users can see "most recently added album" from their music library."

Other images

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  Virtual folder - all songs

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  Virtual folder - Most frequent played

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  Virtual folder - all artists 1

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  Virtual folder - all artists 2

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  Virtual folder - all artists 3

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  Virtual folder - all artists 4

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  Virtual folder - all artists 5

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  soundslike view 1

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  soundslike view 2

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  soundslike view 3

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  soundslike view 4

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  soundslike view 5

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  soundslike view 6

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  visual design 2: sound wave view-support rich tool tip when users hover on the object instead of full function of preview pane. If users want to see preview pane, they could change soundslike view to the list view

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  All Albums

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  All Artists

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  Filter 1

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  Filter 2

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  Preview Pane 1

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  Preview Pane 2

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  Music Library

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  Structure

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  Create a playlist

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  Add music I

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  Add music II

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  Add music III

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  Add music IV

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  Add music V

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  Add music VI

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  Add music VII

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  Add music VIII

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  Add music VIII

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  Add music VIV

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  Rename the playlist

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  All playlist place

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  Device 1

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  Device 2

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  Device 3

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  Device 4

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  Device 5

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  Device 6

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  Device 7

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  Audiotron device

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  Send e-mail experience in XP: Users have incosistent emailing experience: Entry point from task in shell, right mouse click, and from mail programs.

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  Send e-mail experience in LH: User will have consistent emailing experience:Entry point from task in shell, right mouse click, and from mail programs.

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  "FIG. 9A is a screen shot showing an open application" (Source: US7669140B2 patent)

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  "FIG. 9B is screen shot showing the application of FIG. 9A minimized in the sidebar" (Source: US7669140B2 patent)

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  "FIG. 9C is a screen shot showing important features available in the application minimized in the sidebar" (Source: US7669140B2 patent)

Implementation

Build 4015 has a playlist maker, the UI of which is similar to one of the images above from Heesung Koo's website.

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  My Documents from build 3706 Media Center Edition, note UI similarities with the images from the demos

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  My Music from build 3706 Media Center Edition

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  My Pictures from build 3706 Media Center Edition

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  My Documents from build 3713, note UI similarities with the images from the demos

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  My Pictures from build 3713

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  My Documents from build 4002, note UI similarities with the images from the demos

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  My Music from build 4002

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  My Pictures from build 4002

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  Stacks in Music Library in build 4008. Note the quick links at the left and compare with the screenshots from the demos above.

External links

• Unseen Windows Longhorn UI Screen Shots - BetaArchive
• More Longhorn UX thingy stuff. - BetaArchive
• Longhorn Director demos - BetaArchive