Since the release of Windows 7 in October 2009, Microsoft has been working on new technologies, culminating in the release of (codename) Windows 8, expected in late 2011/early 2012. With fierce competition in the form of Google Android and Apple’s Mac OS and iOS, Microsoft must fight hard to stay relevant in a rapidly changing industry. So rapid, in fact, that predicting the success of Windows 8 isn’t at all easy at this stage, in comparison with the Windows 7 pre-release beta which showed genuine inspiration and truly outstanding performance improvements over it’s predecessor, Windows Vista.

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What we’re looking at today then, is a near-to-beta build of Microsoft’s next OS, which seeks to fulfill a long term goal of Microsoft (since the early eighties) and that is to unify the mobile, desktop and enterprise versions of their OS. Up until now there have been various re-iterations of Windows CE, the desktop Windows NT, and various server flavours of Windows, tailored for different processor architectures. With ARM support, Windows 8 seeks to unify all phones, tablets, desktops, servers and datacentres with a single kernel, offering a single udate pack with possibly even a single service pack.

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Microsoft commented last year that Windows 8 will be their ‘riskiest bet’ – it’s becoming easy to see just why.

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Godammit, let me see some screenshots!

Alright, alright! For this Article, Windows 8 build 7979 has been installed in a Virtual machine with the following specs:

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CPU: 1GHz single core
RAM: 2048 MB
Graphics: 128MB 3D Hardware accelerated

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Note this article will exclusively cover features related to Desktop use of the system, not touch UI elements, which are mainly for mobile devices. What you’ll see here is the Desktop UI, Welcome screen and window elements. Touch will be documented in a seperate article.

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The ISO can be downloaded from the regular sources, and consists of a Windows 8 WIM image, packaged inside a Win7 install, since the native Windows 8 installer doesn’t exist yet.  This means that the installer identifies itself as Windows 7, which has led to much confusion and reports of fake torrents.

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Upon completion of setup, the following screen prompts for Regional and keyboard settings.

Figure 1. Finalising the install

Note that ‘Microsoft Confidential’ replaces the usual Windows 7 logo. At this point, one more restart is still required before we get to see the desktoppy goodness in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Desktoppy Goodness!

Software locks are in place that prevent any of the experimental new features (touch UI, new task manager, logon screens and ribbon interface) from being enabled unless special registry keys are installed on the machine. Normally these keys are only provided to senior Microsoft staff, certain special developers, and sometimes media partners. This is to prevent any buggy or ugly applications from conflicting, and also serves to prevent a ‘bad image’ of the software to fickle early testers.

Figure 3. RedPill enables locked features

These developer registry keys are provided by a hacker tool called RedPill in Figure 3.… (link to latest version)

Figure 4. New Welcome screen

Upon restarting, we’re greeted with an all-new Welcome screen (Figure 4). Windows Live integration is discussed later in this article, and may play a part here.

Figure 5. Broken Task Manager

Looking at Figure 5, Note the window controls appear different, more like the ‘Windows basic’ theme, yet window borders maintain their transparency.

The new Task Manager is obviously completely broken at this stage, apart from the ‘more information expander a the bottom of the window…

Figure 6. Not-so-broken Task Manager

… which reveals an all new Task Manager (Figure 6)

Figure 7. User Panel

The Taskbar now has a LOT going on (Figure 7), now displaying the time and date, as well as a user image, featuring a ‘user menu’ in what appears to be very pre-beta white square with links to ‘User Accounts’ in the Control Panel.

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The permanent little image in the bottom right is used to represent the currently active user, and will presumably tie inwith Windows Live services such as Messenger, and the newly purchased Skype. Google searches on Windows 8 also reveal that SMS (text messaging) services are built-in to the core of the OS, so keep an eye on this little square in future builds. The options here are ‘My Settings, My Look, Switch User, Log off and Lock PC’

Figure 8. User Images

‘My Look’ prompts the user to select an image (Figure 8). Right now this is identical to the ‘Logon image’ feature from Windows XP, and it remains unclear if there’s actually any more planned for this at all. As previously mentioned, various cloud features will presumably plug in to this interface – Windows phone services, Skype, Messenger, etc

Figure 9. Lock-screen Gesture

Figure 9 shows another all-new feature – the ability to set a ‘lock-screen gesture’ – anyone with an Android device will recognise this immediately.

Figure 9. Multi-touch keyboard

Figure 9 highlights the shortcut in the bottom right for ‘Tablet PC Input Panel’ – this a feature carried over from Vista (originally Windows XP Tablet edition from 2005) but with a Windows Phone twist. Yes, that’s an all new multi-touch keyboard, and again yes, that’s a dedicated ‘smileys’ button :-o !

Figure 10. 'My Computer' Ribbon

Looking at Figure 10, you can see that ‘My Computer’ has changed a bit too – gaining the infamous ‘Ribbon’ for finger prodding, rather than mouse clicking, although this of course works too. The masses will be divided on this one, as it requires sacrificing screen real-estate for functionality on tablets (which is really what this is all about)

Figure 11. Windows Genuine Center

‘Windows Genuine Center’ (Figure 11) will supposedly be more resiliant to piracy, including the widely-used BIOS SLIC emulation. Little information is known yet on Windows Activation 3.0 technologies, which will replace v2.2 from Win7.

‘History Vault’ (Figure 12) mirrors Apple’s Time Capsule, automatically backing up all Windows 8 machines on a network to a Network attached storage device (NAS) or external hard-drive. Core OS files can be restored completely seperate from user files, allowing a so called ‘push button reset’ which will install a fresh copy of Windows, and then migrate all user documents and drivers. Computer engineers and especially network admins will save loads of time here.

Figure 12. History Vault

And that about wraps it up! more Windows 8 Articles to follow soon, including a documented analysis of the Touch interface for mobile devices, thumb controls, location-aware services, and more!

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Here’s some suggested reading:

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MinWin

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinWin

Visit the ‘Puppeteer‘ page for more information, and to download.

Thar be Pirates! is a multiplayer map for Settlers II  10th Anniversary.

Supporting 2-5 players in an arid environment, with a large number of resources in the  middle area, players 1 and 2 fight downhill, players 3 and 4 fight uphill. You’ll need a lot of  foresters and catapults to avoid being forced back to the start position.

Fully tested in Single player Skirmish mode and multiplayer LAN and Online

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..Download

Windows 7 is great, but it has an annoying ‘Show Desktop’ button in the far right. For people who use multiple monitors (like myself) Aero-peek is a horrid hindrance, not helped by a small button in the lower right, which is all too easy to mouseover by mistake….

Read on after the break for a one-click tool to remove this chunky waste of space.

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‘Windows 7 Show Desktop button  remover‘  :

w7sdbm.zip (82KB)

Screenshot

Remember to Right click and Run as Administrator

Here’s how it looks without the annoying button:

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/* A quick vbs that will measure and report Windows boot-time.

by Rufus Pearce - www.mothdesigns.co.uk */

Option Explicit

On Error Resume Next

Dim Wsh, Time1, Time2, Result, PathFile, MsgResult, MsgA, AppName, KeyA, KeyB, TimeDiff

MsgA = “Please close all running applications and click on OK.”

KeyA = “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RestartTime\”

KeyB = “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\RestartTime”

AppName = “Reboot-Time”

Set Wsh = CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)

PathFile = “”"” & WScript.ScriptFullName & “”"”

Result = wsh.RegRead(KeyA & “Times”)

if Result = “” then

MsgResult = Msgbox (MsgA, vbOKCancel, AppName)

If MsgResult = vbcancel then WScript.Quit

Wsh.RegWrite KeyA & “Times”, left(Time,8), “REG_SZ”

Wsh.RegWrite KeyB, PathFile, “REG_SZ”

Wsh.Run “cmd /c Shutdown -r -t 00″, false, 0

else

Wsh.RegDelete KeyA & “Times”

Wsh.RegDelete KeyA

Wsh.RegDelete KeyB

TimeDiff = DateDiff(“s”,Result,left(Time,8))

MsgBox “Your computer reboots in ” & TimeDiff & ” seconds”, VbInformation, AppName

end if

wscript.Quit

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This script has been tested on Windows 2000, P, Vista & 7

When Windows Vista was introduced, I liked the new refined start-menu. Coming from XP,, it was refreshing and it felt all new not having the big green childish ‘Start’ button – prior to that, all we had was a plain grey rectangle.

With the release of Windows 7 in October 2009, Microsoft revised the taskbar again, yet did not retain the Vista-style as a legacy option. This article will explain how to achieve exactly this.

A brief history of Windows Themes

Windows XP 'Luna' Theme

Windows XP was introduced in 2002, among the features touted was the ‘theme engine’ that featured a (by now all too familiar) blue and green colour scheme with chunky buttons. This was known as the ‘Luna theme‘ and was enabled by default (see image left)

Various themes were released by Microsoft and made available for download, but these files were distributed in MSI or EXE installers with signed digital certificates. Only themes carrying valid Microsoft-signed certificates were allowed to be installed. This method ensured that no rogue third-party themes could be installed, potentially compromising the security of the host system.

Theme Packages and system DLLs

In simple terms, theme packages themselves are just collections of bitmaps which define portions of Windows UI elements such as the start button, taskbar, even window borders and button colours. If you’re familiar with skinnable applications like Firefox or Winamp, the concept is the same.

As mentioned earlier, a theme package (in .dll form) has the potential to compromise the security of a host system if that theme package was written either poorly or maliciously. Because of this, Microsoft digital signatures are enforced by three system files:

themeservice.dll ….. located in Windows/system32
themeui.dll …………… located in Windows/system32
uxtheme.dll ………….. located in Windows/system32

in Windows XP, this signature-enforcement was overseen by the single file uxtheme.dll (located at the same path) and is why the patching proedure is referred to as ‘uxtheme patch‘ even though we are dealing with 3 files today.

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I toyed with the Win7 taskbar for a while, but ultimately decided that I didn’t like it, and changed the taskbar settings to ‘use small icons‘ and ‘never combine‘ but I still hated the ‘pure glass’ and it just didn’t look as sleek or as sexy as the vista taskbar was.

So, replacing the Windows 7 taskbar resources with third-party ones requires patching of the above DLLs to bypass the digital-signature check.

For the purposes of this tutorail, we will be using a pre-made tool called Universal Theme Patcher for Windows by deepxw (website here) which will patch the necessary files with three clicks:

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UniversalThemePatcher

Download the file

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Right click and Run as administrator.

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If your OS is 32bit, you need the -x86 version
If your OS is 64bit, you need the -x64 version

The program will prompt you to patch the 3 system files. Just proceed and click the ‘patch’ buttons in the far right. When all three files are patched, you *must* restart your computer before proceeding.

Following a restart, the patched files have now been loaded into RAM, and the following archive can be downloaded, and the vista theme resources can be extracted. Below is the Theme Download and a screenshot of the archive:

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VistaAeroTheme

Click any image to view the fullsize version.

December 2010 snow storms hit the UK hard, and Cardiff was no exception.
Here are some panoramic photographs (approx 7000 pix width) taken of notable scenes…

Cardiff University

Millennium Stadium

Cardiff City Stadium

View of the stadium from Leckwith park

View from the North Stand

Lord Mayors House

Gordon Hall university residence