Microsoft is clearly hard at work tinkering with the Windows 7 codebase to prepare it for the first release candidate. The firm already outlined 36 new and altered features back in February, and now Microsoft is back for another round in a recent blog post.
The most interesting thing about this new batch of changes is that many have been implemented at the request of a few small, vocal users. I don’t think I can recall a time when anything has been committed to a Microsoft codebase at the request of a blog user, much less a horde of angry nerds (web devs? IE loves you). Check it:
On one of the blog posts, GGreig summarized what we heard from several of you—“Invert Selection; that’s a useful – sometimes absolutely invaluable – little piece of functionality, and I definitely don’t want to see it go…Please reinstate Invert Selection.” Given the feedback from enthusiasts, we added back the functionality for RC.
Or how about Microsoft commenter Bentronic’s comment?:
Bentronic wrote, “It’s nice that there’s a little close button on the thumbnail previews–why not have a similar button for when it’s showing as a list? Being able to run down the list clicking the close button instead of right-clicking would be great.”
So happens that feature is now in the newest RC builds:
For RC we’ve made the list view architecturally the same as the thumbnail view, just sans thumbnails. Customers will now enjoy close buttons and the menus open on hover (in Beta one had to click to open them).
In all, Microsoft has outlined more than 25 enhancements to drivers, device installation, device management, the UI, and Windows explorer. All of these changes have been made in direct response to feedback gleaned during the beta test of build 7000.
Does anyone else find this level of developmental interactivity and transparency to be wildly uncharacteristic of Microsoft?
Articles RSS