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Assimilating some of the better bits from the Vista User Interface

Friday 23rd March, 2007


(or: Replacing Message Boxes with Task Dialogs, and other related improvements)

When we first ran Visual Lint on Vista RC1 we were struck by the potential which some of the user interface features of the new OS (notably Task Dialogs, the new style File Dialogs and some aspects of Aero Wizards offered to improve the "look and feel" of our product. At that time of course we had more pressing things to worry about (namely the release of Visual Lint 1.5 and with it Visual Lint Professional Edition) so unfortunately any work in this area had to wait.

However, once the release of Visual Lint Professional Edition was complete we were able to take a step back and look at these issues in more depth. Over the past three months (and alongside the integration of support for eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0) we have been conducting a design study to determine what we could realistically achieve using the Vista APIs in the short term.

The results were pretty straightforward:

The results can be plainly seen in these screenshots of the latest Visual Lint build, which we will be publicly releasing shortly:

One of the new Task Dialogs within Visual Lint, shown here running under Windows Vista.
One of the new Task Dialogs within Visual Lint, shown here running under Windows Vista.
One of the new Task Dialogs within Visual Lint, shown here running under Windows XP
One of the new Task Dialogs within Visual Lint, shown here running under Windows XP.
The Manual Analysis Dialog has had a Vista style makeover
The Manual Analysis Dialog has had a Vista style makeover.
Visual Lint also now uses the new Windows Vista file dialogs
Visual Lint also now uses the new Windows Vista file dialogs.

Of course, there is always plenty more to do; we're only really just getting started with this. As ever the phrase "watch this space" applies.

Posted by Anna at 12:15pm | Get Permalink