EnergizeIT in Calgary.

June 24, University of Calgary.

I know this seminar is for introducing Windows Vista which is in its Beta 2 last week.

The first thing I like about the Vista is the Virtual Folder. It's like Symbolic Link in Unix/Linux. In Unix/Linux, ln has been long deployed. Sometimes a file can be saved in different place. For example, a picture can be treated as "Family Gethering" picture, and "2006 Summer" picture, so it can be saved in both folders. That is to say, when I try to find it, it is expected in any of these folders. But I don't want to make duplicate of it, because that will waste my harddrive space; and if I want to add a waterprint to the picture, I have to do it twice. That's the situation that Symbolic Link can be used. We put the picture in one folder, and put a link in another folder; double click the link can open the file. Looks like Shortcut? No, it's very different from shortcut. At least, in the thumbnails, you can't see the picture of a shortcut.


Second, The Gadget bar can put some small applications. No matter how big your screen is, Microsoft can help you to make use of it. I like the running clock. :) Also, in some gadgets I saw the familiar symble of RSS , so I assume I can put any RSS feed, and it can display the news from that feed.

IE 7+ is the default browser of Vista. Tab Browsing (of course) is the biggest feature. Yes, in Tab Browsing, Microsoft has something new. It can make thumbnails of all the tabs. It can be helpful, if you have more than 20 tabs running, and you forget which one you want to look at.
The speaker also talk about the search engine problem. Last month somebody claim that the MSN search engine is built in the IE, so it's not fair to other search engine. The speaker showed us how easy it is to use other search engines, such as Google. When I was listening, I was thinking if I can still make custom search engine, such as Baidu MP3, BT download, Ciba as I made for Firefox.
About security, IE7+ provides 2 techniques. 1, Other browsers only judge a website by the existence of security certification. If the certification is existed, Firefox and IE 6 display a lock . But IE7 look at the certification to see if it is provided by a trusted site. If it is from a trusted site, the address bar will become green. Sounds interesting? 2, Microsoft maintain a whitelist and a blacklist. When user visits a website which is in the blacklist, she will get prompted. This is Microsoft's way to fight the rampant phishing activities. Many listeners asked questions about the whitelist and blacklist: How to get in the lists, and how to get out; Do we need to pay? What I concern is: We don't trust a commercial company to maintain such lists. Will Microsoft transfer the list to a non-commercial organization?