A Glimpse Into Windows 7 Milestone 2

section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 15.8.2009

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From the first ever Windows 7 builds to the RTM, the widely praised OS that recently hit the RTM development stage sure has come a long way.

Between the many under the hood changes that improved stability and performance greatly over its predecessor, to UI improvements that improve productivity such as the revamped taskbar and Aero Snap, a lot of work was put into engineering 7, and evidently, what we see at the RTM stage wasn’t put together overnight.

Many builds were compiled at Redmond, and the features were slowly constructed and improved on until they became what they are today. It’s difficult to really catch a glimpse at Windows 7 while it’s being baked in Sinofsky’s oven, and many builds are yet to escape Redmond. While a Milestone 1 build (6519) and a Milestone 3 build (6801) leaked to the public, Milestone 2 was locked away in the vault.

Rafael managed to get a good look at the Milestone 2 superbar and he showed it off sandwiched between the M1 and M3 superbars. This post inspired me to go further into the rabbit hole and see more Milestone 2 goodness, and with the help of Rafael Rivera and Chris Holmes, I did just that. It’s worth noting that, for irony’s sake, this build of Windows 7 was bootcamped on a Mac Mini.

Milestone 2 is really a mash of Windows 7 and Vista together. The superbar consists mainly of a white gradient, with the start button/quick launch and system icons area having a 6519-esque gradient. Any toolbars (such as Quick Launch and the Windows Media Player toolbar) will occupy the black gradient area. You can also find the show/hide desktop button, which also triggers Aero Peek in this build.

You can also tell by the superbar’s clarity design-wise that Microsoft was drifting away from the “darker” design of Vista in favor of one that’s “lighter”. Something else that’s worth noting is that in this build, Aero Snap was much snappier, so to speak. The moment the window is dragged to the left, top, or right side of the screen, it snaps without there being an Aero glass preview showing the space that the Windows will occupy. In this build, the ribbon was not yet implemented in any of the Windows apps.