Furan's Avalon article

Thanks for sharing with us.

I am really looking forward to this longhorn alpha presentation later this month!
They will reveal the new Aero interface and people will get an early longhorn alpha preview version.
I wonder if they finally made a design/theme that can compete with macOSX. But the new technologies have huge potential and If MS will not take advantage of it I am sure stardock will.
Damn, I bet you can even add Shader effects to your Desktop
Imagine glassy windows with realtime refraction/raytracing effects *drools* Okay maybe I am too optimistic

I consistently follow Longhorn development, and Avalon/Aero are going to be superb. Paul Thurott, who runs WinSuperSite.com, has loads of up-to-date stuff about Longhorn, and some excellent Aero screens. The thing I am most amazed about is that in Paul's article, he said that during a conference an MS exec loaded 3 separate windows of a Star Wars triailer and spun them around simultaneously, and the CPU monitor didn't even notice. That kind of power is going to be incredible for the further advancement of skinning and customization. The GDI+ base is just a limitation for the future, and it's nice to see something new. Think of what DesktopX 3 is going to be like!

Yea, we plan on doing some slick stuff when DesktopX 3 comes around! And yes, shaders are looking to be a part of the technology. For tier 1, shaders are required. For tier 2, 2.x shaders are required.

As far as shaders are concerned, everything I've heard says they'll be applyable, to custom, mesh-based windows. Also, pixel shaders will apparently be used for a better version of cleartype.

Some videos of the technology at an early stage:
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2003/0509/kaigai01.htm

Interesting take on it:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1151833,00.asp

I'll be at the PDC in LA. We've got some great things planned for Longhorn.