A Failed Idea in Windows

Here's a failed idea in Windows: Active Desktop. This feature has existed in Windows 98 and remained, though gradually pared down, all the way to Windows XP, and possibly Windows Server 2003, but it won't be in Longhorn.

Created in the days when Microsoft felt threatened by Internet, Active Desktop essentially turned the desktop into more than a mere icon and folder holder. It turned the desktop into a web page. In addition, the background of any folder could also be turned into a webpage.

Windows 95 didn't offer great support of the Internet, but Microsoft was determined to redesign Windows 98 to provide superior integration with Internet. IE support was directly integrated into the shell browser. Windows 98 included a Personal Web Server. MSPaint was upgraded to support JPG and GIF, in addition to BMP. Windows questionably offered a mode, when selected icons can display underlines, and single-clicking, not double-clicking, can launch icons. I distinctly remember that either FrontPad or FrontPage Express was available in an early version of Windows 98. Then, there was Active Desktop.

A good amount of resource and attention was expended on this feature, but, in the end, few customers used this feature or even knew about this. Active Desktop was motivated by the current interest in push technology, symbolized by PointCast and Netscape channels.

While Longhorn no longer supports Active Desktop, I think it provides a more well thought-out and baked-in approach to supporting Internet concepts. Longhorn includes its own declarative UI markup language, XAML. A set of XAML pages with code can be stored within a single .container file using the OLE compound document format. A XAML page can then be displayed through IE (which hosts active document control for XAML) or compiled into an existing application. One could imagine that Internet websites may even deliver direct XAML to Longhorn clients, instead of HTML, for a richer experience.

Longhorn natively supports a new application type called navigation application. Longhorn applications and pages can launch from the web into a secure sandbox using .NET code access security mechanism. Longhorn introduces many of the advantages of the Web world into Windows application development such as simple deployment and automatic updates.

Comments

[steve (in the uk)]

Yes, thats right, I remember seeing those Active Desktop flag settings, they let you have running animations as a desktop background - I haven't been looking at Longhorn, I am to tied up in working at the moment, my XP Pro keeps me going. Anything good coming along?

[Xofis]

Hover activate and single click launch is actually really useful. Effortless UI. I've had it turned on for years.

[Robert Scoble]

The technology failed because it was too complex (translation it was buggy and crashed my system so I turned it off).

Here's more details, and what I'd like to see instead: http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/05/22.html#a7532

[Stephane Rodriguez]

"Longhorn applications and pages can launch from the web into a secure sandbox using .NET code access security mechanism."

Why should such complex descriptions when everyone understands what a Java applet, and that's the best analogy you can come up with.
Security wise, I am not sure what you mean. Provided the applet is signed, you can perform all sort ofnasty things. What does it take for a singed applet to get file I/O access ? Only the click of a OK button at startup. If you remember well, 99% of users click OK because they just don't want to see the warning.
The same applies for CLR hosted applets.

[Wesner Moise]

Code access security in .NET is fine-grain. If any application requires certain permissions, Longhorn will inform the user of the app's need and allow the user to decide.

Even if the applet is signed, it is not allowed to do anything that it is explicit forbidden to do such as access the file system without using isolated storage.

[Stephane Rodriguez]

"Even if the applet is signed, it is not allowed to do anything that it is explicit forbidden to do such as access the file system without using isolated storage."

Yes, unfortunately, I suspect the security enforcement is soon turn off. Either of the following are reasons why : 1) the equivalent of administrative rights will have to be enforced by users on an individual basis since 1.1) not all software will be rewritten only to run on the .NET code stack 1.2) a lot of software out there do more than outputting strings in a command line (the kind of .NET code you see in many places). Those software products need access to the low level anyway. 2) You have the P/Invoke-COM- tyrany and all the implications for the user's ability to execute unsafe code.

To make a long story short, .NET is not ready yet. It will take an entire OS .NET stack before things can get properly done and executed in the so-called sandbox. Are we there yet, I'll let you decide. Side effect, the "n+1 is better" syndrome.