Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

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shaosean
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Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by shaosean » Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:43 pm

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/3 ... _timeline/


That 70s Show: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features
Like HyperCard, but without the cards. Or hype

Microsoft isn't short of good ideas – but getting good ideas into Microsoft products, which then stay alive for a long time, is another thing.

New builds of Windows 10 will feature a couple of these – and they're features that hark back to the utopian computer labs of the 1970s.

One feature, Sets, yokes related documents together, although there's no graphical representation of the bundle, as there was in HyperCard, the first and best-known commercial implementation of the idea.

"The concept behind this experience is to make sure that everything related to your task – relevant webpages, research documents, necessary files and applications – is connected and available to you in one click," Microsoft's Terry Myerson explained in an email to Windows Insider guinea pigs.

Yes, that does sound like a HyperCard Stack, Terry. The thing is explained in this video here. <https://youtu.be/3lEjuU-XFHg>

So what happens if you decline to open up all the apps when prompted. Is the association lost forever? Or retained in a list of Sets somewhere? [A set list? – ed] We'll have to find out.

New Windows 10 builds will also feature Timeline, a cross between Time Machine and the old Office Journal, now discarded. Microsoft first showed off Timeline at Build 17 in May, promising it would be in release Autumn builds, only to postpone it.

This is a familiar story: the "People Experience" was shown, held back and eventually plopped out in a form that fell far short of the hype. Timeline is another attempt to give an alternative way of accessing data than apps and files.

Why the 1970s reference? Because back then researchers and designers on the bold new frontier of computing weren't slavishly chained to ideas like "files as hard containers (and boundaries) for things or between things". Smalltalk is a good example of thinking at the time. IBM's AS/400 (where the file system is a database) and its OS/2 Workplace Shell were the last commercial expressions of such free-thinking. The latter vaguely resembled sets: when a "Workplace Folder" was opened or closed, it opened or closed all the associated documents that were in it.

Now imagine being able to group people with a timeline – as the Office Journal (almost) could. Microsoft wouldn't have to buy SalesForce, then.

More seriously, it is the sort of useful feature whose absence reminds you that in many ways, we’re still in the computing Stone Ages, only with 64-bit colour stone. A kind of neo-Paleolithic age. ®

Bootnote
HyperCard was notorious for some of the worst software ever written – a result of the ease of coding HyperCard stacks. Lower the barrier to entry, and more crap gets in. It's the best argument ever against "teaching everybody to code", and illustrates why it is not an imperative like "teaching everybody to read", or "teaching everybody to swim" at all.

bogs
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by bogs » Thu Nov 30, 2017 9:19 pm

shaosean wrote:
Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:43 pm
Bootnote
HyperCard was notorious for some of the worst software ever written – a result of the ease of coding HyperCard stacks. Lower the barrier to entry, and more crap gets in. It's the best argument ever against "teaching everybody to code", and illustrates why it is not an imperative like "teaching everybody to read", or "teaching everybody to swim" at all.
I agree with this 100%, so I think we should just do away with all these namby higher level languages and go back to straight up machine code. C++ ? :P too easy. Assembly? :roll: cmon, take off the training wheels!
01011010 01100101 01110010 01101111 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 01110011 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101110 01100101 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101001 01100101 01101110 01100100 01110011 00100001
It is the only way to fly !!

Bogs bootnote -
All of the above is represented solely as my own distorted sense of humor. I actually got a good laugh out of the read and appreciated it Sean :)
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shaosean
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by shaosean » Fri Dec 01, 2017 12:55 am

I used to create hideous things in HyperCard and realized I'll just stick to writing libraries for others to us ;-)

capellan
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by capellan » Fri Dec 01, 2017 2:00 am

Most HyperCard stacks were actually just read-only documents, like PDF files and HTML webpages.
Many HyperCard stacks were interactive multimedia with sounds and animation, like Director movies.
Few, very few HyperCard stacks, were real applications like a few of these:
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/app ... /?c=12&p=1

bogs
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by bogs » Fri Dec 01, 2017 5:01 am

The only other thing I could add would be that along with the dross that was made, a goodly amount of gold came out too. And look at the number of people that really took to and learned from HC, many of them all these years later still active here.

If nothing else, it fostered a lot of really long friendships, if the archive mail lists are any indication 8)
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by jacque » Fri Dec 01, 2017 9:19 pm

shaosean wrote:
Fri Dec 01, 2017 12:55 am
I used to create hideous things in HyperCard and realized I'll just stick to writing libraries for others to us ;-)
:) When I was managing the AOL HC Forum, we had a tagline we added to all the simple stacks uploaded by 9 year olds: "Contains simple line graphics." It respected the kids' dignity while the more mature users caught on to what we meant.

But I still kind of miss "Man Gets Beheaded By A Ceiling Fan." It was a noble effort for a stickman animation.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
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bogs
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by bogs » Fri Dec 01, 2017 10:29 pm

That is a very nice way to have intro'd them, and I think this
jacque wrote:
Fri Dec 01, 2017 9:19 pm
But I still kind of miss "Man Gets Beheaded By A Ceiling Fan." It was a noble effort for a stickman animation.
is priceless, even though I've never seen it, the title put a smile on my face :D
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shaosean
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by shaosean » Sat Dec 02, 2017 9:26 am

jacque wrote:
Fri Dec 01, 2017 9:19 pm
But I still kind of miss "Man Gets Beheaded By A Ceiling Fan." It was a noble effort for a stickman animation.

Why would you ever not keep that stack?!

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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by jacque » Sat Dec 02, 2017 5:59 pm

I thought I had kept it and a few years ago I actually searched for it, but it has gone. I mourned. I still remember fondly all the bitmapped black blood on the ceiling.

But the really terrifying part is that the 9 year old is probably pushing 40 now. Which of course is impossible.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
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shaosean
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by shaosean » Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:05 pm

Thanks for making me feel like an old maid. :-p

bogs
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by bogs » Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:25 pm

jacque wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 5:59 pm
But the really terrifying part is that the 9 year old is probably pushing 40 now.
Makes you wonder what that 'kid' is doing now, don't it?
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shaosean
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by shaosean » Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:36 pm

25 to life based on his game. ;-)

bogs
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by bogs » Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:44 pm

LOL :!: :twisted:
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Re: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Post by jacque » Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:46 pm

shaosean wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:36 pm
25 to life based on his game. ;-)
LOL! I wonder what happened to the authors of the dozens of "Kill Barney" stacks...

You win the internet today.
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