New Features in Windows 7 Pre-Beta

Submitted by lalit on October 27, 2008 - 3:47pm.

Mary Jo Foley of ZDNET is reporting that Microsoft will show Windows 7 to attendees of Professional Developers Conference going on in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Some details about the new features have started to leak out through people who have seen the latest pre-beta build of the upcoming Windows OS. Below is a list of new features that Mary talks about in her post:

  • Device Stage: a central location for customers to more easily interact with devices, ranging from printers, cameras, cellphones, media players, etc. Device Stage will only recognize “Device-Stage-enabled” peripherals.
  • Action Center: a self-diagnosis feature to help users troubleshoot problems with their Windows 7 systems
  • New Animation Framework: for customizing animations
  • Multitouch and Gesture Recognition: Similar to what Microsoft showed earlier
  • Improved Bluetooth Support: for better connectivity with Bluetooth enabled devices
  • Ribbons Everywhere: Microsoft will add Ribbon UI to almost every part of Windows 7

Mary says that she didn’t confirm the list with Microsoft, but she believes that Microsoft is going to show off number of other features on Tuesday along with the features described above.