When I installed the Windows Live Wave 3 pack released by Microsoft Live team recently and run "Windows Live Mail" desktop client, the first thing which I noticed was the new toolbar:
As you can see in the above screenshot, the toolbar background has been changed and surprisingly, they have removed the small icons from all buttons in the toolbar.
First it was looking a bit odd and I had no idea why did they remove the icons and why a new toolbar background cause the previous toolbar background was Vista default which you can see in Vista Explorer as well.
Now all the things are clear to me when I saw the screenshot of Windows 7 M3 Build Explorer:
Above screenshot shows how the Explorer window looks in recently leaked Windows 7 M3 build. This screenshot has been taken from ThinkNext.net website.
As you can see Windows 7 Explorer has the same toolbar background and it also doesn't have toolbar icons similar to new Windows Live Mail version.
So the things are clear now. Microsoft is trying to make all new applications looking similar to Windows 7. Same as they did in past when Windows Vista was released.
So does it mean they have finalized Windows 7 UI? Are they not going to chage it any more? There are many such questions which will only get answered when we'll get the first Beta of Windows 7 very soon.
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Andrea said:
My opinion is, because is a beta (like Window 7 as well), they are working on a new UI for the toolbar (please, no ribbons!), leaving so far this part as poor as possible: it's a quite a basic interface, after all, isn't?
VG said:
^^ But if they have not finalized the UI, then they would not have implemented it in Windows Live Mail so soon.
Andrea said:
Why not?
Windows 7 is not even a RC, if I'm not worng, and everything may suddenly change on the UI (like happened with all previous Windows version, including Vista).
anyway, I hope is like that, because, honestly, I don't like this toolbar: the old icons would save a lot of space.
VG said:
^^ Since the first Beta of Windows 7 is coming this December and Windows 7 will not be a major release, I highly doubt we are going to see much GUI changes. Also implementing the same toolbar in WLM clearly shows their intention otherwise they would have waited for a few months before changing the toolbar in WLM.
Anyway lets see what they are going to give everyone in first Beta.
Andrea said:
Ok, I suppose you're right, after all
But let me keep hoping that the toolbar UI will be changed in something nicer 
Alsiladka said:
A Microsoft guy gave the reason for this move as this on the connect website.
"The long answer is that Windows and Windows Live is moving to a much more typographical driven UI over all (not saying it will all look like WLM!). The reason is that all the whitespace puts the spotlight on your content instead of the app frame.
"
Well, they seem to be moving in two different directions. With Messenger, they are trying to add more Visual cues to pass on the information to the user.
And with the other apps, they are trying to make them bland.
In a age when people are moving towards more visual representation of data, textual representation does not make much sense for me.
VG said:
^^ Completely agree with you.
Andrea said:
Me too.
. More space used by buttons' captions, therefore results in less space to show more buttons or customize the tool bar.
. Because "Windows and Windows Live is moving to a much more typographical driven UI over all" is not a good reason, for my point o view, to replace the small, nice and promptly icons.
. Text, sometimes, is less immediate to remember or understand than an image
. Is an involution of UI standards: sometimes this could be a bonus, but not this time
VG said:
The best way would be to give users a choice to select between "show only icons", "show only text" or "show both text and icons" in toolbar. And toolbar customization is highly needed unlike Vista.
Ramanathan said:
The best way to create a choice to select between the Icons in toolbar.
Kari said:
This is nothing new, if I remember correct most of the icons were missing on Wave2 Live tools also.
Nikolaj said:
i cold be cool to be able to switch between vista and 7 toolbar