A Brief Look Into ZETA's Future. PDF Print E-mail
Written by DaaT   
Monday, 09 October 2006
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A Brief Look Into ZETA's Future.
Page 2

As is the norm (for the most cases) with private software companies, yellowTAB before, and now Magnussoft, have been reserved in commenting what's coming down the road. We know Multi-User is coming (as we here at ICO have shown you) and also that GCC4 is part of ZETA's future, but today we're going to bring you a small glimpse in what's coming for ZETA and its users.

So click below and enjoy.

Ed. Note: I think, by reading some comments below, that I wasn't clear enough when writing this piece. What we've shown you isn't what Magnussoft is working at the moment, it's what might happen in the future. Those plans and designs were made at yellowTAB and they (that's the plan so far) will be implemented in the future, but it's not what they're working on presently. Now back to our regular programming.

Since, like we mentioned, it's only a brief look, we'll only be focusing on 2 aspects: Preferences and Updater.

Preferences

ZETA has seen a large transformation in its Preferences. Many welcomed the changes while others still prefer BeOS' way. With ZETA 2.0 the route will continue with the centralized Preferences app, with changes coming both to the look (improved Tabs and their navigation) and functionality. In this case, you'll see in the screenshot below that some categories have been combined "based on user feedback".

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Another addition is the "Related Options" (aka similar links) you see in the bottom of the window and at the righthand top corner, the "Search" field. By this time, the search index will be implemented allowing users to easily find their way around ZETA's Preferences.

Updater
 
This is something that has been talked about for a long time but not yet implemented. That will change (at least it's planned) with ZETA 2.0. Let's start its integration with the above topic, the Preferences. As you can see below, the user will be presented with the standard options: the time period for the OS to check for updates, the option which says the OS to automatically download available updates, and the option to automatically install the downloaded updates. Notice once again the "Related Options" on the bottom half.
 
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Now you can see the Updater in action. Available for download are 3 updates: driver upgrade, OS update and backgrounds. Each update has available an "info" link, to provide the user with more information about it. The user can also see the date of the update, the size and its level, which in this case go from Critical to Optional.
 
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In case there aren't any updates available, the Updater will show the following.
 
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We'll now show you the complete update process, in this case, with updates available for download.
 
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At this time, as you can see above, the user can choose to either close the Updater or reboot the system. If there were updates that the user downloaded but didn't choose to install at the time, this window will appear.
 
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Finally, if the Updater can't connect to the server to check for updates, it'll of course complain.
 
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So there you have it, I hope you've enjoyed this brief glimpse into ZETA's future, according to current plans, since we here at ICO can't say for sure if things will be as we've shown here of course.

I'd like to thank Lisa for taking the time to send me the original shots and PDFs.

Comments
Written by jer on 2006-10-09 13:51:00
that's interesting... Updater is indicating that it will check yellowTAB's website for updates (as oppossed to magnussoft's). I wonder if that's just something they didn't change yet. 
 
especially since Bernd said the yT website won't be around much longer.
@jer
Written by DaaT on 2006-10-09 14:09:37
That's something that will be changed, naturally.
Interesting changes in the Development T
Written by BiPolar on 2006-10-09 16:43:53
Looking at the About window (of the 1.21 "LifeCD", sigh...) shows you a "bye bye" to the old development team, and a wellcome to a new bunch of devs. It´s interesting to note their names. At least one of them is quite good. (Hello Ram! :-)
Written by özgür on 2006-10-09 19:48:55
i love ZETA.. 
it is a great alternative OS..
Written by BeOSR on 2006-10-10 00:29:32
Reboot after an update? How un-BeOS can you get??? Even when updating Tracker or Deskbar a reboot isn't required in R5...
Re: reboot
Written by Simon Taylor on 2006-10-10 05:36:35
I absolutely agree on the reboot thing - not very BeOS. OK, so for a graphics driver or something you may need to reboot but that should pretty much be it. 
 
I tend to ignore the messages in Windows apps' installers about the need to reboot as they are usually untrue - it's just lazy programming as a reboot can never do any harm and may be necessary in certain circumstances.
Written by paws on 2006-10-10 05:43:36
when you install drivers or low-level components like bone, you have to reboot. that's probably what's going on here.
Well...
Written by nutela on 2006-10-10 08:46:19
I'd say to those Zeta producers why don't you do someting more usefull like fix stuff that is BROKEN (that wasn't).  
 
Wake up people! Heard of QA? 
 
Tssss
1.st step first and then the second 2. n
Written by BrunoBrocoli on 2006-10-10 10:47:21
I agree with nutela. 
 
The 1.2.1 Version is out and now they start to praise 2.0 instead of fixing problems in 1.2 and 1.2.1 first. There are a lot more things to do than just a roadmap (wich is nice) but not at this very moment. 
 
I would love to see major steps in driver and codec developement and system stability, more than steps how to install them in the next version. 
That implies that the drivers are finished, which are not.
I fully agree.
Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 2006-10-10 20:04:37
I think it is VERY sad, that first YT, and now MAG.. sunk all this time and energy (not to mention money) into fluff. It is like XP and 2000. Fluff on top. 
Lets deal with real issues. I would like working webcams,printers,disk striping; a JVM. A FULL Posix compliant environment. 
I could use Linux. I use R5 w/Bone7a.. I never bought Zeta, was offered it for free on Beshare.. didn't even want it then... I would much rather have a pure cli with JAVA than all the pretty dialog boxes. Just my two cents. 
P.S. I just finished a partitioning program for Beos. It is a native application capable of everything Ranish is capable of.. non-destructive partitioning is not working yet.. will post to Bits soon. 
 
LGVX8300
Written by madman on 2006-10-11 05:59:48
The update window mockup looks pretty similar to Mac OSX's one, same idea and same kind of simplicity - might be good - if Zeta worked as expected...



 
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