[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] balendra68:
Here are my initial views/expectations regarding the Win7 series phones, could someone be nice enough to comment on the same:

I always wanted a scrollable today screen without the scrollbars and it appears that this time they have provided just that.

It seems that the plugins have been renamed as hubs and they are now squarish instead of rectangular, which is better for

4-way scrolling and they may also look nice once encased inside shiny photo frames.Further, this time, it seems, they have

not added a today plugin like titanium (which could be switched off and replaced by a third party mobile shell) but changed

the today screen itself ,which being more integrated with the OS,will not be replaceable.

The same functionality was offered previously by HTC SenseUI in a systematic, paged manner.They arranged the tabs/plugins in

different sizes and made the today plugins to fit in a whole page. You could scroll horizontally through different tabs/pages

and scroll vertically within the individual tabs/pages.Now if you were to reduce the size of the sense tabs and join them

together on one large page, so that more of them could be visible at the same time, won't you get a screen similar to what we

are witnessing today.There is a difference here that this time the categorisation is from within and not outside as done

through sense/Touch Flo.

Regarding the hoo-hah of hubs being 'live', wasn't it so in the previous today plugins.What about the calendar and task

plugins, were'nt they "live" i.e. could update themselves automatically without user interaction. what about the missed call

notification, wasn't it live, did'nt it automatically update your missed call/message numbers, as soon as a missed call/new

message arrived.Now they are merely extending that functionality to facebook e.t.c. so it's actually an update in that

sense.Even the Clock plugin was live, did'nt it update the time every minute.

I feel that in harping about this "live hubs" thing, they have taken a leaf out of apples book and started publicising

existing functionality as something new after changing it's name and appearance.But they have beaten apple here as instead of

showing dead icons on the Home Screen, they are showing icons depicting live hubs, by merely resizing the today plugins to

resemble icons.Off-course,integration of similar services into one and depicting them as a hub on the today/Start screen is

innovative but this canard about having written everything from scratch,it's clearly not digestable.

Thus, I feel that this Win7 thing is nothing but old wine(mo) in a new bottle and by extending the above logic, to me it

appears that if a third party wants to add it's own plugin/hub, which offers functionality different from the existing hubs,

then it can do the same. However, if a third party wants to improve the default hubs e.g. if a third party wanted to improve

the existing people hub by adding it's own Contact hub/plugin or the media hub by adding it's own media player hub. This I

think won't be possible i.e. say if you want to run the iconsoft phonex application on Win7 phone then you won't be able to

use it's today plugin but you could run your contact application and dialer. I hope here I may be proved wrong and they may

give third parties the option to not only skin but also enhance the functionality of default Win7 phone hubs. Regarding the

existing applications, to me it appears that most of them would be usable, after they are skinned to match the looks of the

new UI.Regarding the

I will like to put my demand here, that the hubs or whatever they call it showing the missed call or unread message

notifications should also show previews of the latest caller name/messages, otherwise what's the point in making them so

large. I also hope that these squares will be freely resizeable, so that one could adjust them to our liking on the

today/home screen.regarding the blank space at the top, I feel it should be reserved for the "time hub" and the blank space

on theright should be for the "recent applications" hub/tab/plugin/widget.

For those who are worried about not being able to use SPB mobile shell or the Sense (UI), if microsoft allows skinning and

resizing of the hubs then they could be made to look like any of these and these shells and with the added advantage of

deeper integration within the new UI, these addons would no longer be required or maybe we could access them through another

hub after disabling all the other hubs just as we do with plugins in WM6 series(6.1, 6.5,6.5.3 e.t.c.) phones.

For those who are worried about their HD2 not being able to run WM7, please take a look here -

http://translate.google.co.uk/trans...ries-draait-op-de-htc-hd2/&sl=nl&tl=en&hl=&ie

=UTF-8

Henceforth,I expect that the manufacturers, for their own good, should clearly specify whether their phones would be

upgradable to Win7 series phones or not. This uncertainity is killing the demand for Windows phones and the platform is no

longer in a position to take further beating.

I feel that existing WM users should'nt worry about these changes, most of them could turnout for the Good except maybe for

this silly thing about installing applications only through the stupid marketplace, an idea propogated by that shylock

"jobs'. I am praying for it's failure as I like the flexibility of purchasing goods from different shops instead of getting

them all under one Roof.