My View: Cairo Public Alpha
Yesterday saw the first public release of Cairo, “a customizable, intuitive desktop environment for Windows”. I have been a follower and supporter of this project for years and have tested two previous unreleased alpha builds of Cairo. So yesterday I was excited to hear what people thought about the program and was pleased to see a lot of positive comments; obviously there were a few negative ones but the authors of the those comments didn’t seem to understand that release was an alpha and that Cairo is still very much work in progress.
I thought I would write a short post about some of the best features of Cairo and to show the potential this has as a shell replacement for Windows.
My favourite part of Cairo is the Menu Bar, allowing users to access programs, pin folders and pin places to the bar for quick access of the files within.
By clicking on Programs the users has access to a fully customisable list, customised through the App Grabber, this is a more attractive and neater way of listing and accessing programs than the Windows Start Menu.
The Places list is not currently customisable and not something I will use much as the places I want quick access to will be pinned to the Menu Bar,
The pinned items are a great way to quicker open a file you are looking for without needing to open up a windows explorer window, in a future version of Cairo it will be possible to browser through other folders contained within the pinned.
On other notable feature of Cairo is the ability, with knowledge of WPF, to customise the look of the software. Unfortunately I am no programmer and so have yet to try this out, I know others have already made Cairo fit in very nicely with their desktop them. Having said that though I am very happy with the default look of Cairo.
There are other features of Cairo, such as the Taskbar and Search that are featured in this alpha but because they still have some way to go before they act and look like they are meant to I don’t think it fair to review them. Another reason for not really mentioning the Cairo Taskbar is because I am using Windows 7 and have gotten too used to the live previews and Jumplists implemented in the Windows Taskbar.
I think everyone should try Cairo just to see what potential there is for the software, remember though this is an alpha and so any help you need or bugs you want to report should be done via the website. Download here.
Finally I think that the Cairo project is great and when the software finally hits version 1 it will really be a joy to use but I no longer see myself using it all by its self but used in conjunction with some aspects of Windows 7 to make a very functional Cairo/Windows hybrid desktop, where I use the best bits of both. I think for users of Window XP and possibly Vista Cairo will be just as good as Windows in most places and better than Windows in many others, however improvements made in Windows 7 just stop being able to use Cairo independently of anything else.
Well done Cairo team and as always I look forward to more news and releases.
EDIT: Here is what is believed to be the first custom skin for Cairo.
Gaia.vs.Cairo by ~Dark-Shot666
Comments
Austin (Oct 07, 2009)
I’m loving Cairo (not really usable yet, but what it has the potential to become is GREAT).
I noticed you use IE 8. You said it compares to most other browsers. As a web designer I couldn’t disagree more. IE is not standards complient, and is a PAIN to cater to when building sites.
Nice site!