Microsoft has a new label for the imagery designed to personalize Windows 7. “A desktop background, formerly called wallpaper, is a picture on the desktop that provides a backdrop to your open windows,” the company revealed on a webpage in the Windows 7 online hotspot dedicated to personalization. The next iteration of the Windows client ships, even as early as pre-Beta builds, with a collection of content on the same model as Windows Vista. Build by build, Windows 7 is growing into its own, with an incontestable evolution from Beta built 7000 to Release Candidate.

Of course, the Milestone 1, 2 and 3 releases, including, for example, Milestone 3 – labeled pre-Beta Build 6081, including the pre-Beta version that was delivered to participants at the Professional Developers Conference 2008 in Los Angeles and then at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference 2008, failed to really bring anything new compared to Windows Vista in terms of the default wallpapers. In fact, changes to the collection of backgrounds shipping with Windows 7 only started being contoured as the next version of the Windows client when it was approaching the Beta stage.

Microsoft thinking “in-the-box” with Windows 7

With the release of Windows Vista, the Redmond company attempted to offer extra flavor on top of the operating system with the introduction of the Ultimate Extras for the high-end edition of the platform. At that time, the Ultimate Extras website was applauding the initiative as thinking outside-the-box. One of the elements that contributed to the Ultimate Extras fiasco was DreamScene and the associated animated background. The inconsistencies, and inconsistencies is, by all means, a euphemism, that plagued DreamScene made the feature virtually unusable, even for the most stubborn Vista Ultimate users.

There will be no more animated or video desktops for Windows 7. In fact, even upgrading from Windows Vista Ultimate to a pre-release version of Windows 7 Ultimate kills removes the Ultimate Extras installed. But Microsoft has undoubtedly done the right thing, having been unable to get DreamScene to a consistent standard of quality, to kill it altogether.

Instead, Windows 7 brings to the table themes, collecting wallpapers, Aero UI configurations and sound settings into single packages, which can be used for personalizing the operating system across all aspects of the UX. Users can also customize the desktop in order to enjoy a plus of variation, by selecting a group of wallpapers that will be shuffled around on it at intervals specified by the end-users.

Windows 7 pre-Beta Build 6956 and Beta Build 7000

Both releases were wrapped up at the end of 2008, even though, Beta Build 7000 was only released to the public on January 10, 2009. Windows 7 Build 6956, which was leaked to BitTorrent trackers worldwide, marked the debut of the Betta fish wallpaper, which had survived well past the actual Beta of the next iteration of the Windows client, and into the Release Candidate branch builds. But otherwise, when it comes down to the default imagery, Microsoft has not made any changes between 6956 and 7000.

Build 7000 of Windows 7 made it into the wild at the end of December 2008, weeks ahead of its official launch following CES 2009. Microsoft revealed that the Beta of Win 7 was downloaded by the millions, but failed to provide the specific numbers. However, interest for the release was extremely high, and it caused the company to postpone availability by a day in order to extend its server infrastructure to support the influx of users. It was Windows 7 Beta that put the Betta fish on millions of desktops worldwide.
 




Windows 7 Build 7048 from the Release Candidate branch

Essentially, all post-Beta development milestones of Windows 7 are from the RC branch. At the same time, Microsoft has not released officially any of the RC-branch builds of Windows 7, except to partners and select testers. However, the company has been producing and is continuing to deliver a steady flow of interim Windows 7 pre-RC builds. Some of them, such as Build 7048, just as previous testing milestones, have successfully found their way to torrent websites. Windows 7 Build 7048 is a release that allows users to play around with country-specific theming.

“Navigate to c:/windows/globalization/mct and you'll see all the country specific themes in there. You can actually install all of them if you want! You just go into each directory and find the theme file. It’s under the Theme directory for each of these. So, if I want to install the theme for South Africa I go into the MCT-ZA directory, then the Themes directory and open the theme file. This way, you can enjoy every country that we have in there and all their associated photos, not just the ones that apply to your current locales,” Michael Kleef revealed.



Windows 7 Build 7057 Release Candidate 1

Windows 7 Build 7057 is tagged Release Candidate 1 in the End User License Agreement accompanying the development milestone, also leaked outside of Redmond. The RC1 label does, by no means, imply that Microsoft is cooking any additional Release Candidates. The Redmond company will move straight from Beta to RC, then to RTM (release to manufacturing), and subsequently to General Availability.

As you can see from the wallpapers/backgrounds enclosed in this article, the content included with the operating system is evolving at the same pace as the platform. Microsoft is introducing new imagery with new interim builds, and 7048 and 7057 are illustrative of this. But more importantly, the new content in Windows 7 Build 7057 is defining of Windows 7.

I have emphasized from the early development stages of Windows 7 that the Redmond company needed to move away from the “vistas” of Windows Vista and to build a separate visual identity with the background imagery for Windows 7. It was only a matter of time before it actually managed to do just that. And, certainly, Build 7057's Scenes and Characters collection of backgrounds screams Windows 7, having no connection with the style and design of the wallpapers in Vista.

Fact is that end-users, especially after testing Beta Build 7000, have high expectations of Windows 7. This is because of the quality standard that the Windows team has delivered with the pre-release versions of the platform. The same goes for Win 7's imagery. Let me make this clear. Windows 7 backgrounds needed to be just as the operating system: spectacular pieces of art, inspirational, unconventional, breathtaking and jaw-dropping.