With Windows 7 out of the way for over a month now, Microsoft is starting to shift all of its focus and resources onto the next iteration of Windows, which, as far as unofficial clues from the company reveal, is in planning stage under the codename Windows 8. Asked “What's next for you at Microsoft?” the creator of the Windows 7 105-frame startup animation noted “The next version of Windows.” In all fairness, neither Rolf Ebeling, nor any other Microsoft representative has confirmed officially that Windows 8 is the label for the successor of Windows 7.

The Windows 7 boot animation is Ebeling’s brainchild, and it is essentially created out of no less than 105 separate frames, which in swapped in rapid succession frame create the startup animation for the company’s latest Windows client. At the bottom of this screen, you will be able to see the Windows 7 boot animation from Build 6956 of Windows 7 via the embedded video.

"We never lost sight that we wanted the boot-up to be faster, but thought, 'Well, if people are going to be there we should make it attractive and something that inspires confidence,'" said Ebeling, a senior user experience lead for the User Experience Design and Research Team for Windows, Windows Live and Internet Explorer.

Ebeling joined Microsoft in 2008, and just four months later he had been put in charge of developing a new start screen for Windows 7. And the self-taught designer managed to pull off his assessment splendidly. "It has been an eye-opening 18 months, as you might imagine," he added. "It's a lot to learn. I keep hearing that fire-hose metaphor—it felt like multiple fire hoses."

At the start of this year, Microsoft opened up on the evolution of the Windows 7 boot. Essentially, the successor of Windows Vista comes to the table with an overhauled boot mechanism. The actual startup animation is the surface-level of the Windows 7 boot process, because as it is displayed on the desktop, the operating system's kernel and critical device drivers are loading into memory in the background.

“I can't lie—seeing a few seconds of the boot animation in a snappy, fun Windows 7 commercial for a Sony touch-screen PC was really exciting. Long term, I'm hopeful those swirling lights and their glow will remain a welcome start to someone's time on a computer,” Ebeling added.