14 DAY TRIAL // One of the aspects of Windows Vista that is going to evolve in Windows 7 is the User Account Control. More criticized than praised, UAC in Vista represents just a milestone for Microsoft, according to Ben Fathi, vice president for core OS development, who revealed that the Redmond giant was ready to go all the way with the feature. Fathi stated that Microsoft had centralized both the negative and positive feedback on UAC and that Windows 7 would resolve some of the issues associated with the RTM edition of Windows Vista. The company has already toned down UAC with the release of Service Pack 1 for Vista.
"Based on what we’ve learned from our data and feedback we need to address several key issues in Windows 7: reduce unnecessary or duplicated prompts in Windows and the ecosystem, such that critical prompts can be more easily identified; enable our customers to be more confident that they are in control of their systems; make prompts informative such that people can make more confident choices; and provide better and more obvious control over the mechanism," Fathi revealed.
UAC is nothing more than a security mitigation introduced in Vista to force users to run with standard privileges and developers to build solutions for standard users. In this manner, although the User Account Control is by no means a security barrier, the Redmond company did manage to enhance the protection of end users.
Fathi indicated that Windows Vista and UAC had changed the way that developers built applications. In this regard, software built for the successor of Windows XP no longer requires unnecessary administrator rights in order to install or run. This move has contributed to decreasing the attack area of the operating system and the exposure of end users.
"As we evolve UAC for Windows 7 we will address the customer feedback and satisfaction issues with the prompts themselves. We’ve heard loud and clear that you are frustrated. You find the prompts too frequent, annoying, and confusing. We still want to provide you control over what changes can happen to your system, but we want to provide you a better overall experience," Fathi added.
The UAC in Windows 7 will be less chatty than its precursor in Vista, while at the same time being a lot less confusing. The tests Microsoft conducted with the Windows 7 User Account Control indicated that 83% of respondents understood the information presented to them in the dialog box. Fathi indicated that there were two critical aspects on which Microsoft was focusing for the Windows 7 UAC.
"1. Broaden the control you have over the UAC notifications. We will continue to give you control over the changes made to your system, but in Windows 7, we will also provide options such that when you use the system as an administrator you can determine the range of notifications that you receive. 2. Provide additional and more relevant information in the user interface. We will improve the dialog UI so that you can better understand and make more informed choices. We’ve already run new design concepts based on this principle through our in-house usability testing and we’ve seen very positive results," Fathi said.