Microsoftis not including all the new Windows 7 goodies in the pre-beta versionthat will be distributed at the Professional Developers Conference inLos Angeles. However, the good news is that they are putting in a lotof new stuff that will have fans of the operating system excited untilthe public beta hits—if they can reach their deadlines this time—in December.
• Device Stage: Apparently this is a control panel for all kind ofconnected devices, from printers and cameras to cell phones and mediaplayers, that will allow users to "manage, explore, sync, print to, ordo other common device-related tasks". Unfortunately, the devices haveto be "Device-Stage-enabled". This sounds a bit scary.
• Action Center: This is a troubleshooting center. Yes. Definitely get scared.
• StreamOn: Not much is clear about this, except that it's a way to control multimedia content on PCs and other devices.
• A new animation framework which may be related to Apple's Core Animation framework.
• New task bar and shell integration.
• Multi-touch support and gestures.
• Improved Bluetooth support.
• The ribbon user interface element present in the current version of Office will be available everywhere. For some reason.
According to ZDNet's Mary-Jo Foley, Microsoft will be showing morefeatures tomorrow but those will not be available in the beta. We willkeep you updated, as Wilson is now in LA covering the event. [ZDNet]
