The reset occurred as Microsoft's development staff had lost focus on the project as a whole and what was. Development on the OS started in May 2001 and went through two unique development cycles separated by a development reset in 2004.
Personally I prefer design like in 5112 build. Windows Longhorn was the pre-release codename for Windows Vista and was the successor to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (built from NT 5.2 codebase).
Seems like they continued development in Windows 7:īut then they remade it without aurora. Next builds were focused on glossy smooth gradients.Īnd next builds (especially 5284) introduced a new blue-green aurora design that remained to the end.īoth Windows Vista boot screens were incomplete, but Microsoft preferred to use a VGA one. Successive internal builds over several months gradually integrated a lot of the fundamental work that had been done over the previous three years, but with much stricter rules. It just had Windows XP design.īuild 5048 introduced a new design, seems to be based on latest pre-reset themes. Build 3790.1232 (build date of August 19, 2004) is notable, as it was the first build of Longhorn based on the Server 2003 codebase, but with the Windows XP interface. This is the one of the first post-reset builds. You may notice that it was focused on matte gradients. Milestone 7 builds didn't have an aurora background, but as far as I remember there were some aurora controls. Build 4001 had some sort of desktop backoground, that reminds of aurora, but it's not.īut in build 4017 there was an updated wallpaper, that is actually aurora.
