Draft:Activity Centers

Start Page in Windows Neptune build 5111

The Activity Centers are a canceled user interface concept that first originated during the development of the Neptune project and Windows Me. Unlike the traditional Windows desktop experience, which primarily focuses on windowed applications, Activity Centers are a task-based user interface that features several "Centers", each of which are associated with a separate activity featuring common tasks grouped together. The new interfaces were primarily implemented using Internet Explorer's web technology, often using the then-new Mars framework. A key focus of the Neptune project was to experiment with user experiences that did not require manually saving previous work; some of this effort is visible in the only available build, which enables hibernation by default and requires the user to take extra steps to fully shut down the device.

The experimental user interface was ultimately scrapped altogether with Neptune in late 1999, as Microsoft executives feared it would be a far too drastic change to the existing user experience. However, the underlying design language survived the cancellation of Neptune and would eventually evolve into the Inductive User Interface used by Microsoft Money 2000. Some of the new features in Windows XP were also inspired by its design philosophy, such as the improved Windows Explorer and the User Accounts control panel applet.

Furthermore, the touch-oriented Metro design language introduced as part of Windows 8 shared many common goals with the Activity Centers, including their focus on typography as well as dedicated full-screen applications for common tasks.

Mars[edit source]

The core component of Activity Centers is Mars, a framework that allowed applications to combine web content with a backend using the native Windows API. It is ultimately the only part that survived the cancellation of Activity Centers, as it was also used for System Restore and Help and Support Center in both Windows Me and later Windows XP.