Commemorating 20 years of being a SuperFan of SuperSite for Windows and the Man behind it.
You heard it here first....
As a young student, I always wanted to start and maintain a website to chronicle my days at the University of Algiers. During that simpler time, Macromedia Dreamweaver, which was about to be acquired by Adobe, ruled supreme as a web authoring and publishing tool par excellence. And my very first attempt was to use the venerable FrontPage XP that came as a standalone version straight from Office XP Family. it required me to learn HTML and CSS, --although there were some other WYSIWYG alternatives (ah Bluementals' WeBuilder - we had such a great run) -- due to time restraints with my late-night studies and exams, I quickly threw the towel.
But in 2004, the word "blog" began to buzz into the web-o-sphere to describe an online personal journal to share with friends and family. It was the early sign that the web has matured since 1989 and moved from the static pages into a more collaborative web. Actually we were at the tipping point of what we called it : The Web 2.0. And blog pages, online sharing ushered to that nascent era.
However since maintaining a website in general required technical knowledge from the end-user, especially how to handle the file transfer protocol and learn the essence of HTML and CSS, many companies jumped into the bandwagon and started to offer ad-supported and/or premium services to get the personal self-hosted weblogs up and running for non-technical users. Chief among them are WordPress from Automattic, and Blogger from Google.
Microsoft, on the other hand, answering the call, released a number of online services as part of the Windows XP Reloaded marketing push to reinvigorate Windows XP since its initial release that included a major security overhaul with Service Pack 2 followed by an avalanche of free-of-charge consumer-oriented offerings, but also to satiate fans and enthusiasts while the company was trying to make sense of Longhorn, which was going nowhere - the next operating system that would follow up Windows XP was one year behind the schedule, originally slated for late 2003 as a "fill-in-the-gap" (a.k.a Interim release in Microsoft's word) between Windows XP and the upcoming Blackcomb.
Anyway, these online services included MSN Music- which has been updated with the then-newly released Windows Media Player 10 as a part of Reloaded, but it a futile attempt to dethrone Apple iTunes. And there was MSN Spaces, a highly customizable blogging platform with tons of features. Spaces allowed users to upload photos and videos, but as far as I'm concerned, I used them almost exclusively for uploading and sharing courses and resumés. I'd blog regularly about Huckleberry Finn but also about the theme of naturalism as seen in Maggie a Girl of the Streets. That time, we had to fight our way hard to prove that our material studies were our very own instead of doing just a copy and pasting from Wikipedia or Encarta. We had a place at the university called "The Cavern", a euphemism for our library whose second and third floors were being renovated, and some outcasts found their way during the late afternoon to get in and smear the outer walls with graffiti.
As the exams were looming closer like a boogeyman - my friends and I, would fire up SteveSi's Word 2000 which was installed on all of the networked Windows 2000 SP4 PCs running in "kiosk mode" with only Office 2000 productivity suite and the University's in-house SQL-powered book search database gracing the desktop sporting that super ugly icons that came straight from Windows 95 era. We would be warmly welcomed at the entrance of the "Cavern" with a duct-tapped A4 paper format spelling out in all prints: ''SAVE YOUR DOCUMENTS ON FLOPPY DISKS OR THUMBPENS" with an image of Office Clippy since all the workstations were monitored by Faronics' Deep Freeze.
While the system and our university's network, in general, were super reliable (Algeria introduced ADSL high-speed connection in October 2003 for both personnel and enterprises), power outages were more frequent. As a result, if this would happen, you'd lose everything as Faronics' mascot, that mean-looking polar bear pocking his face on the system tray near the clock would do its thing by restoring the system to its original factory setting, erasing whatever was saved in the unthawed partition. Happened to our teacher of British Civilization. She was not a real tech-savvy and was pissed to no end. Sadly, I'd learn in late 2020 that she passed away from a cardiac arrest 😢😢
 Suggested Reading: With Netscape Navigator ushering in the new era of the world wide web to the general public in 1994, Redmond was on red alert. They needed to act fast and create an in-house web browser. Face sculptured as an Irish poet and hands of an accomplished pianist, Microsoft's Thomas Reardon would lead a one-man assault against Jim Clark and his gang. Find out more about Reardon in the upcoming episode of Microsoft Legends on Nexus(dot) NET. |
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Later when we get back home, we'd summarize what we've learned and then share them on Spaces when we get home. It was a real collaborative platform. And when I was not in the mood of studying, I'd spend a lot of time, just customizing it with widgets and changing the entire look and feel of it. We even held a small competition with friends at the university every end of the week to see who had the best-looking Spaces. Whoever loses, pay us for drinks.
Ah, memories. Facebook was in its infancy back then. Twitter was yet to be released.
However, while being consumed by my studies at the university, I never lost focus on the technological advances of Microsoft Windows Longhorn, which was still being delayed once again until 2006. As a result, I kept a watchful eye on two major websites that provided the latest information on what was going on in Redmond. The first is Neowin.net, a collaborative website written by many journalists, while the second one is called SuperSite for Windows, owned by one man. His name is Paul Thurrott.
Just a brief history of how I came to know SuperSite: You heard it here first 🥇!
I started following Paul Thurrott when I was 17 years old, back in August 2003. full twenty years ago. At that time, I was consumed by the brand-new Windows XP's Luna interface which was beautiful and a real work of art. I even urged my dad to upgrade our Fujitsu Siemens computer- he bought it on Wednesday, June 7, 2000, and came equipped with Windows 98 Second Edition ( and Dr. Solomon Antivirus) to Windows XP Home, and the firm answer on his part was a "no". To the patriarch, Windows 98 was "good enough" and no need for another operating system. I came to understand that the mentality of "good enough" would later spread to millions of users worldwide when Windows XP became the new "good enough" throwing Windows Vista into oblivion before being rescued by Windows 7 as the first decade of the twenty-first century wound down. So what I could do, was to go on the internet and download the Luna icons pack and started to change every icon of Windows 98 into flashy new ones that came from Windows XP. The only catch is I could not change the Control Panel applets since they were deeply rooted in a .cpl extension without the help of a third-party app. If my dad could not get Windows XP, let's make Windows 98 look close to that.
Windows XP was all around us from print ads in magazines, and commercials, to big billboards covering an entire building of Algiers's Office Post here in Algiers. Back in 2001, Microsoft MENA (Middle East and North Africa) did a hell of a job of promoting Windows XP as... I quote: " The ultimate active desktop that lets you do more". They did the same in 2003 with the next iteration of Office for knowledge workers and in 2004 with XP SP2.
Then Longhorn came in.
As I was looking for more Windows XP icons I stumbled on a particular screenshot from a website called SuperSite for Windows. The image depicted the famous, albeit saturated -- Windows XP Bliss wallpaper and a huge remote control that takes up almost half of the screen real estate. The taskbar huh...a sidebar (!) was moved to the right side with an anchored volume applet that controls each individual application (i.e. Microsoft Outlook, WMP) and hardware-specific (i.e. Speakers). A drop-down menu would list additional options.
What the heck? Is this Windows XP Second Edition of some sort? I said to myself.
My fingers went scrolling through a gallery of images to let my eyes be filled with these niceties. Next up, was another screenshot. This time depicting a what-would-be an Avalon-based application featuring a Dell Computer at the center of a carousel view surrounded by a generic printer, a highly detailed Phillips MP3 player, and other connected peripherals. It was obviously an early work in progress of what would become a Device Stage when Microsoft would ship Windows 7, a full six years from then. But everything seemed ahead of its time.
SuperSite for Windows as it was named, was definitely a pitstop for any Windows enthusiast like me, who was looking for the future of Microsoft's products. Visually appealing, with a look-and-feel of Windows XP theme, SuperSite of 2003, the year I landed on, was actually created five years prior. Excited by Microsoft’s prospect to combine its venerable David Cutler's NT kernel and 9x product lines for compatibility' sake in a single and cohesive release known as Windows NT 5.0, -- but history would tell us later, that these plans were not materialized until Windows Whisler was announced at the dawn of 21st century, and NT 5.0, later renamed Windows 2000 was business-exclusive, Paul Thurrott started the SuperSite for Windows in August 1998 as the way to chronicle about the most advanced operating system ever. Just as Windows Longhorn, SuperSite grew in scope, and started covering not only Microsoft but also its rivals, including Google and Apple. The "What I Use" section was added later on, in which Paul would list the hardware and software he bought. The site went through several iterations, visually updated in 2006 to match Vista's aero look, a new section of Podcast featuring Leo Laporte's Podcast You Love From People You Trust: This is Twitt. I do still own the MP3 of the very first podcast (or "Pilot episode" because I do a lot of tevee scripts too) recorded on the eve of Windows Vista being released to corporate users, around November 2006. And Leo's introducing Paul for the very first time: "It's Thurrott". He had some troubles indeed, but he succeeded nevertheless. And Paul would later jettison that famous breadcrumb menu in favor of the Scenic Ribbon-like in 2009 when Windows 7 would hit the market. He would overhaul SuperSite just when Wind8ws hits the market, before moving to Thurrott.com in 2015.
To make the story short, SuperSite was the cavern of Ali Baba, providing a wealth of information. I'd give credit to Paul, for his famous squared images that graced the top of the site, and featured Luna icons of whatever product he'd written about. Pictured below, is one of the sheer numbers of articles I printed on SuperSite until Epson's printer ran out of ink.
Speaking of what's next, what impressed me was the set of images that Paul uploaded on his site which depicted an overhauled version of Windows XP, featuring a very bizarre Aqua-like button, gone the bliss wallpaper and replaced by M3 wallpaper (some M5 bloody red wallpaper) -- a sidebar docked on a right side, unpolished window application "My Photos & Videos" featuring XP Folders, and an image of a boy holding a camcorder, another one, a woman with headsets listening to " My Music".
But I did not know back then, I just get a very first glimpse of the Future of Windows, under the codename "Longhorn". Previous Windows operating systems featured the ubiquitous plastic look and feel flags that represented well.... windows, as in the case of Windows XP, which jettisoned the black border (with waving motion) that graced the earlier versions of Windows' logo since the Windows NT era, Windows 98 and Windows 2000.
Longhorn, on the other hand, featured a symmetrical representation of the beef cattle head as seen from someone's subjective view: a long chin and two long horns. (hence the name) That's very unusual for Microsoft to have that logo for a product used worldwide. But I thought that would be only a placeholder as the boot screen of earlier versions featured a black and white borderless Windows Logo.
Was Windows "Longhorn" a nod to Texas livestock brought to the US by Spanish conquistadores or an hommage to Bill Gates' ex-wife Melinda French who originated from Texas?
And the answer was "no".
But I would soon learn that the code name was chosen after a grill bar that sits between Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains in British Columbia where Microsoft executives went skiing. A legend, later confirmed by Mary Jo Foley -- stated that back in late 1999 in Whistler resort 🏔️ while on Winter break after the cancellation of both the consumer version of Windows Neptune and its business-oriented cousin Odessey, the big Australian Iain McDonald -- who would come face to face with Paul Thurrott, confronting him with the Luna / Mallard / Watercolors UIs and a series of leaks, a year from then -- lined up for a ski jump on his snowboard and he would fall off his head, (hey Kids, wear your helmets) and had a revelation about what would be the next version of Windows.
It's called Whistler. 🏔️🏔️🏔️
Gallery depicting various incarnations of the "Mallard" visuals, a decoy theme used to distract the audience while Luna is in the works.
Fun Fact: During the development of Windows XP, Team Iain MacDonald went all cloak-and-dagger when designing the Luna user interface. Nobody outside Microsoft knew about it. Because they needed an infrastructure to work on and test the codes against, they designed a decoy theme known as "Mallard" (which included Blue Lagoon and Chartreuse Mangoose) to distract fans while they were tweaking Luna. Because the famous watercolor - as revealed in early builds of Whistler during the spring and summer of 2000 (ah that's Shania Twain era) was meant to be just a placeholder anyway, everybody went porting Mallard to other existing OSes. Iain clearly fooled everyone in the audience. The goal of that secrecy is to make a big splash during the XP reveal in February 2001. They succeeded that even Paul Thurrott - known for his leaks and the famous quip "you heard it here first" - failed to notice. |
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One point for Iain.
And Longhorn, first coined by Joe Belfiore, verified by Jim Allchin, and mentioned during the anti-trust trials in November 2001, sits at the bottom of Whistler where patrons would sit and relax before moving to Blackcomb. By following the rapid three-year release cycle that Microsoft instituted since Windows 95, Windows Whistler (a.k.a Windows XP) was released in 2001, Longhorn for 2003 while Blackcomb was pushed for a 2005 release window. A review from BillG. just as XP headed to the Release Candidate branch in July 2001, deemed Blackcomb too aggressive and asked to scale it down. So an interim release between Whistler and Blackcomb had to fill the gap. But as time went by Longhorn was not just an operating system, but evolved into something bigger, a sinister "Linux Killer", a reimagining of the platform, A set of "waves" of technology that Microsoft planned to release in the near future, which included, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, SQL Server, Windows Server, and MSN-related services under the same umbrella.
Longhorn had its own dedicated FAQ section at SuperSite just like Windows that came before it. It provided super exhaustive questions and answers. And Paul, twenty years later I still remember by heart the intro you made on that enormous project which wanted to rewrite almost everything, envisioning a highly connected future where the power of modern hardware could be used to its full advantage:
Once envisioned as a minor upgrade to Windows XP, Windows "Longhorn" took on all-new importance in early 2002 when Microsoft decided to reach for the brass ring and make this upcoming Windows release an all-encompassing major upgrade with a new security architecture called Palladium, a hardware 3D-enabled user interface, and many more exciting new features. Here's the first--and most comprehensive--Longhorn FAQ ever created, constantly updated to include the latest information about this release. --Paul Thurrott
The FAQ section bullet listed the most impressive features of this new operating system: from an integrated AV to a fledgling user interface that would leverage the power of the PC's graphical card and would replace the fisher-price UI from Windows XP. From a reimagined task based iterative to a new setup routine that would get the system - after a full install - up and running in 15 minutes. A new rational database called WinFS became BillG's holy grail and one of his biggest regrets. WinFS in its early incarnation was "a thing on a thing" and required - according to MSFT VP Chris Jones - NTFS to work properly. Sadly WinFS would be cut off during the Reset as Longhorn turned into a pig and ended up as a mockery to the eyes of Apple. Longhorn would get DVD burning, and multimedia capabilities right out of the box. A new document format code-named Metro would rival Adobe PDF. (Not Metro UI from Windows Phone and 8 eras) And Palladium would feature "My Man", (wait! Did you say "My Man ?" Seems like I'm in a Young and Restless soap opera) a software agent that would ensure that the sealed data sent across the web would reach the proper end-user. "My Man', as reported by Newsweek was a goof on ".NET My Services," "My Documents," and other similar names at Microsoft.
I always liked to draw a comparison between the Windows Longhorn Project and Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel -with his famous amp going all the way up to 11. Microsoft really went to the extreme - big bang release.
Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder ? -- Marty DiBergi
But if I have to reprise what Paul would later state during PDC 2003:
Windows was not just awesome. It rocked.
Fueled by the desire to know more about the future technology that Microsoft had to offer, I used MSN Spaces to relate to what was going on at Microsoft. If my memory served me well, the first article I wrote and published in Spaces was The infamous Longhorn sidebar, (aka application awareness) which originated from Microsoft research that folks at Redmond were dogfooding internally during the Summer of 2000. It was the piece of software I was fond of. And back then, several enthusiastic whiz kids managed to backport the sidebar on Windows XP. Heck, there was even a Windows Longhorn transformation pack up for grabs on the internet. That's the price Microsoft paid for lagging behind and being too open about its projects. (That's Jim's fault)
At that time Paul Thurrott unceremoniously published very bad news that the Sidebar was gone before being revived after the reset.
However, MSN Spaces, which has been renamed Live Spaces during Vista's era presented one major challenge: It was amateurish, not professional looking. Fact of adding a lot of widgets would not help as well. I was looking for a site that presented the end user with a minimalist theme with professional attire. I knew from Paul's FAQ about his SuperSite, that he had to code himself the front end (look-and-feel) of his site and do the business logic (the codes that ran behind the scene). A glimpse at his site's extension used at the time -- which I never heard about it -- was the .aspx.
Just a side note: actually I don't really recall whether it was .asp or .aspx but one thing I'm sure of is, SuperSite was not powered by PHP. Maybe Paul would help me out. 😃
Doing some research on the net, I found out that .aspx is ASP.NET, Microsoft's in-house server-side web application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages and applications - and part of Microsoft's .NET Framework, which in turn is part of the nebulous .NET initiative that Redmond embarked back in 2000. ASP[dot]NET's root can be traced back to 1997, when its first incarnation, ASP was created in order to compete with the PHP programming language.
Because Paul did it. I wanted to do it. And during my years at the University, I had a chance to train myself with PHP/MYSQL and was able to create my very first website. I wish I could learn ASP[dot]NET, the only catch: it came bundled with the super expensive enterprise-grade Visual Studio 2002 and its follow-up 2003, which I could not pony up due to the student wage I was earning back then. But Microsoft heard my plea somehow. In 2005, they released the entry-level Visual Studio Express, a stripped-down -- free - version of its venerable IDE, targeted at enthusiasts and hobbies. "Inspiration starts somewhere", the tag said with the image of the young Bill Gates, with his big-rimmed glasses during his early years at Microsoft in Albuquerque.
Learning PHP was harder than ASP, and time-consuming, I had to split my study times with my hobby of programming websites. It was a cool experience - but cooler when I stumbled on Joomla in 2009 and made my life super easy. Joomla is a fully featured Content Management System where you can create a professional-looking site with less. Then, I found out there was a proliferation of CMS out there, like WordPress, which I started to use side-by-side with Joomla, and forum-based CMS, which I created back then to talk about Red John, the principal antagonist in CBS's procedural drama The Mentalist (2008-2015).
Speaking of SuperSite, Microsoft's days were counting back in 2012, with the upcoming release of Windows 8. Honestly, I never liked it. The Start Screen was cool but the idea of mixing out Win32 Legacy applications and Metro Apps made me vomit. Besides, the flat Metro icons, especially the User icon clearly reminded me of Whistler's early Builds.
When I started my career as a flight attendant after a six-month initial theoritical training and three months for practical , my first flight was on October 1, 2012, and a month later, I'd learned the shocking news from SuperSite, that Steven Sinofsky would retire from Microsoft after 23 years of services.
Sinofsky's retirement would be the last entry I posted on my site before I'd shut it down in early 2013. Yeah, I could not manage sites and be on a plane.
Epilogue :
20 years later and here we are. A lot has changed. Things had come and gone. The world has evolved. Artificial Intelligence is all around us. And James Cameron's predictions about AI could become a reality like Skynet's. But in the meantime, Paul Thurrott still blogs at Thurrott.com with his partners in crime, Brad Sams, Leo Laporte, and Mary J. Foley. His site is still bookmarked on my Google Chrome and Edge. Windows, a once dominant operating system lost the battle against Apple and Google. Just like Iain MacDonald when he was interviewed by Mary Jo Foley when Microsoft put a final nail in Longhorn's coffin, I had an emotional ride too. See, when I stepped up at the University of Algiers in October 2003 after obtaining my Baccalaureate diploma (equal to a High School degree in the US and Canada 🇨🇦), Microsoft was gearing up for the apex of Windows Longhorn PDC 2003 Build 4051 which turned out to be nothing but a pack of lies. WE ARE GEEKS BEARING GIFTS. When I graduated from the University, four years later in 2007, Microsoft finally shipped Vista. So during my college years, I spent keeping track of everything that happened in Redmond, I breathed Vista/Longhorn, and talked a lot about the progress on Spaces, thanks to Paul's SuperSite. On the other hand, things began to change. Bill Gates pledged to retire a year from then, leaving his title of chief software architect to Ray Ozzie. Microsoft began moving to the cloud with the new Skydrive in late August 2007, Hillel Cooperman left Microsoft and started Jackson Fish Market with Jenny Lam. And Jim Allchin, whom Bill Gates had trouble recruiting in 1991, retired and left his place for Steven Sinofsky - who started as technical advisor of BillG before moving to Mike Maple's Application division - would be heading the future development of Windows.
Under Sinofsky, a major reorg happened, a new song, new lyrics, and even a new dancefloor at Microsoft. He brought up his top lieutenants from the Office division to work on "Fiji", to Windows Vista, to set things right where once were wrong. Steven would institute a new mentality within the company. He is a very secretive man, as opposed to Jim Allchin, who was too honest and too open. Gone are the code names, and are replaced by "releases". Blackcomb became "Vienna" and then Windows 7, which could have been marketed by Windows Vista R2. Under his leadership, Sinofsky successfully erased Vista's mistakes, and Windows 7 became the best-selling product in the market. But like Microsoft of 1994 under Bill Gates failed to react to the emerging world wide web, Microsoft under Ballmer failed to react to a new trend that takes the form of an iPod, a phone, and an internet mobile communicator. Heck, Ballmer even laughed at it and he paid the price. By the time, they put the gear into action, it was too late, and Windows would never be the same.
And then, Windows 8 happened. But that's another story I prefer not to tell.
But, as far as I'm concerned, Sofiane, you humble storyteller, I will keep blogging and maintaining Internet NEXUS (dot) NET, a nod to .NET marketing - not regularly - since my job as a cabin crew is exhausting, but I will still do my best. But one thing is sure, I will keep following Paul Thurrott every single day, as I did 20 years ago. If this site exists on Wix it's because of SuperSite and the man behind it.
You heard it here first.
WHAT'S NEXT? READ MORE If you want to know more about the development of Windows since its inception back in 1985, I highly recommend the excellent Windows Everywhere by Paul Thurrott. As a tech journalist for more than 25 years, Thurrott brings the definitive history of Windows, and the turf wars that happened against Apple and Antitrust as the 20th century began to wind down. From The .NET all the way up to the Longhorn era and the touch-first craze that doomed Windows forever.