Microsoft 'Avalon' Framework for Longhorn

eWeek | at | by Mike

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has promised for years how Windows will allow consumers to access "information at your fingertips." With Longhorn, the next version of Windows due out in 2005, the company will take its first serious stab at delivering on Gates' vision. And a new application programming interface (API) framework, code-named Avalon, will be at the core of Longhorn's new information-access architecture, according to sources. Avalon is the key to the new "inductive" user interface that will debut in Longhorn, sources say. The new UI will allow users to organize and share information more intuitively, most likely using some kind of "dock," a la Microsoft Office XP, sources say. In such an information environment, files would no longer be displayed on their physical location but instead could be organized by context or in some other way set by users and/or administrators.