Windows 8 Sneak Peek: Well This is Different!

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://allthingsd.com/20110601/exclusive-making-sense-of-what-we-just-learned-about-windows-8/?mod=tweet' target='_blank'>http://allthingsd.com/20110601/excl...ws-8/?mod=tweet</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"On Wednesday, Microsoft offered the first glimpse of Windows 8, a sneak peek that reveals much about both the influences and the strategic goals of the major overhaul of Microsoft's 25-year-old operating system. The fundamental goal with the new operating system, which is being shown for the first time at D9, is to create something that is equally well at home on an 8-inch tablet as it is on a powerful desktop attached to a huge monitor."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1306977835.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p><object width="600" height="360" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/p92QfWOw88I&amp;ap=%26fmt=18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/p92QfWOw88I&amp;ap=%26fmt=18" /></object></p><p>Microsoft is serious about the Metro UI being part of their product line-up, and we can see that in action in the screen shot above (<a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110601/exclusive-making-sense-of-what-we-just-learned-about-windows-8/?mod=tweet" target="_blank">check out the source article</a> for a high-res image). This looks like what you'd expect it Microsoft transformed Windows Phone 7 into a tablet UI: Live Tiles more appropriate for a device with a big screen, a panoramic pivot view, and some extremely funky colours. I still have severe reservations around the performance and battery life of a tablet running full-blown Windows (even based on ARM), but I'm excited to see Microsoft going after this hard by betting on a radically different UI overlay.</p>

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Chromeless UI with the Windows standard UI in the same screen feels like two different design languages coming together. It's a bit hodgepodge at the moment.

[Jon Childs]

Without having ever used it, I think I would like the live tiles. I do miss the email summary lines from my old windows phone now that I have gone to the iphone. My initial question from watching the video is how do you tell what application is associated with what tile? The Store one and the IE one are obvious, but some just seem to have a few lines of text or a photo. How am I supposed to know what I am getting into when I click on a tile that just has a random picture on it? Is the kid playing soccer a proxy for all my photos? Something to jump to my kid's soccer teams website? Or to start a soccer video game? I guess it works out ok if they are carrying it over from Windows Phone. The one thing you can't knock about icons though, is that for the most part you know is going to happen when you click on one?

[Jason Dunn]

Chromeless UI with the Windows standard UI in the same screen feels like two different design languages coming together. It's a bit hodgepodge at the moment.

I don't know how often you'd want to do the dual screen thing. I think it's more like a "Hey, look at this" than a mode people would always be in. I'd guess that most people would either be in tile mode, or in full-blown Windows mode.

[JonnoB]

I like it... full Windows looks like a way to include backward compatibility while I am hopeful that there will be many duplicating function apps that do things that are more tablet/gesture friendly such as a version of Outlook as found on WP7. I am sure that will be the case.

[Fritzly]

Based on the, few, details released so far I like it very much: Kind of Media Player\WP 7 GUI without the limitation of the latter.

I wonder how it will behave in a vertical orientation; I use a convertible tablet and I keep it in a vertical orientation a lot when hand-writing so it is important for me.
Also it will be interesting to see what will happen with multiple display; they are becoming more and more popular nowadays.