Windows 8 redesigns Microsoft user experience
New look and feel, centered on touch tiles and the cloud, finally levels the playing field wit Apple and Linux
Published: 14 September, 2011
READ MORE: Microsoft | OS | UI | Windows Phone
Windows 8 duly got its first full outing at the Microsoft Build developer conference in California yesterday. As with WP7, some of whose touch-oriented concepts it borrows, the highlight is a new user interface which scores by looking very little like Windows. Indeed, some enthusiasts hailed the system of live tiles, gestures and 'semantic zooming' as enough to make iOS and Linux-based systems like Android look outdated.
"Is it just me or does Windows 8 now make Linux, and Mac OS X especially ancient and outdated?" said a post on ZDnet, and there were many similar comments around the blogosphere. There was plenty of disagreement too, but these are the kind of ratings Microsoft is unaccustomed to hear.
Although many features of W8 have already been discussed, this was the first demonstration of the whole platform. It is a "bold reimagination of Windows," said Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows division, who gave the keynote and demo. The new user interface is called Metro, and replaces icons with touch-sensitive tiles which can be updated dynamically - for instance with weather data - and organized in groups for easier navigation. "Tiles are more expressive than icons," Microsoft said. "Icons are yesterday's way of representing apps."
The traditional Windows desktop does survive, but mainly for what Sinofsky called "precision apps", or those which still rely on a mouse click (and presumably for non-touch PCs). He offered Microsoft's own Task Manager and Adobe Photoshop in that category, but the desktop interface becomes "just another app". Apps will be "immersive" (filling the whole screen), but W8 will support multitasking, with apps moved to a sidebar when not in active use. They can also be saved in a "suspended state" to conserve power.
Like most modern operating systems, though less radically than in the browser OSs like Google Chrome, W8 is heavily centered on the browser and on cloud access. It is designed to integrate deeply with cloud services like Microsoft Live and SkyDrive as the firm seeks to dominate the new online experience, rather than just the client platform. W8 will also be able to unify cloud data from different sources.
Such radical changes come with compromises for existing users, and those who are attached to the old UI style. Traditional desktop apps will run only on x86-based products, not the new breed of ARM/Windows devices. However, new Metro-based apps will span both architectures since the Metro UI abstracts different hardware platforms into one set of OS system calls. To build Metro apps, developers can use the XAML framework, or web standards like HTML5, JavaScript and CSS.
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