On its own, the Metro interface is just the frivolous front-end to an upgrade of
the Windows 7 operating system. What makes the Windows 8 Metro compulsive
are the
hundreds of Apps produced by scores of developers; as a result there will be
little programs to suit every interest.
The combination of the Metro design
and the clever tiled applets will soon hook you onto this new way of interacting with
computer information.
Once Windows 8 initializes and you logon, what you see is a new 'Metro' Start screen with a montage of
icons, which are now called
tiles. This is a radical development, which replaces the
Windows shortcuts of previous Microsoft desktops, with information-rich
Apps.
If you swipe the screen from right to left an overlay appears
which enables you to select an App. Although the technique is fluid
and
intuitive, it requires us to replace the old click and scroll mind-set, with
a hand-grab technique. However, you can bring the scroll-wheel into
play, for example, flicking through the start screen tiles.
We're moving in a great direction in terms of a common and coherent
design language and user interface across phone, slate, PC and TV." Steve Ballmer (Microsoft SEO)
While this new Metro display layout is ideal for tablets, the tiles have
been designed to work
on bigger screens because they respond to a mouse click almost as easily as
a finger. Indeed, this format is scalable from an 8-inch screen all
the way up to wall-displays. A back-handed compliment is that users
complain that the Metro UI is just like a tablet, but with Windows.
Another feature for tablets is adaptive brightness. This is a
classic example of hardware and software developing in tandem. Tablet
screens can change their brightness based on light conditions. Windows
8 provides the software to sense and change automatically.
Windows 8 Start Button
The biggest news in Windows 8 is the disappearance of the Start Orb.
For those who bemoan this loss I say: 'Think of the whole Metro UI as
one massive start button'. Voila! there are your icons; and if you
want to 'Search' - just start typing! See more on the
Windows 8 desktop v metro debate.
A program's tile has more space than the corresponding icon, thus it can
display up-to-date information, for example the latest weather, or a traffic
report.
Furthermore, each tile is
'chromeless' thus the program can use the whole screen since there is no need for
scroll-bars. You manipulate the Windows 8 controls from the sides
with your thumbs, while you can swipe the application's own
controls from the top and bottom with your fore-finger. The golden
rule is that all Apps controls have the same look and feel.
Change of Mind-set When users switch from Windows 7
they need to change their mind-sets and think of flicking through a grid of tiles,
and not be worrying about, 'Where's my shortcut gone?' Those who are
used to Smart Phones will find it easy to abandon thoughts of the old Taskbar and Desktop and
begin to thumb through the Metro UI's mosaic of tiled Apps.
Opinion is divided whether users can indeed switch from 'touch first' Windows 8
at home to the traditional Windows 7 in the workplace. For these
people, one way of
looking at the old style desktop is as just another app which you can launch
from Metro UI.
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I supported Vista users who wanted to revert to XP's Quick Launch, and I
still hanker back to the days when you could customise the Office Ribbon /
Toolbar easily. But with the Metro UI -v- Windows 7 interface debate
there's no contest, the intelligent touch orientated tiles are the way to
go.
Still, people are being polarized; on the one hand there are those with a touch screen, and an
interest in
the many apps, who love Windows 8. On the other hand, there are
Luddites with an old monitor,
an inflexible mind-set and only
business applications. If you gave them Windows 8 they would seek ways of reverting to the
traditional Windows 7 style start menu.
Windows 8 Touch Language for Metro UI
To recap: the top and bottom of the screen are for the Apps controls, while the sides are
consistently for the system buttons such as the 5 'Charms'.
Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings, (See screenshot to the left).
Interestingly, people always use two hands for tablet. That's why App Bar
controls are at the sides where you would place your thumb. Where ever
possible apps are designed to work with a mouse click just as they operate
with finger touch. Incidentally, if you get stuck with the mouse,
right-click is your contextual saviour.
Metro is also an internal code name for a typography-based design
language Microsoft created. It all began with their mobile operating
system Windows Phone 7. A specially made version of Microsoft's Segoe
font family, Segoe WP, is used as the main font family for all typographical
elements of Windows 7.
The Seven Touch Actions in the Windows 8 Metro UI Language
Press and hold to learn
Tap for primary action
Slide to drag
Swipe - up or down to select
Pinch to zoom. Semantic view, icons change depending on resolution.
Swipe from edge
Rotate!
WinRT Windows Run Time (WinRT), this is the
environment for tailored Metro UI apps that launch from the Windows 8 Start
screen. In fact this is a replacement for Win32, thus WinRT is
important because it's the new native runtime in Windows 8. The real benefit of WinRT is that the apps are sandboxed so that they
cannot interfere with other programs.
Metro Keyboard Tips
Suppose you want to find an App. From the Metro interface, just press a
letter on your keyboard! Here is a screenshot of what happened
when I tried 'e'. (No need to call for the Charms and Search.)
If you right-click an App you can 'Pin' or 'Unpin' to the Metro UI.
It's not long before you start dragging the Tiles around, grouping them and
moving the most important to the left.
Previous Metro UI Products
Zune
Windows 7 Phone
Windows Live Essentials 2011
(Metro UI will also be used on Windows Server 8)
IE 10 Integration Metro manipulation techniques also
extend to IE 10, where the browser is optimised for touch, and panning.
See more on Windows 8 IE 10.
The problem occurs when you are at the Metro UI and you click
specifically on the 'Desktop' tile. What causes the hang is when you
attempt to return to the Metro UI by rolling the mouse over the left corner
How to Cure the Windows 8 Metro / Desktop Hang
Launch the Control Panel
Select System (System and Security)
Click 'Advanced system settings' (see below left)
Advanced Tab
Performance Options
Visual Effects
'Adjust for best performance' (see below right)
Reboot
Go to the start page and type "advanced system settings Then
performance Then visual setting Set the radio button to adjust to best
performance. Reboot.
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To get the most out of Windows 8 Metro you need a TouchSmart monitor capable of
wide screen display with a 16 x 9 aspect ratio at 1366 x 768 pixels.
Naturally, a 1024 x 768 display will still work, but you will notice
the difference.
Windows 8 laptops will also have a Kinect motion sensing device.
These are like webcams and features on Xboxes. The biggest benefit is
that will enable people to interact with Windows 8 without touching the
mouse.
The original touch screens with pressure-sensitive panels
required the user to press down on the screen. Unfortunately, resistive screens could track
the position of just one finger at a time. What Apple did was to track
two simultaneous touches, thus enabling more versatile commands such as
rotate or pinch.
Modern touch panels are laid on top of a liquid crystal display. Capacitive
touch-sensing technology requires a person's finger to disturb the
electrical field; unlike resistive designs, it doesn't work with any old
object.
Samsung has taken the multi-touch technology a stage further by introducing (AMOLED) screens (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode). The key feature is sensors directly on the screen itself, which allows a thinner display than the original Apple layered design. The
new 7" tab from T-Mobile is built by Samsung and is their most recent product with the AMOLED screen.
For those who like big desktop machines you can still operate Windows 8
controls with the mouse. It seems to me that after the initial novelty
of scrolling with my fingers the novelty would wear off.
Furthermore I have developed a fetish for a clean screen and all those
greasy finger prints would drive me mad.
My strategy will be to keep my desktop for keyboard intensive work, and
buy a cheap ARM tablet to play with the Apps.
See more on Windows Metro UI
Winrumours are full of articles discussing Windows 8 developments.
In Windows 8 the user interface has undergone a revolutionary
change. Under the covers, the Windows 8 kernel is just a better
version of Windows 7, but the
Metro UI design is a revolutionary change from the Aero desktop. The
switch to tiles brings with it a new mind-set, instead of scrolling through
windows you grab tiles and swizzle them into position; a technique that
Smartphone users will already have mastered. In another clever piece of programming the app on the tile is dynamic and
thus capable of live update notifications.
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