Designing the Start screen

re: Designing the Start screen

Karl — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:52:14 GMT

@TheRichman : equivalent for mouse hover:

news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20003541-1.html

re: Designing the Start screen

CGI911 — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 10:01:55 GMT

Well there may be several key improvements with windows 8 i hate the metro style interface. It may be quicker but I feel like I am being downgraded from windows 7. People love the classic windows look, why not make these speed improvements without compromising the look. It is like you stripped all the good stuff in exchange for a less hungry operating system. People don't need to run a modern os with 1gb of ram on a single core processor. Most people today are using at least a dual core processor with 2gb ram. I have a quad core processor with 8gb ram, and windows 7 works just fine. I will be keeping windows 7 unless you make a way that I can revert back to the way windows 7 looks. I am on a 25 inch monitor and I feel like I am using a cell phone os. Microsoft, you are trying to make a os that is seamless with other platforms such as your windows phone. Please fix this before the release or I will definitely not be updating.

re: Designing the Start screen

CGI911 — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 10:01:31 GMT

re: Designing the Start screen

TheRichman — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:14:09 GMT

Thanks @WindowsVista567,

I do appreciate the feedback. I was kind of "trying some things on for size" to see how they might look and feel. I do agree about closing apps and a "close" icon on the App Bar would be nice. And yeah the taskbar is a tough one. I did some concept slides on a "Universal Metro Taskbar" that would be the same across Start and Desktop but there's some difficult issues like right clicks versus finger touches (like a long press) and things like mouse hovers for which there is no touch equivalent that I know of. Ultimately the exercise made me appreciate just how powerfull the desktop taskbar really is. Maybe I'll dust off some deleted slides at beta time.

Thanks again and for all your posts

re: Designing the Start screen

WindowsVista567 — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:32:40 GMT

@TheRichman

I know from what you've said that you want some feedback on your ideas, so here they are:

Your ideas could make Windows 8 better if they were implemented properly, but ultimately, this design falls victim to a "just add more" design mistake. Your ideas involve adding a facsimile of the Start Menu back in that is done in a Metro style, but there is little reason to use this, since it looks like the old Start menu is actually better. As for your picture with the Taskbar in the Start Screen/Metro area, this partially resembles what I want Windows 8 to be, but only partially. The Desktop should be the first thing a user sees when they boot up a non-tablet PC, not the Start Screen, and the Start Screen needs to load overtop of a blurred, darkened desktop rather than covering up everything. As for the fully Metro Start Screen taskbar on page 11, it has the same problems as the rest of the Metro UI, and doesn't solve enough problems by itself. As for closing apps, there is no reason not to let users close apps the same way they do today, by clicking "X" or "File--->Exit." In my opinion, Metro needs to be redesigned to make the desktop the primary UI as it was in Windows 7, or to at least have the option to do this. Just adding more buttons, hidden sections of the OS, etc. won't make Metro's problems go away.

re: Designing the Start screen

Jon — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:45:49 GMT

Regarding figure 6: did you never stop to think that a "limited" view is actually *preferable* in this case? The fact that I can opt in to showing explorer when I want more results is a good thing, not a bad thing. I rarely even need more results than Win7 search provides, and I'd rather not waste tons of screen real estate for a short simple task.

Secondly, speaking of real estate: do you even see how much screen real estate is being wasted on the new search? Basically the entire screen. How many more results are we showing? Only 3 more results versus figure 6 (win7 seach). So what, you're telling us we need more space to show more results and then only showing 3 more results than we already get without a full screen search? .... this doesn't seem very thought out to me.

re: Designing the Start screen

Shashank Timilsena — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:51:00 GMT

It would be better if the icons were not in tiles. Or they may be in slightly glassy and transparent tiles. They too have no borders. Bordered tiles look abit good . Isn't it................

re: Designing the Start screen

Harvey T — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:12:31 GMT

Here's hoping that the small vertical rectangle on the bottom left corner of the taskbar in Windows 7 (toggles the desktop and open windows ) turns into an element that activates the Metro start screen from the desktop. Then, in the windows desktop app, the current element that activates the metro start screen, turns back into the traditional start menu. At least for a few years to get everyone used to the new start screen. :)

re: Designing the Start screen

Alan J — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:05:52 GMT

Im waiting for the launch of Win8. :)

re: Designing the Start screen

Jake london — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:02:24 GMT

In picture 5, Why use small icon which is familiar to us. for example, MS Word, MS OneNote we know its full name. In matter as fact, we need Big icon on Start Screen. We can easy find them by icon not by its name but icon.