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Comment by jobu | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft spent many years on WinCE before learning that a mobile UI should be different than a desktop UI. I wonder how long it will take them to learn that a desktop UI should be different than a mobile UI.

It's not that windows 8 is terrible - I actually like using it on the tablet they gave out at the build conference, but it's very difficult to use with a normal computer (i.e keyboard and mouse).

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I use Windows 8 on oneof my work desktops and it's certainly superior to Win7 in almost every way that I've encountered.

The Win8 desktop is better than the Win7 desktop, and Win8 seems faster in general. I'm only in Metro for brief moments in time. I suspect I'll use Metro more once I get a tablet, but for most users the Win8 desktop is a good upgrade from Win7.

Unlike Vista, there's no perf regression going to Win8. And the user experience in Win8 seems at least as nice as Win7. Seems odd to want to skip it. Especially since you can upgrade to Win8 Pro for $40. My home desktop has Win7 Home Premium which doesn't include Remote Desktop. I look forward to getting Win8 on it and Remote Desktop all for $40.

Not feeling the issues with Win8, I'm on a low end Dell 13" and apart from the missing start menu I've noticed no real difference in usability.

After pinning everything to the home screen and task bar it's generally one click to get to most things (or Windows key -> Click) which feels more intuitive than Win7. Even the corner targets and new Alt / Win + Tab behaviors are solid enough. Was dubious about the quick app switch when you click at the top left but it's been unobtrusive enough.

The Windows Key + Live search on typing, while basically the same as the Win7 start menu search tool, feels a lot quicker in 8, maybe due to the metro search result style. Few other small bits like the new task manager are generally more useful as well.

The default fullscreen apps for photo viewing and what not feel like little horrors though, feels like a highjack when you click a photo and suddenly get dumped to a fullscreen app. Hitting escape does nothing and it can get a bit jumbled working your way back to the desktop (is there a faster return than Windows Key + Clicking desktop again?).

Yeah, I think setting the default file associations to Metro apps is something that really damages people's first experiences with Windows 8 on non-tablets. I find it hard to believe that many people, even "casual" PC users, would prefer this setting, at least with the apps in their current state (which I doubt will change that dramatically by launch). It is easy enough to change (there's even a popup that appears the first time you open a file of some type, asking if you'd rather use a different app) but a standard rule of UI design is that most people don't and defaults do matter.

I think if someone's running a majority of metro apps it might be a bit less jarring (because they are used to the "app as the whole screen" thing), but it can be confusing when switching, and the switch feels a bit like everything else has "closed" if you're used to the task bar. The windows key acts as a good anchor though, everything feels pretty close at hand.

I do like that quick little context box for the other installed apps. Advantage to how that app selection context box works is that it scales with the users expertise - if you do see it, it means you've installed software, which probably means you understand why the selection is necessary. Average mum and dad user probably won't come across it / get confused by it.

Honestly I don't really see how it is hard to use on a desktop/laptop? Sure it is different and a little bit odd at first but basically all they have changed is the start menu, something which I hardly ever use these days. The 80% of applications I use are pinned to the taskbar, the other 20% I did have pinned to the start menu but on Windows 8 I just have them "pinned" on the start screen. Not hugely different.

The whole Metro thing I have kept away from as I have no real need for "full screen apps". It is a little annoying that it is pushed into your face now and then but with the RTM it is possible to load to the desktop rather than the start screen which, while only a small change, is very helpful at making the upgrade to Windows 8 less jarring than it was in the previews we had before.

They're forcing touch paradigms, like seeking screen edges with the mouse since you can't swipe, essential a workaround, onto desktop environments. With previous mobile versions they were forcing the mouse paradigm where touch would've worked better. If you as a tech person find it odd and need time to adjust then you have to multiply that many times for the average user, and all this without any benefit to a desktop user.

Is using the edges and corners of the screen not a mouse paradigm? Isn't the Fitts's Law value of the edges and corners one of the classic tricks of mouse UI design?

Having to take the mouse to an area of the screen that doesn't have any UI clues that something may happen is not a mouse paradigm. If I show you a window that doesn't have the red X in the top right corner, would you still take the mouse there and click anyway or would you not even bother?

It's not particularly a touch paradigm either. It's simply a "new" convention introduced by Windows 8. FWIW, moving to the mouse to the corners or edges to trigger "invisible" actions isn't unprecedented, for example that's how you show an auto-hidden taskbar (ok, so there's like a 1-pixel edge visible) or show tabs in a fullscreen IE in Windows, and Mac OS X has a "hot corner" feature that has you set actions for the corners.

Fitts's Law says that elements along the edges are easier to hit with a mouse, and elements in the corners are easiest to hit with a mouse.

There's nothing in Fitts's law that says that invisible UI elements are preferable to visible ones.

It's ok on my laptop (not touch-based), but the issues really start getting rough if you add a second monitor in. There's no good way that I've figured out yet to move the start screen or any of its' metro apps to the other screen - they're just stuck there. When it's just one monitor, going to the desktop at least removes you from the Metro interface.

I haven't tried it on a multimonitor system yet, but my understanding is that the start screen and apps will appear on whatever monitor they're launched from and can then be moved around ( http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/21/enhancing-wind... ) - is that not your experience?

The assumption of Windows8 (and WinCE before it) has always been questionable - "device agnosticism" is a fancy way of saying you don't care about your users' experience.

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