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Comment by ditoa | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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