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The lack of clear affordances in the Microsoft design really bothers me.

* When two buttons are next to each other, do they behave as tabs, toggles or buttons with disparate behaviors? You can't tell.

* is an icon next to a field actionable? I have no idea until I try to click it.

* These buttons are very reliant on :hover to indicate behavior. That's not very useful for users on touch devices (Is the button intentionally disabled, or is it broken?)

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Having a windows phone for a while now, I can tell you this sort of thing was really unnerving at first. All I can say is that you get used to it.

Questions like: "is that a label or button?" were frequent in my mind because many "buttons" that are just text, with nothing to suggest they're clickable.

However, once you mind is free of the notion that a button must have a border around it or be underlined, you start to admire the simplicity.

I agree. While I really like the aesthetic behind Metro's minimalism, I'm not convinced the usability is there.

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