Windows 8 app designs | Hacker News Reader

Windows 8 app designs

thenextweb.com

37 pointskanebennett12 comments

Is it me or does every single app on the list looks like a web app?

That is to say that every app does its own thing as far as the design is concerned. Excluding the lack of 3D decorations and skeumorphisms, there's little consistency in their look and feel. Not necessarily a bad thing, but that's a new push in a direction of one-design-per-app for a desktop OS.

Well, not exactly. In Windows 8, Apps can have very different designs, but they use common interface elements and interactions. For example, there are many styles of app bars, but they all come up with a right click.

Bing travel is pretty good to and comes with 360 degree panoramas. My favourite is ESPN Cricinfo app. Some screenshots: imgur.com/a/pEPSA

The Cricinfo app is stunning, I was blown away when I first used it.

I hope a lot of other developers use it as inspiration for what is possible with the Metro UI, too many apps follow the same cookie cutter templates with no real thought behind them.

In my experience Metro apps work well in cases where I do not need to multitask or where I do not like distractions. I like to read my feeds in Metro and I like to write personal email in Metro.

Also, I quite like pinning things like twitter or IM into a Metro sidebar/split next to my desktop. If I have multiple monitors connected, I even fill the second monitor with Metro apps, for example a browser for documentation.

But despite all that, my main work space is still the desktop and it is quite hard to get real work done in a Metro-only environment. (Disclaimer: I am a programmer)

I find that as a programmer I use the desktop most of the time - but still the occasional metro app. I use the included mail app and pin it to the side, and that works well.

About 7 of these apps could be called inspiring on a stretch, but the rest should be called Visual Studio templates.

Good on Microsoft to make these templates to help developers get started, but the new and fresh of WANM (Windows Application Not-Metro) is quickly starting to look like tired PowerPoint and Front Page templates.

I'm going to start calling it WANuM Style. I can hear the theme music already.

The reason they look so much like the VS templates (on which many are probably based) is that the VS templates implement the very precisely set out UI guidelines. Microsoft wants to have a set of very consistent UI patterns, which I wholly commend.

Flipping through them, only a few jump out at me as inspiring :( the drawing app looks great, as does the tv app.

I think it might have something to do with a lot of empty screen real estate for some of these apps.

I'm surprised they missed Netflix, as it's the best Netflix design anywhere (iPad, web, Android, XBox, etc...).

I've actually been surprised how often I am using "apps" rather than the web version on a full blown Win8 box that does NOT have touch.

I burned through 2 entire seasons of Walking Dead on Netflix on the Surface. Definitely prefer it compare to the Netflix app on my TV, Xbox, and the browser(ugh!).

When more stuff like HBO, Showtimes, etc are available I would definitely see the Metro thing replacing my HTPC setup. Add Kinect support Microsoft!

Nice designs :)

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