Windows 8 designer: Why Microsoft forced Metro on us all
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
Why? It simply allows me to do much more without touching the touchpad. I power on the laptop, press Ctrl+Alt+Del, start typing my password without having to awkwardly alt+tab around as I would in W7. I log in to the desktop, press Win and start typing c,h,r...enter, Chrome starts. I press Ctrl+L, type a URL or a search, scroll on the page using pgdown or pgup... only having to use the touchpad if I want to click on a link or select some text.
Sure, I could do much of this in W7 if I wanted to, but W7's start menu search is far inferior to W8's Metro search, and I would have to ALT+TAB a lot more around if I wanted to avoid using the touchpad.
That's interesting because I personally consider Win8's start screen search far inferior to Win7's start menu. Neither come close to being as powerful and as useful as OSX's spotlight, but I honestly felt Win7 did a finer job.
It's also the exact opposite of what the author is saying, because it's the power users that would (probably) use keyboard shortcuts, not normal users.
The same feature's confusing to causal OS X and Linux users, too. Which is most definitively not a problem, because casual users won't be coming into contact with that feature, anyway. OS X is a single-desktop interface until you actively choose to create a second desktop. Most Linux setups behave roughly the same. On territory this well-trodden, it should have required precisely zero lateral thinking for Microsoft to figure out how to respond to that focus group result.
Similarly, when Apple added a tablet-inspired application launcher to OS X, they figured out a great way to make it both easy-to-access and non-disruptive, without displacing any existing workflows. The launcher's there and works well for users who want it, and is effectively non-existent for users who don't.
That anecdote from the article, if true, is yet another delightfully pithy illustration of Microsoft's fundamental difficulty with UX: They don't grasp the difference between "one size fits all" and "all fit one size".
Am I the only one that remembers the hate from the Windows XP start menu?
Although in fairness, moving from the lower-saturation Windows 7 to an XP VM was shocking all over again. So many colors!
Also, the icons were much larger than the Windows95/98/ME/2000 start menu.
On a Windows 8 tablet, you swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open the "control bar" of a Metro application (I don't know what is the official name of that UI element). This is crucial to know because the bar is hidden by default, yet it contains fundamental actions like deleting a message in Mail or navigating to a URL in Internet Explorer.
When using a mouse instead, you're supposed to right-click to bring up the "control bar". This is completely non-discoverable and also goes against every established UI convention: for the past 20+ years, the right button has been used for context menus, but suddenly in Metro it brings up a hidden application-global menu instead.
Windows 8.1 tried to fix this by adding a button in the corner that brings up the bar, so at least you can find it by clicking around. But that's still not good enough. The bar makes sense on a tablet where screen real estate is limited and the swipe feels very natural, but on a desktop it's just a bad toolbar implementation that adds extra mouse navigation to simple tasks because people never figure out the right-click shortcut.
I hear this view constantly, but it's just absurd. I started using OS X for the first time just a year ago and generally loved it, even though it's very different in many ways to Windows or KDE/GNOME. The multi-touch trackpad gestures are particularly useful. You don't get complaints when you offer users significant new functionality.
Good change is good. Bad change is bad. Sideways change is also probably bad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCKWn1zjejE#t=0
http://davidhewson.com/2014/02/10/revising-without-paper-fin...
Doing a complete book edit without paper (stylus only), or drawing and publishing web comics is now possible on a tablet.
Windows8 is the only content-creation tablet device right now. The Samsung Galaxy Tab (Android) tries to do the same with their Wacom stylus and everything... but the experience just isn't the same.
When you can actually use _real_ Photoshop, Word, One Note, and have the best handwriting recognition software... the Stylus on Win8 is far above everyone else.
Stylus machines are rare... but you still have some choice. Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Dell Venue Pro (8 and 11), Asus Vivotab Note, Lenovo Helix, and Lenovo Thinkpad.
So the price range is between $300 (Intel Atom based Vivotab Note) and $2000 (Lenovo Helix Intel i7 with 8 GB of RAM) for Windows8 based stylus tablets.
"CNET contacted Microsoft to verify the identify of the self-dubbed Windows UX designer. A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed that Miller does work for the company but declined to reveal any details about his specific role."
What a load of trash. People need to stop judging Microsoft products in terms of unreleased products. I understand that the hackers et al. who use the power features in Windows are upset that MS changed the game on them, but putting Metro as the forefront of the UI was, as the article describes, a necessary step in getting users to actually use it.
Metro UI is quite good for browsing content and navigating to the things that you're certain to want. It's good looking and it works pretty well. Just because it's your launch screen doesn't mean it's supposed to be the only tool you ever need. If you log on to windows 8 to check facebook, it's awesome. If you log on to manage hard drive partitions, you're going to need to be looking elsewhere.
Microsoft is trying to make products for the consumer market. If you want to blame anybody for Metro, blame Apple. iOS and other simple, clean user experiences showed consumers that there is a better way than the old desktop standards. The applications you want can be at your fingertips, instead of in a button in the corner. Microsoft HAD to make the initial experience of the UI simpler to stay competitive in the modern market for personal computing.
The author is correct, Metro is the heaven for all those grandmas and family relatives who before would call/mail us on "how do I power on the computer"-type problems. Now, you put 'em in front of a Metro PC and boom, your incoming calls reduce by half.
A lot of win8 is not easy to figure out by yourself if you've only used win 7 before.
Sure, she doesn't know how to "use" it in the grand sense that we savvy users might. But, she knows how to do things. She knows how to Facebook, she knows how to send an email. Unlike us, she doesn't think of these things as general concepts. They're very specific, down to the smallest detail. Email for her is hotmail.com
Now, grandma is presented with Metro (or as I like to call it, The Boxes). The small, basic knowledge she gathered over time that gave her freedom of communication is now worth nothing. Perhaps she'll explore, and perhaps over time she might find that the interface is in fact easier to use. The problem is she wants to send an email now, and none (and I really mean NONE) of the anchors, symbols or paradigms she's used to even exist anymore.
On a tablet, this makes sense. She can intuitively poke around and maybe get to the email app. She's not used to touching a screen, and the opportunity gives her a chance to learn something new.
With a mouse and keyboard, she doesn't know what to click on. She's never clicked on text and had it perform an action. "Charms" bar? Corner of the screen? Ha.
Now imagine we're not only talking about grandma, but instead average non-technical office worker. Not only does said office worker need to send the email now, she needs to send a dozen yesterday. She has no time to learn something new. Her company paid good money for a device that's supposed to save time.
I agree that this article gets to the bottom of the issue, though. Microsoft has underestimated its users.
self-described UX designer
Cnet tried to confirm his job title, but Microsoft didn't want to provide that information; hence "self-described".
And for a GUI, Metro provides significant and logical access from the keyboard.
From a sysadmin perspective maybe hardcore Powershell jockeys don't mind it as much but if that's the case Windows Server 2012 has a GUI less install option that would suit them even better than Metro.
Wonder if this is a case of "It's true because it's on the internet"
Windows is just painful to use nowadays.
He's saying that by splitting windows they can add all sorts of power features to desktop, while not messing with the more casual users since they stay on metro.
Personally a little option box that turns on those power features and defaults to off makes more sense to me <shurg>. Like how Pine (and Alpine) do it.
"Now that the casual users are aware of their new pasture, we can start tailoring. It will be a while before the power users start seeing the benefits of this (that's why I said they'd benefit in the long run). Right now we still have a lot of work to do on making Metro seem tasty for those casual users, and that's going to divert our attention for a while. But once it's purring along smoothly, we'll start making the desktop more advanced. We'll add things that we couldn't before."
Bull. They just did what they thought was the best for them: "everything must be Windows (even if we try to catch up with Apple's success.)"
Content? Not for me. Waste of time. Including this one, having to explain. I'm surprised you see that much worth in the article to even discuss it with me. Do you have any direct involvements? That would explain...
It actually was confirmed.
> I'm surprised you see that much worth in the article to even discuss it with me.
A bit - is their strategy of splitting power and basic really the way to go? I don't agree, but it's a valid argument even if I disagree.
You claim no content, but there is content - the very argument I repeated in the paragraph above this one.
> Do you have any direct involvements? That would explain...
No, it would not explain. Not only do I not work for Microsoft I hardly ever even use any of their products. Linux for me, and I used OS/2 for many years.