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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Any hope of a Win8/Metro version?

Why would you want a Metro version? (I'm really curious, not just hating on Metro.)

I like metro better, with its full-screen/tiled modality, and find it really frustrating as well as unaesthetic to have to switch back and forth to the desktop. If Microsoft's own apps won't make the switch, it seems like they'll never manage to get rid of the desktop.

I think the complexity of software development warrants a pass on the switch to Metro. There are so many things going on that can't be simplified that it's not worth it.

Also, Microsoft doesn't want to kill the desktop. Enterprise uses the desktop, so it's staying for the foreseeable future. Full stop.

Is there any reason applications with complex functionality can't be written in Metro? And if Microsoft isn't trying to kill the desktop, why does it exist as a separate world in Windows 8 severed from the main Metro UI?

Metro exists separate from desktop because they couldn't figure out how to make the desktop work on a touch-centric interface like tablets and phones, and because desktop apps are bound to x86, which precludes many phones and tablets because of battery life reasons.

But why have the schism on desktop devices?

I don't want to run Visual Studio on my phone. But if I get say a Surface Pro device, I'd like to not have to switch back and forth between two totally different worlds all the time, without giving up modern amenities like resolution independence, etc.

That is why people want to stick with XP/7 instead of 8.X because they don't like the Modern GUI (It was called Metro until Microsoft was sued over the name) and feel like it is a giant step backward to the 1992 MS-DOS days of AOL for DOS or the old Prodigy of everything in small Windows that you cannot even re-size or have any 'visual clues' how they work like the Desktop and Start Menu of the Classic Windows has.

For example 'visual clues' in the Classic Windows have minimize and maximize buttons and the "X" button means close. These Modern GUI Windows, where are the 'visual clues'? It breaks the way Windows is supposed to work.

You have to drag the mouse to the bottom or top right side of the screen to access the 'Charms Bar' to do stuff in it, and Windows-C as a shortcut. I tried the touchscreen and it is a nightmare trying to make the correct type of swipe. Sometimes it does things you don't want it to do.

Plus a lot of desktop apps cannot be converted to Modern GUI mode because it lacks the gadgets the desktop has to make things easier to use. The Visual Studio IDE for example has so many tool icons and toolbars that not all of it will fit in a Modern GUI screen. It would need a major rewrite of the GUI, and force all developers to relearn all of their Visual Studio skills.

Remember when Office 2007 made that Ribbon bar? It was worse than Clippy the Office Assistant type of annoying.

Many compared Modern GUI to New Coke, the Classic Version was always better. If not for Desktop mode I could not use my Windows 8.1 Pro device.

Modern UI isn't ready - that's why so many people hate it. How do you make desktop better? It is already perfect. But development must go on - there is a need to make something new that people would buy.

So, you start a new thing and add continuously "new features" that are simple and elementary as hell. Years of safe development of elementary features that may simply be included in the first version of software - but they aren't. In Windows 8.1 you don't need to stick with static background colors. Wow, what an update and development achievement. Couldn't foresee that user would like that.

I think that Modern UI becomes more and more user-friendly but it takes time because you simply cannot make final product with first version because then the next versions wouldn't shine.

Modern UI applications do have a minimize and close button now. They also show up in the taskbar.

I find the ribbon to be very usable

I found it usable for 90% of the use cases but that last 10% is incredibly frustrating. It's been a long time since I've used Office so I can't conjure up an example but I remember trying to do something with tables that was fairly straight forward in Office 2003 it was nearly impossible in 2007.

Have you tried working with desktop apps on a touch-centric interface?

It works great. I don't use any Metro apps on my Surface Pro. Click, Double-Click, Drag, Drop, Right-Click - it all works very, very well.

I agree; they'll never get rid of the desktop. Certain classes of software, such as those based around an MDI, will never have a home in the hyper-focused and single task-oriented world of Metro (and iOS for that matter).

Why does Visual Studio need MDI? XCode and Lighttable and Sublimetext get by just fine with panes, tabs, and dividers. I could totally see say Lighttable being a Metro app.

Of Xcode, LightTable, and Sublime Text, all three of them support opening code in new windows in addition to in panes, tabs, and dividers. So their popularity is not evidence of MDIs being unnecessary. Whether their MDIs are necessary depends on how many people use multiple windows in those apps, and would dislike using other views if multiple windows were not an option.

Visual studio does definitely allow that, although I honestly don't use it very often.

Apps with tabs are MDI - VS uses tabs for MDI.

Speaking personally, due to the massive size of modern screens, the only application I run full-screen any more is my video player. Metro is a non-starter for working with multiple overlapping windows.

I normally develop with at least 6 windows in frequent use - two browsers (one for doc / misc and one for app) and 4 terminals (two for simultaneous login to front and back nodes, one running the app along with mysql sessions, and one running emacs).

The idea of using a single full-screen dev environment, or perhaps with one other window docked to the side, seems ridiculously inefficient. I need to see those other windows. I'm frequently tailing logs, running tests in the background, provisioning VMs, all little things that need to be visible so I can see when something goes wrong and I need to take action.

alt-shift-enter, go fullscreen, ditch the windows chrome. I don't understand how you would want a Metro UI for vs.net - such a waste of screen real-estate!

That would be unlikely, as discussed in other comments. But see Project Siena for a Microsoft app-building app that is Metro

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/projectsiena/default.aspx

Off topic: Have you used this at all? If so what's your take on it? I've heard about it and that's pretty much it, but got the gist that it's more of a "toy" development environment than anything else.

--No offense meant by "toy"--

No, havent tried it, just seen it in the store.

From the blurb "Building a Siena app is as easy as editing a PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet. You place some visuals on a canvas. You hook them up to your data or favorite services. You customize how your app looks and works. Then, if you need special logic and intelligence, you write some Excel-like expressions. You can use your app immediately, or share it with colleagues or the world."

So aimed at non-programmers but with some modern stuff like the ability to talk to restful services.

Very doubtful. They don't seem to be pushing productivity apps away from the desktop interface.

You can just hide all the menus and buttons and put the editor full screen. That's pretty close to metro I think

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