4 ms·

Nobody is born with the skills to open a door or push a button. I have a <1yr old that still can't do either of those. That is something you learn. Metro is jus

by lini 14y ago

Nobody is born with the skills to open a door or push a button. I have a <1yr old that still can't do either of those. That is something you learn. Metro is just a different type of UI that you might want to learn. "Can I click on all those tiles?" - if you try to touch or click them, you will quickly see a 3D effect that mimics that of a push button (tile scales to 97.5% of its size similar to a pushed button). After that you will quickly learn that you can interact with tiles.

nodata 14y ago
But a physical button has a shape or appearance that makes it look like something to push. It's learnable. The author is making the point that Metro has zero visual clues, it's not learnable. You don't know which tiles you can interact with until you try and interact with them.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  >But a physical button has a shape or appearance that makes it look like something to push. It's learnable. And there are also plenty of things that looked like buttons when I was little, that I thought you could push. But you couldn't. I don't really buy this argument.
jiggy2011 14y ago
But that then creates an expectation that "anything in a square box can be clicked on" which is going to make life difficult if you want to design an app but now you can't use square boxes for pure information display.
- pilgrim689 14y ago
  These are called style guidelines and iOS has them too [1]. If you don't adhere to some of them, you won't even get your app in the App Store. So you need to design your app in an "iOS" way, just like here Windows Phone devs should design in a Windows Phone way. http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006556-CH1-SW1 http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userex...
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    it's much easier to design an app if you can say "don't bevel anything that isn't a button" rather than "don't put anything in a rectangle that isn't a button".
    - pilgrim689 14y ago
      That's a strawman. No one said: "don't put anything in a rectangle that isn't a button".
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        if all of the buttons are coloured rectangles, how do you differentiate a non button rectangle?
        pilgrim689 14y ago
        That depends on what you want to show, of course. What kind of example do you have in mind? What kind of information are you showing? Here are some examples of non-button rectangles: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/weather-clock/ece99882-96c2-46de-b687-2ade1f99aa34 http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/weather-clock/ec... http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/weather/171f3a75-b11e-4cfe-9ff7-699eb4c32d32 http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/weather/171f3a75... The differetiators here seems to be that 1) the rectangle is not a square 2) the rectangle has rounded corners edit: and I guess 3) the rectangle is not "flat", it has a gradient, 4) it's not colored, it's transparent grey, unlike any clickable rectangle in the system. .... (basically, it's fairly easy to differentiate between a clickable square tile and a pure informational rectangle)
        jiggy2011 14y ago
        Those UIs look quite cluttered and unclear to me, but I suppose a weather app isn't the best benchmark.

by lini 14y ago

nodata 14y ago

But a physical button has a shape or appearance that makes it look like something to push. It's learnable. The author is making the point that Metro has zero visual clues, it's not learnable. You don't know which tiles you can interact with until you try and interact with them.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
>But a physical button has a shape or appearance that makes it look like something to push. It's learnable. And there are also plenty of things that looked like buttons when I was little, that I thought you could push. But you couldn't. I don't really buy this argument.

jiggy2011 14y ago

But that then creates an expectation that "anything in a square box can be clicked on" which is going to make life difficult if you want to design an app but now you can't use square boxes for pure information display.

pilgrim689 14y ago
These are called style guidelines and iOS has them too [1]. If you don't adhere to some of them, you won't even get your app in the App Store. So you need to design your app in an "iOS" way, just like here Windows Phone devs should design in a Windows Phone way. http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006556-CH1-SW1 http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userex...
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  it's much easier to design an app if you can say "don't bevel anything that isn't a button" rather than "don't put anything in a rectangle that isn't a button".
  - pilgrim689 14y ago
    That's a strawman. No one said: "don't put anything in a rectangle that isn't a button".
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      if all of the buttons are coloured rectangles, how do you differentiate a non button rectangle?
      - pilgrim689 14y ago
        That depends on what you want to show, of course. What kind of example do you have in mind? What kind of information are you showing? Here are some examples of non-button rectangles: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/weather-clock/ece99882-96c2-46de-b687-2ade1f99aa34 http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/weather-clock/ec... http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/weather/171f3a75-b11e-4cfe-9ff7-699eb4c32d32 http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/weather/171f3a75... The differetiators here seems to be that 1) the rectangle is not a square 2) the rectangle has rounded corners edit: and I guess 3) the rectangle is not "flat", it has a gradient, 4) it's not colored, it's transparent grey, unlike any clickable rectangle in the system. .... (basically, it's fairly easy to differentiate between a clickable square tile and a pure informational rectangle)
        jiggy2011 14y ago
        Those UIs look quite cluttered and unclear to me, but I suppose a weather app isn't the best benchmark.