6 ms·

Metro is a fantastic design language. What they screwed up is the combined Metro+classic desktop in Win8. A Surface 2's UI is great (the problem is the lack of

Metro is a fantastic design language. What they screwed up is the combined Metro+classic desktop in Win8. A Surface 2's UI is great (the problem is the lack of apps), same for WP.

thirsteh 13y ago
It sounds like you're suggesting that Windows 8 would've been fine if they had just forced Metro, but people dislike Windows 8 because its default view is so obviously designed for tablets and touch, not because they're able to turn it back into something close to Windows 7.
joe_the_user 13y ago
As far as I know design, Metro could well be a fantastic way to make design-oriented apps. The problem is that full, complete, design orientation doesn't give you enough clues to accomplish tasks. Maybe no one ever cares to accomplish anything on a tablet but if they do, it doesn't seem like Metro will be helpful. I mean, the problem with the Metro start button isn't that it's touch oriented - you can click the tiles with a mouse just as easily. The problem is you look at the start button and say "beautiful - WTF is it?" If you just feel like experiencing an endless beautiful demo, it's great but if you have a goal, it's opaque how you'd achieve it.
- jkrems 13y ago
  Design != good looking. If you look at something and it seems beautiful but not functional, it's maybe good art but it's likely to be shitty design.
- usaphp 13y ago
  > design orientation doesn't give you enough clues to accomplish tasks Design is a specification of an object, manifested by an agent, intended to accomplish goals, in a particular environment, using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to constraints;
jpalomaki 13y ago
I wonder if they actually thought they would eventually port the major applications to Metro? Somehow hard to believe that the master plan was to have this mess between Metro and traditional desktop going on forever. On the other hand porting apps like Office to Metro would have been quite a job. The whole concept would probably have to be resigned. For my usage it would be been quite fine if the old desktop apps could run as Metro apps. I really liked how the splitting of the screen between multiple Metro apps worked in Windows 8.1. It was easier to use the screen efficiently than with traditional desktop windows.
- dublinben 13y ago
  >It was easier to use the screen efficiently than with traditional desktop windows Did you never take advantage of Aero Snap in Windows 7? It's far more useful and versatile than the limit multitasking of Metro in Windows 8.
  - contextfree 13y ago
    The problem with Windows 7 snap is it's still tied to the overlapping window model, so when you snap a window it just goes on top of whatever was on screen and doesn't automatically manage the remaining space.
- contextfree 13y ago
  I don't understand the use of the "would have been" tense. It's not a hypothetical thing, they are in the process of doing exactly that right now.
eCa 13y ago
It might be great for touch, but I don't have a touch screen. On my new Win8 machine the first program I installed was Classic Shell [1]. Now I have a (functioning) start button and it boots straight to the desktop so I never have to see the touch interface. [1] http://www.classicshell.net/ http://www.classicshell.net/
- shitlord 13y ago
  Another good alternative is Start8: http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/ http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    Well, it's not really necessary for the start screen to context-switch the entire screen. That's my main complaint. The W7 start menu was more than sufficient in terms of screen real-estate to get its job done.
adamwong246 13y ago
for touch. For the average, non-touch mouse and keyboard windows users (aka all windows users), metro sucks. But I agree, on a tablet, Metro is great.
lurkinggrue 13y ago
Is it fantastic? It's just fonts on whitespace with stock photos while scrolling horizontally. While paging from the side or a slide in is cool they decided to go with an infinite side scrolling paper thing. Real bitch to read like that. The newsapp is a perfect example of that annoying hard to track with your eyes side scrolling that would be a 1000 times better if it either scrolled vertically or just paged.

Metro is a fantastic design language. What they screwed up is the combined Metro+classic desktop in Win8. A Surface 2's UI is great (the problem is the lack of apps), same for WP.

thirsteh 13y ago

It sounds like you're suggesting that Windows 8 would've been fine if they had just forced Metro, but people dislike Windows 8 because its default view is so obviously designed for tablets and touch, not because they're able to turn it back into something close to Windows 7.

joe_the_user 13y ago

As far as I know design, Metro could well be a fantastic way to make design-oriented apps. The problem is that full, complete, design orientation doesn't give you enough clues to accomplish tasks. Maybe no one ever cares to accomplish anything on a tablet but if they do, it doesn't seem like Metro will be helpful. I mean, the problem with the Metro start button isn't that it's touch oriented - you can click the tiles with a mouse just as easily. The problem is you look at the start button and say "beautiful - WTF is it?" If you just feel like experiencing an endless beautiful demo, it's great but if you have a goal, it's opaque how you'd achieve it.

jkrems 13y ago
Design != good looking. If you look at something and it seems beautiful but not functional, it's maybe good art but it's likely to be shitty design.
usaphp 13y ago
> design orientation doesn't give you enough clues to accomplish tasks Design is a specification of an object, manifested by an agent, intended to accomplish goals, in a particular environment, using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to constraints;

jpalomaki 13y ago

I wonder if they actually thought they would eventually port the major applications to Metro? Somehow hard to believe that the master plan was to have this mess between Metro and traditional desktop going on forever. On the other hand porting apps like Office to Metro would have been quite a job. The whole concept would probably have to be resigned. For my usage it would be been quite fine if the old desktop apps could run as Metro apps. I really liked how the splitting of the screen between multiple Metro apps worked in Windows 8.1. It was easier to use the screen efficiently than with traditional desktop windows.

dublinben 13y ago
>It was easier to use the screen efficiently than with traditional desktop windows Did you never take advantage of Aero Snap in Windows 7? It's far more useful and versatile than the limit multitasking of Metro in Windows 8.
- contextfree 13y ago
  The problem with Windows 7 snap is it's still tied to the overlapping window model, so when you snap a window it just goes on top of whatever was on screen and doesn't automatically manage the remaining space.
contextfree 13y ago
I don't understand the use of the "would have been" tense. It's not a hypothetical thing, they are in the process of doing exactly that right now.

eCa 13y ago

It might be great for touch, but I don't have a touch screen. On my new Win8 machine the first program I installed was Classic Shell [1]. Now I have a (functioning) start button and it boots straight to the desktop so I never have to see the touch interface. [1] http://www.classicshell.net/ http://www.classicshell.net/

shitlord 13y ago
Another good alternative is Start8: http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/ http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Well, it's not really necessary for the start screen to context-switch the entire screen. That's my main complaint. The W7 start menu was more than sufficient in terms of screen real-estate to get its job done.

adamwong246 13y ago

for touch. For the average, non-touch mouse and keyboard windows users (aka all windows users), metro sucks. But I agree, on a tablet, Metro is great.

lurkinggrue 13y ago

Is it fantastic? It's just fonts on whitespace with stock photos while scrolling horizontally. While paging from the side or a slide in is cool they decided to go with an infinite side scrolling paper thing. Real bitch to read like that. The newsapp is a perfect example of that annoying hard to track with your eyes side scrolling that would be a 1000 times better if it either scrolled vertically or just paged.