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Windows 8 Pre RTM Metro UI Leaked
An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from PC Tech Talk, which features screenshots of what is said to be something very close to what users will see in Windows 8: "One of the biggest changes Microsoft announced for Windows 8 was the change from the 'Aero Glass' interface we had in Windows Vista and Windows 7 to a new Metro UI. Until today these changes had not been fully seen as the weren't included in the recent Release Preview. A number of changes have been made to the UI since the Release Preview 2 weeks ago. Microsoft have said the new Metro UI will appear crisper following the removal of shadows and transparency. Gradients have been removed from buttons. The task bar is no longer has the glass, transparent look or blur effect. The new design brings with it some heartache for those that loved the Aero Glass effect as it has now been completely removed from Windows 8." Maybe it's more exciting in motion than are these static shots.
It sucks just as hard as I thought it would!
That's horrific.
It looks the same. I the blurring/transparency that important?
I for one will not be pirating this version. The ultimate DRM!
its like seeing bill o'reilly naked
i'm going to run out and buy a Mac for twice the price of a PC just so i don't have to look at this
Can it still be set back to the 'Windows Classic' theme? If so, nothing to see here.
(I do need to touch a Microsoft PC once every few months).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Its pretty clean and I was baffled at the need for fancy glass and transparency, heck, those things were cliche by the time Win7 came out and are beyond cliche already. I like an interface made up of flat colors much better personally.
These screenshots remind me of linux when the window manager crashes.
... looks like ass.
Or vagina.
If these screenshots are to be believed, it feels like every fancier looking OS from the late 90s, back before most of the fancier stuff was really feasible.
Shadows have a role (helps to establish depth and layers). Gloss has a role (draws the eye to interactive elements). Translucency has a role (establishes that something is over something else and gives it a sense of impermanence). Gradients have a role (draws the eye along the gradient towards something). Windows Vista and 7 overdid it by quite a bit, but cutting them out entirely is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You sacrifice usability when you do so. You can take a minimalist approach while still having those elements.
Why?
It's like a step backwards to an old 80s OS where everything consisted of solid bars with no shading or variation.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
This design is great, but Windows for Workgroups 8.11 is going to be even better!
How odd - it looks like any of a dozen Linux window managers from the late 90's. Back then I used to think how the flat/square look was just the first simple thing a developer would come up with, and how Linux would need a little more graphical refinement if they ever hoped to go mainstream. In the end it doesn't matter much for usability, but it sure looks like a toy/baby window manager to me.
All I have to do is set the window border color to a nice light blue, drag the task bar to the top of the screen, and I'll feel like I'm back using my Amiga from 20 years ago. Which isn't a bad thing, really.
What I find funny is that everyone bashed XP's big rounded edges and colorful themes as being cartoonish. Then Vista came around, and everyone railed against Aero for being a pointless resource hog, adding eye candy without functionality. With 7, everyone complained it was just a service pack for Vista, because there wasn't a big huge interface change. Now, they decide to overhaul it to be a simpler, cleaner interface, without the frivolous flair, and everyone hates against that too.
If the goal is to simplify the interface they have failed. The first screenshot in the article: "Computer" is the most cluttered confusing thing I have seen in a long time. I counted 8 icons of computer screens.
I'm glad Microsoft is getting away from the faux materials UI design that Apple made trendy. Shadows, gradients, mirrors, glass... it was all getting very predictable and tired. The metro interface, for all its faults, is based on the distinct and recognizable iconography you'd find at airports and train (metro, get it?) stations. You can find your way around these places without even knowing the language, and just following the pictures. Adding bevels and gradients and embossing to these UI elements just detracts from the usability of the device.
We're now in an age where we don't need to draw physical analogs to digital representations in order to understand them. File systems make sense without talking about a filing cabinet and a physical manila folder. Erasing makes sense without having to talk about a pencil eraser. Copying makes sense without having to talk about a clip board. However, Apple still insists on a physical spiral notebook for their notes app, or a desk planner for their calendar app, or a bookshelf for the iBooks app. Maybe this is comforting to a much older generation than mine, but I find no value in it, and therefore welcome the cold digital interface that metro brings.
Why would you want your CPU doing the Window compositing? Computers have these massive GPUs sitting around doing nothing - might as well use them for something like, I dunno, graphics processing.
I'm not a big fan of this UI, but it does remind me of the fairly recent UI change that I've seen in gmail. Yeah... not a big fan of that either.
Is this just some kind of "natural" progression we're going with?
"Intelligence has nothing to do with politics!"
-Londo Mollari
Just because you can compute transparency does not mean you should use it.
IMHO this is looking infinitely better, the first time they have improved over the "Classic" appearance. Clean is much better.
The title bars and resize edges are really thick however. And they seem to be cluttering the titlebar with icons. Not sure what the colored text that seems to be attached to the "ribbon" tabs is either, it would seem better to move the ribbon tabs and menu bar up into the titlebar.
i'm going to run out and buy a Mac for twice the price of a PC just so i don't have to look at this
You don't need to. My clean PC runs Xubuntu.
Clean, precise, pangolin-powered. MyCleanPC.
IE 10: Better HTML 5 support - not much else - who cares?
Sign in with MS Account: Who cares? Is anyone gonna use this?
Picture Password and PIN Login: Picture pass is kinda cool, but PIN login? Really?
Ribbon in Windows Explorer: Holy cow no thank you.
Hybrid Boot: Kinda cool - depends on how well it works.
Windows To Go - Officially supported BartPE. Yawn.
Refresh and Reset Recovery - How about making it so you don't need recovery in the first place? How is this better than a decent backup system?
Native USB 3 - This shouldn't be a Windows 8 "feature," this should be in a service pack for Vista and Seven
New Windows Task Manager - Yawn
XBox Live integration - I don't think anyone will care about this - are they thinking about competing with steam? Good luck.
Storage Spaces - LVM for the masses? Kinda cool.
Family Safety - Wasn't this included with Windows Live? Yawn
Antivirus in Windows Defender - In other words, they are just including MSE.
Secure Boot Support - Holy cow no thank you
So a handful of actually useful new features (that can, mostly, be added on to Seven with 3rd party utilities) a few that should be included with Seven and Vista, and a bunch that I don't want, including, in a big way, Metro.
Doesn't sound like a winner.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
This theme seems to already be present in the Consumer Preview that was released a few weeks ago. The only difference is that the RTM is going to use this theme by default. Did I miss something here?
After having used Windows 8 and started developing apps for it using VS 2012 (11 beta) for several months now, I have to say Metro is about the laziest UI design that has come out of any OS developer in the history of operating systems.
What they have done is removed ALL borders, all color variations and rounded corners, along with any chrome and created blobs of white/grey boxes with text on it.
Its almost like Microsoft has given up on traditional desktop applications and want to encourage more "web-like" app designs exclusively for the Metro overlay.
I could almost be claimed to be a Windows fanboy, but Windows 8 is the first time since Windows ME that I am greatly disappointed in the direction Microsoft is taking for UI/UX. It is horrid on almost every level of UI and UX and I have been a UI/UX developer for 15+ years.
Windows 8 may be the biggest disaster they have ever created.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
If you look at my post history, I have *HAVE* been an avid supporter of Windows for my desktop OS
from an AC.
Slashdot is getting weirder all of the time.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Is that all that counts today ? pretty effects and cool graphics ? I for one just want a plain old desktop with no background, just the classic theme without anything installed, no gadgets no candy just the desktop, a couple of icons there and that's about it.
You do realize, of course, that roughly 30 years ago, computer geeks were running complaining about these new-fangled GUIs and how they just wanted a good ol' command line interface without the pretty graphics. I think we're long past those arguments at this point. IOW, you are squarely in the minority. People want computer interfaces they can relate to and that feel "human" and that means pretty effects and cool graphics.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
I've never seen a company so eager to destroy their own user base though forced , unwanted, change.
Wander over to a discussion on Mountain Lion in the Apple forums. Remarkably similar rending of garments and gnashing of teeth.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I really never liked Aero that much and the special effects just seemed like fluff to make the CPU work harder than being anything useful.
Oh right, you are always supposed to run all games full screen and not task switch out of them (otherwise your GPU will have to dump the game rendering data to make room for composting and such).
I always run games in maximized windows, ie. not fullscreen, and I constantly tab out and back in. No issues whatsoever. Maybe it's just your GPU that's the problem?
>"Metro" is the new start menu
No. No.. It's. Not.
Go play with IE in Metro mode and tell me that Metro is just the start screen.
Where did this idea come from that Metro is just the start screen? I've seen people who are totally ignorant claim this, and then I've seen dyed-in-the-wool Windows White Knights 4 Lyfe who should know better, claim this. It's not. It's a whole new interface paradigm.
Crikes.
--
BMO
He's probably the type that disables superfetch because IT'S USING ALL THE RAM.
People want computer interfaces they can relate to and that feel "human" and that means pretty effects and cool graphics.
Which is fine...as long as I can turn it off and have a clean and efficient UI to work with. When I'm spending 8 hours a day flipping between Visual Studio and SQL Server Management Studio and various spreadsheets and documents...the last thing I want is pretty graphics and bloated ribbon style toolbars taking up screen real estate and making me have to scroll around a lot more to see all the important stuff. Windows (file) explorer and it's task bar has just been getting progressively more and more annoying. I'm at the point now where I'm just writing my own taskbar and file explorer. I just want something that takes up minimal space, provide quick access to RUN, CMD, Admin Tools/Control Panel, allows me organize the running programs in the taskbar...and spot them easily... and a file explorer that doesn't try to figure out what view I need based on the files in the folder...I want to see the detail view...always...filename (w/extension), date modified, and size. That's it...even for media files. I just want to see my drives and be able to drill down into the folders. I want to be able to expand folders without the damn tree view dancing all over the place. I want the folders contents to load quickly, not sit around while windows does whatever the fuck it does that causes me to have to wait five minutes to see the bloody files in some folders. ok...I'm done ranting. I guess I'm just an old guy resisting change. But when that change is just stupid and slows me down, I get annoyed.
... looks like ass.
Or vagina.
Stay away from Morse Code, if you have that much trouble determining dots from dashes.
I still prefer NT4 era window decorations (NONE) cause I just want to get shit done and pretty graphics means less space on screen for apps.
However on friends and realitives computers who don't all have eagle eyes the aero thing with the transparencies really look quite nice and cool.
It is to me a little bit hilarious Microsoft is focusing on function over pretty interfaces while at the same time pushing a totally zombie consumption based interface concept like metro which makes no sense at all on the desktop.
My conspiracy theory they want the desktop interface to look as ugly as they can get away with so people will be less confused by Microsofts 8-bit blockworld interface.
It was cool to be able to run and see the output of two DOS programs on one 640x480 vga computer display at once in desqview like 20 years ago... The reserrection of that same prospect for metro apps in 2012 on our modern high rez monitors is beyond anything I am capable of processing or understanding.
I wish MS the best of luck in its future endeavours chasing the apple zombie class of users.. As for me I don't want to be on your nonsensical sinking ship anyway MS...I'm jumping ship while there are still penguins in the water willing to rescue me.
Funny you mention that. I had told a colleague the other day that I predict this will be the same as Active Desktop. People will just want to turn it off / get it the hell out of the way so they can get some actual work done with their PCs. Unfortunately, it's going to be another set of APIs in Windows that will have to be maintained forever, and will turn the OS a bit schizophrenic in terms of it's presentation.
I'm actually really happy with Windows 7 - I really like the way it looks and performs. So, I don't think it's a matter of me simply not liking change, I think. I just can't see any use for this Metro stuff on a desktop. Sure, it makes perfect sense on tablets, but why try to pretend it's useful in situations where it obviously won't be?
Meh. I just don't get this at all.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
This is not Metro. This is the Windows 7 - like part of the OS, they just made the color theme a bit more like Metro. Aero transparency was really jarring when you switched from Metro.
I think the desktop has been deprecated. Microsoft no longer intends to add any new feature to it, just bug-fixes. That's sad, because the desktop found in Windows 7 is probably the best computer interface there is.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
REPEAT - WIN 8 CRASH, FAIL, BURN
I'm one of the last active 3-digit UIDs. Been aboard since Windowmaker tips on Rob's "Chips N Dips". My Karma - always excellent is down to good.
Look at this - 6 downmods on a +5 anti-Microsoft comment, on the eve of Win 8 launch.
Kicker that proves the targeting? This comment is more than 2 weeks old.
The comment is May 131, and mods are all June 15 - after the thread was archived and closed for responses.
Someone is paranoid that we will sink Win 8. I hope this isn't internal to Slashdot, by an editor.
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Never been known to fail..."