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In my opinion, the biggest failure of windows 8 is that they called it windows. If metro mode was an installable add-on for windows 7 that you could jump into whenever you wanted a simplistic or touch-friendly experience, people would love it. The usability isn't terrible on its own, it's only terrible if you try to use it while expecting a windows operating system. for example, the only being able to run one fullscr…
Have been using a Surface as well as a Win8 desktop for a couple of weeks now, and I have to say this is pretty accurate. When WinPhone first came out with the Metro UI I was a fan - there's a visual simplicity to it that's very appealing. After you use it for a while though the weaknesses become pretty glaring and hard to accept. It is often very hard to tell what UI elements are interactive and what are purely info…
On a tablet swipe down from the top edge to the bottom to close the app. On a desktop drag from top to bottom or bring up the appbar on the left and right click on the app that you want to close.
On Windows 8, there are a ton of Keyboard settings - including promising-sounding ones like "Change how the keyboard works" and "Keyboard properties" - yet you still have to use a stupid registry hack to actually change the behavior of keys (ie, to make your capslock key an additional control key).
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On a tablet swipe down from the top edge to the bottom to close the app. On a desktop drag from top to bottom or bring up the appbar on the left and right click on the app that you want to close.
How the hell do they expect the everyday user to learn that? That is such an essential and core feature to navigating any operating system's interface. Jesus.
EDIT: This describes a metro app's life cycle: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh46492...
The basic idea is that if you aren't using an app it receives a "suspend" event allowing it to save its state so that it can resume where it was. If the system is low on resources it will start terminating suspended apps that you have not used -- though as far as I gather they should still have the ability to re-launch and read in whatever they saved at the time they were suspended.
So the general idea is that closing apps isn't something you should be concerned about as a user.
Tablet-mode: default to Windows 8 metro style (I'm using my fingers)
Any kind of trackpad or plugged-in mouse: Shift UI to traditional Windows GUI (Obviously I want more fine-point control)
If Windows is truly trying to cover both types of usage, they should recognize that both of these paradigms are useful in specific settings.
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How the hell do they expect the everyday user to learn that? That is such an essential and core feature to navigating any operating system's interface. Jesus.
If I'm not mistaken they don't expect every day users to learn that on account of metro apps automatically being suspended and then closed for you based on your usage. EDIT: This describes a metro app's life cycle: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh46492... The basic idea is that if you aren't using an app it receives a "suspend" event allowing it to save its state so that it can resume where it…
For what it's worth I've been using Windows 8 since the RP and have been very happy with it. The key point that a lot of reviews fail to emphasize is that evrything that worked in Windows 7 is still there and works exactly how it always has. The removal of Aero and subtle improvements to explorer are nice updates for the desktop experience. The start menu was always kind off useless so I didn't take long to get used…
I do this too, but often I need to use my mouse to select a control panel item or file. That's very annoying. Why would they get rid of universal search from Windows 7?
or
Windows-W opens the settings search directly Windows- F opens the file search directly
Question: Why couldn't Microsoft user some sort of device input flag to default the Windows 8 UI to the best UI for the current input? Tablet-mode: default to Windows 8 metro style (I'm using my fingers) Any kind of trackpad or plugged-in mouse: Shift UI to traditional Windows GUI (Obviously I want more fine-point control) If Windows is truly trying to cover both types of usage, they should recognize that both of the…
Who says they're trying to cover both types of usage? It seems pretty clear to me that they want devs to forget about the desktop and start building metro-only apps.
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If I'm not mistaken they don't expect every day users to learn that on account of metro apps automatically being suspended and then closed for you based on your usage. EDIT: This describes a metro app's life cycle: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh46492... The basic idea is that if you aren't using an app it receives a "suspend" event allowing it to save its state so that it can resume where it…
And how do you expect the everyday user to learn that? Sometimes I keep programs open for days with work I'm hoping to get back to. I'm surprised that that's the everyday solution. Shockingly bad.
Setting firefox as my default browser helped here. (Not going to work on RT of course). Clicking a link in the Metro mail app takes you to the desktop instance of the browser, unlike chrome and ie, which also seem to ignore any sessions you have open in the desktop version.