Metro
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Metro
1–10 of 163 posts
Re: Metro
#2Contra-Gruber I'm betting ARM Windows 8 devices will have some mode that looks and feels just like Windows desktop. It may not be the default and it may be a dumbed down version of it but I can't imagine them shipping without it.
Re: Metro
#3I'm guessing Microsoft doesn't know yet how it's going to address this quandary.
Re: Metro
#4>I think Metro will only run alongside the traditional Windows desktop on Intel PCs. On ARM devices, there will only be Metro.
It seems there will be a desktop mode for ARM tablets if you look 1:40 into the video here:
http://thisismynext.com/2011/09/14/nvidia-kal-el-windows-8-t...
The desktop mode doesn't seem to immediately respond to touch like Metro. It will be interesting to see the final product and how well Windows 8 performs on an ARM processor in desktop mode.
Re: Metro
#5Thinking about it, isn’t window an odd word choice for what we call movable, stackable, resizeable content regions in a user interface? Other than being rectangular they’re not like real-world windows at all.
I can remember my high school computer studies teacher explaining they're called windows because they're split into panes. Microsoft Windows versions 1 and 2 didn't actually have stackable overlapping windows (you'd split the screen up into as many panes as you needed) so I suspect the name made sense then and has since stuck.
Re: Metro
#6Thinking about it, isn’t window an odd word choice for what we call movable, stackable, resizeable content regions in a user interface? Other than being rectangular they’re not like real-world windows at all. I can remember my high school computer studies teacher explaining they're called windows because they're split into panes. Microsoft Windows versions 1 and 2 didn't actually have stackable overlapping windows (y…
Good point - though I believe they were called windows on previous GUI systems.
EDIT: Though now that I think about it and, IIRC, Xerox's stuff didn't have overlapping windows either. Apple's Lisa and Mac did. I think Englebart's demo had windows but I'm not sure if they overlapped.
Re: Metro
#7There will be ARM laptops, not just tablets, and they will run Microsoft Office in classic mode or nobody will buy them. Office on ARM has already been demoed on stage.
Re: Metro
#8Metro to me, and I hate to say it, reminds me of MS Bob, and frankly of the original Windows 3.1 except where in that case it was a layer on DOS, this seems like a gloss on Windows 7. I hope for the sake of innovation I'm wrong, but it is frankly more bizarre than Launchpad (and that's saying something).
Let me show: https://skitch.com/ethank/f3drj/windows-8-x64-preview
then https://skitch.com/ethank/f3drc/windows-8-x64-preview
and... https://skitch.com/ethank/f3dr1/windows-8-x64-preview
after you go back to metro: https://skitch.com/ethank/f3dri/windows-8-x64-preview
dumped back into Metro with no context how you got out.
Thus: feels like a skin or window manager, not the OS.
Re: Metro
#9I had been reading statements like this as meaning that they wouldn’t be doing Rosetta-style emulation of x86 software on ARM...but that developers would be able to recompile traditional Windows apps for ARM. Now I’m thinking what they mean is more profound: that on ARM, Metro will be the only Windows interface.
I think that's a very black and white way of looking at it. Sure maybe MS will rule out C++ x86 apps targeting winforms apis, but there's no reason to assume that they will also exclude C# apps targeting WPF.
Re: Metro
#10Metro is really nice. It's great to see Gruber praising it like this: it is very praiseworthy. Also, it's easy to forget that Gruber is first-and-foremost a design geek.