121–130 of 131 posts
Microsoft now has, IMO, the most interesting design language of any of the big tech players. I guess it remains to be seen if there will be any reward for them in the market for this but, as a developer, I find this a lot more appealing than anything Google or Apple are doing and C# kicks the shit out of Java or Obj-C.
Is this what we have to look forward to with Metro? The design seems like a children's book combined with some ISP "landing page" from 1995. Everything is big and bold, yet the entire page is almost completely devoid of meaningful content. It's just a vast array of disorganised links, or more precisely, a whole bunch of vast arrays of disorganised links, with no sign of any rational information architecture or even b…
"It's just a vast array of disorganised links, or more precisely, a whole bunch of vast arrays of disorganised links, with no sign of any rational information architecture or even basic scannability." What a ridiculous statement. Of course it's organised. Want to download something to extend a Microsoft product line? Click "Downloads" and choose the product line. Need Support? Click "Support". Want to buy a Microsoft…
Really?
Go to the page. Open the first menu, "Products". They've grouped Windows stuff together and Office stuff together. On the next column, there is everything from Surface (which one?) to Hotmail. On the column after that, we have products like "Partner network" and "Microsoft in the enterprise". This column also has "Cloud services", but Azure is in the final column.
Let's try another menu, "Security". There are only four options on this menu. Let's assume I'm someone who doesn't know what every Microsoft brand means, but my friend told me I might have a virus on my Windows PC. Does that menu give me the slightest guidance about which option I need? The names are completely meaningless, unless you happen to know that Microsoft Security Essentials isn't actually a guide to the essentials of security, it's the product with anti-virus functionality.
Which use cases exactly are you imagining are not supported by this "vast array of disorganised links"?
I know what I want to do, but I don't know the name of the Microsoft product or service that will help me.
I know what I want to do, but I don't know whether Microsoft offer a product or service that can help me.
In fact, just about anything except "Tell me about Windows", "Tell me about Office", or "I already know exactly which product or service I want, by Microsoft Randomised Brand Name(TM), tell me about the thing I've already found".
There is no sense of priority. No sense of leading a visitor interested in a particular area through what Microsoft has to offer. It's just a catalogue, with a lot of spurious entries thrown in and no descriptions for anything. It is empty.
Click on almost any link and the beautiful geometric layout is replaced with something different and far less pleasant.
This would have made so much more impact on me if the theme had been deployed more consistently and thoroughly across more pages.
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"It's just a vast array of disorganised links, or more precisely, a whole bunch of vast arrays of disorganised links, with no sign of any rational information architecture or even basic scannability." What a ridiculous statement. Of course it's organised. Want to download something to extend a Microsoft product line? Click "Downloads" and choose the product line. Need Support? Click "Support". Want to buy a Microsoft…
Of course it's organised. Really? Go to the page. Open the first menu, "Products". They've grouped Windows stuff together and Office stuff together. On the next column, there is everything from Surface (which one?) to Hotmail. On the column after that, we have products like "Partner network" and "Microsoft in the enterprise". This column also has "Cloud services", but Azure is in the final column. Let's try another m…
Your friend told you you have a virus? Well if you know that means "Security" click on there, and, logically being unfamiliar with the 4 choices you pick the first one, "Security Home". Bang, right there in front of you:
"Download Microsoft Security Essentials for free. Help shield your computer from viruses, spyware, and other malware."
"What is a Computer Virus | What Do Computer Viruses Do. Have you ever wondered what is a computer virus or what do computer viruses do? Learn how are computer viruses spread and how to prevent them."
That's the only specific use case you mentioned and I had zero problems finding the correct solution. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize Microsoft (the 3 hours I wasted yesterday trying to get ASP.NET MVC 4 working is one of them). But you didn't list one valid criticism with a specific use case. The rest of your post is a vague rant.
I decided to download Movie Maker so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a Downloads menu there. I clicked "All Windows Downloads". (The site is pretty fast, BTW). I selected "Windows 7", then scrolled down until I found Movie Maker. I clicked "Get it now" and it showed me the Movie Maker page. On that page I clicked Download Now, and it started downloading!
This is a reference to Bill Gates ranting about not being able to download Movie Maker easily. See here: http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2008/06/24/full-text-an-...
Just shows the lack of direction the product was getting when you hear the totally different results that Steve Jobs got. Admittedly BG was no longer CEO then.
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I totally agree about the design language. I work on a Mac most of the day and love my iPhone, but damn does Metro look nice. And it's great seeing that come across with their other products as well.
I think the Design is good on first sight but doesn't carry over with time. It is the excitement in graphics but little in design philosophy. Compare to Android 4.0 and Apple.
I think Metro has a lot of growing to do, but it seems like a language that could be very interesting down the road.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it's organised. Really? Go to the page. Open the first menu, "Products". They've grouped Windows stuff together and Office stuff together. On the next column, there is everything from Surface (which one?) to Hotmail. On the column after that, we have products like "Partner network" and "Microsoft in the enterprise". This column also has "Cloud services", but Azure is in the final column. Let's try another m…
You seem to be blinded by some serious Microsoft hatred. "Microsoft Randomised Brand Name(TM)"? "Office" is "random"? I suppose you think "Apple" or "Linux" or "Ubuntu" or "Sun" or whatever it is you are a fan of is less random? Another ridiculous statement. Your friend told you you have a virus? Well if you know that means "Security" click on there, and, logically being unfamiliar with the 4 choices you pick the fir…
If you really can't understand that many of Microsoft's brand names are not literal/descriptive or why this creates a usability problem if much of the material on their home page is just links to such names without any explanation or context, there is little more I can say here.
However, straw man arguments about brand names in general or advice that boils down to "Just Google it" because the page doesn't contain any useful information don't exactly help your case.