{"id":7381,"date":"2011-06-02T10:15:42","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T15:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/?p=7381"},"modified":"2023-12-14T18:48:36","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T00:48:36","slug":"microsoft-makes-the-leap-into-the-ubiquitous-os-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/2011\/06\/microsoft-makes-the-leap-into-the-ubiquitous-os-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Makes The Leap Into The Ubiquitous OS Game"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Yesterday evening, Microsoft took to the stage to demo the future of Windows. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this fancy new Windows 8 thing was merely Microsoft’s foray into the tablet world, given the WP7-esque design philosophy and the decidedly touch-centric interface. You’d be wrong, though, to make such cavalier assumptions, my friend. Windows 8 is for desktops, too. This in addition to being for the ARM architecture as well as x86. Welcome to the new world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

To start things off, Microsoft shows off the new “Start screen”. Goodbye Start button! A panel of live tiles (which Microsoft insists are “better than icons”) splatters the screen with so much colored paint. The interface is largely the same as WP7: you’ve got tiles that function as hybrids of icons and widgets, and you stack them together. Frankly, the interface looks much more suited to a tablet than it does a phone, allowing plenty of room to see and interact with more than four-ish things at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there’s the multitasking interface elements. Swiping from the left of the screen will allow you to cycle through your running apps, which feels like a proper Alt-Tab for the 21st century. Perhaps a little slower, but certainly not lacking in flair. Additionally, beginning a swipe from the left side of the screen, but pausing before release, will allow you to create a second panel with an app inside, thus allowing you\u2014for the first time on a tablet!*\u2014to view multiple apps at once. What’s even cooler is that it seems you can slide the divider around the tablet to resize your screen paritions and doing so will automatically remap the apps to take advantage of whatever amount of space you give them. Think of it like Android’s Fragments API, which redraws an app’s UI based on what size device it’s on, except totally dynamic on a single device. It’s really clever!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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