theoutermost

Changing the desktop look is probably the least important part of all the work on Windows 8 so it seems pretty logical to leave it until the end. And if you use the classic theme in both the Developer Preview and Consumer Preview you can actually see a lot of this flattened look.

As to it not looking great, I heartily disagree and say it’s the best Windows has looked but succesfuly retains a familiar layout and structure.

I was of that opinion as well. And it’s still a great app for sure with a great stock metro look and wonderful set of options. When the nest is working it will surely be indispensible too.

But the quirky Gleek! has won me over at the moment. It’s got a whole bunch of fun ideas is updated extremely quickly by one of Windows Phone’s finest and most dedicated developers and is from y experience even smoother in use than Rowi.

It’s got a rubbishly short trial of 24hrs but if you follow them on twitter at the moment @gleekthis you can find out what today’s 24hr magic hash-tag is which when you input it on the app will get the full paid version for you for free. Huzzah!

I think the Windows Phone team was quite a small and radical group within the overall corporation and were given quite a bit of freedom to experiment hence the beautiful work they’ve done.

What I suspect has happened or is happening is that this small team is now being absorbed by the giant gorilla that is the Windows team and some of that free and radical spirit is being subsumed and lost as a result.

Hopefully not too much though.

Yeah it’s a sad loss Mike Kruzeniski has great ideas so hopefully he can bring some of that to twitter.

He wasn’t the only driving force behind Windows Phone though but it does seem a few of the closely knit Windows Phone Design Team have been leaving recently. It would be a shame if the fantastic work they collectively started at MS isn’t shaped by them in the future.

If people can handle going to the home screen on their iPhone I think they’ll eventually be able to handle the start button bringing up a similar ‘homescreen’ on Windows.

It really isn’t jarring. And going back to OS X and Win 7 now (Win8CP was too unstable on my MacPro) I miss the toggle homescreen of the start button and full screen search.

Exactly. MS needs to be practical as well and this is the cleanest and most attractive I’ve seen Windows and yet it remains honest to its heritage.

It’s also worth noting once you get past the appealing gradients and soft focus effects that make the concept designs appealing the actual balls of the design work, the structure, the layout the icon and type sizing/spacing as well as the style of these icons isn’t strong enough and needs work.

You can snap it to a corner, or just use a desktop mail option?

Having run it for over a month if you don’t want to touch the metro stuff ona desktop PC you really don’t have to.

Indeed it’s like some people were looking at the Zune Desktop UI.

Dear lord… If I hand you some crayons can you draw me something everyone will be happy with?

The grading and soft focus effects are nice. The type sizes, explorer arrows and close min and max buttons aren’t so great and need a lot of work.

This new MS effort is less showy but has much stronger structure.

Not if you pin them to your taskbar. But if you find it disjointed then you must have trouble when someone hands you an iPhone and you pop in and out of full screen apps back to the home screen

Tis good and will work well for a windowed environment. Pushing it further would start to run into UI issues.