Microsoft demonstrates Windows 8 with HTML5 apps - Page 3

Gah, I was just reading on another site that Microsoft is actually coming up with "a third-generation activation system would speed up getting a device ready to use".

Only Microsoft would spend so much effort trying to protect something so few will want.

Microsoft's idea of a "better user experience" is to add more animations. At least, that is how they process what Apple is doing.

This was from Anandtech"Microsoft also showed that you've got full access to the underlying file system regardless of whether you're in standard Windows mode or the new tile based start screen with lighter weight HTML5 apps."

I am not an engineer, but is it not true that even an Atom IA64 struggles with W7? So, the SoCs now can handle 'full access' on W8? I am waiting to be impressed!

I use 3 devices, and Microsoft wants to reduce that to 2 by making my tablet as powerful as my computer. Kudos to them for that. How well they can execute is another story and there are still too many unanswered questions. Still, it would be funny to think that we could potentially sync an iPad to a Windows 8 tablet. Although iOS 6 will probably be out by the time Windows 8 launches, by which point Apple would have rid the iPad's dependence on iTunes.

Don't like the fact that it's Windows underneath all of the cosmetics though, both a blessing and a curse but shows that Microsoft hasn't quite moved with the times. Hopefully they'll properly optimise it so we don't get any slowdown and lag on the tablet side, which did look quite zippy. People expect tablets to be quick and responsive so Microsoft have task ahead of them.

I would be surprised if Steve c.s. would pay a lot of attention. Only if they haven't enough to tell on their own.

But if they do, maybe it is good to recount the history of Cairo and Longhorn. Because whenever Microsoft announces something in consumer space, history shows there is only a chance of some of it actually ending up in consumer's hands.

The only really new ideas I saw there were the idea of app icons being huge and live, and the way you can have multiple full-screen apps on screen at once by squashing them side by side. Everything else I have already seen on other products. But it's still good to see Microsoft trying to shake things up.

My point wasn't that tablets are incapable of filesystem browser/management due to lack of CPU performance. iOS devices definitely have a filesystem, just like Mac OS X.

My point was that times have changed and most users no longer care to do file system management for themselves nor do they particularly want Apps to be presented with a raw filesystem view. For most consumers, providing them with a tree like organization structure is more information then they really want to deal with. Grandma... to open the photo go to the folder "a" then "b" then
"c" and then "d" and then open file mno.jpg". Seriously? this is the best we can do?

Instead, the trend is to store user files of type XYZ in a database which which is designed to manage and quickly index and search for files of type XYZ using metadata, i.e. photos are in a photo library, music in a music library, apps in an app library, and books in a book library. Where the photo library is relative to the music library is of no importance to the user.

So.. Windows 8 can show you the physical filesystem and allow you to manage files for yourself. Just like MS-DOS. The question, however, is this a selling point for the modern day device designed for non-techie consumers?

The developments seem to go to the cloud for syncing and iOS, Mac OS X, etc. as front ends for cloud services. No need for iPad - Win8 tablet syncing.

Either iOS 7 will be out or Windows 8 will be watered down if history is any guide.

And if they are moving to ARM for the tablet, they will leave WinTel legacy firmly behind. I don't know if they are willing to do that.

Microsoft used to be strongest in having a good strategy. In the early days, their tech was always mediocre or bad (or decent, but acquired), but their strategy was always ahead of everybody else. Gates was the first to see that PCs would become ubiquitous and cheap and built the entire company on top of that brilliant insight. But Microsoft has always been very bad at technology. Their products were mediocre and often stale. Their futuristic ideas (like everything AI-like) were naive (gates can be blamed here, he never understood it). They never were decent designers (both outside and inside of systems). Then they lost their strategic capability, somehow (being in a monopoly that has to be defended might have something to do with it, or maybe it was just one single brilliant insight). It is quite of funny: Apple was an innovation-oriented company with poor strategy that then lost its design capability. Microsoft was a strategy-oriented company with poor innovation skills that lost its strategic capabilities (maybe because there was never need of them for a long time, they just atrofied).

Apple has (obviously) re-established its innovation-orientation between 1996 and now. It has also improved markedly in strategic skills. I know Microsoft has been trying for years to improve their design skills (trying to get the best of the field, but they all seem to get smothered in the Microsoft culture).

My iPad has 155 applications plus quite a few bookmarks saved to homepage icons this all fits nice in 9 screens. The first two screen for favorite apps, third for news apps fourth is all folders (reference, utillitys, etc.) the fifth screen is tv and video apps, 6 & 7 are my games and 8 is educational apps for my two year old and the last screen is a collection of the Dr. Seuss book apps ( I hope they make them all). How is that UI with such big tiles going to handle so many apps ( I'm sure some have many more than this too).

[QUOTE=MauiJoe;1873967]My iPad has 155 applications plus quite a few bookmarks saved to homepage icons this all fits nice in 9 screens. The first two screen for favorite apps, third for news apps fourth is all folders (reference, utillitys, etc.) the fifth screen is tv and video apps, 6 & 7 are my games and 8 is educational apps for my two year old and the last screen is a collection of the Dr. Seuss book apps ( I hope they make them all). How is that UI with such big tiles going to handle so many apps ( I'm sure some have many more than this too).[/QUOTE

My guess is it will be done in a similar way to WP7. You would enable tiles for your favourite apps. For the rest you would have an apps tile that would take you to a long list or set of icons. This would provide the best of both worlds.

The decline and fall of Windows:

W8 = wait
W9 = whine
WI0 = why, oh why
WII = written by Nintendo

Assuming we're not still using iTunes.

Good points, I'm slightly more optimistic than yourself although they're still sticking to the tried and tested 'Windows everywhere' strategy. The question is, will Windows 8 launch before the iPad matures to the point it can act as a primary computer. Also interesting is the fact that Microsoft seem to be phasing out Balmer. He wasn't around announcing Mango last week or introducing Windows 8.

It seems that MS developed its own style without the blatant copying it's always (and most of the time rightly so) accused of. It seems that the ripoff copying is now Android only.

I must say it actually looked good and seems to be in some ways the next step for touch computing. Maybe MS finally knows what to do and dropping propriety software like Silverlight and adopting HTML 5 is the way to go. It is possible however that MS is betting on several things at the same time and that one moment of bad judgement (on Balmers part for example) could kill the whole thing. But I must say kudos to the developers, I hope they have a good time developing and refining this interface.

Another thing is that it isn't important if it is a layer above older software. For the end user perspective it only matters if it runs smooth and presents the right paradigms in a fluent way.

J.

More using HTML for something it wasn't designed for. It was designed for creating documents with hyperlinks. It was never designed for applications. It has always been very clunky in the creation of web apps. We need javascript shared libraries, javascript bytecode format, and (although canvas/webgl is a good first step) need a way to create widgets that doesn't require strange hacks that reuse html elements.

Hopefully just the little windows are html and the entire thing isn't. Otherwise I can see the next generation of windows malware inserting html tags in this table to mess up the formatting of everything. I've seen it enough times in non-malicious software. Web mail messages that mess up the web mail UI for instance.

Geez. Cranky much? </kidding!!> I agree with you for the most part!


With a deep sigh, I have to agree with you. Windows users have come to accept malware, buggy, crashy software, security vulnerabilities, etc. as part of the "reality" of the computing experience. I actually had someone tell me several years ago that Macs aren't "real" computers, because they don't get viruses!!


I feel like I'm blaspheming to say this (gosh, me giving kudos to a Microsoft development? say it ain't so!!!), but the thumb keyboard is pretty genius. In the video, the guy talked about how the standard on-screen keyboard takes up too much space. Decent point. A better justification for a "thumb" keyboard is, as you suggested, ergonomics: it works better with the way you hold your tablet. With the current on-screen keyboard design (which is what the iPad has), the most viable way to use it is to have the tablet in your lap or on a desk or other flat surface. If you're sitting on a train or a bus, you can't easily secure your tablet (well, there's always a couple inverted loops of duct tape, but then there's that gummy, sticky mess afterward, and what a pain that is!!) while you're typing. The bus hits a big bump, or brakes suddenly, and your tablet goes flying. With the "thumb" keyboard, you necessarily have to grip the device securely by the lower corners in order to thumb-type. And muscle memory will make thumb-typing very easy to do after not too long.

I would not be surprised if Microsoft jumps on the "Open vs Closed" bandwagon, and in order to set themselves apart, they'll paint Apple as "closed" and "draconian", while Win8 is "open" and "free" and, "hey look, a pony!!"

The trouble with free-for-all multitasking is, it will basically encourage users to leave a gazillion applications open and running, which will over-tax the processor, memory and virtual memory, and will kill battery life. And, similar to what you said, I think the average user will get confused with all the applications running, and lose track of what it was they were trying to do.

The trouble with "shaking things up" is the average Windroid* user. I'm a full-fledged Mac user, and avoid Windows as much as possible(and I wash my hands afterward!</snark>) The only time I use Windows is when I'm helping someone with their computer. The question I get most often is: "I saved the file, now where is it?" And that's with XP, which has been around for what, nearly 10 years? What I expect when Win8 launches is, users will turn on their computer, and will see the weather thingy and sports scores and a couple photos, and they'll say, "WHERE THE HELL IS MY GRANT PROPOSAL???" And they'll call ME in a panic, because they can't find the budget report which is due tomorrow!!!

* this is kind of off-topic, but I said "Windroid" because I'm gonna guess that a lot of Windows users reflexively will choose Android devices because, like my one friend, they'll erroneously assume that you have to have a Mac in order to use an iOS device (not true!)

I dunno. I use Windows to do Visual Basic programming in Access, and I like things to be stable and predictable (meaning my interactions with the OS and software) to maximize my productivity. Is this an interface change for the sake of change only, or is this somehow supposed to make my life easier?

That said, sure, it looks cool. But coolness doesn't really do much for me.

To me this is exactly what I want a tablet interface to look like. I like the iPad but whenever I see it I just think the home screen looks wrong. The space between app icons makes it seem like a streached iPhone (which it is) and generally a bit of a let down when you consider how amazing their other products we're on release.

Building in HTML5 also makes a nice slap back at Google and its Chrome OS.


Seriously you think 9 screens is nice! That's 8 swipes and a press just to get an app. 4 would be my absolute limit.

I imagine they will have a scrolling list with the jump list functionality to skip down to a letter, like WP7. A lot of people don't like this but to me it seems the best way to fill your device up with apps you hardly ever use without them getting in the way.

When the guy talked about how Win8 is gonna do everything for everyone, (including build you a kitchen sink!!) I thought about the future of iOS/Mac OS X, and I came up with this prediction/wish:

the iOS store will be decoupled from iTunes, and will become a subset of the Mac App Store. Coincident with that, iOS devices will sync from directly within the Mac OS(/iCloud??), with iTunes taken out of the synching process. iTunes will go back to just being a media player. Even music/tv shows/movies will be purchased via the Mac App Store, and will download directly to the iTunes librarywithout opening iTunes. The next time you open iTunes, it will update its library to show your newly purchased media. (I never liked the idea of having to open iTunes to purchase media, or to sync my devicesyncing my media library is fine, but syncing iCal and iPhoto via iTunes? always felt silly to me.)

While iOS is necessary as a device OSdistinct from Mac OS X, I could also see OS X subsuming iOS for Mac Pro, iMac and MacBook. Lion is already gonna use a lot of iOS "look-and-feel" interface elements. Why not go further and incorporate full touch capability, while retaining cursor-based input as well? Not that I'd wanna use a touch interface full-time on a screen that's mostly vertical, but there would be times when it would just be more intuitive to "touch" or "move" an object directly. A touch interface would not be very useful for writers and programmers who spend most of their time tapping away at a keyboard, but for designers, illustrators, photographers, engineers, architects, and artists, a touch interfacewith a screen that could lay at a shallow incline, like an architect's work surfaceit would be a huge intuitive leap forward; ironically, by going back to the way they all used to work before all these new-fangled computers came along!

Maybe this could be the future of the Mac Proall the guts married to a touch screen (three versions: 20", 27" and 36"*); though it would be thicker than an iMac, because you'd still need room for for four hot-swappable drive bays, swappable power supply, graphics slot for cards up to 4 GB, memory slots for up to 64 GB. No more need for PCI slots, however, thanks to Thunderbolt. And the whole thing would be on a mount that could tilt from vertical to almost horizontal, depending on how you prefer to work. And yes, it would still include a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I/O ports? 4 USB 3.0, 4 Thunderbolt, 1 FW400, 1 FW800/3200 (y'know, just for the fun of it!)

* The 36" version would include an extra slot for a video card to work in tandem with the original card, to drive the built-in display, as well as push video through the four Thunderbolt slots, as needed. Yes, the 20" and 27" would also be able to push video through the Thunderbolt ports, just at lower performance rates, as they'd have to share with the built in screen.

Yeah, keep wishing, Future-boy.

"The new HTML5 layer of Windows 8 works like the Dashboard layer of Mac OS X, although rather than only supplying quick assess to simple widgets, the new "Windows 8 apps" are intended to supply a layer of highly animated, full screen, touch-based apps capable of competing with native apps running on Apple's iPad."

Now was he trying to say access or asses? Hmmm? I mean, it is Windoze we're talking about.

That guy is like "so west coast?" sentences end going up and as in with a question and not a statement.

So they shifted from using .NET to silverlight which is a cut down version .NET. Think someone should have checked what silverlight actually is before trying to write about it in an article.

This entire post literally reeks of astroturf.

Just sayin.

I like it, but it has some flaws. Having another UI paradigm to learn on top of the usual one may be a little too much for some. You can switch between applications by swiping but you can also put them on the taskbar, which is not always on... It's a good idea to try to put mobile and desktop together, but it still needs a lot of work.

I see here 2 things I would love in OS X and/or iOS :
- Tiles, no need to open an app to know basic information
- Putting apps side to side on fullscreen mode

Not to pick on anyone because there are a lot of comments here about how "nice" the thing looks, but I have to disagree.

The first thing I noticed was that the "Metro" UI is actually broken on this new effort.

On the Windows Phone, the tiles are all the same colour and you can pick your colour. This is because the incredible busy-ness of the tiles with all the updates, animations and blinking colours needs to be toned down by the bland-ness and clarity of single colour tiles on a deep black background. Makes sense.

This UI on the other hand, seems to allow the user to give each tile any colour the user wants on an individual basis. It also seems like they are thinking there might even be wallpaper behind this mess. Yikes!

How is a giant screen with even *bigger* tiles, with even *more* junk on them, all *different* colours and all arrangeable by the user anyway they want, going to end up as anything but an annoying, confusing swirl of crap? Sure it looks good on the demo, but how is the average users desktop going to look?

The first clue that these innovative designers don't really know what they are doing, is that dog's breakfast "inspiration wall" which is full of the most irrelevant, uninspiring junk I've seen in a long time. It's just a bunch of unrelated images grouped on the wall by colour. It's too stupid for words. It's most likely carefully staged screencraft for the video.

I agree. Still, those 2 things look cool and useful.

So a windows UI which looks nothing like Android or iOS is a copy of Apple? Does not compute. It is a copy of Windows Phone 7 which was a copy of Zune Software which was a copy of Microsoft Media Center.

I'm impressed with the fact that it looks pretty, but that's about it.
It's interesting that this fellow is a music major. Clearly he has developed some design skills and has many years of experience with MS so he is more than that, but it's interesting that MS has a few artists working there now.

A few points
The UI looks pretty opaque to me. I see no breadcrumbs or other hints, nor do I see a consistency that makes it navigable and memorable. Creating a mental map is vital, but it escapes me with this UI (of course seeing it is very different than actually using it.)

I'm thinking that in actual use this thing would be endlessly cluttered.

Clearly all of the content is canned, which explains the "fast, responsive interface." I doubt this would be at all smooth if it is building on the fly with dynamic information.

There's too much "magic" stuff. By that I mean interface features that appear from nowhere and without hints as to their presence. This is a sign that the whole thing is canned, opaque, and unlikely to work in practice.

I'm surprised that MS doesn't seem to realize that touch and pointer interfaces are very different animals and that they are not likely to coexist very amicably. I realize Apple is looking at this too, but I think they are taking a more careful look at how/if they can fit together.

I will say that it does seem like a bit of a different and more thoughtful approach for MS, but then it also looks much more like following (years behind) and much less like leading, innovating, or "schooling."

So long vertical lists nestled under huge tiles. That doesn't seem more convenient to me when you only have six tiles( the number of icons just in the iPad dock).

No huge tiles, just small app tile and it's title. WP7 currently does it this way with a normal list, which does cause a lot of scrolling. The Mango update has the list changed to the jump list that's used for contacts, artists, albums etc. Follow this link for a demo of how it lets you jump to a point in the list.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drBhdjHBj4Q

Don't get your comment about six tiles?

On WP7 the colour of the tiles is dependant on the app. They can either be completely custom or follow the theme of the phone. They can also be updated by the app with an image as part of the live tile stuff. e.g. The weather app on my phone changes between different representation of the weather and shows the temperature so you don't have to open it.

My main complaint with WP7 is that you can't customise the tile colours individually. It's all down to personal opinion but if you can change it then you can make them so their not annoying.

I tend to disagree with this.

The separated thumb keyboard they show is hardly new. It's been done on Android and I remember seeing it on tablet PC's of one type or another over the years. A bigger problem for me is that Microsoft has a long history of pushing "ergonomic" (split, humped, sideways) keyboards and they never catch on with anything but a tiny minority of users. For a touch typist, to separate the keyboard into two pieces means you have to look at your hands when you type and your speed is instantly reduced to a snail's pace.

I do a lot of typing on the iPad and luckily for me, my hands are big enough to use it in portrait mode, because I agree with you about the landscape typing being a big problem, especially while travelling. I use the regular keyboard, but in portrait orientation and I thumb type while standing up on the train or bus or walking down the street. I think this is the winning position, but I don't agree that splitting the keyboard in half is the way to go.

What I'd like to see .... (and I know it's unlikely because Apple has a long standing aversion to admitting that people aren't all the same shape and size and don't all live in California), ... is simply a couple of different sizes of iPads and iPhones. If the iPad were just a touch smaller for instance, (not 7" but more like 8.6" as opposed to 10.1"), it would be a breeze to thumb-type on and yet the screen would hardly be any smaller than the current model.

It's also pretty obvious that the larger screen Android phones we've seen recently, are popular in the USA because, well frankly ... there are a lot of larger type people in the USA that like the extra room for their fingers.

I don't understand why Apple continues to cling to this idea that there is one perfect size for devices when people range rather wildly in size, and one person's hand can be literally twice the size of the person next to them.

OK, point made. However, I can see how Apple is proceeding by reading about LLVM, Clang, Xcode4, etc. Yes, iOS hides the file system.

What I am struggling to understand is how the legacy Windows code can be ported to ARM referenced SoCs. It is not the porting as a possibility, but rather the processing power of SoCs supporting the ported legacy code. That, to me, is a very ambitious goal. MS is going to have to come up with the compiler optimizations, and also provide a viable developers platform.

I am saying that Apple is less ambitious because iOS is a severely stripped down Mac OS as I understand it. Even though Lion will make a surface convergence from a users viewpoint, I do not see iOS and Mac OS merging in the near future. Maybe Mac OS will fade out over time.

According to MS, "we have much more to reveal at our developer event, BUILD (Sept. 13 - 16 in Anaheim, Calif.)" At that point, how MS intends to accomplish its goal should be clarified. Later will come the nitty-gritty product reviews.

Actually, this probably will end up benefiting Mac and iPad users as well, as HTML5 is cross-platform. But we know the real reason why web apps have failed thus far... they just don't compare to the responsiveness and feature set of native apps. That, and there is no "store" for web apps to get discovered.

what was the experimentation? to make it slow and buggy? I'm pretty sure that was what the backlash was all about

As someone who mostly uses Windows in a work environment - this is all pointless and annoying. Businesses account for a huge % of Windows installations, and no business is going to want to have this touch UI overlaying what's really important - the Office suite.

Moreover this smacks of developers being locked in a room together too long and developing something they think is cool and intuitive, but which for the ordinary user (read: pear-shaped people in Ohio) is going to be confusing and cumbersome. How do I know what apps I'm pulling from the mystery space on the side? How much time will I waste trying to organize my tiles?

What in goddess's name is wrong with icons on a desktop?

OK, say something positive... I do like the thumb keyboard idea (two halves of keyboard on each side of the tablet).

Great. The last thing windows needs is another layer that will require legacy support for the next 30 years...

I'm totally happy with Win7 for my windows partition. It's working great and I couldn't be happier. Don't fix what isn't broken.

A friendly suggestion here. Use iOS4 folders on the iPad. Instead of one dedicated screen per category. This allows you to get to any "category screen" in a random access fashion instead of requiring linear progression.

I'm one of those that thinks the UI is FUG but I like the idea and thumb typing.

Ummm this is why Windows has to keep supporting legacy software for 10 years after it's been released.

This is all "damning with faint praise."

Sorry to quote you guys in this context-- some of you are my favorite critics -- but why do so many feel compelled to say it looks "nice" and "cool"?

I'll tell you why: BECAUSE THE TILES ARE RECTILINEAR, BLAND AND INSTITUTIONAL!! And in the worst possible "safe" school/kitchen/Seattle-office-cubicle colors! They are worse than tasteless, they are in bad taste! And they are getting past your filters only by being left-brained-rectangular and animated.

"Beige fascism" has devolved into pastel fascism. If Microsoft can put this over on the world, we are further doomed. Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft -- you have to get rid of that baby blue! Combined with the horrible, lifeless green, orange and chalky eggplant . . .

The Professor has made one of his best posts ever:


Then there is this good catch:


But it misses the geographical/cultural/generational mark. "Upspeak" is bicoastal. It is infantalism, like those colors are infantile.