I originally wrote this article for Typography and Squares but now think readers of MML will like this just as much.
Regular readers of MML probably know I am a major Metro UI fan and its perhaps why I am also a big fan of the Zune software and the upcoming Windows Phone 7. I’m also happy to see the new Xbox 360 interface takes notes from the Metro UI.
However there aren’t really many apps that use the Metro UI and I think its a great shame. Of course though there is MetroTwit, the great Twitter client that is completely designed with Metro in mind. You might even remember that in my bid to find more Metro for my PC I stumbled across Omnimo, a great Metro interactive theme for PCs.
Don’t you think it would be great if Microsoft used the Metro UI in more of its own products, thankfully there is evidence of Metro in the new Messenger. But Microsoft would need to implement correctly the Metro UI on its own products and I don’t think it is well suited for all software. Metro doesn’t work well for content creation buts its certainly great for content consumption, getting out the way and allowing the content to take centre stage. Therefore I don’t think Metro would work in Office but it would work very well in Windows Live.
But how might Windows Live applications look if they used Metro? That’s where clindhartsen comes in. He has designed Metro inspired application concepts such as Windows Live Mail and Photo Gallery and even a simple document editor. They all look great and only makes me think Microsoft really should use Metro in more of its own applications.
Here are some of the concepts but there are several more on clindhartsen’s deviant profile.
I love these concepts and in fact think that Photo Gallery needs to go in this direction of allowing people to browse photos easier both from one’s PCs and the internet (Windows Phone 7 makes this kind of thing so seamless). I fear though that these will only be concepts, I have contacted the author asking if there are any plans for any of these metro inspired concepts to be made into the app. I hope Microsoft is taking note.
Upon searching for other ways to bring Metro to one’s PC I also found some very nice looking Metro themes for Windows 7, I’m not sure how well they work in practice but they certainly look nice. I remember that when Zune first launched Microsoft released a theme for Windows XP, shame they haven’t released any newer themes since.
What do you think about these concepts? Do you want more Metro on your PCs?
