It’s been a busy for hours for the Windows team as they have so far made 2 significant announcements about Windows 8 in their blog Building Windows 8. The first announcement was that Windows Explorer will be donning the Ribbon UI to better show many of the features and options available to users currently on Windows.
Personally I think the arrival of the Ribbon is not really aimed at power users as they already know about these features. Yes, in some cases it may now be easier for power users to access these options but equally the power users probably use short cuts and hot keys which are faster than clicking the button on the Ribbon. Instead I think the addition of the Ribbon is to offer some of the features to more casual users who wouldn’t know where to look to access the feature with out it being shown off front and centre.
Of course, as with any radical change in design, this announcement has been met with some dislike as people fear it will take up too much room on the screen. However, the fact that the Ribbon can be minimised will mean that the Explorer’s UI in Windows 8 will actually take up a considerably smaller amount of screen space that Explorer in Windows 7.
Personally I think that the Ribbon will be a useful addition to Windows despite that I am not really a fan of the look of it. Do bare in mind though that the final UI of Windows 8 has not been shown off, the Ribbon could look quite different in the final UI. In fact there is more on the UI of Windows 8 later in this post.
Following that announcement came speculation that Microsoft had shown off the UI in Windows 8 via an ad. This has actually been shown to be wrong, the UI shown off in the video is actually a theme for Rainmeter and not anything from Microsoft at all. As a reader of my site you might already know about Rainmeter for the Omnimo theme for Windows which borrows a lot from the Metro UI.
Then earlier today Microsoft published another blog post about how they are adding ISO and VHD support to Windows 8. This will make it much easier for users to access data within the Windows Explorer than it has been before. Users will be able to mount an ISO to a virtual CD/DVD drive to access the content on it and similarly be able to mount a VHD to a virtual hard disc drive.
These are both welcome additions but perhaps more interesting to most people is what else was shown in the video attached to the blog post, the new UI for Windows 8.
Those of you who have been following Windows 8 will know that the time and date box is not new however the Start Menu on the left is. We have been shown a “touch first” Metro inspired UI for Windows 8 that shows a new Start Screen when the Windows button is pressed. However, in the above screenshot we don’t see the Screen but instead the Menu.
It’s my belief that what we see here is the bare essentials of the “click first” Metro inspired UI for Windows 8 and when I say “click first” I mean mouse and keyboard. The options shown in the new Start Menu are the same options that are available in the “touch first” UI when a user swipes in from the right. This makes me think that this UI is not for touch at all, I guess that what we see here has been designed for traditional desktops that don’t feature a touch screen. I am very interested to know whether there is a Start Screen component to this UI or if it is very much like the Windows 7 UI only with a Metro twist.
Later in the same video another interesting thing was shown, an image of the “touch first”, immersive, UI. I believe this is only the second shot Microsoft have shown us of the immersive UI.
There’s not a lot to see really but it does show that Marketplace tile as a square and not a rectangle as we had previously been shown. The grid of tiles is 4 tiles high where as in the previous demo of Windows 8 it was only 3 tiles high. Perhaps this points to a very customisable “touch first” UI where the user can set the tiles to be square or rectangle and the number of tiles on the screen. This shot also shows a different background and a different layout of tiles, making it look very customisable indeed.
(Looking at the device above can anyone tell me what the things on the bezel at the top of the screen are? I might be being silly but it looks like two webcams to me… that wouldn’t be Kinect embedded around the screen would it?)
The more we’re hearing about Windows 8 the more excited I am getting about it. Microsoft are handling the PR of Windows 8 very well indeed. All the announcements so far would be immensely boring if shown in a keynote but they are immensely interesting when shown in the current manner. It also means Microsoft don’t really need to show off the new copy experience (announced last week) nor the Ribbon UI for Windows 8 when they talk about Windows 8 at Build next month.
What are your thoughts on the recent Windows 8 announcements? I wonder when we will next see a blog post from Microsoft about Windows 8, maybe tomorrow.
