If you ask anyone – who has installed and worked with the developer preview of Windows 8 – about what’s new, the first thing they’ll say is the Metro UI. The Metro User Interface is a new type of interface from Microsoft and is more like a Windows Mobile based interface with an eye-catching look and smooth finish.
Without taking up much of your time and without compromising your excitement, let us take a quick look at the Metro UI and see for yourself what’s new!
Welcome show
When I started the developer edition of Windows 8 for the first time, I was confused for a while. After the boot screen, there’s a beautiful scene with information like the time, date, remaining battery life, and the Wi-Fi network I’m connected to (these can vary from device to device). It took me a few minutes to realize that it was the lock screen and I needed to slide the picture to enter my login password.
If you look at it from the perspective of a user working on a laptop or desktop, it doesn’t make much sense but if you have a touch-enabled device like a tablet it proves to be useful.
If you don’t want to drag the image, you can simply double-click the image or press any key on the keyboard to go to the password input screen. If you want to end your session, you can also shutdown and restart it.
Believe me, when I say the next screen you get with all your apps pinned on it with a slick appearance is the Start Menu, I’m not kidding. If you have worked on any modern smartphone, you can consider this Start Menu as your Home screen with all your apps placed on it. If you need to run an app, scroll and find it and once you get it, just click to run it.
Again, if you’re using an accelerometer-enabled touch-enabled device, you can simply swipe the screen and reach your app.
You can arrange tiles (app icons) by dragging and dropping it to a new location. There is currently no way we can pin an app or file to the menu but we will show you how to tweak Windows 8 to enable some such features in future posts.
Subway control panel
Now this one is really interesting. Windows introduced another cool new look to the Control Panel. So, after Classic and Categorized, now is the Metro look. You can access this new panel directly from the Metro Start Menu.
The screen is divided into two sections: the left part has settings like Personalization, User, Wireless etc, while on the right hand side we have detailed settings for the specific module. If you ask me, this new dashboard is made with people working on tablets and handhelds in mind.
Start Menu Search
Remember in Vista and Windows 7, our Start Menu has a search bar from which we can search and run all the applications installed on our system?
Now in Windows 8 with the new Metro Start menu, the search bar is gone forever. Whenever you want to search, you just have to start typing and the home screen will show all the apps related to the current search keyword almost instantly.
The search also includes apps, files, and control panel items.
My judgment
If you ask me, while using the Metro UI in the Windows 8 developer preview, I’ve always asked myself, “Why don’t I have a touchscreen?”. The Metro UI was certainly created with tablets in mind, but, working with it on the desktop is also a new experience.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
