Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

by yurylifshits • 13 years ago

65 96 13 years ago

spdy• 13 years ago

Am i the only one who does not like "touch" on a desktop/laptop. It is not the revolutionary input method that makes everything magical. I want to think in boxes (desktops) not a fluid streams of desktop space.

We need something else for the desktop.

arethuza3• 13 years ago

It is even less appropriate on a server OS - I have no idea what they were thinking making Windows Server 2012 use the same touch oriented start menu replacement nightmare....

[Having to use a demo VM that has 2012 installed at the moment and I'm finding it incredibly annoying].

LoneWolf4• 13 years ago

Now imagine having to manage servers everyday with that interface (yep I have to do it)

Freaky4• 13 years ago

Been using 8 for about a year and have no problem with the start screen without a touch interface - the workflow is pretty much identical to 7: Press the Windows key and type part of the name of what you want, with the bonus that it's significantly faster at giving results.

If you do end up having to select something in the menu, you now have more space to see what's available and modifying the layout to match your usage is a lot more accessible.

hug• 13 years ago

I imagine what they were thinking is "maybe people shouldn't be logging on to individual servers in order to manage them."

I manage a number of 2012 VMs, and actually log onto them via RDP very rarely.

You should use RSAT on a workstation, or perhaps Powershell and Enter-PSSession (alias: etsn) in order to manage your machines. If you're a masochist you could even use winrs.exe from inside cmd.exe.

I can't think of much you can do with those two tools that you can't do otherwise, unless it involves [random third-party software]. Even with third party software, I don't see a reason people should be logging on to servers often enough that the start screen should be an appreciable problem -- especially since the start screen is likely to have an immediately obvious and clickable 100px*100px "tile" to get to the software you need to.

sixothree• 13 years ago

Start8 is $5.

ericcumbee• 13 years ago

I think the Idea is that you wont use the GUI much on server instances. I am working through a Sharepoint MCSE right now. and the Server config and admin, your encouraged to use the Server Manager tool on another computer or the command line. Ideally on most installs the Full GUI is not installed. MS considers it best practice to use the Core install if at all possible. Followed by the Min Gui, and then if necessary the Full GUI.

josteink5• 13 years ago

Having to use a demo VM that has 2012 installed at the moment and I'm finding it incredibly annoying

While Metro/Modern/Whatever is incredible annoying in itself when not on a tablet, having it (which depends on screen-corners) running in a VM which is typically window'ed brings the madness to new dimension.

For minimum frustration, I recommend fullscreen.

eksith3• 13 years ago

You're definitely not the only one.

Honestly, I feel like it's a break in my momentum and flow of creativity (that really sounds pretentious, but it's true) to move my hands from keyboard to screen. It's not like keyboard and mouse where both forms of input are on the horizontal plane.

I rather liked the idea behind the Nintendo DS where inputs are available on both the horizontal and (semi) vertical plane. If a touchpad can be made sufficiently intuitive and comfortable enough to serve as both keyboard, touchpad and display screen, I'm in.

FridayWithJohn• 13 years ago

Agreed! Thankfully there is something else. Ubuntu baby!

eksith3• 13 years ago

Unity is no better IMO. It feels like another counter-intuitive and ultimately awkward (for me) interface. Which is why I'm right now on Linux Mint which ironically has the most "Windows 7-like" post-Win7 UI.

vezzy-fnord• 13 years ago

This concept looks as if Canonical designed Windows, quite frankly.

If anything, it does borrow elements from the Android interface and modern DEs like Cinnamon.

I'll just stick to my window manager. There's something charming about their raw simplicity compared to the overt modern "glossy minimalist" interfaces of today.

jpswade• 13 years ago

Touch really lends itself to interfacing with objects.

Using a mouse, in particular is a little bit foreign to our natural instincts.

frou_dh• 13 years ago

We're already squarely in unnatural territory as soon as an LCD screen is involved.

RivieraKid7• 13 years ago

Exactly this kind of pseudoscientific reasoning is behind the bad UI decisions in Win 8 and Gnome 3.

anonymous• 13 years ago

And where in the entire body of everyday natural instinctively useful objects, are things that respond to and are manipulated by caressing them precisely with just the tips of your fingers? Well, sex obviously, but having sex with a large square piece of glass isn't at all enjoyable.

Kind of explains the popularity of thinkpads' nipple mouse, though.

freehunter• 13 years ago

You seriously come to HN asking if you're the only one who doesn't like Windows 8's interface? I know this isn't your first post, so you're basically just posting a popular opinion phrased as a question in an attempt to reap karma.

Welcome to 2011. Your complaints are now fresh and new again.

jzzskijj2• 13 years ago

"Manual window management is awful. Windows 8 ditched windows in favor of fullscreen apps."

Wrong. Manual windows management is just what a professional needs. The window manager will never know what is the best position and size for your programming editor/environment. It will never know where is the best position and size for your preferred debug window. And how to place and size your browser windows for API documentation.

Sure, a typical computer user needs only a full-screen browser window. But when you're really trying to get work done, Microsoft's "new" concepts are just wrong.

aw3c2• 13 years ago

Manual window management on Windows can be awful. With decent window managers one can hold keys (alt in my case) and then drag or resize windows easily by dragging the mouse. They snap. And you can have more key combos for things like snap to left/right, maximise, minimise, always in front, etc.

Ever since getting used to this (in XFCE), using windows in Windows feels incredibly annoying and infuriating.

72deluxe2• 13 years ago

Windows 7 onwards has keyboard shortcuts - WinKey + cursors moves the windows to snap to half of the screen (top, bottom, left, right) and learn the Alt-Space-then X to maximise and Alt-Space then R to restore. If you happy using the mouse, Windows snap to the edges of the screen. There is also a utility you can get for shortcuts very similar to the Mac OSX ShiftIt tool but I can't remember the name of it!

jzzskijj2• 13 years ago

Yes, you're right. It can be awful in Windows. But on the other hand, when I place my windows to their correct locations (on Fluxbox or Win7), it might take weeks or months before I have to relocate them again.

warcode• 13 years ago

Manual window management is awful. Windows 8 ditched windows in favor of fullscreen apps. Traditional desktop window paradigms are powerful but obsolete.

In any multi-monitor situation living without manual window management is awful. What they need to do is to offer a choice instead of forcing users down a specific path.

skriticos22• 13 years ago

Fullscreen apps are especially fun on 27" 4k displays!

Swinx432• 13 years ago

Although this is a much better looking concept than what is currently available in Windows 8 I still do not understand how it solves anything for people who actually need to do development on these machines. I would hate to have to do development in an IDE such as Visual Studio or Eclipse while being restricted to this sort of interface.

Trying to force a tablet interface on a desktop machine is simply not acceptable. It makes matters even worse when you look at a server operating system such as Windows Server 2012. That is simply the biggest FAIL for an interface on a server OS I have ever seen.

xylem• 13 years ago

In the brand new Visual Studio 2015 keyboard support has been dropped so that we could focus on delivering state-of-the-art handwriting recognition algorithms so that you can easily develop even the most complex applications with nothing more than a single finger or a stylus.

kbart• 13 years ago

Reminds me of http://www.datamation.com/news/tech-comics-windows-8-1.html

I'm starting to get feeling, that Microsoft consciously abandons PC as a workstation with a fully functional OS model and moving towards dumb browser-only tablet-like terminal. And I bet that some cloud based, .NET like IDE for Windows developers is on their plans.

..and I'm sooo happy that I can do all my development work on Linux machine.

Swinx432• 13 years ago

That sounds extremely likely if you look at the way they are going. I completely agree that I have never looked back since I started using Linux instead. If I truly need a Windows machine I will spin up a virtual machine.

nextstep• 13 years ago

It's optimistic to think VLC will be available for Windows 9. It's still not out for Windows 8.

klausjensen• 13 years ago

My Windows 8 laptop next to me is playing a video using VLC.

What you meant to say was that VLC does not exist for the MetroUI (I forget what that POS is called these days).

manojlds• 13 years ago

Here you go - VLC doesn't have a Windows Store App.

LoneWolf4• 13 years ago

"Manual window management is awful. Windows 8 ditched windows in favor of fullscreen apps. Traditional desktop window paradigms are powerful but obsolete."

Just NO NO AND NO, I can't be the only one who hates the new Windows interface, I want to be able to place my windows where I want them not be forced to use full screen for everything, or rely on some automated way to place them, I know better than the OS how and where I want my windows.

Sorry but I had to get that out of my chest, I can't deal with the new Windows interface, it annoys me.

Microsoft please stop trying to force a tablet/touch interface into a desktop computer it just doesn't make any sense.

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

Can't you just use the normal desktop interface? It's still there.

ngcazz• 13 years ago

Well not really if you want to use Metro apps.

RivieraKid7• 13 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree with you. This "reinvent the classical desktop" trend really annoys me. Traditional desktop environments like Win 95 up to 7 or Gnome 2 are imho closest to the ideal, they have many many years of evolution behind them.

Mistakes that are being made:

1) Thinking that touch is superior to mouse, that touch is the future. That's simply untrue, mouse is quicker and more productive.

2) Focusing on first-time users too much, forgetting experienced users. Example - animations - nice at first, but get annoying quickly.

3) Trying to unify the tablet and the desktop interface. The optimal interface for tablets and for desktops are different.

For me the ideal desktop environment would be:

- take the classical desktop concept

- do a design update (Gnome 2 or Win 7 aren't especially pretty, the design looks outdated)

- add some nice features without changing the whole concept, e.g. some tiling support, useful keyboard shortcuts etc.

lnteveryday• 13 years ago

I think tiling would greatly improve the usability. If windows had tiling and something like dmenu I would be much happier. The start screen sucks, especially if you have a lot of applications that you commonly use. It's impractical to look for a application in the tiles. I know that you can go to the start screen and start typing in the name of the program (sort of like dmenu), but why should you have to go to a pointless screen to do so.

jonnydark• 13 years ago

I am reminded of the Henry Ford quote "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

The design idioms seen in Gnome 2 and Windows 7 are essentially highly refined versions of what existed on the Apple II OS. Personal computers and what we use them for have come a long way since then and it makes sense to redesign the UI to reflect this. Often this means getting your hands dirty and trying new things. Also - first time users are going to be around for longer than experienced users ;)

josteink5• 13 years ago

Just NO NO AND NO, I can't be the only one who hates the new Windows interface, I want to be able to place my windows where I want them not be forced to use full screen for everything, or rely on some automated way to place them

Personally I find manual window-management extremely tedious. I want a window-manager to actually manage my windows for me. So on that part, I agree with the statement. That however doesn't mean that any automatic window-management is an improvement simply by being automatic.

There are bad automatic window-managers. The one in Windows 8 can clearly be be categorized as such. That however doesn't mean that all automatic window-management is bad.

On Linux, I like tiling VMs, because that means I no longer have to manage Windows manually, yet I get to remain in control of what I do and how I position my "windows". This is good automatic Window-management.

One day I hope Windows will be able to get there and get something of equal power and usefulness. That is, without throwing all the users not power-users out the Window, because current Linux tiling-VMs are obviously aimed at and created for power-users. User-friendlyness and intuitiveness has been sacrificed in the process.

PaulJoslin• 13 years ago

Am I right in thinking with this design you can only have one app as a point of focus at a time? So assuming I'm doing development, I can't be in my IDE, with a browser open on a particular stack overflow question, while having the app I'm debugging open in front of it all and some other app also in view showing diagnostics?

Instead, I'd have to flick back and forth between the apps like a headless chicken?

[Edit] Actually, take his example apps as a suggestion. He's running VLC to watch star trek, but can't watch it at the same time as say using the browser. In a traditional window set-up, you can just set VLC to stay on top and overlay a portion of the screen while you can continue doing something else (like using the browser).

Although the concept looks pretty, it almost seems to be a step backwards in available functionality.

RivieraKid7• 13 years ago

All of the new desktop environments I know of (Win 8, Gnome 3, Unity) are steps backwards. The classical desktop concept (taskbar + floating windows) has tens of years of evolution behind it. If there was a better concept, it would have been invented before.

Maascamp• 13 years ago

I'm sorry, but that's just a terrible way of thinking about things. If we assume things that have been around for a while have reached their apex by virtue of them having been around for a while we'd never make any progress.

Zoomla• 13 years ago

They need to make the desktop monitors as small as phone screens for this to be acceptable.

GBiT• 13 years ago

Windows had to give us choice to use old windows 7 style, or windows 8 style for touch. Right now for enterprise I see, that for companies it is no difference to teach how to use Ubuntu or new windows 8. Windows 8 put OS from leader position on PC to mobile OS for touch devices.

ethana2• 13 years ago

I like it. I think the 2+ decades old idea of resizable and draggable windows is becoming a nuisance. With 5+ windows overlaying each others, the desktop becomes a chaotic mess.

People who say they need to be able to have multiple windows on screen should really be having multiple monitors if they don't already. Because even with high-res monitors, most productivity applications (IDEs,Excel,etc) are unusable anyway when not in full screen.

The drag&drop can be easily solved by dragging content from one app to another by dropping on their desired app icon on the taskbar. Or have dedicated share button to other apps like how Android does it.

nodata• 13 years ago

people.. should really be having multiple monitors if they don't already.

Multiple monitors are used because hires monitors are expensive. Once that changes we are back to the same problem.

LoneWolf4• 13 years ago

I disagree, first of all I already have multiple monitors, and while my IDE is maximized on my main monitor, the secondary monitor has multiple windows with documentation, file manager and logs, or other stuff depending on what I am working on.

About the drag&drop I have a problem with that, supose the application supports more than one place to drop with different functionality, how do you solve that?

ethana2• 13 years ago

I used to do this too actually. Throwing a bunch of windows to my secondary screen. But over time, I realized I don't use them at all over time. Sticky notes are all over it and it was just a mess.

Now I try to have only two things open at once to streamline my work flow. Everything in excess, I try to have it my IDE when possible using plugins.

RWeaver• 13 years ago

What if you have a laptop? I often have some crappy tv show over on the right hand side of my screen with the code editor taking up the other 3 quarters. Or two notepads in semi different places to be able to type text from one to the other with different formatting (eg eg brainstorm notes into DB query).

Not going to give those options up

72deluxe2• 13 years ago

Resizable and draggable windows lets you arrange items on the screen very similar to the way that you have items on a desk. It works - it isn't broken or out of date. When writing in a notebook on my physical desk, I do not want my notebook to be the size of my desk. I might be taking notes from a book. If my notebook was the size of the desk, how can I read my book? I can't.

Overlaying windows is brilliant. It isn't a problem to press Alt-Tab or use the taskbar. Personally, the grouped buttons on the taskbar is a nuisance as you need to click on it (XP) or hover over it and wait for a popup (7+) rather than just seeing loads of window buttons.

I have multiple hires screens but this doesn't suddenly mean I want one fullscreen window on each screen. That effectively reduces the windowing system to only displaying two items at a time. My physical desk has more - why should the computer suddenly be limited to only a couple of items?

lumberjack• 13 years ago

Have you tried other window managers besides explorer.exe? There is more to window management than the old Windows™ routine of resizing and dragging windows by pointing device.

aaronetz• 13 years ago

While I personally tend use applications fully maximized, I do have a need to open two (or more) applications side-by-side from time to time. I do not like a multiple monitor setup because I find it very distracting having a second monitor on my peripheral vision. I do agree that overlaying windows can become a mess. How about an eclipse style (or gimp 2.8 style) interface, which doesn't allow you to have overlapping windows? I don't think I've ever needed to have windows overlap on purpose. If anything, I'm usually wasting time trying to align them to maximize the usable screen space.

pstack• 13 years ago

The best thing that could ever happen for Linux is for Microsoft to follow in the footsteps of Windows 8, with their design for Windows 9.

contextual• 13 years ago

There's also a more intuitive eavesdropping functionality for NSA agents in the new Windows OS.

oceanstone• 13 years ago

Please make this for Ubuntu.

TheHydroImpulse• 13 years ago

I think Linux would be the perfect place to test these assumptions, or concepts. There have been some distros that implement new looks (ElementaryOS). It would be an interesting idea to implement these concepts on-top of Linux.

Sommer717• 13 years ago

This is somewhat like the 10/GUI concept from 2009: http://10gui.com/

pedalpete• 13 years ago

I did my own design idea on the next version of windows, but didn't go so far as calling it "Windows 9" http://pedalpete.github.io/windows_idea/

This design is much 'nicer' than mine, and probably more progressive. I would have liked to have seen what was returned in the search, and the layout of a search.

cpursley• 13 years ago

This would be interesting to see as a linux distro, and more realistic to boot (zing).

lb0• 13 years ago

I don't agree with Microsoft.. but i also don't agree with statements like "Just NO NO AND NO...I want to be able to place my windows where I want...I know better than the OS how and where I want my windows" and "Wrong. Manual windows management is just what a professional needs." At least, it is not true for me. Manually placing and resizing windows, lowering and raising them, that is sooo much mouse work which reduces my productivity, i'm happy that in 99% of my workflow i do not need to do that kind of stuff anymore, but when i want the freedom i can just fall back to that ..

I think Microsoft got the point with their tablet-orientation fullscreen-only-apps, driven by touchscreen interfaces, but agreed, forcing everyone into that (currently coupled with the dual-old-desktop-mess) is ridiculous, user-hostile and typically Microsoft. This inofficial Windows 9 concept does not really help either.. IMHO they are looking for what tiling window managers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager) have implemented since a long time (without being driven by the touchy-concepts), without taking away any freedom like Microsoft always does it, because MS thinks they know what's best for their users? :

• Provide automatic placement for windows, fullscreen, halfscreen, spiraled, any layout which makes sense for you. • Have the nice side-effect that they are much more controllable by keyboard only, increasing productivity even more (at least for developer's kind of work) • Provide the freedom, that if you want to, you can just take windows and resize them freely like default window managers

Introducing and playing with new concepts still is the right, however i think MS should stop forcing users into every new concept, but leave the freedom for the advanced user to customize to their style... if i have ever to go back to windows i hope there is a tiling window manager with the features i am accustomed to ;)

josteink5• 13 years ago

It looks fancy and pretty and all that, but I would probably hate using it for the same reason I hate using Windows 8 right now.

Yes. Manual window-management is tedious and in an ideal world should be obsolete, but I don't think this is the solution either.

Basically, I hate this automatic window-management more than I hate manual window-management and then we've not really gone anywhere useful.

For reference, I use tiling WMs in Linux and I'm happy with that, but I can see how that's not a solution for most people. We need to reach a middle-ground somehow.

krsunny• 13 years ago

Not a fan of this design. Its hard to distinguish what UIs go with what and everything generally seems all thrown together in one UI with no demarcation.

nr0mx• 13 years ago

I fail to understand how this is any different from a skinned Android tablet interface.

alkonaut• 13 years ago

Manual window management isn't the perfect UI paradigm for anyone, regardless of input method. Being able to overlap by a few pixels isn't necessary for me.

A simple way to see where window management should have gone is to look how it has changed within applications, where the resistance to change is lower. 15 years ago it was all MDI applications, where the idea that a doc has a window . Soon people realized that noone really needs to overlap their word documents windows, or move their photoshop tool dialog by 3 pixels, so more modern applications used docking managers to snap and tile their workspace together to use as much of the available area as possible.

As usual in the demos and mockups of both Win8 and this concept, the applications demonstrated happen to be simple communication apps, media players and so on. I'd like to see Photoshop, Visual Studio, AutoCad etc. that actually have a large workspace with several confgurable areas. I don't think it would be horrible to lose the movable windows, but I'd want something as powerful in return: Windows should manage the desktop the way a good desktop application manages its different areas.

Raphael• 13 years ago

Exactly. People need resizable panes, not overlapping windows.

w_t_payne• 13 years ago

Here is what I want from an OS UI:

http://williamtpayne.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/gui-ng-desiderat...

Perhaps not to everyone's taste, but hey-ho.

mcot2• 13 years ago

I want more desktops not less. Not having native support for multiple desktops is a shame in 2013.

pibi• 13 years ago

This is almost done with Rainmeter and http://omnimo.info/. Pretty useful on my B121 tablet.

JasonSage• 13 years ago

As far as touchscreen-compatible window management goes, I'm not sure it gets better than ChromeOS.

For example, the keyboard shortcuts for snapping a window left or right let you customize how wide the window is after the snap. So for example, alt + ] snaps the window to the right half of the screen. The same shortcut again grows the window to 90% wide, then 80%, then 60%, and finally back to 50%. So if I want whatever I'm reading to be decently wide at the cost of letting my SSH window take up slightly less than half the screen, I can make that happen without a mouse. Or for a good responsive site, 20% or 30% of my screen is all the site needs.

In addition, when I have two windows each taking up 50%, hovering on the window edges they share them brings up an additional handle that lets me adjust the width of both windows simultaneously (if I want). Why can't Windows do that?

Finally, there's a keyboard shortcut for centering a window on the screen, which I am a total sucker for.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

Not too surprising to see lots of people here who would prefer a gradual evolution of Windows toward a touch interface. Bouncing back and forth between legacy Windows and "Modern" UI is obviously unsatisfactory. But, remember that Microsoft tried a gradual, familiar evolutionary approach three times previously and failed. Where were you then?

Now Microsoft has a new kind of failure. Is evolving it in this proposed direction or any other going to succeed? I think this proposal is good. It helps the "bouncing back and forth" problem. One problem is that Microsoft has different security models for "Modern" and legacy apps. (Never mind what kind of sense it makes to have a stronger and weaker app security model in the same OS.)

Here is a potential irony: Ubuntu Touch is an evolutionary approach to bringing a conventional implementation of the desktop metaphor to touch. I could see using an Ubuntu tablet. It probably won't be widely popular since it will have some touch-unfriendly legacy in it. But it might end up being a better evolutionary path than what Microsoft chose. But I'd know what I'm getting and probably be comfortable with it.

TeddyLondon2• 13 years ago

I was wondering what the difference is between the hatred for the win 8 change compared to the change from win 3.x to 95 (nt 4)?

Was it just because not so many people used win 3.x and so ms could change it without so much moaning?

If metro was developed instead of the windows 95 start menu, would it have been hated as much??

ximpathy• 13 years ago

My one complaint about Windows 8 is that I can't use Win+# to switch to the fullscreen apps. I wouldn't even mind the fact that they took up the entire screen if I was able to navigate to and from them with ease. The way to navigate between the full screen apps is with Win+tab which forces me to use two paradigms for task switching. I'm sure this irks alt-tabbers as well.

cJ0th• 13 years ago

"Personalization

Users are given control over the desktop background that gives personality to the user experience."

What the fuck???!

If they advertise like that then why don't they just sell Windows 95 again?

</useless>

Unnoficial design concept for Windows 9

Related Stories