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  On 20/03/2015 at 10:15, psreloaded said:

This is way better than what they have come up with.

How is it any different? It's taking what's already in place, and streamlining it.

  • Like 2

Its taking what is already in place, and making it visually beautiful, and extremely productive to use compared to their current versions. 

Microsoft should hire this girl, she could do wonders for Windows 10 or even work on the UI of those other programs for MS. 

Seriously impressive stuff.

Edited by zhangm
  On 20/03/2015 at 10:32, Anarkii said:

Its taking what is already in place, and making it visually beautiful, and extremely productive to use compared to their current versions. 

Microsoft should hire this girl, she could do wonders for Windows 10 or even work on the UI of those other programs for MS. 

Seriously impressive stuff.

I'm not a girl :D
  • Like 3

It's taking the 'tile' to the next level, merging it with the icon to provide dynamic content (I assume) throughout the shell - like what MS should be doing, and apparently aren't.  I don't know if the 3rd screenshot is a sidebar/reservation feature for live tiles, but I like it a lot.  Most concepts are daft - this is more logical than the vendor seems to understand - excellent work! (Y) (Y)

  • Like 2

If only windows had decent font smoothing. Then this would be muuuuuuuuuch better.

 

Yeah I know it's a matter of opinion but I, and many find windows fonts to be way too aliased. The cleartype wizard doesn't help either.

 

I'm sure higher dpi displays will help a bit but it's a way off until I can afford one :p

 

Oh and I agree 100% that the blur needs to be there if they're using transparency.

I like the vertical tiles too. Rather than having a text list in the context menu for tile size, there could actually be a visualization as to what the tile would look like. Like a grid of tiles of the said tile you're clicking on with all of it's different forms and the tile on the start screen/menu could update live as you mouse over them. Sorta like mousing over styles in MS word with a text selection.

  On 20/03/2015 at 11:33, tuxxio said:

It is nice. Unfortunately this is way beyond the skills of Microsoft's current designers :(

 

I dunno, I have this feeling that the designers might be bound to certain constraints as to how much they change. Anything they do change is going to be thrown over to a focus group as well. Everything is going to get super scrutinised at all stages. "do we need this?" "will this be confusing to older users?" "do we have the time to implement this?" "what's the performance hit?" "can we do this some other way?" "we already have a way to do this, which might not be as good but it gets the job done"

 

The list of reasons a Microsoft designer might not be able to actually implement a good idea could be endless.

  On 20/03/2015 at 11:38, Mark said:

I dunno, I have this feeling that the designers might be bound to certain constraints as to how much they change. Anything they do change is going to be thrown over to a focus group as well. Everything is going to get super scrutinised at all stages. "do we need this?" "will this be confusing to older users?" "do we have the time to implement this?" "what's the performance hit?" "can we do this some other way?" "we already have a way to do this, which might not be as good but it gets the job done"

 

The list of reasons a Microsoft designer might not be able to actually implement a good idea could be endless.

 

I would love to agree but... Windows 8

I'm not really sure what the extra clock accomplishes, and I don't know how I feel about "pinning" tiles identically to the old Vista widget bar. It basically immediately opens the door to asking--why not just allow freely placing live tiles on the desktop altogether? Or simply a replace-desktop-with-start-screen option.

 

Otherwise, I like the suggested improvements to notifications. It looks like it implies sliding up on the toggle area to view them all (something I keep trying to do and realize I can't). The grouped alerts are nice, too.

  • Like 1
  On 20/03/2015 at 12:52, Joshie said:

why not just allow freely placing live tiles on the desktop altogether?

Because Active Desktop didn't ended well and gadgets weren't popular much too - at least for the majority of users; tiles are fine but when you don't have to look at them all the time. Not mention that tiles on desktop, in desktop/tablet mode start menu would cause visual mess.

 

As for concept - it looks visually more polished than what we have in "reality"; but start menu-sidebar on right isn't really a good idea. It distracts user and gives extra moves - sadly, I can't tell what's Ilya's idea behind it because I can't read Cyrillic script. I'd rather exchange that for ability to resize start menu and make it vertical-horizontal as on Jay Malachani concept of Fixing Windows 8: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5265fce1e4b04f7def53c2b6/t/52a94816e4b0e7a8c4427dc1/1386825753937/05.jpg?format=1500w and http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5265fce1e4b04f7def53c2b6/t/52a9482ae4b0797436bafb55/1386825772076/06.jpg?format=1500w

  On 20/03/2015 at 13:18, insanelyapple said:

Because Active Desktop didn't ended well and gadgets weren't popular much too - at least for the majority of users; tiles are fine but when you don't have to look at them all the time. Not mention that tiles on desktop, in desktop/tablet mode start menu would cause visual mess.

 

As for concept - it looks visually more polished than what we have in "reality"; but start menu-sidebar on right isn't really a good idea. It distracts user and gives extra moves - sadly, I can't tell what's Ilya's idea behind it because I can't read Cyrillic script. I'd rather exchange that for ability to resize start menu and make it vertical-horizontal as on Jay Malachani concept of Fixing Windows 8: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5265fce1e4b04f7def53c2b6/t/52a94816e4b0e7a8c4427dc1/1386825753937/05.jpg?format=1500w and http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5265fce1e4b04f7def53c2b6/t/52a9482ae4b0797436bafb55/1386825772076/06.jpg?format=1500w

I don't think I would seriously suggest pinning tiles to the desktop. It's more like, "if this, why not just that?"

 

I kind of see the interest in making tiles more 'available' somehow. The whole point is information at-a-glance, and yet they aren't the most efficient thing in the world right now. Every time we open the start menu, tiles are immediately outdated and have to go through a refresh which takes a few moments. It's also frustrating how the data state isn't synchronized between tiles and their apps (MSN News is a great example of this), but I digress.

 

It's like there's a good idea hiding out there somewhere for how live tiles should work, and it's just determined to stay barely out of reach. It doesn't help knowing that one of the original concept models for live tiles was that they were the applications (the full app was just a larger 'tile' size, so to speak). The history behind these things is odd, and I'm still not sure what I want from them myself.

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