I’ve been on board with the Windows 8 mission from day one, but to
say things have been rocky for Microsoft is something of an
understatement. If you’re using a touch-capable device, Microsoft has
been heading in the right direction with Windows 8. Unfortunately,
Microsoft thought they could bring the mouse-and-keyboard crowd along
for the ride, even if it meant dragging them kicking and screaming. If
anything, Windows 10 is
an apology to those users. It’s a backpedal of monumental proportions,
restoring the Start Menu and shrinking the Modern UI apps into regular
old windowed applications. Unfortunately, this is not good news for
touchscreen users.
Microsoft’s theme for this year seems to be backpedaling, but unlike
the Xbox One, it seems like the changes planned for Windows 10 are going
to be great news for anyone who uses a mouse and keyboard. While
Windows 8.1 made the desktop experience usable, Windows 10 really
focuses on returning the UI back to what everyone is used to.
The challenge here for Microsoft is to not sacrifice some of the
really great UI gains that were made in the process. You see a lot of
that in the new Start Menu and even more in how simple it is to switch
between virtual desktops. There are a few places within this experience,
however, and that’s where everything slides downhill when you use
something like Microsoft’s own Surface Pro 3.
As you see in the photo, the biggest problem with Windows 10 right
now is how wildly different the sizes for each kind of interface is. You
see the larger icons in the touch-friendly Modern apps, and even the
resize and close icons for these apps in the new Windows 10 containers
offer a large enough surface to reliably tap. The All Apps panel in the
Start Menu, the status icons in the bottom left corner, and the list
view in folders are all way too small to reliably interact with using
your finger. Part of this is the result of the extremely high resolution
of the Surface Pro 3,
which can be resolved in some areas by adjusting the scaling or icon
sizes in settings. This doesn’t always work, especially in the Start
Menu, and as a result trying to navigate with your fingers is way less
easy on a tablet than Windows 8.1.
Fortunately, this is early days for Windows 10. Microsoft is
encouraging all forms of feedback from their users as this technical
preview gets used out in the real world, and this is very much a part of
that experience. As Microsoft heads towards a third attempt at unifying
their experiences across all of the different screens you can put
Windows on, this is the sort of thing that has to be addressed before
the final version of Windows 10 launches.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment