What's new

I miss the ergonomic design of Windows 8

ptrkhh

Active Member
Before anybody complaint, Im not going to treat Windows 10 like a final release because obviously it is not. There are MANY bugs and broken visuals for sure. But here, Im going to talk about the core design, the usability, experience, and ergonomic. Something that is not going to, and should not change once the build goes beta. And quite frankly, from my perspective, they kinda screwed up the tablet experience.

Here's the thing, its important, nobody complained about Windows 8 experience on a tablet. Yes, sure, people do complain about Windows 8. Lots of people do. If youre sitting in a room right now, I can assure you that there is at least one person that got irritated by Windows 8. Even if youre in Redmond, WA. But those people are using Windows 8 on their $500 HP craptastic laptop (okay, that's too much of a generalization, but you get the idea).

Its not bad. It is the driving force behind Windows 10 itself. It is the main reason why they built Windows 10. It is a slap to Microsoft to remind them that people are not blind.

Anyway, Windows 8 was clearly built for a tablet, there is no debate. In fact, I find that Windows 8 was designed with tablet ergonomic in mind. It is the most ergonomic OS that I could ever think of for tablets. Seriously, swiping from the right to open the start screen is very natural. Swiping from the left side allows us to switch between app without awkwardly moving my hands across the entire screen. What day is it? What time is it? A simple swipe shows everything for you, no matter where you are. It was super comfortable, none of those actions require you to move both hands on both sides of the tablet. I didn't realize how convenient and comfortable those were until I tried Windows 10. When a design goes so deep into your nature, you start forgetting that somebody actually thought of that. Somebody spent time to make it happen to you. And yes, somebody did it on Windows 8. And somebody else screwed all of that on Windows 10.

But lets break for a moment from that, and talk about other fundamental design. It is much much worse than that. Which designer thought that it is a good idea to put the taskbar next to a metro app, ON A TABLET? I dont know about you, but for me it doesn't make any sense at all. Maybe for working with Office or stuff, but that doesn't make any sense for using YouTube apps and such, on a tablet. See, tablet apps are designed with most controls on the side, because, once again, our hands are sitting on both sides of the tablet. Putting a taskbar on either side is not a solution for that reason. Putting it down on the bottom? Forget it, its an ergonomic nightmare as I mentioned earlier. Moreover, the immersive experience is pretty much gone when the taskbar is there.

I do realize that theyre trying to blend WinRT and Win32 apps together. But, quite frankly, theyre not meant to be. Lets talk about the fundamental SOP of WinRT apps: open it, when youre done, go to the start screen, open something else, then forget about that app forever. It will stay in the background consuming practically zero resource. You can open it again and continue right where you left off. In fact, metro apps should NOT be closed. It will close itself when you need it. And it will be more efficent if you just leave it on the background. On the other hand, Win32 apps are not designed to be like that. Its designed to stay persistently on the memory. It stays open until you close them. When you have it in the background, only god knows what will happen. Perhaps it will consume some CPU cycle, perhaps it will leak the memory, perhaps it will nuke North Korea. Nobody knows.
In short, Win32 apps need more care. Metro apps dont. Putting Metro apps on Win32 environment (Windows 10 non-tablet mode) doesnt make an issue, since giving more care for something that doesnt need care is not a problem. But when you do it in the other way around, you start giving less care on something that does need one. And when it happens, bad thing could happen. Once again, North Korea, watch out.

All in all, I do now appreciate the ergonomic design that I took for granted in Windows 8. For me, Windows 10 feels, really feels like Windows 7 with all the apps, desktop or metro apps they don't really matter, forced to be maximized. If anything, Continuum on Windows 10 actually feels like a stop-gap update between Windows 7 and Windows 8, and that's not a good thing.

If there is anything I could recommend to Microsoft, it is to keep Windows 8.1 and its ergonomic design for tablet mode in Windows 10. Let the core features of Windows 10, like Universal Apps or Cortana, shine through Windows '8.1', but we dont need them to reinvent the wheel every year. Let the current Windows 10 be awesome on a desktop, as it was designed to be, but don't ruin the most ergonomic tablet experience in the world.

Don't get me wrong, I am not judging the visual aspect of Windows 10. Its for sure going to be fixed, but I was talking about the fundamental design, the core experience. Something that's not going to change once the build goes beta. And, once again, that is not a good thing

EDIT: UserVoice page https://windows.uservoice.com/forum...ss-the-ergonomic-design-experience-of-windows
 
Last edited:

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
I think we are seeing the ergonomics returning in this latest build and hopefully we'll see more refinements as well....I agree with you BTW.
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
So where do we stand with continuum is it in the latest build, I assume not? will that change any of this?
 
OP
P

ptrkhh

Active Member
So where do we stand with continuum is it in the latest build, I assume not? will that change any of this?
I am talking about the 'tablet mode' Continuum in the latest build released hours ago. To ask about will the design change, well, honestly, Im pessimistic. It seems like MS has completely forgotten about ergonomic that they paid so much attention the past. If you've been following Windows Phone, you can kinda see how they screwed the ergonomic there too.
The menu items used to be on the bottom on Windows Phone. In fact, they made a huge deal about the address bar on the bottom when they introduced IE on Windows Phone for the first time. Few years later then they completely ignore it in Spartan. The universal mail app running on WP also ignored that design language and placed all the buttons on top. Not to mention the Action Center shortcuts that don't conform to their own design guidelines (people talked about that when WP8.1 introduced the action center)

Im not even sure if ergonomic design will make a comeback at all, since other popular OSes also have poor ergonomic. Maybe ill stick with 8.1. Maybe Im too old, too traditional, resistant to change, or whatever W8 users are calling W7 users. But for me, I don't think, at this stage and this core design, Windows 10 makes a decent tablet OS.
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
while we seem to be doing I miss feature x.

I miss the swipe to browse back a page
Good riddance, I wont miss that mess. Half the time it didn't work right and would hang. Sometimes on the MSN page for example where you can swipe to advanced the inline carousel it would catch and page advance instead then hang.
 

zhenya

Active Member
Did they really remove the one decent gesture that IE has? They need to be expanding the gesture set, not reducing it. Where are the gestures to jump to the top of the page? To refresh? To switch tabs?

The only thing I didn't understand about the current back gesture is why the page render is so slow. Its faster to open the browser fresh than to reload a page.
 
OP
P

ptrkhh

Active Member
Did they really remove the one decent gesture that IE has? They need to be expanding the gesture set, not reducing it. Where are the gestures to jump to the top of the page? To refresh? To switch tabs?
Theyre now copying Chrome with its terrible UI. After all, people love such terrible browser till the point where even Google themselves have no idea why.
 

dleuen

Active Member
I just put up Windows 10 January tech preview on my SP1. I'm a software engineer and consider myself very open to change. But I have to agree with @ptrkhh here. Windows 10 is not suitable at all for a tablet. Holy crap! What are they thinking? I think it will be lovely on a desktop but for my SP1 and SP3 it is a massive step backward in usability. You might as well put XP or Windows 7 on. All the tablet mode seems to do is auto-maximize everything. The task bar takes up space. IE is completely unusable. Text input is near impossible because the OSK covers anything low you try to type into. Wow I'm still in shock.
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
Well then, I guess we really need TWO OSes. One for Desktop and one for Tablets. Forget phones, nobody buys those anyway!
 
OP
P

ptrkhh

Active Member
Well then, I guess we really need TWO OSes. One for Desktop and one for Tablets. Forget phones, nobody buys those anyway!

IMO, WP should be killed and replaced by the full Windows. I thought it was the main target of Windows 10.

Okay, maybe ARM devices could get the 'RT' version with no ability to install .exe programs. But we don't need MS to decide if we are going to use our sub-8" device as a companion or main device (yes, Joe Belfiore did say that we are going to use sub-8" devices as companions). Let us decide by ourselves, just stuff the features needed on a phone onto full Windows and let us decide by ourselves. If I want to use a Galaxy Note as my main device, why should MS intervene with that?
 
Top