Windows 8 What are you expecting to see

[Trouble]

With the announcement that we can expect the next preview iteration of Windows 8 as early as the first week of June, what would you like to see and then what do you actually expect to see?
Does anyone but me think that if we are expected to swallow this new start screen, as a first, if not primary means of navigation, it might be nice to be able to customize it to some extent? Maybe with an advanced color wheel, or maybe even a custom image or our choosing. Maybe be able to resize tiles and the fonts used within the tiles. Maybe force the tiles to use an entire column within a named group before starting a third or fourth column. Maybe even be able to expand and collapse columns to facilitate a better navigation experience.
I think I could accept the concept of a start screen over a start button much easier if I was allowed to customize it more to my liking.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi Randy

My guess is that it will have the missing items that we expected to see, like the Microsoft games etc. (maybe some new ones) plus more support for hardware and drivers.

Beyond that I don't expect to see them allow more customization of the interface.
It's just a feeling I have that they want to ram this down our throats.

As a graphic designer who spent the last 50 years trying to make things clean and easy to understand I really think I could do something that would really look better and be easier to use.

I saw a sample that another designer did on a forum someplace that was really nice.
I'd post a link to it but I can't find where I saw it.

But I really do think that the touch pad interface isn't right for a PC with a big screen.

Lists that are in a logical order with folders and sub folders are much easier to deal then big icons spread all over the screen.
With really good typography and some design elements they could be modern and clean looking and still be simple to use.

I'm really glad that Classic Shell works with Windows 8, but it doesn't seem to solve the jumpy left hand list in Windows Explorer the way it did in Windows 7 and it does look a bit old fashioned.

I find my self swearing at my monitor every time I start to click on a folder only to have it suddenly move to the top or bottom of the screen just before I hit the mouse button. And if you do click on it you know it's going to jump to someplace else.

The folders should stay where they are and let you scroll the window to where your want them. I hope they fix that but they never did in Windows 7.

I haven't really used the search engine in Windows 8 much.
I use Agent Ransack so I'm not sure if it works better then the feeble one in Windows 7 but I hope they improve that.

In short I don't really expect to see anything much different in the new version, but I'm hoping that they have listened to peoples input (that doesn't seem likely knowing Microsoft).

Mike

 

[Drew]

Myself, I don't use Start or visit it enough, (hardly, @ all, really) to care much bout what gets done or change w/ that.

My wants:
1. Power button on the Sys Tray, by default.
2. An Applications folder on the Taskbar, by default & one that will hold its view.

Drew

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I don't use the Start page either but I would use it if it was easy.
I know it's not hard but I want it really easy.

I put everything on my Desktop that I'm ever going to use in day to day work flow.

Only rarely do I need to go someplace else to open anything.

And I have it organised, all my graphics, animation, and video software together, all my games related stuff grouped together etc. on my Rocket Dock bar. I know that you can do that with the task bar too, but I don't like the task-bar wide enough to have two rows of icons.

It uses up space from program windows unless you hide it, and I have some software that requires that I click on things at the bottom of the screen and it keep popping up when I don't want it to.

In Windows 7 I use a program called Task-Bar Eliminator that makes it stay hidden until you use a key stroke to unhide it.

I think that what Drew talks about as an applications folder on the task-bar, and what I think of as a programs page, are basically the same thing. A one click list of your installed software organised the way you want it.

And of course I agree that the power button should be on the task bar too.

Classic Shell takes care of some of these issues but as I said it does look dated.
It does give your the one click start menu where everything is visible and it give you the power button on the task-bar.

Mike

 

[Mike]

I'd like to see some additional eye candy and branding, as well as streamlining of areas that have been rough around the edges for newcomers. Those without touch screens need some additional support, and I don't like how elements of the Control Panel seem to be in Metro, while other parts of it remain on the desktop. I hope this kind of counter-intuitive interface has been cleaned up. I'd like to see a branding full copy of Windows, in the sense that we get to see what the system will approximately look like upon release. I do not think this has happened yet, based on my experience with early betas and release candidates in the past. Hopefully, Microsoft loaded the Consumer Preview with the bare bones of what the OS will ultimately look like. Some additional designs for the Start Screen and some added interface improvements with the new WDDM would be sweet.

Looking at it overall, I'd like set up to either ask or detect if you are using a touch screen, and adjust the experience based on that. Customization of the use of Metro, for me, is still essential. It will nice to see optional values instead of mandatory ones. Hopefully, I believe that a lot of Windows customers have spoken, and this will be addressed.

As far as the June release, I hope to see some more meat on the bone, so to speak. We should get into where the big technical improvements are and how they will be presented in RTM. I am hoping to see more on the memory deduplication, semi-complete help files, and some more data on how soon we can expect to see ReFS (Windows Resilient Filesystem) on Server and hopefully as an upgrade for the client (remember it can be possible -- you were able to upgrade FAT32 to NTFS at one point with Windows 98 SE). I would like to see the June release candidate outperform the Consumer Preview in terms of its look, performance, and feature set, making it a splendid and worthy successor of Windows 7. These requirements are necessary for me to assess my upgrade plans. I am looking forward to seeing how SkyDrive profile integration may be possible, now that cloud storage is being offered. SkyDrive has always synced really slow for me in comparison to Dropbox, and I would like to see an improvement in this area. I see that Google Drive is lightning fast. It will be good to see, in some instance, less eye candy and more meat on the bone, although I still want to see a real preview of the final product.