win8 Former MS Employee Blogs on Problems and Potential Solutions

[Salutary7]

The site is up http://www.fixingwindows8.com

Fox News has dug up some of his personal information, which confirms he has some experience to back up his opinions:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/14/former-microsoft-employee-is-fixing-windows-8/

While his stance toward Windows 8 is generally negative, he also presents a few interesting solutions and assesses the good and bad aspects of his proposed changes.

[Guest xiphi]

Looks like the site was taken down.

[Tech Star]

I would have loved to read his views. :/ Does anyone have screenshots or something?

[djdanster]

Google Cached page :

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6Ja4qtJoUjAJ:www.fixingwindows8.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk

[culmor]

Google Cache...

Fixing Windows 8

Touchscreen + Windows 8: Great! Keyboard/mouse + Windows 8: Hate!

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Mar 02 2012

Leave a commentBy admin Problems

A narrative explaining how Win8 is broken

During the MWC keynote, Microsoft made it very clear that Windows 8 will work fantastically if you are using touch, mouse or keyboard. Unfortunately, that?s not entirely true. Here are some obvious issues I?ve encountered in a little under an hour of playing with the latest build:

Windows 8 just dumps you into the Start screen. No tutorial, no help icon on the main screen, nothing. This will be fixed by launch or Windows 8 will fail.

The Start screen presents you with a bunch of colorful tiles to launch your apps. This isn?t the entire collection of apps, just the default collection that Microsoft decided upon. Getting to all of your apps is completely undiscoverable: Right-click on an empty part of the Start screen then click the little icon at the bottom of the screen that says ?All apps?.

A new user launches one of these colorful apps, let?s say something new and exciting like ?Store?. It won?t work unless they have a ?Microsoft account?, which is just a hotmail or Windows Live ID, but with a new name. If they want to sign up for such an account, it?s multiple steps and requires punching in your phone number for confirmation.

After a user has a Microsoft account and launches one of these colorful new apps, the app takes up the full screen. The user might be able to figure out that their scroll wheel, used for years to scroll up and down, will now scroll left and right. If not, maybe they?ll notice the ridiculously low-contrast scrollbar at the bottom of the screen. If not, the user sees a very small portion of the full app and is pretty confused. This confused user wants to go back to Start and try something else, maybe that will work.

Metro apps do not have window controls. How does a user know how to exit a Metro app? They can?t minimize, they can?t maximize, they can?t exit. I?m pretty sure this is where 75% of first-time users will simply give up. This will be so frustrating, people won?t even try to fix it. We are going to hear a lot of ?I just want it the way it used to be!? The user has at least three methods of getting out of a Metro app, none of them are discoverable. First, they can hit the Windows key. Second, they can move their mouse to the very top right edge of the screen, wait a second, then scroll down to the new Windows logo. Third, they can move their mouse to the top edge of the screen, click and drag the window to the bottom of the screen. That last one is especially confusing because the window does not follow your cursor toward the bottom of the screen until you actually hit the bottom of the screen.

Windows 8 is pushing the ?Charms? menu as a major navigation element. The charms menu is available by hitting Windows+C or by resting your mouse in the top right corner for a second, completely undiscoverable. The menu has search, share, start, devices and settings as icons. The charms menu is obviously important since you need it to shutdown your computer! How does a user shutdown? Charms menu > Settings > Power > Shutdown. I?m honestly surprised that there is no visible method of showing the charms menu. It?s like if the old Windows Start button was invisible.

The new Windows Start button is invisible. Actually, they removed the Start button and left some dead space where it used to be. If you put your mouse over there and wait, a list of your running apps will appear in tile form. If you try to mouse over a tile, the entire menu disappears. Instead, you have to make that menu appear then only move your mouse up about 50 pixels. Then the entire multitasking menu appears. If you move your mouse in any other direction, poof, the menu disappears before you got to use it. Also, the hit target for the multitasking menu and the charms menu is about 20 pixels total, much too small. Why is there no visual indication that these hit targets even exist?

Let?s switch back to the Store. There is quite a bit of content here, that?s pretty awesome so early before release. Someone said there was a Kindle app coming, so I want to search for it. ?there?s no search bar, there?s no search button. Okay, let?s apply what I?ve learned so far?. maybe I can right click on an empty part of the screen to get that bottom bar to appear. Nope. Maybe if I scroll through all this content?. Nope. Turns out, search is in the charms menu and you can only search Metro apps using that menu. Sure, that seems to work okay, but it?s weird having search results in the charms menu and not the app I?m trying to use.

Let?s go ahead and download one of these new apps. The user clicks on one of the app tiles on the main Store page and is brought to a detail page. It?s quite easy to install an app, thankfully. I hit install and? I?m brought back to the main Store page. There?s an extraordinarily small piece of text in the upper right corner saying ?Installing <app name>?. Windows 8 does give you a notification when you are done installing, but if you don?t click on the notification for the three seconds it is on the screen, it?s gone forever. Now the user has to remember how to get to the Start screen. Smartly, there is a new tile on the Start screen to launch the new app. I think the whole process should be a bit more obvious, in your face.

Alright, I want to sign out of the Store, don?t want my kids being able to buy apps when they play with my computer. There?s no UI, no right click menu, nothing. The user has to open the charms menu, then Settings. This menu is context-aware and will add settings based on the application you currently have open.

All of these issues were uncovered in my first hour of using Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Power users should be able to figure out how the mouse works in Windows 8. Novices and new users will be completely lost. Over the next few weeks, I hope to explore these issues deeper and maybe even come up with solutions Microsoft can use. This website is meant to be informative, not just negative. If you have any comments you don?t want to post publicly, feel free to email us at hello@fixingwindows8.com!

[Tech Star]

Google Cached page :

http://webcache.goog...1&hl=en&ct=clnk

No pics. :(

[culmor]

Part Deux...

Fixing Windows 8

Touchscreen + Windows 8: Great! Keyboard/mouse + Windows 8: Hate!

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Mar 05 2012

Leave a commentSolutions

Fixing Metro by mouse

Summarizing previous posts, using a mouse in Windows 8 is broken because of discoverability and familiarity issues. The Start screen is new, the old Start menu (and associated button) is gone and now there?s a ?Charms? menu. I?ve designed a few minor changes Microsoft could make to Windows 8 that would improve the experience when using a keyboard and mouse. First, a few guiding principles:

1. Fundamental global navigation must be discoverable and memorable.
   
2. Do not rely on keyboard shortcuts. They are considered shortcuts for a reason; they are an alternative access path.
   
3. Keep metaphors consistent.
   
4. It?s okay for the mouse to behave differently from touch!
   

Here are the potential options for non touchscreen devices:

1. Windows 8 boots into the Desktop. The Start screen and Charms menu are combined into a single window, not full screen. The Start button is restored and pressing the Start button reveals this combined Start/Charms screen. The combined screen isn?t quite fullscreen, some of the most recent app is seen behind the combined screen. The taskbar is visible no matter if a Desktop or Metro apps is running, keeping global navigation visible at all time. All apps, Desktop and Metro, appear in the taskbar.
   
2. The Desktop and the Start screen are combined: The taskbar is shown at the bottom of the Start screen. The Start screen content is scrollable like normal so a user basically gets a more interactive Desktop. The Start button is restored and pressing it opens a combined All Apps / Charms menu. Again, the taskbar is always visible and all apps appear there.
   
3. Keep the Start screen and Desktop separate, but offer some sort of navigation element at the bottom of the screen when in any app. Offer quick links to the Start screen, All Apps and the various Charms at the least. The Settings charm is basically information+settings so all of the information in the old System tray could be kept under there.
   

I will outline all of the design changes, pros/cons and even provide sketches for these solutions soon.

[Guest xiphi]

I liked the metro-ized taskbar concept he had. Basically having the Charms integrated into the taskbar for desktops/non-touch devices. Too bad I didn't get to read or see any of the others.